WASHINGTON — The moderate middle is disappearing from Congress.
Evan Bayh is the latest senator to forgo a re-election bid, joining a growing line of pragmatic, find-a-way politicians who are abandoning Washington. Still here: ever-more-polarized colleagues stuck in gridlock — exactly what voters say they don’t like about politics in the nation’s capital.
Politics runs in cycles, and the Senate has seen flights of self-styled centrists before. In 1996, for example, 10 senators who could boast strong bipartisan credentials chose to retire rather than run again. Many of them complained about how lonely the middle ground of American politics had become.
But more than their feelings are at stake. The moderates in the middle are the ones who tend to make deals and sometimes resolve standoffs blocking decisions that affect programs — not to mention taxes — that touch virtually every American.
Former Sen. William Cohen, a Maine Republican, says what’s happening now is a continuation of the “hollowing out of the middle.”
“There is this sort of purging in both parties,” Cohen said. “They insist on moving to the left or moving to the right. . . . Over the years, the moderates have disappeared and continue to disappear.”
The few left in the middle can gain outsized power to decide the fate of closely fought issues. But that comes at a price more and more of them say is too high: crushing pressure to conform, shrill media barbs and the increased fight for cash to shape one’s own campaign narrative.
“I simply reached a conclusion that I could get more done to help my state and the American people by doing something in the private sector,” Bayh, the two-term Indiana senator and former governor, said Tuesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
Rather than heed President Barack Obama’s appeal for pragmatism, Congress is losing its value as a problem-solver and becoming more unworkable, said Bayh, a Democrat.
Polls say voters hate that about national politics. Lawmakers profess to dislike the polarization too but still engage in it — on the House or Senate floor, in private meetings or both. And on the campaign trail, the truth is, there’s cash to be made by taking sides and, in effect, becoming a dependable brand.
“If you’re on either fringe of the party, you have an easier time raising money,” said one who would know, Sen. Arlen Specter, who left the Republican Party for the Democrats when he found he could not win a Pennsylvania GOP primary.
Calling from a fundraising swing through California, Nevada, Arizona and Tennessee, Specter said sticking around awhile — three decades in his case — can produce a brand of independence he is hoping fits the public’s populist streak. “I think the independents are going to be in a position to pick the winners and losers,” he said.
And moderates?
Moderates, said Darrell West, vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, are “going the way of the dinosaur.”
“Soon we’re going be able to go to museums to the see the skeletons of the centrists and learn about what they were,” West said.
Not long ago, Senate seats were among the most sought-after positions in the land. They meant power and prestige, some posturing but also some significant problem-solving. Now, many believe the $174,000 salary just isn’t worth it.
Veteran Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., said Bayh could do more to change things by staying. “I don’t understand how you make things better from the outside. I share the frustration, but I would have hoped he would have stayed around,” Frank said.
