The unfortunate aspect of this "victory for the moderates"

It great to see anything declared a "victory for the moderates" these days, but in this case the real downside, at least from a centrist perspective, is the particular cast of characters who have become the public face of centrism these days. Peggy Noonan doesn't mention how she feels about the deal, but she leaves no confusion about her feelings toward the deal-makers.

I know they're centrists, but there is nothing moderate about their self-regard. And why should there be? I personally was dazzled by their refusal to bow to the counsels of common sense and proportion, and stirred that they had no fear of justified insult ("blowhard," "puffed up popinjay") as they moved forward in the halls of the United States Senate to bravely proclaim their excellence.

I managed to avoid seeing the announcement and interviews, but based on what I've read, I'm glad I did. Noonan, usually the most smooth of writers, is refreshingly biting on the subject of these over-inflated egos. Read the whole essay. she doesn't, thank goodness, ascribe their behavior to their centrist politics, but rather to the influence of the culture in general.

I think everyone in politics now has been affected by the linguistic sleight-of-hand, which began with the Kennedys in the 1960s, in which politics is called "public service," and politicians are allowed and even urged to call themselves "public servants." Public servants are heroic and self-denying. Therefore politicians are heroic and self-denying. I think this thought has destabilized them.

People who charge into burning towers are heroic; nuns who work with the poorest of the poor are self-denying; people who volunteer their time to help our world and receive nothing in return but the knowledge they are doing good are in public service. Politicians are in politics. They are less self-denying than self-aggrandizing. They are given fame, respect, the best health care in the world; they pass laws governing your life and receive a million perks including a good salary, and someone else--faceless taxpayers, "the folks back home"--gets to pay for the whole thing. This isn't public service, it's more like public command. It's not terrible--democracies need people who commit politics; they have a place and a role to play--but it's not saintly, either.

I don't know if politicians have ever been modest, but I know they have never seemed so boastful, so full of themselves, and so dizzy with self-love.

No matter how difficult these Senators tell us it was to negotiate this deal, there is nothing here that was truly "hard." In other industries, with fierce competition breathing down their necks, people cut much tougher deals that risk their own jobs and investments, as well as the lives and livelihood of many other people, and they get it done quickly and get onto the next deal. These guys have little at risk and only their own egos to overcome. Was that not the big barrier in this case, the stonewall egos of both party's leadership?

As for the gang of 14, some are familiar centrist ans some are a bit suspect. Before the deal was announced, David Brooks wrote about how the Centrists are doomed to failure in these sorts of efforts; " Here's an example of why moderates never accomplish anything in Washington" is how he opens. He was wrong about their failure, but made some cogent observations nonetheless.

Contemplating the likely scenario if the nuclear option was triggered...

The leaders of both parties sound like the cheerful generals at the start of World War I, who had their own happy fantasies of victory before Christmas. Neither party is prepared for the quagmire and for how the public will react.

He's got that right. This deal has not made everything nice and friendly in the Senate, so this observation still stands.

As for the centrist negotiators...

I'm all for valiant efforts, but why do the independent types always have to be so ineffectual? Why do they always have to play their accustomed role: well-intentioned roadkill?

The answer, to be blunt, is that some of the moderates are moderates out of conviction. They do have courage. But many moderates are simply people who feel cross-pressured by different political forces, and their instinctive response is to shrink from pressure. They lack spirit to take risks, to actually lead.

Sadly, he's right about this too. In talking about centrism as I like to define it, I must always differentiate between centrism as a conviction, even a "radical" conviction, and the accidental moderate politics of those Brooks describes above. They don't want to be out fighting in the middle, but the ended up there more or less by accident. The strong-form of centrism is likely to scare them half to death.

At least Brooks was wrong about the outcome. This time, at least.