Barack Obama and the Dangers of the Center

A friend once explained to me the strategy of tic-tac-toe. Everyone who has ever played the game, he said, has at least once strove for the center of the board. The thinking is that the center offers the greatest destination for security. But the center gives the illusion of safety, my friend told me.

Essentially, going to the center is disadvantageous for several reasons. One, you've wasted a move to go to other areas (say the left, for reasons of being cute), and in tic-tac-toe there are few moves to make. Second, being in the center not only does not help you construct a scenario where your opponent doesn't have enough moves to stop you winning, but actually hinders you from winning. "You basically win by your opponent not noticing that you have amassed a strategic position," he told me.

Now we have the case of Barack Obama. By now, it has been a bit of time since the "shellacking" of 2010 (remember President Bush's "thumping" four years ago?). The Democrats suffered a humbling defeat of losing control of the House of Representatives and thus a great deal of Obama's agenda (most notably climate change legislation, immigration reform, and LGBT rights legislation). Is it time for Obama to move to the center?

Let me first say that everyone should calm down. For starters, the past three presidents who lost control of the House during their first term (Truman, Eisenhower, and Clinton) were re-elected, and I stand by my prediction that Obama will win re-election in 2012, even with Republicans in the House and a high unemployment rate. Second, this is the first time in decades that the opposition party did not take back both houses of Congress, and there is one reason for that--the Tea Party. Yes, the Tea Party might be have given further momentum in the goal of re-taking the House, but it undoubtedly cost the Republican Party the Senate. Because of the Tea Party, we still have Harry Reid, a senator who would have been defeated by any other Republican besides Sharon Angle. Because of the Tea Party, we do not have a Ken Buck or Christine O'Donnell or a Linda McMahon. We probably won't have a Joe Miller. And Mitch McConnell is still the Senate Minority Leader. Fifty-three Democratic senate seats looks a lot better than forty-eight, which is what it would be without the Tea Party.

On to the larger point, it may seem like the necessary thing for Obama to do is compromise. I'm not totally opposed to compromise, although I still believe bipartisanship is very overrated. Still, that does not mean Obama should pretend that the Earth is suddenly clean or that a Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal should be shelved or that all (excuse me, any) of the Bush tax cuts should be extended. Only two centrists presidents--Dwight Eisenhower and Bill Clinton--won re-election in the past hundred years. Paul Begala has argued that Obama needs a centrist economic policy. Fine, I guess. Begala knows more than I do--he was, after all, a top level adviser to President Clinton.

But a major ideological shift to the center is not the right path. At this point, for Obama, the center is an illusion for safety. The center is where he will be most vulnerable to Republican attacks. Obama can still win the independent vote by not going to the center (it worked for him two years ago). So there's no need for him to make such a move, and, other than some areas, I doubt he will.