THE TIMES, THEY ARE A-CHANGIN'

Tom Friedman coins a pretty powerful metaphor in his op-ed "A Hole in the Heart." Literally, he means that there's a hole in the center (the heart) of the political spectrum:

American politics is so polarized today that there is no center, only sides. Israeli politics has become divided nearly to the point of civil war. In the Arab-Muslim world, where the moderate center was always a fragile flower, the political moderates are on the defensive everywhere, and moderate Muslim spiritual leaders seem almost nonexistent.

Europe, for its part, has gone so crazy over the Bush administration that the normally thoughtful Guardian newspaper completely lost its mind last week and published a column that openly hoped for the assassination of President Bush, saying: "John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. - where are you now that we need you?"

But the phrase strikes other notes too.

Bleeding. We've seen decapitations. Car bombs. Murdered school children in Beslan. War.

And hate. Hate personified in killers like Zarqawi, but also between Republicans and Democrats, and by western Europeans towards George Bush. Hate manifest in films like Fahrenheit 9/11.

But then Friedman claims that

The Bush-Cheney team bears a big responsibility for this hole because it nakedly exploited 9/11 to push a far-right Republican agenda, domestically and globally, for which it had no mandate. When U.S. policy makes such a profound lurch to the right, when we start exporting fear instead of hope, the whole center of gravity of the world is affected.

What is he talking about? Al-Qaeda exported fear. We exported hope, to Afghanistan, to Iraq. Who can deliver a message of hope like Bush, with his "transformational power of liberty" and his "I see the valley of peace"?

And, what far-right Republican agenda? The Medicare bill? No Child Left Behind? A tax cut that took millions of poor people off the tax rolls and increased the share of income tax revenues paid by the wealthy? More money to fight AIDS in Africa? Increased government spending on veterans' health? An embrace of nation-building?

Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe begs to differ. To him, the election is "Radical Bush vs. Reactionary Kerry":

And there in a nutshell is the choice in this election: forward with Bush into a difficult future or backward with Kerry to the familiar ways of the past. It would be an easy decision, except for one thing: The familiar ways of the past led to Sept. 11.

James Klurfeld at Newsday agrees that Bush is a radical, and that's why he can't understand why the election is close:

Bush hasn't been conservative; he has been radical, self-righteous and too easily manipulated by simple-sounding but impractical ideas. To name just a few:

Fighting a preventive war. That is, invading another country with little or no support from most allies and against much of world opinion without any evidence of an imminent danger to our security, or, for that matter, taking the steps to make sure the outcome would be successful.

Or: Cutting taxes across the board, especially for the wealthy, while fighting a war.

Or: Saying part of Social Security can be privatized without any idea of how it will sabotage the program or how much a transition to a new one would cost.

Has Kerry been that poor a campaigner that he has failed to provide a reliable alternative to Bush? Has the public been so easily convinced that there is something fundamentally wrong with Kerry that the nation shouldn't take a chance on him, although Bush has failed in so many areas? Is that tough-guy-from-Texas act really so believable?

Matthew Manweller of RealClearPolitics explains explains what Friedman and Klurfeld don't understand:

This November we will vote in the only election during our lifetime that will truly matter. Because America is at a once-in-a-generation crossroads, more than an election hangs in the balance. Down one path lies retreat, abdication and a reign of ambivalence.

Down the other lies a nation that is aware of its past and accepts the daunting obligation its future demands. If we choose poorly, the consequences will echo through the next 50 years of history. If we, in a spasm of frustration, turn out the current occupant of the White House, the message to the world and ourselves will be two-fold. First, we will reject the notion that America can do big things. Once a nation that tamed a frontier, stood down the Nazis and stood upon the moon, we will announce to the world that bringing democracy to the Middle East is too big of a task for us. But more significantly, we will signal to future presidents that as voters, we are unwilling to tackle difficult challenges, preferring caution to boldness, embracing the mediocrity that has characterized other civilizations.

The defeat of President Bush will send a chilling message to future presidents who may need to make difficult, yet unpopular decisions. America has always been a nation that rises to the demands of history regardless of the costs or appeal. If we turn away from that legacy, we turn away from whom we are.

Second, we inform every terrorist organization on the globe that the lesson of Somalia was well-learned. In Somalia we showed terrorists that you don't need to defeat America on the battlefield when you can defeat them in the newsroom. They learned that a wounded America can become a defeated America. Twenty-four-hour news stations and daily tracing polls will do the heavy lifting, turning a cut into a fatal blow. Except that Iraq is Somalia times 10. The election of John Kerry will serve notice to every terrorist in every cave that the soft underbelly of American power is the timidity of American voters. Terrorists will know that a steady stream of grisly photos for CNN is all you need to break the will of the American people. Our own self-doubt will take it from there. Bin Laden will recognize that he can topple any American administration without setting foot on the homeland.

It is said that America's W.W.II generation is its 'greatest generation'. But my greatest fear is that it will become known as America's 'last generation.' Born in the bleakness of the Great depression and hardened in the fire of W.W. II, they may be the last American generation that understands the meaning of duty, honor and sacrifice.

Maybe not. I believe my generation may have learned the meaning of duty, honor and sacrifice from George W. Bush. April 9, 2003 is our defining moment, when we realized that people all over the world want freedom, and that evil can be confronted and beaten. A sense of high calling was born in us. As Pearl Harbor awakened our grandparents from their isolationist sleep, 9/11 awakened us. As Roosevelt articulated a great global mission for our grandparents, Bush expressed one for us.

Tom Friedman complains about the missing center. But the times, they are a-changin'. The political spectrum has become a wheel. The wheel's still in spin, as the bard put it, but left is becoming right and right is becoming left. There is a hole in the heart. And that's how it should be. We should bleed with compassion for the hungry, the sick, the poor, the narrow horizons of hope within which so many of this world's people live out their lives. We should be willing to bleed alongside those who fight for freedom, to overthrow tyrants, to do the dirty work of establishing order in failed states. "With great power comes great responsibility," as Spiderman puts it. It's time to embrace that responsibility.

(Hat tip: all links from RealClearPolitics.)