Women are slightly less central than men and their centrality decreases faster with decreasing rank.
Electing black women leaders into central power positions, though, continues to be a struggle despite their centrality to the party's success.
College campuses seem to have lost their centrality.
At the same time they seem to be making pre-emptive statements about their centrality to the culture.
The two relationships do, however, have something in common other than their centrality to Mr Blair's political fortunes.
The failure to reconcile these contradictory views, or even to appreciate their centrality to the ongoing conflict is what the Bush Administration's failure is all about.
Some literary weather events advertise their centrality right up front: the snow in Orhan Pamuk's "Snow," the typhoon in Joseph Conrad's "Typhoon," the tempest in "The Tempest".
Having established their centrality to the sound of contemporary music, percussionists are beginning to make themselves heard in other ways; for example, by composing and conducting.
To disallow these events, it can be argued, would make their centrality as articles of faith in the later religious beliefs of Israel inexplicable.
In any case, given the apparent frequency of such statements in Wright's preaching and their centrality to his worldview, the pretense that over all these years Obama had no idea that Wright was saying such things is hard to sustain.
"Reinvention of the self, going on the lam and the swindle are the three great American themes," Mr. Sante said, citing their centrality to Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn".
