Run Center, Govern Partisan
By Chris Bowers, in the context of discussing whether or not Obama is a progressive:
Campaigning is often a sign of how someone will govern. In 2000, the Bush campaign ended up “winning,” basically by preventing many people from voting in Florida, and then stopping the recount there altogether. He won through a power grab, foreshadowing the many power grabs to come in his administration. In 2004, Bush won through a base strategy, and then preceded to govern directly to the base without any concern for broader public sentiment. In the 2008 campaign, Obama is winning by appealing to a huge wave of progressive activists, but also by appealing to beltway, center-right conventional wisdom.
Bush may have won by preventing votes in Florida being counted, but he got into position to win by running a campaign that stressed unity, bipartisanship, cooperation with Democrats, and even (believe it or not) hints that he would include Democrats in his cabinet. He then governed from the far right; even farther right than the national GOP of the 1990s. As such, his governing ran directly counter to the way that he campaigned. So I’d have to say that Bowers is actually wrong on this point; Bush is an outstanding example of candidate whose centrist direction (at least in 2000; I think Bowers is right about 2004) had no noticeable impact on governing strategy. And so to then draw the conclusion (as Bowers does) that centrist moves in the Obama campaign (or the Clinton campaign, for that matter) herald a centrist orientation is quite wrong, at least based on the evidence of the first Bush term.
What’s notable about 2000 wasn’t that Bush ran right in the general, but rather that he was able to run a centrist campaign while having such a clearly right wing record as governor of Texas. A better argument challenging the “Obama as progressive” stance would be to suggest that Obama’s relatively short record can be interpreted as stressing such things as unity, bipartisanship, etc., and that as such we can’t be certain that he’ll govern as a genuine progressive/liberal. But as for the campaign, it really doesn’t tell us much, other than that Obama believes he’ll need independent and Republican votes to win in November, and that he believes he essentially has the Democratic nomination sewn up. On the first I’m sure that he’s right, and on the second we’ll know more on Tuesday.