Why do centrist parties always fail?
Why is it that in every election cycle new centrist parties rise up while the old ones collapse and vanish? Kulanu, Kadima, Hosen L’Yisrael, the Center Party and the Third Way: all names of centrist parties that came and went.
So why do they disappear?
The answer is a bit of a bummer for me personally, but a deep historical analysis reveals the following:
People of the center cannot lead.
People of the center have an important, enormous role: to bind together and unite. But once they’ve done that — the people of the center simply cannot continue to lead.
And here is the abridged historical analysis:
Among all the tribes of Israel there was one distinctly ‘center’ tribe whose role was to unite: the tribe of Benjamin. It sat precisely in the center of the Land among all the tribes, its city was Jerusalem, which “was not divided among the tribes,” and its stone on the priestly breastplate was the ‘jasper,’ a stone that contains all colors and hues. And so the people of Benjamin always united the different extremes of the nation:
Benjamin, the small and humble one, is the one thanks to whom the terrible war between the brothers — between Joseph and his brothers — came to an end (with Judah and Joseph both fighting for his heart).
Saul of Benjamin is the one who united the people after the divided era of the Judges, in which “every man did what was right in his own eyes.”
Mordechai and Esther of Benjamin took “the people scattered and dispersed among all the nations” and “gathered all the Jews” together into national unity in exile.
What tremendous power this wondrous tribe has. The youngest of the tribes, the one that humbles itself and, out of humility and an embrace of all the hues, manages to connect and mediate between them.
But precisely this understanding and acceptance worked against them when hard leadership decisions had to be made in the face of erupting evil:
The people of Benjamin who tried to defend and show mercy to the rapists and murderers in the episode of the “concubine at Gibeah” refused to hand them over and brought about a terrible civil war.
King Saul protected the wicked Agag the Amalekite and listened too much to the people who took pity on the sheep and cattle in the war against the pure evil of Amalek.
Mordechai and Esther did not leverage their tremendous success to promote a return to the Land of Israel, and therefore Mordechai was demoted from his greatness at the end of his days (according to the Sages).
The people of Benjamin were mighty leaders, but at the moment of truth, their desire to listen to everyone, to show mercy, to concede and to compromise — caused damage.
That is why they always led for a limited time; they were needed for the moment of unification, but afterwards they were replaced by other leaders:
Saul, who listened too much to the people, did not establish a dynasty and was replaced by David.
Mordechai, who did not leverage the unity he forged into reality-changing moves, did not continue to lead the people and was replaced by Ezra and Nehemiah.
It happened later in history too: the man of the center in Second Temple days, “Zechariah ben Avkulas,” struggled to make hard decisions, tried pathetically to mediate between opposing sides, and his hesitancy, according to the Sages, led to the destruction of the Temple.
Another Binyamin Ze’ev managed to unite dozens of streams and shades together into the First Zionist Congress, but the unbearably difficult attempt to unite all the different Zionist streams caused him great sorrow and he died young without a clear successor. Until David rose — sharp and cutting as a razor.
I am among those who believe that the country’s success lies in the tension between left and right. When one of the sides pulls too hard toward itself — the balance is broken and bad things happen. I once defined myself as the “extreme center.”
But I am forced to admit that the balance between them comes more through the transfer of power from side to side, like a pendulum swinging from right to left (which hasn’t happened so much in recent years), and this pendulum motion creates the stability and the rhythm of the metronome that plays the beat of our lives in this land.
Centrist parties will always be doomed to collapse into themselves. The metronome’s motion from right to left will sweep them out of the way.
This does not mean that people of the center are unimportant. On the contrary. Without them the whole enterprise could collapse. But not every stream is measured by its influence specifically at the ship’s helm. The people of the center need to unite and balance, not necessarily through leadership, which does not necessarily serve them well.
Many more centrist parties will probably rise in the coming years. That’s how it has been here for decades. They will rise when there is an acute need for unity — and then vanish when the pendulum’s swing wipes them away in a storm.
Some will enjoy trampling and snickering at the crumpled signs of the disposable centrist parties, but I thank them for the brief hour of leadership they took on. Like bassists in a rock band, the people of the center stand in the back. Seemingly no one notices the bass in the melody, but the moment it disappears — there will be nothing to drive and bind together all the band’s different instruments.
