Edward Glaeser wonders if the current political environment might lead to a break out of centrist politics. He points out an unfortunate reality of politics: Rational, common sense, centrist politics are unexciting:
Our best hope is that the collision between the Tea Party and the Obama administration will explode into some serious centrism. Just as the strange cocktail of Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich produced welfare reform in 1996 and a significant decline in the gross debt, to 57 percent of G.D.P. from 67 percent, the political conflict between President Obama and the Republican-controlled House seems to have created some fiscal seriousness from both parties.
Political energy rarely comes from middle. It’s easy to understand why millions of Americans could get passionate about the more generous, more just country offered by progressives from Theodore Roosevelt onward. It’s also easy to understand the passionate desire for freedom that inspired the original Tea Party and its current incarnation.
But currently, our nation needs something that doesn’t conjure a crowd so readily: common sense. We need the spirit of nation-building centrists, like Washington and Eisenhower. We need the middle way described in the Bowles-Simpson budget plan, but that middle way needs to tear off the green-eyeshade approach to budgeting and wrap itself in red, white and blue, for it is America’s best hope.
