In Search of a Political Center

The American political conversation is increasingly driven by partisan anger and disgust over the perceived extremism and bad behavior of the ‘other side.’ Americans are trained to think about politics in terms of rigid binaries (left vs. right, Trump vs. anti-Trump) in which energy and ideas come from the poles. The political center — if it is thought about at all — is imagined as a muddled middle, without a distinct identity or policies of its own. Nevertheless the center is where the power to shape policy lies and it is time for centrists to take a more pro-active role in establishing political priorities and the terms of debate.

Before the center can mobilize it needs to wake up and recognize itself. The media does a consistently brilliant job of disrupting that self-realization. Cable news and the big three stoke the competing indignation of progressives and conservatives and endlessly revolve President Trump’s divisive and sometimes bizarre behavior.

Still there are many clues to the center’s enduring potential. Smart politicians recognize and court the pivotal groups that move between the two parties, the so-called Regan Democrats and Obama-Cons. Even in deep red states like Alabama or liberal strongholds like Massachusetts about a third of voters consistently identify with the opposition party. The Pew Center continues to show that a majority of Americans prefer non-absolutist positions on supposedly ‘hot-button’ issues like abortion and gun rights. Municipal bodies like school boards frequently manage to operate along non-partisan lines. Both low voter turnout and the regular flare-ups of interest in third parties and iconoclastic candidates like Rand Paul, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump underscore the same potent dissatisfaction with the narrow and inflexible ideological options presented by the two parties.

What if independents and moderates from both parties built a common platform around the promise of good governance and incremental evidence-based reform in education, criminal justice and healthcare? Could that sort of approach get traction amidst the point-scoring and bad faith that passes for political discourse today? It might be hard going, but we live in a time of such profound disappointment and suspicion about our institutions (government, media, higher education) that pragmatic and competent leadership could capture the national imagination, unsexy as it might be. Border walls and trade wars are objectively bad ideas but Sandersian proposals for free college or universal government employment are at best unnuanced and at worst could turn into massive boondoggles.

It is urgent that centrists build themselves a political home. Partisanship is unmistakably getting worse; weakening the center before it even discovers its strength. Furthermore our domestic divisions compromise American standing in the world. Our enemies celebrate and our allies hedge their bets seeing how badly our house is divided against itself. It is a patriotic responsibility to find common ground and to build a platform around the mutual interests of the vast majority of Americans. Rather than cultivating partisan resentment the media should provide a forum for asking what the social contract ought to deliver and how it is failing to do so. Above all we must have faith that Americans want to find and renew the center. But why not believe that? We clearly hate the present state of things.

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