Clinton and Bush Killed the Center

if I agree with your thesis.

While Clinton was obviously more of a centrist than a liberal who made sure all of his policies were popular amongst the electorate, Bush has stuck to his guns with principles that many would consider to the right. "Centrist" is not something I've ever thought to apply to Bush.

I have not been able to connect to your blog, so I have no evidence to support this, but I am guessing that politically you fall on the left.

Why do I say that? Simply because you agree that Clinton is centrist and Bush is "right". if you had said Bush was a centrist and Clinton "left", I would have guessed you were on the right.

Objectively both were centrist. Clinton did some things very left, but on the whole was centrist. Bush may have pursued the war on terror, but he also enacted No Child Left Behind, prescription coverage, signed McCain-Feingold, all VERY left, not right.

If I can connect to your blog, it may prove me wrong, or may not. But just guessing I think you may help prove my thesis, rather than disprove it.

Thank you for your comment and please come back and read more. I appreciate readers from all over the political spectrum, and, if you are a bit to the left as I suspect, I especially enjoy readers who challenge my assertions, so come back and rad whenever you can.

In fact, if you want evidence that Bush is hardly a hard-core right winger, just look at him now.

His state of the union address was a paean to the "poor exploited mortgage victims" and he wants his legacy to be an "FDR lite" "stimulus package".

The man is running left of Ted Kennedy.

So, yes, he may have spent a year or two in the middle concentrating on the war on terror, and was actually a bit firm on that one issue. But the entire beginning of his presidency was dedicated to very left wing policies, and so is the end. And even in the middle he continued to pass very left wing economic and social packages.

If the war on terror had never happened, if 9/11 had been delayed by 8 years, Bush would have been an entirely left wing president. The left would likely still vilify him (because of Florida in 2000), but he would have ruled entirely form the left had 9/11 never happened.

I did finally get through to your blog and have to say you do not appear to be on the left, at least not to the degree I suspected.

The fact that you can stomach the Daily Show, or the current editors of the Onion (I found them funny about 5-6 years ago, not so much today) suggests you may fall a bit left of my position, but then again, a lot of people do.

Still, I find it strange that you would consider Bush a right-leaning president.

You can't judge a president by his rhetoric, or even his personal beliefs. If you did, Clinton was a hard-line leftist and Carter was a centrist. (For that matter Nixon talked right a lot more than he acted on the right. Price controls are definitely not conservative, nor were the Smithsonian Accords.)

No, Bush may talk a good game on the right, and may have pursued the war on terror, but in all other ways, I still stand by my characterization of him as pretty far left for a Republican.

But I do need to correct myself and say that my initial impression of your politics was incorrect.

(Sorry for the delay in this correction. I forgot about it until I saw your more recent post on another article.)

I need to correct myself again. I should know better than to rely on my sometimes faulty memory.

I don't actually recall if you mentioned the Onion. I checked a number of old pages, once I got through, and seem to recall seeing you mention it, but I could be mistaken.

No, I meant to say that you have more patience for "The Daily Show" and Slate, and are much more fond of Christopher Hitchens than I am.

I hate correcting myself twice in a row. But I am too honest to avoid doing it when I make errors. So, sorry again, I think I now have the response I originally intended.