The Radical Middle

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Yet there are real signs of hope. More and more people fed up with partisan gridlock are not responding with cynicism and inaction; rather, they're rolling up their sleeves and coming together across ideological lines, building unlikely coalitions and moving toward solutions to seemingly intractable problems that don't easily fit the tired old left-right paradigm -- like the global AIDS crisis, energy independence, education, poverty, middle-class decline, campaign finance, globalization, the burgeoning prison population, and climate change. This "radical middle" is not about cynical, poll-driven attempts to find the mushy political center. It's about people who have stepped outside old ideological boxes to fight boldly for the common good.

Here is a look at a few of the remarkable thinkers and doers who are shaping this new radical-middle politics. Some of them focus on policy, proposing new solutions that a majority of Americans could get behind and advocating these measures in the marketplace of ideas via newsletters, reports, books and magazine articles, talk shows, and lobbying. Others focus on process, designing new ways of doing democracy that heal the wounds of political division in the body politic and tap into our collective wisdom by bringing many voices into dialogue. Still others are going outside the political process altogether, creating innovative projects that involve citizens directly in creating solutions. The common thread uniting all of these people is a belief that our political system is seriously flawed and that the answers lie beyond blind adherence to old orthodoxies.

Mark Satin Creating a Pragmatic New Politics

The long and winding political career of Mark Satin has taken some odd turns. Starting as a '60s campus radical, he became the guru of a New Age politics based on personal transformation in the '80s and a corporate lawyer in the '90s. Satin now edits and publishes the Radical Middle Newsletter (www.radicalmiddle.com), dedicated to crafting a new political synthesis that listens to, and draws the best ideas from, both left and right. "The left has taught us to care for everyone, not just the middle and upper classes," he says. "The right has taught us the value of personal achievement." He has distilled his thinking down to four guiding principles: Maximize choices for all; give everyone a fair start; maximize human potential; help the developing world.

In his new book, Radical Middle: The Politics We Need Now (Westview, 2004), which provided the initial inspiration for this article, Satin fleshes out pragmatic new policy ideas that stem from those principles, like instituting universal health coverage that is private and preventive, endowing every newborn with a financial nest egg, and launching a massive new energy research program that gives equal weight to conservation, renewable energy sources, fossil fuels, hydrogen, nuclear power (yes, nuclear), biofuels, and lifestyle changes. He is quick to stress that he doesn't necessarily have the right answers, and that his proposals are merely opening salvos in an ongoing debate over what constitutes radical-middle solutions.

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