The Dangerous Middle
by Clay Risen

These days it seems like anyone who's anyone in American politics is making a beeline for the center. Take George Bush Jr. and the new wave of "compassionate conservatives." Or Bill Clinton and the success of the New Democrats. Or, in a recent Atlantic Monthly cover story, New America Foundation President and card-carrying Gen-xer Ted Halstead, who claims that centrist politics - social investment, balanced budgets and so on - is the defining agenda for the Next Insanely Great Generation.

If you believe what you hear from inside the Beltway, America - and the world - are being taken over by a mutant race of "fiscal conservatives who are socially left." They are called by many names: Call them compassionate conservatives. Call them the Third Way. Call them the curse of prosperity. In times when it seems hard to argue that everything isn't coming roses, who wants to rock the boat?

"Third way" thinking is defined not by any one set of ideas, but rather as a politically convenient mish-mash of vague and almost-but-not-quite contradictory statements. Take the following, a definition from the Progressive Policy Institute's home page:

The Third Way approach to economic opportunity and security stresses technological innovation, competitive enterprise, and education rather than top-down redistribution or laissez faire. On questions of values, it embraces "tolerant traditionalism," honoring traditional moral and family values while resisting attempts to impose them on others.

It favors an enabling rather than a bureaucratic government, expanding choices for citizens, using market means to achieve public ends and encouraging civic and community institutions to play a larger role in public life. The Third Way works to build inclusive, multiethnic societies based on common allegiance to democratic values."

The problem is that while this sounds great to policymakers tired of the inconvenience of things like values and coherent ideas, it makes little sense to the average American. This is because while those in Washington (and Silicon Valley and Wall Street) may be reaping the bounty of our seemingly unending economic boom, the vast majority of Americans are getting less and less of a share of the proverbial cash pie.

According to a recent report by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, most Americans are actually worse off than they were twenty years ago, even though the top 20 percent are making almost twice as much as they used to. Over 44 million Americans are without health insurance. Most workers are forced into "mandatory overtime," while more and more companies are ditching traditional employment altogether in favor of "independent contractors" whom they don't have to give benefits. Homelessness is growing at an alarming rate, just as states are ever so quietly failing to complete the welfare reforms they began five years ago.

These are not the sort of things that "compassionate conservatism" or "conservative leftists" are prepared to deal with. Indeed, among the calls for Third Way politics, where are the voices of the average factory worker, whose wages have stagnated in the past 10 years while his bosses' salaries have grown five-fold? Where are the voices of minority students who are getting shut out of higher education by the rolling back of affirmative action programs? Where are the voices of unwed mothers, struggling to raise a family and get an education while having to work harder and harder because of drastic welfare cuts?

What is needed in this country is not a New Center, but a reinvigorated Left that can call the Third Way (or compassionate conservatism or whatever you want to call it) for what it is: a sly but very dangerous attempt on the part of political insiders and economic elite to shut out the voices of most Americans under the rubric of a new all-inclusive politics. A new Left that not only represents the millions of Americans who are not enjoying the fruits of the New Global Economy, but also refuses to abandon the idea of a government that takes care of the Little Guy, even when it means taking a few more bucks from the Man.

E-mail Clay Risen at risenc@yahoo.com.