Striving for the center

McCain and Obama both want to be thought of as moderates, at least now that they've got their respective nominations locked down. All the verve and vigour of the primary season has been replaced by more moderated positions. Whether you have McCain saying that he wouldn't now vote for his immigration reform or Obama stepping back from the hard line for withdrawal from Iraq, both candidates have tempered their image. The fact that all the rhetoric, all the extreme policy proposals, and at least some of the anger of the primaries disappears ought to be examined more closely.


I find that a simple diagram or two serves me greatly in analyzing these issues. This is mostly economic theory, combined perchase with a bit of my own penchant for tidy analysis, but the fact that this simple a concept can be used to illustrate such a wide diversity of political phenomena makes it worth mentioning.


First, one must bear in mind that the audiences to which potential nominees must appeal during the nominations are decidedly different from those that receive the brunt of candidates' attention. Only Democrats and Republicans can vote in their respective primaries. If we posit that the two camps can be divided into conservatives, centrists, and radicals, (where conservative refer to voters that most prefer a politically neutral candidate and radicals to those who most prefer an extreme candidate), we get a very pretty standard bimodal distribution curve. Since the bulk of either party's voters will lie some distance from the political middle, nominees have an incentive to appeal to (gasp!) the fundamentalist right or the socialist left.


The true moderates - the ones near the center in the grand political scheme of things - are unable to pick a candidate from the other party, and since their votes can be supposed to make up a minority of the party votes in each respective caucus, they are largely ignored. Court the (more extreme) majority, and ignore the (more moderate) minority, or else some other potential nominee will move to the left or right of you, and steal a substantial portion of your party's votes..


What happens when we move to the national elections? Suddenly the political landscape is greatly changed. Instead of a bimodal distribution of moderate Democrats and Republicans (which gives politicians the incentive to wax partisan) suddenly we are presented with one single distribution. Politicians now have to court the average voter, the Democrat or Republican who was too disheartened by the extreme rhetoric so typical of the primary season. Just as important are the undeclared, the so-called swing-voters who might evaluate policies based not on the party stance, but on the real implications of implementation. The nominee no longer cares so much about the radical-partisan voters. For example, a socialist would never vote Republican - he'd just be less enthusiastic in voting Democrat. As long as the party base remains loyal and actually votes (which is a tenuous proposition - more on this some other day) then each candidate has the incentive to move as close to center as possible while still remaining on his party's side of the political divide.


So the movement of the candidates to the middle should be no surprise. Both are touting their bipartisanship, and both certainly seem to believe fervently in bipartisanship. The question in my mind is whether Obama, with his scanty record, will be able to match McCain's long history of bipartisan effort. Obama's speeches are very "new" sounding, to use his own words, and if he is elected president we'll see how his promises pan out. Because the incentives a president faces are completely different.


I will try and scan in some diagrams, to help clarify the explanation.