On ruling from the center

Updated below:

I guess I feel compelled to weigh in on the debate over Brad deLong's comments about ruling from the center:

I am, as I said above, a reality-based center-left technocrat. I am pragmatically interested in government policies that work: that are good for America and for the world. My natural home is in the bipartisan center, arguing with center-right reality-based technocrats about whether it is center-left or center-right policies that have the best odds of moving us toward goals that we all share--world peace, world prosperity, equality of opportunity, safety nets, long and happy lifespans, rapid scientific and technological progress, and personal safety. The aim of governance, I think, is to achieve a rough consensus among the reality-based technocrats and then to frame the issues in a way that attracts the ideologues on one (or, ideally, both) wings in order to create an effective governing coalition.

...

Right now Paul Krugman and I seem to have two disagreements.

First, I think--being as I am here at Berkeley under the powerful (but benevolent) intellectual dictatorship and hegemony of David Card on labor issues--that the benefits of using government policies to strengthen unions (while they are certainly there) are much smaller than Paul judges them to be.

Second, while I am profoundly, profoundly disappointed and disgusted by the surrender of the reality-based wing of the Republican policy community to the gang of Republican political spivs who currently hold the levers of power, I do think that there is hope that they will come to their senses and that building pragmatic technocratic policy coalitions from the center outward will be possible and is our best chance.

Paul, I think, believes otherwise: The events of the past decade and a half have convinced him, I think, that people like me are hopelessly naive, and that the Democratic coalition is the only place where reality-based discourse is possible. Thus, in his view, the best road forward to (a) make the Democratic coalition politically dominant through aggressive populism, and then (b) to argue for pragmatic reality-based technocratic rather than idealistic fantasy-based ideological policies within the Democratic coalition.

He may well be right.

I'm sorry, but no. You can't combine with these Republicans to get sensible answers. They take any effort at compromise as a weakness (just as they believe any effort to use diplomacy in foreign policy is appeasement). If you try, they'll take you to the cleaners. Ted Kennedy tried on education and look what we got – every child left behind. Barbara Boxer tried on Supreme Court nominees and look what we got – Scalito. Many tried on the war in Iraq and look what we got - the war in Iraq. The so-called “center” now is to the right of Dick Nixon and closing in on Atilla the Hun. That's not a place the you want to work from.

Meanwhile, Atrios makes some good points as well.

...as someone who has spent a reasonable amount of time around the kinds of people DeLong is talking about, I'm not sure I want them running anything. The sensible technocrats haven't exactly had the best track record lately, in part because imagining you're above it helps to isolate you from the consequences of what you're advocating.

How's that "free trade" working out for Mexico? How'd that currency peg work out for Argentina? How'd that energy deregulation thing work out for California? How'd that shock therapy work out for Russia? How's the privatization of federal government functions coming along? Oh, and how's that Iraq war coming along?

What the Democrats need to do is set the agenda for the debate. They need to lead and not look back. If that means that they have to do a bit of demagoging, so be it. They will get nothing unless they win -- and win big. After that, maybe we can begin to look for reasoned discourse.

Update:

Big Tent Democrat at Talk Left has this to add:

As always, the important thing is to be proud of who you are and what you stand for - Democratic values on both domestic and foreign policy are the right ones for our country. We should not be shy about saying that, and saying what Republican policies have been - a disaster.