A centrist manifesto for a populist moment

There is a better approach.

Centrists could embrace flexibility, striving to be much more open to pragmatism, not only about means (which policies work) but also about ends. What do Americans need and want the government to do two decades into the new century? And how might we go about achieving these goals (including paying for the effort)? Those are the questions we need to pose and answer as a society — not presuming we already know the answers (as the old centrists do), and not pitting the preferences and needs of some groups against those of others (as populists prefer), but encouraging a free and open conversation among all Americans as Americans.

Everything is, or should be, on the table and up for debate — except for the rules of the game itself. The norms and institutions of liberal democracy need to be affirmed, preserved, and protected. But the best way to do that isn’t to constrict the policy debate to the parameters that have prevailed since the late 1970s. It’s to demonstrate to the country, including its most agitated populists, that our norms and institutions are flexible enough to adjust to new realities and respond to new problems — whether it’s an ascendant China, the opioid epidemic, or the soaring costs of health-care and college, and whether or not the best solution offends the stultified ideological pieties that have defined the conventional wisdom since before the Cold War came to a close.