Editor’s Page

How to think straight about America’s imbalanced politics? It’s not so easy nowadays. David Plotke’s smart article in this issue ought to initiate considerable debate about how we went from the New Deal to Bush’s bum deal. Bush has not pulled the country radically to the right, Plotke thinks. Those who claim he has or that he owes his job to ruse must have been sleepwalking through the last decades as the public moved rightward. The president’s plunge in the polls is due to his performance more than reproof of conservatism.

How, in the short term, can our imbalanced politics be checked? How do we get more people to question that conservatism? The first question is easiest. This fall’s congressional elections are urgent. But even if the Democrats win one or even both chambers, that second question makes things complicated. Many people may vote Democratic to rebuke Bush, not to embrace liberalism (let alone social democracy). Plotke suggests that the left must resign itself to a centrist Democratic strategy if the most important thing is to make sure that the right loses in 2006 and 2008. That will be a start, and if we on the left want to persuade the country, we’d better be able to persuade Democratic centrists.

Others will demur. They will contend that today, more than ever, lines should be drawn, big arguments made, bigger visions projected. Too much focus on “the center” makes people cross-eyed. Besides, who succeeded centrists—Carter, ...