Perhaps the U.S. political scene has arrived at another “third-party moment.”
Or perhaps it needs a different sort of “centrist” course correction, as former Sen. Joe Lieberman suggests.
Either way, frustration with the old two-party system is high enough that serious people, not just cranks, are talking along such lines. From the reformist Left side of the political spectrum, Democratic former presidential and New York mayoral candidate Andrew Yang says he is founding a third party (of sorts). From the reformist Right, prominent columnist Jonah Goldberg is proposing a new third party for tactical reasons, to force the Republican Party eventually to return to Reagan conservatism from “Trumpified … asininity.”
Then there are those of us intrigued by a third-party (or multiparty) or independent option as a national or regional force, but only if its goal is eventually to win real elections rather than forcing one or both existing major parties to come to heel.
Anyway, Lieberman, the longtime Democrat reelected for his final term (in 2006) as an independent, became the latest to enter this conversation with the Oct. 19 release of a new book, The Centrist Solution. In the book, which is part political advocacy and part political memoir, Lieberman describes “centrism” not as a midpoint on the ideological spectrum but as an approach to governing that stresses negotiation and principled compromise. A week after his book’s release, I interviewed Lieberman by phone.
Lieberman, who is the co-chairman (with Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan) of a centrist advocacy group called No Labels, said there should be outside efforts to convince current officeholders to go “centrist” and to provide financial and political support to candidates who will do so.
“Government in Washington seems so unable to solve problems, but it’s by coming to the center that American government has always solved its problems,” he said. “I don’t mean ‘moderation’ ideologically; I mean people of different points of view seeing a problem and figuring that the only thing to do is to talk civilly … and, in a legislative context, to negotiate, to see what things in the bill are most important to each, and then work it out.”
Lieberman said that until rather recently, that’s how Washington actually worked, at least in the long run, even after some obligatory partisan bickering. President Ronald Reagan, he said, worked with liberal Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill to shore up Social Security, and Democratic President Bill Clinton worked (even if uneasily) with conservative Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich to create three straight years of budget surpluses.
Lieberman had much more of interest and acute insight to offer, including some trenchant thoughts about third-party gambits, which I will write about later. For now, though, let it be noted that he is far from happy with how far leftward Joe Biden has gone in the first year of his presidency and that Lieberman’s own view of centrism is compatible with the pending $1.2 trillion “infrastructure” bill but decidedly not with anything even approaching Biden’s original $5.5 trillion social-spending blowout proposal.
The former, even though he said it alone is costlier than any single bill for which he voted in 24 years in the Senate, has the virtue of being broadly bipartisan. He supports it strongly. But he said the social-spending bill is a Democratic-only production and, substantively, is “more than we can afford to do.” Also, “as first proposed, it had four or five new entitlement programs that were hardly discussed and still haven’t been. To me, it was like putting together Medicare, Medicaid, and the Clean Air Act in one bill all at once.”
Lieberman believes that sort of overreach, by unipartisan political might, is irresponsible government.
“I am grateful Sens. [Joe] Manchin and [Kyrsten] Sinema [of West Virginia and Arizona, respectively] have basically said, ‘Stop, and let’s try to bring this down to real priorities.’”
For more from Lieberman, and on the topic of third parties in general, stay tuned until the next column. For now, though, give Lieberman the last word, explaining what he hopes The Centrist Solution can contribute: “I am disappointed by the performance of our national government. I get angry about it at times, just like probably everyone else. … I hope the book will give some hope to the voters who read it and will give some lessons to people in the Congress and White House today about how to make government work for the people again.”
