Goodbye to all that…centrism?
Over the last 2 plus years, I’ve found myself thinking about political centrism on a number of occasions. After the 2016 election in the US, the 2014 election in India, the most recent European Union election, the Brexit vote, the 2018 Brazilian election, the 2016 election in the Philippines. The list is rather exhausting and I’m sure I’ve missed a number of similar electoral outcomes around the world.
In each of these cases, political outsiders built insurgent campaigns, relied on populist appeals and won large margins of victory. After winning, most candidates have gone on to govern in relatively destabilizing ways.
In some cases, like Bolsonaro in Brazil, destabilization has turned a popular candidate into an unpopular President. In others, like Duterte in the Philippines, his popularity rises, winning him wider governing margins while he encourages extrajudicial killings as a response to the drug trade. India’s recent election, riding off the popularity of Prime Minister Modi, gave more power to his BJP party than any single party has had in decades.
It’s all left me thinking about whether there’s room for centrism in politics, here or abroad.
Centrism from the right
At the Niskanen Center, former Cato Institute staffers, who defected to form their own think tank, have been building an interesting set of policy principles that argue against the false dichotomy of market fundamentalism (on the right) and democratic fundamentalism (on the left). A paper published in December 2018 spells out a vision for society and governance that relies on both “dynamic, innovative markets and strong, energetic government” to work together.
In their work so far, the writers at Niskanen have argued for:
- Better deregulation practices from the Trump administration
- Protecting DREAMERS and defending legal immigration flows
- Bolstering the social safety net so people can participate in the free market, well, freely
- A conservative case for carbon tax
… among other heterodox policy positions.
I appreciate the center’s focus on empiricism and willingness to change their mind about something. There’s also something to be said about some of the leading writers at the center promoting moderation and compromise in place of ideology.
Niskanen and its writers have limited reach, mostly read and referenced by political writers and the twitterati. But something about their approach, humility and commitment to
Centrism from the Left
The left has not gone as far away from the center, yet, as the right has over the last 4 or 5 years. However, there are plenty of signs, especially in the wake of the 2018 midterm elections, that more left leaning democrats are poised to shape the future of the party.
The Green New Deal, for example, arguably the single, most comprehensive policy proposal to come out of the House in 2019, uses climate change to frame a set of proposals including creating and guaranteeing jobs, reducing and eliminating emissions, and reducing inequality by providing health care, housing and economic security. Although the proposal has gone nowhere, it will likely represent more of the policy preferences of politicians like AOC, Bernie Sanders and others.
But the left also has people like Elizabeth Warren, who strongly believes in markets and competition as the best route to providing freedom and economic security to average people. Her more technocratic, policy driven approach, like Niskanen’s work starts from a place of framing what she believes are the most important areas of concern for our country, outlining a policy proposal, and then opening up the debate to find a solution that might result from compromise.
Among the number of policy proposals her campaign has released so far, Warren argues for:
- Student loan relief and free public college
- High quality, affordable, child care
- Taxing the ultra-rich
- Increasing taxes on highly profitable corporations
- Addressing rental markets and affordable housing at the state and local level
Whether she advances, her policy ideas take hold, or any of these issues become the central issues of the 2020 election, I find it heartening that there is a candidate proposing a number of bold solutions to some of our most intractable problems. And, in an idealistic sense, I’d love to imagine that policy makers on the right would come to the table, argue about these proposals and find solutions that move the ball forward.
But if I take the advice of a centrist of years-past, it seems the best thing a centrist can do in this time is to cede ground to the left, work to get progressives elected, and let go of the delusion that politicians from the right are interested in compromising at all.
