Most people I know claim they want a leader to lead from the center. I’m talking politics here, not sports. On Wednesday night, as I sat listening to President Obama’s State of the Union address, I started pondering what it would be like if we really did have a leader who led from the center. It seems like a reasonable idea – lead in a way that recognizes the merits of the arguments made by every faction and synthesize them into proposals that give everyone a little bit of what they want. But as I thought a bit more, I realized that leading from the center is even less tenable than leading from the extreme. It has two factors going against it: mathematics, and human psychology.
Imagine there are ten factions, each of which has ideas regarding some particularly contentious issue. Suppose also that there is intense partisanship among members of these factions, so much so that they refuse to communicate with one another, and so have no hope of crafting a proposal viable to each of them. The benevolent centrist comes along and asks each faction to give him (or her) it’s best idea. He uses the ten ideas he gathers to create a proposal that gives each faction something that it wants. It seems as though this practice should be at the heart of any well functioning body that has as its fundamental purpose discursive negotiation. However, instead of being cheered, the centrist is scorned by all! Why? Because each faction is dissatisfied with 90% of the proposal – the 90% comprising ideas that are not its own. Mathematics, it seems, cannot be beaten.
In the psychology department, humans are more likely to react to proposals that they find offensive than they are to react to proposals that they find agreeable. Suppose you have a centrist leader that puts forth proposals for two issues. Now take a group of people, each of whom agrees with one of the proposals and disagrees with the other. If you poll these people regarding their satisfaction with the job of the centrist leader, I am certain you will find that most of them are dissatisfied. It’s just easier to be opposed than it is to support. Evolution, it seems, cannot be beaten either.
The patterns I suggest above are rampant in our political system, and in our society at large. I won’t insult your intelligence by telling you where to look for them. I will only say that if you’re skeptical, take a few moments to rehash the health-care debate.
Word of the Day
irredentist (ir re den tist) [ir-i-den-tist]
- (noun) a member of a party in any country advocating the acquisition of some region included in another country by reason of cultural, historical, ethnic, racial, or other ties.
- (adjective) pertaining to or supporting such a party or its doctrine.
