Tug-of-War

The game of tug-of-war is a surprisingly good model for the perpetual political struggle [1] between the left and right.
[1]This is the preferred model for partisans (people who toe the party line), and especially partisan extremists. Often the people who end up resolutely stuck at one of the ends of the rope do so because they believe that is where they'll have the greatest impact.
An image of a tug-of-war game between a team of blue players (on the left), and a team of red players (on the right). In the center is one person watching both sides.
In this model, the left and right are locked in a competition of strength with each other, where each one's actions is counter-acted by their opponent. If the white flag in the middle of their rope represents the average state of society along this left-to-right spectrum, the goal of each side, as with a game of tug-of-war, is to pull the flag as far in their own direction as possible.
There are a couple of key differences between the model and the reality:
  • While normally the game ends once the flag has crossed some arbitrary threshold, in politics the end-goal is a set of moving goalposts, and when the other team falls over, you drag them through the mud and out of the field to the executioner's block.
  • The relative strength to which each player pulls is roughly proportional to how far they are from the white flag. Simply put, the greatest political effort is put in by the most extreme actors on the field, and most people crowd towards the middle, going with the rope as much as they are actively pulling it.
  • When the rope breaks in politics, you get an ugly war and lots of people die. [2]
  • This models suggests that all political issues break down into clean dichotomies, and that each side is perfectly aligned along these dichotomies. The reality is that political issues are often mismatched between left- and right-perspectives, and that within either side, there are often a number of factions disagreeing and in-fighting over the issue.
  • Players can and do switch sides in politics. [3]
[2]Actually, this is not much different from tug-of-war. It's one of the most deadly sports out there ⬈.
[3]I.e. independents. A vanishing breed in our increasingly polarized →world.
So where is the place of the centrist in this model? It might be tempting to put them in the center, near the white flag. At least that's what the term 'centrist' seems to imply. And truly, a lot of the people near the center are centrists. But remember that in our model, the person near the center is the person who is not pulling strongly one way or another, and remember that we are talking about enlightened centrists here too.
The enlightened centrist is among the players who switches sides. Which is to say that they are characterized by their independence, not by being half-way, or by being milquetoast in their contributions. What makes them "enlightened" is a relative lack of artificial confinement: they are capable of making themselves at home on either end of the spectrum.
Another image of a game of tug-of-war, except with the single observer who was in the center moving from one side to the other.
Why would a centrist do this? Does it not seem self-defeating? The answer lies in sriking the right balance.