The difficult truth of being mired in the middle

One of the most ancient formulations of successful warfare is critically twofold but sublimely simple: know yourself and your enemy. Comprehend both and you'll win each battle; understand one without the other and you'll stumble, occasionally victorious but just as often vanquished; embrace neither and you'll lose every time.

Although an ancient formulation, in modern war colleges it's axiomatic. With each passing century its proofs have mounted. In the last century alone, two great powers on opposite sides of the world understood little about their enemies, whom they foolishly provoked. Not two decades later, the principal victor of that conflict violated both precepts -- it neither understood why it was fighting in a faraway jungle nor comprehended its enemy's motives -- to the march of a predictable outcome.

Domestic politics, as we all know, is the (usually) peaceful version of warfare. As such, it comports with the latter's rules to achieve a successful outcome. Hence knowing oneself is essential, but blinding one's self to the opposition's deployable arsenal -- not merely his tangible resources, but his propagandistic truths, however acutely self-serving they may be -- is a grievous and possibly lethal error.

Case in point: I can just imagine, sadly, the chorus of progressive guffaws that went up upon reading this line from Sunday's New York Times: "Some Republicans said Mr. Obama’s fundamental mistake was believing his election presaged a larger ideological shift in the country."

In the hands of Republicans, yes, that's propaganda . But propaganda isn't always untrue. And every combatant -- both the good guys and bad -- uses propaganda. In the 20th century the word took on pejorative weight, but it's actual meaning is neutral: "Ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause."

So when progressives bellow that contemporary Republicans are a perverse collection of intellectually stunted and emotionally unstable pseudoconservatives who believe that destroying our national village will save it, they're being perhaps a trifle harsh yet unimpeachably truthful -- and propagandistic. Happily, Republicans steadfastly scoffed at progressives' propaganda just a bit too long; they paid the electoral price.

Conversely, it is only with the greatest of peril that progressives now scoff at Republican propaganda: again, their strategic assertion, unquestionably self-serving, that "Obama’s fundamental mistake was believing his election presaged a larger ideological shift in the country." (Even more precisely, an ideological shift in Congress, but that's another column.) Added a GOP strategist to the Times' reportage: "The American people are sort of returning to where they were. I don’t think they’ve made a big swing to the right. They’re returning to their centrist moorings."

How absolutely true, and empirically trackable. In the second half of the 19th century we drifted into a prolonged period of boundless industrialization and vast inequality, against which Americans pushed back through the reforms of the Progressive Era. That was soon followed by yet another postwar era of insane financial concentration and risk, against which Americans pushed back with the New Deal. In rather short order, and despite the New Deal's undeniable successes, what followed was Reaganism, which, in turn, eventually fell, for want of a better term, to Obamaism.

What's spotlighted above are the broad extremes -- national swings in sentiment, high points and low, the peaks as well as the valleys of one peoples' political character -- but averaged out and running straight across is a decidedly centrist disposition: at times centrist right, at times centrist left, but always a return to a stabilizing equilibrium right smack down the middle.

Successful progressive presidents have understood this. Franklin Roosevelt saved capitalism -- to the undying enmity of his era's left -- through a paradoxical mixture of mildly socialist and profoundly conservative reforms. The same political parameters held true in Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. (FDR's Social Security Act was pragmatically pared; and the sausage-making history of, say, Medicare, has been largely forgotten).

The point is, both presidents, while edging the nation leftward in legislation, never forgot this nation's "centrist moorings." They compromised to achieve the achievable. And that's what made them successful progressive presidents.

Did Obama overestimate the "ideological shift" of 2008, as our contented friend the Republican strategist speculated? Probably. I know I did. Obama's election was likely just a momentary national outburst; a voluble leftward reaction to right-wing extremes. But in the absence of the severity of a 1930s' Great Depression or the compensatory mourning of a tragic assassination, Obama's electoral aftershocks failed to rumble for long.

So we're right back where we started, which is to say, where we've always been, mostly: in the middle.

Some progressives may suspect that conceding such an unpleasant reality is a sign of weakness and thus dismiss it, but they do so at their own peril. Because failing to comprehend the enemy's truths, however disagreeable they may be to one's wishful thinking, only plays into the enemy's strengths by distorting judgments as to the best path forward.