| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : DECEMBER 27, 1999 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| BOOKS
Are Centrist Leaders Bad for America? DEAD CENTER Clinton-Gore Leadership and the Perils of Moderation By James MacGregor Burns and Georgia J. Sorenson Scribner 416pp $27.50 It's a truism in American politics at the end of the 20th century: Winning Presidential candidates run as centrists. George Bush in 1988 offered a ''kinder, gentler'' Reaganism. Bill Clinton and Al Gore called themselves New Democrats who favored a ''third way'' of governing that was neither liberal nor conservative. The 2000 election is shaping up in much the same way: When the early Republican front-runner, ''compassionate conservative'' George W. Bush, unveiled his tax-cut plan on Dec. 1, his chief economic adviser proudly described it as ''pragmatic.'' But if pragmatic moderation is the road to victory in elections, is it the road to greatness for a President? Historians James MacGregor Burns and Georgia J. Sorenson most certainly think not. In their intelligent and thought-provoking new book, Dead Center: Clinton-Gore Leadership and the Perils of Moderation, these true-blue liberals make the case against centrism as a political philosophy. The title has two meanings: They believe centrism to be both intellectually bankrupt and politically inert, and they see President Clinton's attempt to govern as a centrist to be a catastrophic failure. The Burns-Sorenson thesis is clear: Great Presidents, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, were ''transformational'' leaders, who acted boldly regardless of public opinion and political resistance. Most politicians, they argue, are ''transactional'' figures--more concerned with winning elections or small political battles than with transforming the nation. What's more, Burns, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1956 biography, Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox, and Sorenson, a former Carter Administration policy adviser, do not believe there is such a thing as a moderate philosophy. In their left-right dichotomy, there are only liberals and conservatives. ''There's nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos,'' former Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower is quoted as saying. Despite their liberal leanings, the authors view Ronald Reagan as the only President in the second half of the 20th century to come close to greatness as a leader. Their reasoning: He stuck to his philosophical guns and transformed both American politics and the world. So where does this leave Bill Clinton, the specimen under the Burns-Sorenson microscope? The answer: not looking very good. The authors consider him a ''chameleon'' who has been more concerned about winning elections and maintaining his popularity than transforming the nation. It's clear that the authors had high hopes for the Democrat from Hope. The book begins with a description of their 1992 campaign interview with then-candidate Clinton, who identified his Presidential role models: Jefferson, Lincoln, the two Roosevelts, and Kennedy. He wanted to be ''one of the transforming leaders who could get people to move beyond party.'' But Clinton doesn't measure up to the authors' expectations. For example, they say, the doomed health-reform plan flopped not because it was too liberal but because it was too much of a compromise. They view Clinton as a perennial pragmatist: backing welfare reform, speaking of the virtue of school uniforms. It's ''leadership lite,'' they write. Burns and Sorenson are particularly disappointed that the President did not try to do more to heal racial tensions in America--a subject in which he deeply believes but, they argue, was unwilling to fight harder for. The authors are much kinder to First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and Vice-President Al Gore. The former is viewed as a principled liberal with a grand vision, and the latter as having much deeper philosophical moorings and being far more decisive than his boss. Readers of various political philosophies will find themselves agreeing with many of the book's conclusions. But the premise of Dead Center is a dubious one. Why can't a centrist be as principled as a leftist or a rightist? Public-opinion polls show that moderates outnumber both conservatives and liberals. In the increasingly polarized world of American politics, there are a growing number of voters who believe in fiscal responsibility, an activist federal government that focuses on results rather than regulations, and neo-libertarian social policies. Just because this ''vital center'' does not conform to New Deal-era definitions of right and left doesn't render it bogus. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, another practitioner of third-way politics, may be a centrist, but there is no mistaking that he has a coherent political philosophy that includes transforming a highly centralized nation into a more federal one. The authors are particularly wrong on the issue of fiscal responsibility. They dismiss it as a philosophy and denigrate balanced budgets. They talk of American heroes memorialized in statues across the country. ''Not one, so far as we know, brandishes a balanced-budget law,'' they write. This dismissive attitude may be rooted in the failure of the modern debate over fiscal policy to fit into the old-school left-right paradigm. Who's the liberal: Al Gore, who wants to retire the federal debt in 15 years? Or George W. Bush, who would give away more than $1 trillion in tax cuts? Dead Center is often dead right when it comes to assessing Bill Clinton's leadership on domestic issues. But the political center is not nearly as dead as Burns and Sorenson believe. By RICHARD S. DUNHAM Dunham covers the White House. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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