Centerfield

Dreamboat or Gasbag?

Is Tony Blair the centrist dream candidate or a helium-filled dilettante? According to Clive Crook in the Atlantic

The most remarkable and annoying thing about Blair's appeal to Americans is that the man is adored by conservatives and liberals alike. Blair is about the only topic, in fact, on which they appear to agree. Conservatives see him as a kind of Margaret Thatcher: an unflinching ally in the new war against terror. Liberals see him as a kind of Bill Clinton, minus the character flaws: the champion of a new progressive politics. Skeptics should already be asking, can he really be both?

But to Crook, he's lighter than air.

Blair's policies, like Clinton's are nothing but a form of moderate conservatism-or, for liberals who choke on that term, you could say "center-left." Such labels sound tepid and derivative; they will not do for a strong leader. What is required is an ideology that is bold and new and uncompromising, but with no actual content, since that might inconvenience pursuit of the centrist agenda that political necessity for the moment dictates to leaders like Blair. The helium-filled Third Way, with all its grandiose vacuity, is precisely this.

Crook argues that Blair's changing views over time indicate a triumph of ambition over principle. I consider it the triumph of learning and experience. What do you think?

Posted by Blogadmin at July 31, 2003 01:07 AM