Is America a "center-right" country?

So is it really true that America is a "center-right" country?

The popular answer is, well, yes.

But I think that notion may now be a bit off the mark. While media types love to say it and conservative commentators love to scream it, it just doesn't hold up under closer scrutiny.

I remember back when Obama was actually struggling to pull ahead of Sen. John McCain, there were a number of polls that showed the country, by-and-large, actually agreed with Obama's stances on the issues - they were just not sure about the man himself. It actually angered me a great deal.

We now know that he eventually won them over.

But that hasn't stopped the media from floating this notion that he won because he ran as a conservative. A candidate with any sense always cozies up to the middle, but one can hardly consider proposals such as massive infrastructure investment, expansion of health-care, tax increases on the wealthy and dovish foreign policy, to be the mark of a conservative. And if those were not the center-pieces of the Obama campaign, then I must have been watching a different election.

The fact is, Obama ran as a new breed of pragmatic progressive, much like myself, who are more interested in smart government than one that fits some ideological framework. There is no real blanket ideology for Obama, just a desire to make decisions based on empirical data and sound analysis. The idea is to be ideologically inclusive, applying what works rather than what fits a liberal or conservative framework.

Obama truly has the potential to elbow out the ideologues in either party and really establish a new governing framework, and a new "center."

And more to the point, the country is no longer a center-right country, at least no if you define the "right" by its current standard bearers.

Post election polling shows that the country really has moved to the left. It was not just the economy, or McCain's uneven performance, or his selection of Sarah Palin, or even the uniqueness of Obama's candidacy that won Obama the election. It was the fact that Obama's stances on the issues reflected a genuine shift away from conservatism, and away from our most obstinate ideologies more generally. America actually agrees with Obama.

The charge that Obama is the "most liberal member of the senate" never stuck. It never worked. And it wasn't because Obama became more conservative, but rather, because it is nearly impossible to compartmentalize his individual proposals as being either liberal or conservative - mostly because his policies include elements of both.

The Republicans could not typecast Obama as a standard liberal because, frankly, he isn't one. And they couldn't effectively paint him as having pandered to conservatives either because he was openly critical of them. Truthfully, McCain willingly gave up the middle by opposing his own immigration bill (a huge mistake in light of how many Latino voters broke for Obama), by ending his opposition to the Bush tax cuts, and by choosing Palin as his VP.

Obama never had to move right to capture the middle. The middle came to him. And it's truly puzzling to me that the same people who called Obama's policies "socialist," are now saying that he moved to the right. Huh?

Media Matters, a progressive media watch-dog group, ran a nice article on the subject, highlighting some of the post-election polling.

The results show that voters overwhelmingly agreed with Obama on health care, ending the Bush tax cuts, infrastructure investment and ending the war. Pretty conservative stuff.

And I think that the whole center-left narrative is one that history will eventually reject. But it was true for a time.

President Nixon once saved himself from an embarrassing defeat by appealing to the "silent majority." I'm certain you've heard the famous phrase regurgitated a million times by conservatives who like to think that while, the country might elect an occasional Democrat, Americans are all really moderate Republicans.

And that may well have been true during the late sixties and early seventies when average Americans were growing tired of the constant noise of a vocal minority of civil-rights activists and war protesters. And it might have been true under Reagan, after the country had lost its way on the economy by letting taxes get out of control, and by growing excessive bureaucracy.

And you could even make the case that it was true when Bill Clinton became president, even though his defeat of Bush represented somewhat of a referendum on "trickle-down" economics.

But let us not forget what followed. Even though Clinton had been successful at governing from the middle, his antics in the White House had people sour on his administration. Even though the economy was doing well, the idea of having "more of the same" did not have much appeal.

Al Gore added to this problem his own lack of personality, and still managed to win the popular vote against George W. Bush. I'd venture to guess that if we had never heard of Monica Lewinski, we would never have known President Bush - and for that matter, probably not President-Elect Obama either.

I say this because in many ways, Bush was a gift to the country. Perhaps in the same way that Jimmy Carter was a gift to conservatives.

What the "center-right" argument ignores is that over the last eight years, Americans have watched the right govern, silently. In 2004, as bad as things were, most Americans were still silent. Young Americans, Latinos, and African Americans were still in apathy mode. They were all still cynical that anything could actually change, regardless of who was elected. So Bush got by.

But by the time 2008 rolled around, three new generations of voters had come of age. I came of voting age in July of 1994. I joined the Marines in the winter of 1995. And during the following three years and ten months of military service, I never really felt compelled to vote.

I can recall feeling vaguely Republican - residual tendencies from my father that were likely reinforced by my service - but I never had any major objections to Clinton policy. Aside from the mess in Somalia, and his dorking an intern then lying under oath and making the country look foolish abroad, he did just fine in my eyes. In fact, I was pleased when he gave me several pay increases, grew my G.I. Bill benefits, and made noticeable improvements in the American military.

By the time I left the Marine Corp I had almost no interest in politics at all, largely because things seemed to by moving along fine. I recall thinking that Gore just seemed too fake, and that W. wasn't too bright. But, I could have cared less because it seemed to be one of those "douche bag v. shit sandwich" types of elections. Had I voted, it would likely have been for Ross Perot - but not because he was perfect.

So it didn't really phase me when Bush won the 2000 election, aside from the fact that it did not feel legitimate.

As things progressed for Bush, I was in my own little world trying to make the transition from military life to civilian life. I found a roofing job, then girl friend, then a job selling cars at a dealership that eventually got raided by the FBI for fudging documents. I sold cars a while longer at other places, always uncomfortable about how the sale might affect the family in question.

And most notably, I got to see first hand what happens when economic incentives run counter to moral concerns: the wallet wins.

And then September 11th.

I woke up that morning to a friend telling me that I had to come see what was on TV. And what I saw changed everything.

I went to work dazed, like so many others. I stood on the showroom floor and watched the news all day. We did not sell a single car. In fact, we did not sell anything for quite some time. The car industry was in serious trouble, as were my finances.

A while later they decreased interest rates. It was the start of the now common zero percent interest rates, and 2.9%, and 3.9%. To go with it, Bush passed a bill to incentivize the purchase of large trucks and SUV's as a way to boost sales for the auto industry. I don't recall the exact amount, but buyers could get thousands back in the form of tax credits for purchasing vehicles with a combined gross weight of 7000 pounds or more.

At a time when the country had so obviously fallen pray to our dependence on foreign oil, Bush propped up the sale of our biggest gas guzzlers. It was right about the same time that Hummer sales began to explode.

It was a feeding frenzy, for a moment.

And then things went flat again. The following August, I quit my job and went to college. I was exposed to a lot of things. Conservatives like to call it indoctrination, I like to call it critical thinking.

Just as a side note, most professors don't tell you what to think, they teach you how to think for yourself. Forcing someone to research a topic is not indoctrination. Teaching someone how to spot logical fallacies and empty rhetoric is not indoctrination, its teaching critical thinking. Something that we could all use more of.

For a while, I was still uncertain about why everyone seemed to be so down on Bush. I defended him frequently, though not because I particularly liked him. I guess I've always been the devils advocate. I even recall winning a debate about the possibility of going to war in Iraq. The decision was made by unanimous vote, including a liberal professor of mine who professed that she disagreed with me profoundly, yet agreed that I had won the debate.

A few days prior to that, I had turned in a paper that condemned the World Trade Organization and International Monetary Fund for abusing developing nations. I wrote papers in defense of, and in support of pretty much everything.

The point is, I was all over the map. I did research on a number of major political subjects - all free from the ideological involvement of my professors - and developed a thirst for knowledge and for politics.

I then moved to Oklahoma, where I hoped to pursue something I still love: engineering and industrial design. Instead, I became fixated on politics. In my new school, I was surrounded by conservatives rather than liberals. Class discussions always seemed to begin with a question about some pressing topic, but, end with "the bible says so." So many of my fellow students could not separate school from Sunday school. I began to see holes in conservatism, particularly on social issues.

But, like Sen. John Kerry famously said, I was actually for the war before I opposed it. I was for the Iraq war in the beginning - a fact that my conservative father is quick to recall - and the Afghanistan war before it. I even recall telling him that I almost didn't care if we found weapons of mass destruction or not. I suppose that in my earlier debate prep I had grown a healthy hatred of Saddam Hussein.

But what a lot of people didn't understand, including me, was the degree to which the president had mislead us, and the degree to which the move really played into the hands of terrorists. The more I dove into my study of foreign policy, the more I realized what a mistake I had made - and the country along with me. In a way, I had allowed myself to buy into this notion that somehow it related to the war on terror, that somehow, by saving the people of Iraq from Saddam, we could magically make them love us. Oops.

In 2004, I watched as the country fought about the war, and chose instead to vote on an issue that was far less complicated: gay marriage. I voted, quite proudly, for John Kerry. It was not because of the marriage issue, but because it was abundantly clear that Bush was not very good at his job.

But Bush won, thanks in part to the issue of gay marriage, and thanks also to the fact that the effect of his policies in the economy had yet to be realized. And, to his credit, there had not been another major terror attack.

By 2006 it was pretty clear to the nation that things were not going well. That year, Democrats finally won back the Legislature - with my vote in their favor being washed out by conservative voters in Oklahoma. Hey, I tried. I even campaigned.

By 2008, things had gotten even worse as Bush and Republicans in the Legislature nixed everything the Dems tried. It was too little, too late. And when the economy tanked, it was the final chapter in a long case against Bush, and against conservatism more generally.

The point of all this is to show that, like me, many Americans forged their political ideals in the last decade. In terms of my personal experience, Clinton and Bush are my only presidents. And there are many just like me. There are also older voters who, for the first time, saw why it is so important to vote.

During the 2000 and 2004 elections, we were the "silent majority" that felt disenfranchised.

But now, we are the vocal majority who are repelled by what we saw from supporters of Sarah Palin, disgusted by an economy based helping the wealthy and ignoring the people and the ones who are crying for better health care for our fellow Americans.

We are the ones who want investments in infrastructure, alternative energy and education. And we are the ones who want to see a major shift in foreign policy - a shift towards diplomacy and poverty alleviation.

We, no America, wants to shift towards the rest of the world, and not away. America wants to move away from ethnic divisions, away from unrestrained capitalism, away from policies that ignore the common people in favor of the wealthy. And America wants to move away from partisan thinking.

Americans will always prefer a limited government, but they are beginning to see that limited does not denote effective. Americans are no longer interested in crushing government agencies to shrink the power of government. Instead, they see that there is a fundamental difference between making government more efficient, and aimlessly deregulating industry and cutting spending on social programs.

Americans now see why deficit spending for the sake of economic growth has its consequences. Americans are no longer impressed by the hyper-nationalism that so fundementally defines the Republican party. And most importantly, the silent majority of Republican lore has contracted and withdrawn into deepest reaches of its most ill-willed ideologies. The age of the silent conservative majority is over.

We are the new majority. Get used to it.