Andrew Yang got the least amount of speaking time of any candidate on the Democratic primary debate stage last night—less than half of Joe Biden’s. But this son of Taiwanese immigrants still managed to distinguish himself as a New New Democrat who broadly shares his party’s progressive goals but doesn’t always endorse its big-government solutions. A lawyer turned entrepreneur, Yang seems to understand intuitively that good public policy involves not Elizabeth Warren–style 10-point programs that empower bureaucrats and technocrats—or Bernie Sanders–style hostility to private industry—but devolving power to individuals.
He kicked off in a decidedly un-Kennedyesque spirit by extolling the primacy of the individual over the collective. “We have to get our country working for us again, not the other way around,” he declared. “We have to see ourselves as the owners and shareholders of this democracy rather than inputs into a giant machine.”
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