No Labels is just the latest version of an old and unnecessary idea.
The No Labels movement has not gained much traction. One reason this might be, is because anyone over the age of thirty has heard this chorus before. Ross Perot’s United We Stand platform of ‘92 claimed that it was time for politics to stop being so partisan. Jesse Ventura was elected on something similar claiming politics was too polarized.
Today No Labels is claiming the same old song. The No labels website reads “Hyper-partisanship is one of the greatest domestic challenges our nation faces.” Even if this is in some odd way true (which most people don't buy), it presumes that the country is somehow more partisan than is has been in times past. It also infers that there has been a time a time when the country came together to accomplish what partisanship was preventing.
Neither of these claims of the past partisanship is the case. The country has always been divided in two distinct directions, from the time of Washington or even the pre-revolutionary period. There were differences, even parties, which slowed the process of legislative progress. This is why the Declaration of Independence was drafted in the Summer of 1776, and not the Winter. There have always been differences, which were at times very nasty. Partisanship was present at the time of John Quincy Adam’s embattled Presidency and rivalry with Andrew Jackson. Partisanship even led to violence and dueling (not in a figurative sense but a literal one) throughout the 1800’s, which even left some politicians like Alexander Hamilton dead. The idea of a previously more gentile politics is a myth.
In fact a lamentation of a polarized nation has been a common mantra of years past from Washington, who warned against divisions, to Earl Warren who said in the Eulogy of President Kennedy
We do know that such acts [Kennedy’s assassination] are commonly stimulated by forces of hatred and malevolence, such as [those] today [which] are eating their way into the bloodstream of American life.
For Chief Justice Marshal, deep division were creeping into the political system and into life into American life. The country was indeed divided then, but it always has been that way at one level or another.
Beyond divisions, another part of the No Labels myth is that they declare the middle-of the-roaders can get more accomplished. Ross Perot believed that he could heal the partisanship that had emerged, so did Jesse Ventura. However these two names are generally connected with a new non-partisan where the Middle bravely led the way to solving the nation's problems. Jesse Ventura quit after one term, after having a pretty miserable and ineffective governorship and Ross Perot was not elected at all. The politicians who claim the middle-road have little support and aren’t compelling for very long.
I would even question the idea of a logical-Middle. Evan Bayh, former Senator D-IN, made similar claims of politics being to polarized, then after announcing his retirement promptly voted more to the Left. Former Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania departed the Republican party stating frustration with a perceived radical shift to the Right and then became one of the most rabidly partisan Democrats in the new Senate majority. Former Florida Governor Charlie Crist claimed that his party (the Republicans) had abandoned him in the Senate race, which was becoming increasingly out of reach for him, so he moved more to the Left. There is a pretty obvious pattern here, beyond the fact that these self proclaimed middle-of-the-roaders are a list of politicians who either lost or dropped out to face a loss in electoral races, they generally move to the Left.
Often claiming the Middle is code for being on the Left without having the integrity to admit it.
However, beyond any of the points stated above, there is also a pattern of the more memorable politicians running on certain rhetoric and then, once elected, moving more to the middle. This is the pattern of both Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan. This movement to the Middle becomes necessary to reach compromise, which hasn’t gone away no matter the self-described Middle might claim.
With a more thorough look, the self-described Middle is just as ideological as those they decry, they just simply have a self-righteous label (of No Labels) to make them appear less ideological.
No Labels is not new, it is not fresh and it is not geared to accomplish anything that wouldn’t happen through the regular two-party process. So to those who claim the mantle No Labels, I say there is no need.
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