Ayomide Adeoso
This column is adapted from Jennifer Rubin’s contribution to the new essay collection, “The Center Must Hold: Why Centrism Is the Answer to Extremism and Polarization.”
It’s no exaggeration to say that, as goes centrism, so goes democracy. In this time of turmoil, we desperately need both.
Conventional wisdom portrays the political center as on the ropes around the world. This month, President Emmanuel Macron ended the “centrist experiment” in France, coming in second in elections behind a left-wing coalition. In the United States, “RINO” and “neo-liberal” are dismissive epithets hurled at the center from the far right and left. Centrist solutions are derided by the fringes in their parties as inadequate to the daunting challenges we face.
But properly understood — and it rarely is — centrism embodies the best of American politics. And it provides the only real path forward for a diverse, fragmented and highly contentious democracy under strain. In fact, embedded within centrism are the precise tools we need to fix what ails our.
A dive into true centrism reveals its power and utility. But first, we have to dispense with some things that centrism is not. Centrism isn’t a mushy tendency to compromise. It isn’t a brain-dead fondness for style over substance. Above all, it is not to be confused with “moderation” — the futile and frankly foolish attempt to carve out a space halfway between the extremes of MAGA authoritarianism on the right and rabid nihilism from the left.