As I write, there is a diary on the Rec List defending Obama's over-eagerness to compromise and hesitancy to be aggressive with moderate Democrats through the use of the myth of "transcending ideology." While I am sure that the author of said diary means well, as does Al Hunt, the author of the underlying article Obama Transcends Ideology by Riling Both Flanks," he badly misuses the term "ideology" as a tool with which to bludgeon "those on the left."
What does this word "ideology" mean?
(1) Does it mean a set of abstract principles, positions and beliefs to which adherents stake their ethical and social identity and sense of self-worth, and thus cling tightly, rejecting compromise and evidence that may conflict with or undermine this identity?
(2) Or is the term "ideology" now nothing more than a political marketing gimmick meant to distinguish someone who (unlike it user of course), is not a "moderate," a "pragmatist" (another horrible word), an "incrementalist," or "non-ideological?"
In the underlying article Al Hunt argues that:
The left wing says he’s a traitor to their cause. Liberal bloggers regularly accuse him of selling out to corporate interests, claiming that he has failed to keep his campaign commitments.
However, according to Hunt:
ideology isn’t the ideal prism to evaluate the Obama presidency.
Maybe not, but its equally not the ideal prism to evaluate Obama's critics on the left, which is exactly what Hunt is doing in this piece. Obama's leftist critics are implied to be, as always, ivory tower intellectuals or upper-middle class do-gooders obsessed with their liberal principles and idealistic demands for an unrealistic utopian society while at the same time enjoying the fruits of their privileged existence. Meanwhile, of course, the pragmatic, non-ideological Obama (and presumably Hunt) is concerned only with the practical counting of what can get get 60 votes for in the Senate, or what the median American will tell Gallup he approves of.
First, Hunt is wrong that Obama is doing all he practically can to fight for liberal outcomes. Obama did not use his leverage from the bailout to push for real changes on Wall Street. He did not push Joe Lieberman on the public option or Medicare expansion, but did push Dennis Kucinich to vote for the Senate Bill. He did not push hard for real protections for underwater mortgage owners or for a larger stimulus bill (how many millions in infrastructure went to appeasing Susan Collins 61st vote?) He did not raise a sustained populist tone against health insurers until Scott Brown's election and Anthem's rate hikes. The list goes on and on. None of this is to say that Obama is not a much better President than the previous occupant of that position, nor to deny that Obama is to the left of center in this country. But Obama's default trajectory has been to refrain from pressuring congress directly, and sometimes, even indirectly. But both sides of this debate have been arguing about these data points for quite some time on this site and I don't want to restart those debates right now.
I want to focus more on what Hunt is missing about the very practical importance of what the left is fighting for, and criticizing Obama for. Part of this is shifting the Overton window, yes. But a much larger part is immediate.
A large problem with the way that Hunt and Obama use the term "ideological" is to emphasize that the left and right wing make decisions and advocate positions based upon "principle" and "feelings" and "emotions" as divorced from the immediate and practical needs of "real folks."
But since when is fixing the lack of affordable health care merely an ideological principal, and not a harsh economic reality for millions of people? When did having a financial system in which people investing for their retirement don't get ripped off by investment bankers just an liberal sticking point? Since when did preventing underwater mortgages become just the province of some ivy league egghead? Since when are preventing soon to be rising sea levels just the ideological crusade of the 10% most liberal Americans? These are all things that left-wing "ideologues" are pushing Obama to push Congress to bring about. As far as I can tell, that makes these "ideologues" the most practical and pragmatic of us all. Without these critics and "ideologues," much of what was accomplished in the Health Care Bill would not have come about. Nor would benefits for underwater mortgage holders be forthcoming. Nor would DADT be on the Chopping Block.
Not only do I dislike being used by the Administration and media as a foil to balance off radical right-wing nuts, or being called "shallow" or "narrow-minded" or "ideological" because I believe in pushing Obama to support real concrete benefits for a better society, it is just intellectually untrue to argue that centrism, or center-leftism is any less of an ideology than leftism, or conservatism, or libertarianism, or any other "ism," or any other more subtle schematic view of the world for that matter.
Ideology can be a useful term to describe an extremely over-simplified sociological variable that can help us explain things about the world and politics in particular. But it is not properly used as something that is opposed to "objective knowledge," "reality," or "the truth." Social theorists as diverse as Michel Foucault and Richard Rorty have argued as such, I think convincingly. There is no place from which one can stand entirely outside one's historical, cultural, gender, racial, and (for you marxists) economic background, and thus no way to avoid being subject to a view of the world that is "ideological" in some sense. Of course we hopefully strive to be critical of our own and others' world views, on the assumption that we have internalized certain biases and on the view that it never hurts to view things from a different perspective. But it is just not the case that there is any place or position in our complex multi-faceted society from which one can be "objective" or "neutral" or "non-ideological."
And because I don't want to get any further into this philosophical debate, I think Chris Bowers put this really well in a post he had over at Open Left:
Everyone has an ideology. This is because, in its broadest definition, ideology simply refers to the set of beliefs that determines the values that guide the actions of an individual or group. Just like everyone has an accent, everyone has an ideology.
Additionally, while it is true that there is a usage of the term "ideology" that refers to impracticality, it is also true that every ideology is in constant contact with reality. Everyone has beliefs, and everyone is also forced to operate in the real world. Since there is no alternative world in which to operate, or different levels of interaction with reality available, everyone deals with the conflict between experiential reality and ideological abstraction equally. People might have different appraisals of the effect of certain actions, or even differences in preferred outcomes of their actions, but no one can escape taking action based on their beliefs.
In many circumstances being the one in the middle may be the democratic (small "d") equivalent of "might makes right" in the sense that the person or group in a democracy that resides in the middle of a given policy spectrum will most often get its policy outcome implemented by virtue of being the one that makes the majority "a majority." However, rather than magically meaning you lack an ideology, being in the middle just, BY DEFINITION, means that you happen to have an ideology that is between other ideologies on some social-historically contingent continuum. That does not make you right, it does not make your viewpoint objective, it does not make you immune to criticism, and it certainly does not make you non-ideological.