Centerfield

All the anger on both sides, along with the increasing awareness of its corrosive nature, should offer significant motive for folks to look our direction -- in the middle.

The challenge, for us, is to find a way to get a wide range of folks to see a different approach -- a centrist approach -- and to recognize another choice that's available to them when it comes to electing candidates and formulating policy.

We have modest successes at these things. The question is how to make it a real, apparent option for folks.

I wonder if what it really takes, as a starting point, is having some major political figure embody that third approach -- having someone that everyone knows play that role. Public awareness of politics is driven primarily by a few leading figures. We need one of them -- someone really appealing -- who overtly identifies with us and illustrates the differences between our brand of politics and politics-as-usual.

That is the exact point that occurred to me when I read Sullivan's take on this, Bill. Do you have someone in mind? What do you think it would take to get someone like that?

I suspect the rancorous polarization we are seeing is one of the major reasons why my daughter doesn't vote. Unfortunately, I also suspect that a great many of those non-voters are mostly in the middle and the public awareness that Bill mentions would go a long way to getting those people to start voting.

Hmm, it's interesting you suggest a public face, because I was thinking almost exactly the opposite when it occurred to me that if we endorse a candidate for 2004, we pick a side and probably lose credibility with the other.

So if we were to have a public face, it would have to be someone committed to NOT being a candidate. I think our position should be that we want to foster debate, make moderate compromise positions more obvious and able to come to fruition, but once we have fostered intelligent debate, we respect people enough to let them come to their own conclusions.

You bring up an interesting question, bk.

I wasn't necessarily thinking in terms of someone who is a current presidential candidate. It helps if the person (or perhaps a few people) is an elected official, certainly, because that's the role in which they demonstrate a different kind of leadership.

There are the obvious names -- Colin Powell, Christine Todd-Whitman, John McCain, Joe Lieberman.

There are a few others who are less well known but have the talent and temperment -- Harold Ford Jr., Mary Landreau, Olympia Snowe, Blanche Lincoln, Chris Shays.

It's a little hard to imagine how you get someone to embody a distinct centrist option in the minds of voters. There's a good bit of serendipity involved -- e.g., when someone famous or accomplished happens to be a moderate.

That's the tantilizing possibility with Colin Powell -- he's famous for other reasons, and if he did run for office would probably illustrate quite well a different approach to campaigning and governing.

I don't think John McCain plans to run again, but if he's healthy enough in 2008, and decides he wants it, he might very well get it.

I don't have a lot of exposure to Christine Todd-Whitman, but what I know of her suggests she is dynamic, decisive, articulate, and thoughtful. I get a vibe from her that says she's "the one" in terms of being able to powerfully illustrate a centrist approach.

I would point out one final thing having to do with Lieberman. The point bk makes above probably applies here -- it's tough to annoint someone this year as "the" representative of centrist politics, in part because of the divisive war issue, and in part because we have such a large field with so many options.

I would point out, though, that when it comes to a definitive centrist style of politics, I think I hear it in what Lieberman was doing early in his campaign. A good example of it is his extended NPR interview, in which he sets aside the partisan rancor and offers an engaging, optimistic, civil, decisive, and thoughtful approach to the issues.

Listen to that interview for an example of what I think a centrist brings to politics, stylistically and substantively.