The vanishing center.

• Author: Bresler, Robert J.
• Position: STATE OF THE NATION

IT IS A COMMON THEME of many self-described moderates that Pres. George W. Bush should "govern from the center." This advice sounds inclusive and magnanimous. It appeals as a way of leading the country out of an environment pockmarked by unremitting personal partisanship. The problem with this counsel is that there is no center from which to govern, and looking for it leads a president into quicksand.

The last White House resident to find sure footing in the ideological middle was Dwight D. Eisenhower. In the 1950s, politics was not dominated by take-no-prisoners consultants; both parties had liberal and conservative wings; most political commentators, usually on the radio, were measured and restrained in their views. After the jarring and abrasive events of the 1930s and 1940s and the ugliness of the McCarthy era in the early 1950s, the American people wanted some respite. Eisenhower understood that and established a partnership with the Democratic leadership in Congress, namely Sen. Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson and House Speaker Sam Rayburn, two moderate Texans. Beyond that, events had brought most citizens to broad consensus on fundamental issues. The Democrats had come to accept the legitimacy of a robust corporate capitalist economy; the Republicans had come to terms with a modest welfare state.

That was then, however. Since the 1970s, every president from Gerald Ford to George W. Bush has found the search for the center to be elusive at best and treacherous at worst. Ford's brand of pallid conservatism only won him a fierce primary challenge from Ronald Reagan. Jimmy Carter's environmental liberalism and fiscal conservatism excited few and, for his efforts, he had to face Ted Kennedy in the 1980 primaries. George H.W. Bush's violation of his "no new taxes" pledge in order to pacify the moderates allowed him to join Ford and Carter as one-term presidents.

Bill Clinton navigated the center a bit more skillfully by using the Republican Congress as a foil while accepting their initiatives for welfare reform, a balanced budget, and capital gains tax relief. For all his clever political maneuvering, though, Clinton presided over the steady decline of Democratic Party fortunes in Congress and in state houses across the country.

George W. Bush, meanwhile, was reelected, not by moving toward the center, but by energizing his political base support. His forays into the center have gained him even less than his predecessors. Bush's...