Christopher Beam: Saying America is "center-right" isn't just wrong. It's meaningless.
Since the election, conservatives have consoled themselves with the idea that Obama may have won, but America is still a "center-right nation." But the phrase is tossed around with little evidence—possibly because there is none. Even if there were evidence, the term is so muddled as to be meaningless.
Defenders of the center-right maxim usually cite the statistic that more Americans identify themselves as conservative (38 percent, according to the most recent study by the Pew Research Center) than liberal (21 percent) or moderate (36 percent). But that's just what people think they are. In practice, the labels aren't clear-cut. Many self-identified conservatives support social safety nets, for example, while many liberals support coastal drilling. Meanwhile, not everyone agrees on the definitions of liberal and conservative, so self-identification means little. It's not unlike middle-class. Since there's no clear definition, almost everyone think they're middle-class.
"You can go down the list of social measures … and come up with different kinds of characterizations," says Andrew Kohut of Pew Research. For example, most people say they oppose government intervention into private matters. But they support the idea of a social safety net, such as food stamps, which is nothing if not the government intervening to prevent or fix some individual problem. And they support such policies even if it means the government has to go into debt. This makes it ridiculously easy for partisans to cherry-pick data to support their favorite characterization.
Center-righters also cite recent presidential history: Just look at the streak of Republican presidents in the last 30 years, they say. Five of the last seven presidents have been Republican. And until Obama's victory, no Democrat had won more than 51 percent of the popular vote since Lyndon Johnson.
What this ignores, though, is that while Republicans have dominated the executive branch, Democrats dominated the House and Senate for all but six of the 40 years before the GOP takeover in 1994. You can also re-spin the "recent presidents" numbers. If you start counting in 1960 and count Barack Obama, then five of the last 10 candidates elected president are Democrats. Ta-da!...
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Defenders of the center-right maxim usually cite the statistic that more Americans identify themselves as conservative (38 percent, according to the most recent study by the Pew Research Center) than liberal (21 percent) or moderate (36 percent). But that's just what people think they are. In practice, the labels aren't clear-cut. Many self-identified conservatives support social safety nets, for example, while many liberals support coastal drilling. Meanwhile, not everyone agrees on the definitions of liberal and conservative, so self-identification means little. It's not unlike middle-class. Since there's no clear definition, almost everyone think they're middle-class.
"You can go down the list of social measures … and come up with different kinds of characterizations," says Andrew Kohut of Pew Research. For example, most people say they oppose government intervention into private matters. But they support the idea of a social safety net, such as food stamps, which is nothing if not the government intervening to prevent or fix some individual problem. And they support such policies even if it means the government has to go into debt. This makes it ridiculously easy for partisans to cherry-pick data to support their favorite characterization.
Center-righters also cite recent presidential history: Just look at the streak of Republican presidents in the last 30 years, they say. Five of the last seven presidents have been Republican. And until Obama's victory, no Democrat had won more than 51 percent of the popular vote since Lyndon Johnson.
What this ignores, though, is that while Republicans have dominated the executive branch, Democrats dominated the House and Senate for all but six of the 40 years before the GOP takeover in 1994. You can also re-spin the "recent presidents" numbers. If you start counting in 1960 and count Barack Obama, then five of the last 10 candidates elected president are Democrats. Ta-da!...