The Center is the place you always say you are if you're President

[cali]

Bush didn't come in and emphasize his conservatism- though I don't think you can call george a conservative. He stressed his history of purported bi-partisanship, he pimped the crap about Compassionate Conservatism. And why did he do this? Because the American people are loath, truly loath to support what they view as partisan figures. And all presidents realize that pushing their agenda is much easier done when you have the support of the majority of the American people.

Bush has radically conservative policies he wanted implemented, but he tried cloaking them in centrism. Worked for a while, particularly due to 9/11, but after 2004, not so much success at pushing his agenda.

Obama has some pretty progressive/liberal items on his agenda. The last thing he's going to do is frame himself as a partisan liberal dem. He knows that immediately turns off at least 58% of the voting public. And in turn, empowers reps and senators who represent districts/states where that anti-Obama policy gets loudly expressed.

So what is the elusive "Center"? It's what the President manages to define as the Center.

Obama is trying to ensure that his policies are viewed as centrist policies, as policies that are within the so-called mainstream.

What's so difficult about understanding that?

[DireStrike]

1. All the more reason for us to piss and moan then!

If a president's base chastises him soundly for being too far on the other side, it helps his claim of centrism and may allow him to move further towards the base.

Make some noise!

[Oregone]

2. "What's so difficult about understanding that?"

Im going to take a wait-and-see approach. Why don't you do the same? No one knows how this is going to play out, so there is no reason to defend his future hypothetical decision making as liberal already.

[cali]

3. I've often said, I'll wait and see. I'm simply pointing out the obvious

but obviously overlooked. All presidents claim the center.

[knowbody0]

4. all this is a good example of why we can trust his diplomacy

it is in his nature to bring together opposing sides.

[EFerrari]

5. I don't see how these equivalencies work. "Liberal" has been tainted;

"conservative" has not been tainted in the culture. Bush made no bones about being a conservative such that when he talked about bipartisanship, it was usually in the context of accusing Democrats of not having any, not in moving toward it himself. His "generosity" in "reaching out" to Democrats was framed as a consequence of his conservatism, not as a repudiation of the basic rightness of conservatism.

There are not two equal sides that mirror each other except at the very top of the political class.

In mainstream culture, we have an ongoing asymmetrical struggle in progress, and the efforts to equate the Left as somehow co-equal or mirroring the Right don't take the last forty years of rightward movement into account, nor do they take into account the vastly different MO of the left and the right.