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Left, Right, Or Center
ByJon Meacham argues that we are a center-right nation:
Democratic presidents from FDR to JFK to LBJ to Carter to Clinton usually wind up moving farther right than they thought they ever would, or they pay for their continued liberalism at the polls. Should Obama win, he will have to govern a nation that is more instinctively conservative than it is liberala perennial reality that past Democratic presidents have ignored at their peril.
Jonathan Alter responds:
If Obama moves "smart left" next year, he will have succeeded in rewriting the American social contractthe obligations of the government to the people on the economy, energy, health care and education. But if we see a revival of the dumb left with old-fashioned capitulation to interest groups and a series of rookie mistakes on foreign policy, even a big Democratic victory next month would be a speed bump on the Ronald Reagan highway...
