Where is the Center?

Barack Obama is still trying to find the center. I don't think he can do it. It's too small now.

Too many have gone to the edges. Everybody, it seems, has found something to be angry about. The administration is beginning to look as if it is not in control of events.

That's because the last administration left us with the feeling that, somehow, it was. But it wasn't, either. 9-11 certainly proved that.

Funny, isn't it, that even Rudy Giuliani could distance himself so far from 9-11 that he immediately--obviously without thinking--could say that no major terrorist attacks took place on George W. Bush's watch. The Republicans were so good at separating themselves from that event, largely because Democrats are too nice to point fingers at them.

I lay this at the feet of the Democrats. They don't know, and have rarely ever known, what they really want. Republicans want mostly the wrong things for this country, but they're united in wanting them. That attracts people, if for no other reason than it gives them someplace to stand.

And now, Democratic lackadaisical reactions to recent elections are bringing with them one disaster after another. New Jersey's gubernatorial race was the first; the Massachusetts senatorial race, for Ted Kennedy's old seat, is another. A Coakley victory would be the upset, it says here, should it happen tomorrow.

And there goes health care. It could simply get deep-sixed, or look like a Republican victory, very easily now. And a Republican turnaround, now considered impossible for at least eight years, might happen in another eight months.

But that wouldn't find the center, either.