As political disputes go, the question of whether the United States is now a “center-left” or a “center-right” nation approaches a near perfect degree of meaninglessness. The answer accords not with any objective standard but entirely to the political and cultural biases of the person responding to the question. To answer, you need to choose where you think the “center” is, and where you are in relation to it.

For conservatives, the center can be located in the political endurance of the New Deal-Great Society 20th century state, and the long midcentury run of liberal cultural hegemony that lingers still. Laboring underneath it all, supposedly, was a center-right majority yearning to be liberated. And from Reagan through George W. Bush, the nation did shift to the right. Republicans won elections by systematically attacking the federal government as the principal obstacle to individual achievement and to the nation’s progress. (But for conservatives to hopefully claim the “center-right” mantle is itself on some level self-contradictory; it suggests continuity with, and affirmation of, the 20th century state that Republican policies repudiate.)

Today’s liberals, meanwhile identify the center with the past generation of Republican electoral dominance, in which a majority of the public seemed at least OK with the abstract ideas of smaller government, lower taxes, deregulation, et al (even as those policies were erratically implemented). Obama’s unambiguous victory and expanded Congressional majorities mark an obvious swing left.

In both cases, it’s interesting to note that the center is something identified with your political enemies: a kind of bright star to be navigated away from as quickly as possible, yet still claimed as your own.

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