The sinking center
The French presidential election result of last Sunday is too good to be true, with the panic it has sown across Europe as a sign of where our democracies are going. Suddenly the French see themselves represented by the incumbent, the right-wing Jacques Chirac, and the extreme right-wing Jean-Marie Le Pen. The center-left has disappeared, leaving a dark hole in the middle of the political system. It is not so much that the number of votes won by Chirac and Le Pen is impressive – it is not, as Chirac got about as many as he did in the first round of the previous election, or 20 percent, and Le Pen only gained about 2 percent to get 17 percent. What matters more is that Lionel Jospin, the prime minister and leader of the Socialist party, was wiped out, getting 16 percent, as opposed to 23.3 percent five years ago (when he beat Chirac in the first round only to lose to him by 47.3 percent to 52.6 percent in the second). So the drama is at the center and only consequently at the centripetal attraction of extreme left and right. So the center is being torn apart, disappearing like a dance floor of a hall of which the outer walls remain – with many doors leading in different directions. Who will venture out to the center now, who will lead the dance? And to think that in the last decade, everyone who wanted to waltz with power had only to grab the center of the floor. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were the clearest examples of this, dumping the ideological baggage of their parties and expropriating the liberal dogma of their more conservative rivals. Their success was spectacular: On the one hand, they made themselves electable – which in turn gave them dominance over their parties – and on the other they sent the opposition into a panic-stricken, platform-less search for an identity. In the United States, the Republicans struck back with George W. Bush and his group of extreme right-wingers. In Britain, the Tories are stuck in an exile that will end only when New Labor fades and sinks. Jospin’s Socialists managed to hold the center while still trying to conduct business as a slightly left-wing party. They pulled the Communists into their coalition and they introduced the 35-hour work week, the first radical change in the labor market since the adoption of the 40-hour week in 1936. And still Jospin paid the price of not leaning far enough to the left, as candidates slightly or much further left than him gained a total of about 27 percent of last Sunday’s vote. If any of six other left-wing candidates had not run, Jospin would most likely have made it to the second round of voting, where he stood a good chance of beating Chirac. So even though Jospin’s Socialists remained a left-wing party, they paid the price of not being far enough to the left. But, more than anything in this world where ideology counts for a lot less than it did, they paid the price of failure. The 35-hour work week did not come across as a big idea; it did not make people feel more confident about their present and their future. The mandatory 35-hour work week also introduced greater flexibility into the labor market and, to those who already had jobs, it brought about the greater competition that was provided by new people in the workplace who might just move up from temporary to permanent status at the expense of the old hands. There were also the continuing confrontations with unions demanding more money or protection of existing gains in the face of social security reforms or other changes that had to be made. And then there was the massive problem of rising crime and the problems caused by millions of mainly Muslim immigrants who had not been assimilated. The problems are such that perhaps no government can solve them, especially one that professes to belong to the center. Today’s rapid changes are sweeping across international relations and international, national and corporate economies. Societies are changing due to growing unemployment (at least in Europe), the weakening of the welfare state and mass migrations from poorer countries and regions to the Western world. There are no easy solutions, and, being moderates, centrist governments are obliged to try to muddle through by introducing changes that will not shake things too much or alienate their electorate. This, by definition, does not make for stirring actions or election campaigns. Those on the extreme left, on the other hand, can preach a utopia whose vision may soothe the soul of their supporters without their having to taint themselves with trying to solve the problems of a messy world in which not everyone thinks the same way. The extreme right can preach simplistic solutions for today’s reality, ignoring the dangers posed by the inevitable reaction that their message and actions will provoke. So, even as they become more attractive in this age of uncertainty, the absolutists of the left and right are in a position to win votes but not to lead nations. Ironically, the existence of these two extremes also strengthens each, at the expense of the only enemy of both – the center. Each is the other’s bogeyman. In other words, the rise of the extreme right will make more people support the more confrontational of the left-wing groups, while the stronger left and the lack of solutions to social problems will keep nourishing the right. (On another plane, the spread of Islamic extremism also feeds the West’s xenophobes at the expense of moderates everywhere and in every religion.) But the rise of the right will also lead, at least for now, to a rush to the center (as in almost universal support for Chirac in the second round) as a defense of democracy. When this new center fails to hold, the extremes will attract, again. In Greece there are many similarities to France right now. The ruling PASOK party has tried to show that it is the apathy of voters and the choice of eccentric boutique candidates of the left that have put democracy to sleep and allowed it to bring forth monsters. But having failed to induce public fear of a non-existent extreme right-wing insurgency, PASOK has now leaped at the godsent opportunity provided this week by veteran Communist Party leader Harilaos Florakis, who declared that it is «100 percent» certain that the conservative party leader, Costas Karamanlis, will become prime minister. This has allowed the Socialists to raise the specter of a second-best bogeyman, a left-right coalition such as the one that persecuted PASOK’s near-legendary leader, Andreas Papandreou, in 1989. New Democracy, the conservative party tipped to win the next election (if it were held now and not in two years’ time) has portrayed itself as the true center, disowning Le Pen and his leprous ilk. The odds are that New Democracy too will not be able to solve the problems of Greece that PASOK, in control of the unions, failed to challenge. The lesson of France is that any government in the center is liable to fail in dealing with today’s problems because it will take parties that are stronger and more inventive than those of today – whether slightly left or right of center – to meet the many evident challenges. It will also take a radical change among the electorate, with social solidarity triumphing over vested interests and suspicion over expectation. Slowly, the old ideological molds are disintegrating and people of good will or bad temper are looking at the world as it is. Overall, it is as if an old religion has died out and our world, with a hole in its center, is waiting for a new one. And it does not come. The only paradigm is that of the United States, but whose great differences from Europe and the rest of the world make it a difficult example to emulate. We are cursed and blessed to live in interesting times.
