BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

            “The Vanishing Middle in American Politics” That headline made me reach for the reading glasses Sunday morning.   Holy voter! Batman, when did the middle vanish? 

            The headline on a story by AP reporter Ron Fournier was misleading, of course. The great middle of American politics–centrists, independents, moderates, whatever you call them (it’s instructive that they don’t have a brand), has not vanished at all.  Those voters, in the words of Democratic consultant Steve McMahon, make up “the invisible middle.”   The middle is ignored, he said in the article, because the politicians are concentrating on the noisemakers. 

            McMahon worked on the Howard Dean 2004 presidential campaign, so he knows something about noise.  

            Fournier said, “Dean’s unsuccessful campaign brought to light one of the factors contributing to polarization: new technologies and media.  

            “He (Dean) began his bid when the war in Iraq was highly popular.  That was a political problem for the anti-war candidate until like-minded people began finding and organizing each other through Web sites such as Meetup.org.

             “Soon the anti-war minority became a vocal, unyielding majority. A generation ago, it would have taken much longer…”

            “Fast forward a few years to the explosion of blogs and the rise of partisan cable news channels, and the United States is a nation of people who increasingly get their information from people who already agree with them.  Facts become fungible.  Compromise becomes cowardice.” 

            In other words, the calm center of the body politic has become invisible.

    The national obsession with the polar icecaps of American politics–the far right and the far left–is attributable to several other factors besides the transformational change in the news and entertainment media.  Others include gerrymandered congressional districts that tilt heavily to the right or left, the absence of a national mandate, the popular political culture of victims and villains dominating every issue, and a nation in constant crisis.  The result has been the noisy racket of a strident and angry public discourse. The result has been a political process in which consensus, centrism, independent thought and political party inclusiveness are all considered signs of weakness and vacillation.

            The modern-day drivers of political thought are not so much thinkers but theater performers, the likes of Glenn Beck, Keith Olbermann, Bill Maher, Sean Hannity, Rachel Maddow, Rush Limbaugh and Chris Matthews. Their audiences, their appeal, their bread and butter are at the right and the left edges of the spectrum.   
            I found it telling that right next to the AP article was a box with details on the upcoming guests of the Sunday talk shows.  Featured guests on the ABC’s This Week panel were Al Sharpton, Bill Maher and Katrina vanden Heuvel, three people who don’t have a moderate thought about gardening, let alone governing.

            But it is, as McMahon points out, in the middle where decisions can be made. It’s in the middle where good governance can take place.  It is in the middle where solutions are formed and progress is made.

            That should be good news for centrist politicians, but it’s not. Politicians in the middle are often very bright but boring.  They have little sense of organization, mobilization and political discipline.  They are highly skilled legislators, but they are not generally inspirational leaders.  They thrive on common sense and shun sensationalism.  Centrism to them is not a governing philosophy, but a method of governing, so they don’t command the attention of people and press who want quick and clear answers, easily recognizable victims and villains, and an anger and emotion quotient that stimulates the senses, but contributes little to solutions.  Most importantly, centrists don’t yell.  

             That is a failure of our political process and a deterrent to solving problems.  We cannot extricate ourselves form foreign military entanglements, or pull our country back from the brink of bankruptcy, or improve health care, or increase domestic energy supplies, or improve our transportation or telecommunications infrastructure without the kind of consensus solutions that can only be found in the middle. 

            And there is the conundrum.  No one can find their way to the middle because it’s invisible.  
    
Editors’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff.   He is currently a principal with the OB-C Group.