Hello Attackerman readers, and thanks to
Spencer for letting me hang out here for a few days.
It’s always a pleasure.
While Tom Friedman’s reading of the Tea Party
Movement is hilariously wrong — a movement of GOP
stalwarts isn’t going to embrace anything “green” —
it isn’t the worst thing about his
column today in the New York Times. Those
honors belong to this passage, where he extolls the
“radical centrism” of Senators Kerry, Graham and
Lieberman:
Yes, I know, dream on. The Tea Party is heading
to the hard libertarian right and would never
support an energy bill that puts a fee on
carbon.
So if there is going to be a Green Tea Party,
it will have to emerge from a different place —
the radical center, a center committed to a
radical departure from business as usual. Acting
on that impulse, Senators John Kerry, Lindsey
Graham and Joseph Lieberman had forged a
bipartisan climate/energy/jobs bill that
deserves an energetic centrist Green Tea Party
to support it.
This critical piece of energy legislation was
supposed to be unveiled by the three senators on
Monday, but it was suddenly postponed late
Saturday because of Senator Graham’s fury that
the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of
Nevada, and the White House were planning to
take up a highly controversial immigration
measure before the energy bill.
The term “radical centrism” is absolutely
incoherent. The New Oxford American Dictionary defines
radical as “relating to or affecting the
fundamental nature of something; far-reaching or
thorough.” Which, incidentally, is the precise
opposite of “centrism.” For centrists, public policy
is only “good” when it offers a concrete benefits to
existing stakeholders and entrenched interests. By
and large, centrism is an ideology of the status
quo, and centrists are most concerned with
maintaining existing institutional arrangements.
Reform is rarely pursued, and then, only when it can
be achieved through tepid incrementalism (the
exception, of course, being wars and defense
spending).
But even if “radical centrism” were a real thing
and not nonsense prettied up by the gloss of a New
York Times column, it’s still the case that
Friedman’s praise is completely misplaced. Senators
Kerry, Graham and Lieberman are consummate
insiders. Indeed, this is why its even possible for
a climate bill to move forward; each has intimate
knowledge of the players involved and the experience
necessary to navigate their concerns. Pace
Friedman, there is absolutely nothing
radical about the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman
proposal; it provides $10 billion to the coal
industry for “clean coal technology” and has
garnered support from “the nation’s largest electric
utilities association and three of the country’s
biggest oil companies.” Of course, that’s not to say
that the bill isn’t good — tepid
incrementalism is the only real option we have for
moving the ball forward — but radical it isn’t.
Like I said at the beginning of this post though,
“radical centrism” is a complete contradiction in
terms, and it would please me to no end to see the
phrase mocked, denounced and completely excised from
political dialogue.
