If I read the various comments on the likely Bush-Dean battle I increasingly see comments on the radicalization of the debate where two extreme options will emerge. No longer that battle for the infamous center, although some would qualify Bush’s move on illegal immigration move as just that. It is therefore not a foregone conclusion that the political center has gone, but looking beyond the US it may well be that the popular politicians who successfully danced in the middle in the 1990s have fallen out of favor.

Take Canada where the Liberals have had an iron grip on power over the past decade by sometimes playing the left card, and sometimes the right card. It worked remarkably well, it kept the leftist core in the party at ease, and many free-market fiscal conservatives were enchanted by the tax cuts and balanced books. Yet, the world changes and in face of the new global realities it is imperative that the new Liberal leader and Prime-Minister, Paul Martin, starts rebuilding the relationship with the US because it is the country’s largest trading partner and there are many joint security issues. Not only that, US-Canadian relations are one of the key issues on the agenda of the newly unified right in Canada and Martin has no choice but to move in that direction if he wants to have some success at the ballot box later this year. As a liberal in Canada you can cut taxes, trim spending and even send troops to Afghanistan and keep the left-wing of your party quiet, cozying up to George Bush is another thing altogether and it has been one of the key reasons why pollsters see a huge exodus of voters in the direction of the hard left New Democrats. That challenge could in turn weaken the Liberal Party to such an extent that liberal conservatives might wonder whether continued support for the centrist Liberals makes any logical sense: why support a losing option in the middle if there’s a viable option on the right? The net result: the Liberals could loose their grip on power and become a minority party stuck between emboldened parties on the left and right. The end of a pragmatic centrist hold on power. An overly optimistic (or pessimistic, depending on where you stand) scenario? Maybe, but take a look at what happened in The Netherlands.

The Dutch Labour Party, until the mid-1980s solidly on the tax-and-spend left fell out of voter favor during that decade and realized that the only journey back to power was embracing the middle. The Dutch Labour Party became fiscally conservative and pro-market in its coalition with the Free Market Liberals (the Dutch right) and like Clinton in the US and Chrétien in Canada performed a clever dance in the middle which combined with a stock market boom and low interest rates ensured budget surpluses and lower taxes, a feast not seen in the lowlands since the 17th century. While in North America the war on terror had started to divide the centre, a different set of domestic issues started to spoil the party for the Dutch centrist coalition and the centre practically collapsed when Pim Fortuyn drove a wedge in that very center and the electorate delivered an unprecedented majority to the Dutch right. Labour was nearly decimated as a result of departing voters, many of whom delivered a huge boost to the up to that point small and irrelevant Socialist Party, an old style socialist group whom I have come to describe as Stalinist. It was earlier this week that the telegenic new Labour leader – not a union leader or academic as before, no, a former HR manager from Royal Dutch Shell – called out for a renewed élan for Labour for if the party would not be able to gain strength and confidence it would lose voters to the hard left and the right. Again, like in Canada we see how a left-liberal party that managed to stay in power by capturing the middle ground is now abandoned by that evaporating center.

Although the mechanics are a little different, the same appears to be unfolding in America where Dean has clearly staked his political gamble on a course that is materially different from what Clinton achieved in the 1990s. It should make it easier for Bush to collect votes in the middle now, not only by playing the war on terror card but also by pointing out that left-liberal economic platforms are not really designed to benefit the middle classes, or if they are they don’t always work out that way. So he can stay comfortably in his right corner without having to make too many moves into the middle ground. That’s why Andrew Sullivan earlier this week endorsed Howard Dean: it ensures clarity in politics, a healthy and intense debate that was so lacking on both sides of the ocean during the 1990s. It is one of my main gripes with Clinton, I could never tell where the man stood and what he wanted. Nor could many others which led to low voter turn-outs, again a phenomenon that occurred in Europe as well. With the disappearance of the center that terrible enemy of democracy - voter apathy - may now disappear, together with that very unsatisfying and unclear political center.