Radical centrism

Influences and precursors

Some influences on radical centrist political philosophy are not directly political. Robert C. Solomon, a philosopher with radical-centrist interests, identifies a number of philosophical concepts supporting balance, reconciliation, or synthesis, including Confucius's concept of ren, Aristotle's concept of the mean, Erasmus's and Montaigne's humanism, Vico's evolutionary vision of history, William James's and John Dewey's pragmatism, and Aurobindo Ghose's integration of opposites.

However, most commonly cited influences and precursors are from the political realm. For example, British radical-centrist politician Nick Clegg considers himself an heir to political theorist John Stuart Mill, former Liberal Prime Minister David Lloyd George, economist John Maynard Keynes, social reformer William Beveridge, and former Liberal Party leader Jo Grimond. In his book Independent Nation (2004), John Avlon discusses precursors of 21st-century U.S. political centrism, including President Theodore Roosevelt, Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Senator Margaret Chase Smith, and African-American Senator Edward W. Brooke. Radical centrist writer Mark Satin points to political influences from outside the electoral arena, including communitarian thinker Amitai Etzioni, magazine publisher Charles Peters, management theorist Peter Drucker, city planning theorist Jane Jacobs, and futurists Heidi and Alvin Toffler. Satin calls Benjamin Franklin the radical middle's favorite Founding Father since he was "extraordinarily practical", "extraordinarily creative", and managed to "get the warring factions and wounded egos [at the U.S. Constitutional Convention] to transcend their differences".

Initial definitions

One of the first uses of the term "radical middle" in a political context came in 1962, when cartoonist Jules Feiffer employed it to mock what he saw as the timid and pretentious outlook of the American political class. One of the first people to develop a positive definition was Renata Adler, a staff writer for The New Yorker. In the introduction to her second collection of essays, Toward a Radical Middle (1969), she presented radical centrism as a healing radicalism. It rejected the violent posturing and rhetoric of the 1960s, she said, in favor of such "corny" values as "reason, decency, prosperity, human dignity, [and human] contact". She called for the "reconciliation" of the white working class and African-Americans.

In the 1970s, sociologist Donald I. Warren described the radical center as consisting of those "middle American radicals" who were suspicious of big government, the national media, and academics, as well as rich people and predatory corporations. Although they might vote for Democrats or Republicans, or for populists like George Wallace, they felt politically homeless and were looking for leaders who would address their concerns.

In the 1980s and 1990s, several authors contributed their understandings to the concept of the radical center. For example, futurist Marilyn Ferguson added a holistic dimension to the concept when she said, "[The] Radical Center ... is not neutral, not middle-of-the-road, but a view of the whole road". Sociologist Alan Wolfe located the creative part of the political spectrum at the center: "The extremes of right and left know where they stand, while the center furnishes what is original and unexpected." African-American theorist Stanley Crouch upset many political thinkers when he pronounced himself a "radical pragmatist". He explained, "I affirm whatever I think has the best chance of working, of being both inspirational and unsentimental, of reasoning across the categories of false division and beyond the decoy of race".

In the 1990s, political independents Jesse Ventura, Angus King, and Lowell Weicker became governors of American states. According to John Avlon, they pioneered the combination of fiscal prudence and social tolerance that has served as a model for radical centrist governance ever since. They also developed a characteristic style, a combination of "common sense and maverick appeal".

In his influential 1995 Newsweek cover story, "Stalking the Radical Middle", journalist Joe Klein described radical centrists as angrier and more frustrated than conventional Democrats and Republicans. He said they share four broad goals: getting money out of politics, balancing the budget, restoring civility, and figuring out how to run government better. He also said their concerns were fueling "what is becoming a significant intellectual movement, nothing less than an attempt to replace the traditional notions of liberalism and conservatism".

Relations to "Third Way"

In 1998, British sociologist Anthony Giddens claimed that the radical center is synonymous with the Third Way. For Giddens, an advisor to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and for many other European political actors, the Third Way is a reconstituted form of social democracy.

Some radical centrist thinkers do not equate radical centrism with the Third Way. In Britain, many do not see themselves as social democrats. Most prominently, British radical-centrist politician Nick Clegg has made it clear he does not consider himself an heir to Tony Blair, and Richard Reeves, Clegg's longtime advisor, emphatically rejects social democracy.

In the United States, the situation is different because the term Third Way was adopted by the Democratic Leadership Council and other moderate Democrats. However, most U.S. radical centrists also avoid the term. Ted Halstead and Michael Lind's introduction to radical centrist politics fails to mention it, and Lind subsequently accused the organized moderate Democrats of siding with the "center-right" and Wall Street. Radical centrists have expressed dismay with what they see as "split[ting] the difference", "triangulation", and other supposed practices of what some of them call the "mushy middle".

Twenty-first century overviews

The first years of the 21st century saw publication of four introductions to radical centrist politics: Ted Halstead and Michael Lind's The Radical Center (2001), Matthew Miller's The Two Percent Solution (2003), John Avlon's Independent Nation (2004), and Mark Satin's Radical Middle (2004). These books attempted to take the concept of radical centrism beyond the stage of "cautious gestures" and journalistic observation and define it as a political philosophy.

The authors came to their task from diverse political backgrounds: Avlon had been a speechwriter for New York Republican Mayor Rudolph Giuliani; Miller had been a business consultant before serving in President Bill Clinton's budget office; Lind had been an exponent of Harry Truman-style "national liberalism"; Halstead had run a think tank called Redefining Progress; and Satin had co-drafted the U.S. Green Party's foundational political statement, "Ten Key Values". There is, however, a generational bond: all these authors were between 31 and 41 years of age when their books were published (except for Satin, who was nearing 60).

While the four books do not speak with one voice, among them they express assumptions, analyses, policies, and strategies that helped set the parameters for radical centrism as a 21st-century political philosophy:

Assumptions

Analysis

Policies (in general)

Strategy

Idea creation and dissemination

Along with publication of the four overviews of radical centrist politics, the first part of the 21st century saw a rise in the creation and dissemination of radical centrist policy ideas.

Think tanks and mass media

Several think tanks are developing radical centrist ideas more thoroughly than was done in the overview books. Among them are Demos, in Britain; the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership, in Australia; and New America (formerly the New America Foundation) in the United States. New America was started by authors Ted Halstead and Michael Lind, and two others, to bring radical centrist ideas to Washington, D.C. journalists and policy researchers.

A radical centrist perspective can also be found in major periodicals. In the United States, for example, The Washington Monthly was started by early radical centrist thinker Charles Peters, and many large-circulation magazines publish articles by New America fellows. Columnists who write from a radical centrist perspective include John Avlon at The Daily Beast, Thomas Friedman at The New York Times, Joe Klein at Time magazine, and Matthew Miller at The Washington Post. Prominent journalists James Fallows and Fareed Zakaria have been identified as radical centrist.

In Britain, the news magazine The Economist positions itself as radical centrist. An editorial ("leader") in 2012 declared, in bolded type, "A new form of radical centrist politics is needed to tackle inequality without hurting economic growth." An essay on The Economist 's website the following year, introduced by the editor, argues that the magazine had always "com[e] ... from what we like to call the radical centre".

Books on specific topics

Many books are offering radical centrist perspectives and policy proposals on specific topics. Some examples:

Foreign policy. In Ethical Realism (2006), British liberal Anatol Lieven and U.S. conservative John Hulsman advocate a foreign policy based on modesty, principle, and seeing ourselves as others see us.

Environmentalism. In Break Through (2007), environmental strategists Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute call on activists to become more comfortable with pragmatism, high-technology, and aspirations for human greatness.

Underachievement among minorities. In Winning the Race (2005), linguist John McWhorter says that many African Americans are negatively affected by a cultural phenomenon he calls "therapeutic alienation".

Economics. In The Origin of Wealth (2006), Eric Beinhocker of the Institute for New Economic Thinking portrays the economy as a dynamic but imperfectly self-regulating evolutionary system, and suggests policies that could support benign socio-economic evolution.

International relations. In How to Run the World (2011), scholar Parag Khanna argues that the emerging world order should not be run from the top down, but by a galaxy of nonprofit, nation-state, corporate, and individual actors cooperating for their mutual benefit.

Defining others as enemies. In The Righteous Mind (2012), psychologist Jonathan Haidt attempts to explain "why good people are divided by politics and religion".

Political organizing. In Voice of the People (2008), conservative activist Lawrence Chickering and liberal attorney James Turner attempt to lay the groundwork for a grassroots "transpartisan" movement across the U.S.

What one person can do. In his memoir Radical Middle: Confessions of an Accidental Revolutionary (2010), South African journalist Denis Beckett tries to show that one person can make a difference in a situation many might regard as hopeless.

Ross Perot

Some commentators identify Ross Perot's 1992 U.S. Presidential campaign as the first radical middle national campaign. However, many radical centrist authors are not enthusiastic about Ross Perot. Matthew Miller acknowledges that Perot had enough principle to support a gasoline tax hike, Halstead and Lind note that he popularized the idea of balancing the budget, and John Avlon says he crystallized popular distrust of partisan extremes. But none of those authors examines Perot's ideas or campaigns in depth, and Mark Satin does not mention Perot at all.

Joe Klein mocks one of Perot's campaign gaffes and says he was not a sufficiently substantial figure. Miller characterizes Perot as a rich, self-financed lone wolf. By contrast, what most radical centrists say they want in political action terms is the building of a grounded political movement.

By the decade of the 2010s, radical centrists were engaged in a variety of actions in the English-speaking nations:

Britain

Following the 2010 election, Nick Clegg, then leader of the Liberal Democrats (Britain's third-largest party at the time), had his party enter into a Conservative – Liberal Democrat coalition agreement to form a majority government. In a speech to party members in the spring of 2011, Clegg declared that he considers himself and his party to be radical centrist:

For the left, an obsession with the state. For the right, a worship of the market. But as liberals, we place our faith in people. People with power and opportunity in their hands. Our opponents try to divide us with their outdated labels of left and right. But we are not on the left and we are not on the right. We have our own label: Liberal. We are liberals and we own the freehold to the centre ground of British politics. Our politics is the politics of the radical centre.

In the autumn of 2012, Clegg's longtime policy advisor elaborated on the differences between Clegg's identity as a "radical liberal" and traditional social democracy.

Australia

In Australia, Aboriginal lawyer Noel Pearson is building an explicitly radical centrist movement among Aborigines. The movement is seeking more assistance from the Australian state, but is also seeking to convince individual Aborigines to take more responsibility for their lives.

United States

In the U.S., the radical centrist movement is being played out in the national media. In 2010, for example, The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman called for "a Tea Party of the radical center", an organized national pressure group. At The Washington Post, columnist Matthew Miller was explaining "Why we need a third party of (radical) centrists".

In 2011 Friedman championed Americans Elect, an insurgent group of radical centrist Democrats, Republicans and independents who were hoping to run an independent Presidential candidate in 2012. Meanwhile, Miller offered "The third-party stump speech we need". In his book The Price of Civilization (2011), Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs called for the creation of a third U.S. party, an "Alliance for the Radical Center".

While no independent radical-centrist Presidential candidate emerged in 2012, John Avlon emphasized the fact that independent voters remain the fastest-growing portion of the electorate.

In late 2015, the No Labels organization, co-founded by Avlon, called a national "Problem Solver" convention to discuss how to best reduce political polarization and promote political solutions that could bridge the left-right divide. A lengthy article in The Atlantic about the convention conveys the views of leaders of a new generation of beyond-left-and-right (or both-left-and-right) organizations, including Joan Blades of Living Room Conversations, David Blankenhorn of Better Angels, Carolyn Lukensmeyer of the National Institute for Civil Discourse, and Steve McIntosh of the Institute for Cultural Evolution.

Beyond the English-speaking nations

Explicitly radical centrist ideas and activities are largely confined to majority-English-speaking nations. However, analogous political perspectives are arising in other parts of the world.

In India, for example, there is interest in an outlook sometimes called "socio-capitalism". In China, "New Confucianism" is making an appearance. In Latin America, people speak of a "new pragmatism" pioneered by leaders like Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Chile's Ricardo Lagos and Michelle Bachelet, despite the left-wing position of their own parties.

Zack Taylor, conflict specialist for Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States at the United Nations Development Programme, is convinced that inequality, elitism, corruption, and cronyism are pushing many middle class Eurasians toward "constitutional liberalism" – which Taylor calls the "radical middle".

Criticisms

Even before the 21st century, some observers were speaking out against what they saw as radical centrism. In 1998, for example, Belgian political theorist Chantal Mouffe argued that passionate and often bitter conflict between left and right is a necessary feature of any democracy.

Objections to ideas and attitudes

Some 21st century commentators argue that radical centrist ideas are not substantially different from conventional centrist ideas. For example, U.S. economist Robert Kuttner says there already is a radical centrist party – "It's called the Democrats". Social theorist Richard Kahlenberg says that Ted Halstead and Michael Lind's book Radical Center, in particular, is too skeptical about the virtues of labor unions, and too ardent about the virtues of the market.

In 2001, media critic Eric Alterman said that New America Foundation was not liberal nor a progressive think tank and did not know what it was.

Some think radical centrist ideas are too different from current policies. Sam Tanenhaus the editor of The New York Times Book Review called the proposals in Halstead and Lind's book "utopian". According to Ed Kilgore, the policy director of the Democratic Leadership Council, Mark Satin's Radical Middle book "ultimately places him in the sturdy tradition of 'idealistic' American reformers who think smart and principled people unencumbered by political constraints can change everything".

Political analyst James Joyner does not think U.S. states that have adopted non-partisan redistricting commissions, a favorite radical-centrist proposal, have adopted more fiscally responsible measures than have states without such commissions.

Radical centrist attitudes have also been criticized. For example, many bloggers have characterized Thomas Friedman's columns on radical centrism as elitist and glib.

Objections to strategies

Some observers question the wisdom of seeking consensus, post-partisanship, or reconciliation in political life. Political scientist Jonathan Bernstein argues that American democratic theory from the time of James Madison's Federalist No. 10 (1787) has been based on the acknowledgement of faction and the airing of debate, and he sees no reason to change now.

Other observers feel radical centrists are misreading the political situation. For example, conservative journalist Ramesh Ponnuru says liberals and conservatives are not ideologically opposed to such radical centrist measures as limiting entitlements and raising taxes to cover national expenditures. Instead, voters are opposed to them, and things will change when voters can be convinced otherwise.

The third-party strategy favored by many U.S. radical centrists has been criticized as impractical and diversionary. According to these critics, what is needed instead is (a) reform of the legislative process, and (b) candidates in existing political parties who will support radical centrist ideas. The specific third-party vehicle favored by many U.S. radical centrists in 2012 – Americans Elect – was criticized as an "elite-driven party" supported by a "dubious group of Wall Street multi-millionaires".

After spending time with a variety of radical centrists, journalist Alec MacGillis concluded that their perspectives are so disparate that they could never come together to build a viable political organization.

Internal concerns

Some radical centrists are less than sanguine about their future. One concern is co-optation. For example, Michael Lind worries that the enthusiasm for the term radical center, on the part of "arbiters of the conventional wisdom", may signal a weakening of the radical vision implied by the term.

Another concern is passion. John Avlon fears that some centrists cannot resist the lure of passionate partisans, whom he calls "wingnuts". By contrast, Mark Satin worries that radical centrism, while "thoroughly sensible", lacks an "animating passion" – and claims there has never been a successful political movement without one.

Radical centrism as dialogue and process

Some radical centrists, such as mediator Mark Gerzon and activist Joseph F. McCormick, see radical centrism as primarily a commitment to process. Their approach is to facilitate processes of structured dialogue among polarized people and groups, from the neighborhood level on up. A major goal is to enable dialogue participants to come up with new perspectives and solutions that can address every party's core interests. Onward Christian Athletes author Tom Krattenmaker speaks of the radical center as that (metaphoric) space where such dialogue and innovation can occur.

Organizations seeking to catalyze dialogue and innovation among diverse people and groups have included AmericaSpeaks, National Issues Forums, Search for Common Ground, and Sustained Dialogue Institute; conversational processes include Nonviolent Communication and World Café. The city of Portland, Oregon, has been characterized as "radical middle" in USA Today newspaper because many formerly antagonistic groups there are said to be talking to, learning from, and working with one another.