But thinking about today’s column, I realized that it’s even worse than that. What defines centrist heroes, as far as I can tell, is that they are people who, faced with a catastrophic slump driven by private-sector abuses, and a severe shortfall of spending, declared that our most urgent priority is … to reduce budget deficits.
That’s often described as a courageous position, but it’s actually anything but: nobody in the Beltway dinner-party circuit has ever been ostracized for demanding entitlement cuts. And aside from being totally conventional, it’s also deeply wrong-headed — and if you ask me somewhat unethical, too, because it involves exploiting a crisis to push an agenda totally unrelated to that crisis.
One of the most annoying stances of the Sensible Centrist Very Serious People crowd is that even though they are dominant force in Washington, despite not having any real constituency, they imagine themselves to be an extremely brave oppressed minority speaking truths that nobody else dares. Except for every damn day on every page of every one of our national newspapers.