The Vital Center

Greg Sargent is one of America's most prolific and insightful political opinion journalists. He is co-author of the Washington Post's The Plum Line blog (along with Paul Waldman) and is the author of the 2018 book An Uncivil War: Taking Back Our Democracy in An Age of Trumpian Disinformation and Thunderdome Politics. Although his columns tend to respond to the most heated and prominent issues of the moment, his column is notable for drawing upon a wide range of experts who help connect the political stories to a larger social and political reality. Sargent's work includes a particular focus on the American right and the particular dangers it has come to pose, in an era of Trump-inflected populism, to American democracy. An Uncivil War examines the history of the counter-majoritarian tendencies on the right and concludes that "the plight of our democracy is the result of deep structural factors and problems that go well beyond Trump and long predate him." In this podcast episode, Greg discusses the deeper significance of recent national stories (including several primary elections and the Buffalo and Uvalde mass shootings), the shifting bases of both the Republican and Democratic Parties, and the evolving forms of post-liberalism on the right. He raises what he considers the Democrats' "fundamental failure to reckon with the Republican Party of today," and his view of what needs to happen to avert emerging authoritarian threats. He also talks about his education and journalistic experiences before coming to the Post, and reveals the obscure meaning of "The Plum Line."

The post-Trump era has been a time of extraordinary political ferment on the right. Stephanie Slade, senior editor of Reason magazine, has had a front-line view of these new political developments. She is both a libertarian and a Catholic, and has written extensively for both libertarian publications and for religious publications, such as the Jesuit magazine America. She covers the intersection of religion and politics as well as the growing illiberalism of the New Right, evident in such new movements as National Conservatism and Catholic integralism. Most recently, she wrote an op-ed in the New York Times on how Florida Republican governor Ron DeSantis’ clash with the Walt Disney Company demonstrates the ways that the Republican Party is distancing itself from libertarian conservatism, particularly in the realm of economics. Trump-aligned, populist-leaning Republicans such as DeSantis, Missouri senator Josh Hawley, and Ohio senatorial candidate J. D. Vance show a new willingness to use the power of the state to punish their political enemies, including allegedly “woke” institutions such as colleges, universities, and foundations as well as large corporations such as Disney speaking out against Republican-authored legislation. Slade believes that what’s at stake in these clashes is the future of fusionism – the commitment to liberty and virtue – as the animating philosophy driving the modern American conservative movement. Unlike many on the New Right, she believes that libertarianism is compatible with religious social thought, like Catholic teachings on subsidiarity, for example. And although (in her estimation) the energy and momentum in intellectual and activist circles on the right are currently with the illiberals, she believes the fusionists have the potential to revive.

For decades, the standard history of conservative intellectuals in the United States in the 20th century has been George Nash’s magisterial The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945. Now, a young scholar, Joshua Tait, has produced a study of conservative intellectualism that compares favorably to Nash’s in its depth of research and acuity of analysis. In this podcast discussion, Josh talks about his 2020 Ph.D. dissertation, “Making Conservatism: Conservative Intellectuals and the American Political Tradition.” He describes his interest in the post-World War II conservative intellectual project. This movement drew together the ideas and philosophies of the right that opposed the prevailing New Deal consensus and built a political coalition and set of institutions that could persuade the public and achieve political power. He discusses his interest in early conservative intellectual movements, including the New Conservatives, the Straussians, the traditionalists, and the libertarians - as well as the ideas and influence of specific figures on the right such as Peter Viereck, Russell Kirk, Willmoore Kendall, James Burnham, and William F. Buckley, Jr. Ultimately, Josh believes that the “fusionist” consensus forged around National Review magazine in the 1950s - which united traditionalists and libertarians under the shared banner of anti-communism - was always unstable and was glued together more by shared enemies on the left than by any genuine synthesis. He also describes how the catastrophism of leading conservative intellectuals, including Burnham and Kendall, ultimately made it impossible for conservatives to cooperate with liberals and centrists, thus depriving them of the ability to govern. He believes the conservative intellectual project should turn away from existentialist counter-revolution and seek to recover the prudence and historicism of traditionalist thinkers like Russell Kirk. This would facilitate a return to conservative politics grounded in realism, reform, and continuity.

Aurelian Craiutu, a political science professor at Indiana University and expert on moderation, dives into the complexities of liberalism and its internal challenges. He argues that threats to liberal democracy are emerging from within Western societies, rather than external regimes. Craiutu highlights the importance of political moderation as a counterbalance to extremism, sharing insights from his experience growing up in Romania under communism. He stresses the need for engaging with diverse perspectives and fostering dialogue to defend liberal values in today's polarized climate.

In 1989, in the wake of Republican president Ronald Reagan’s landslide reelection, political scientists Elaine Kamarck and Bill Galston issued a wake-up call to the Democratic Party. It came in the form of a widely discussed paper entitled “The Politics of Evasion: Democrats and the Presidency,” which called upon Democrats to bring their party back to the political center. “The Politics of Evasion” became the intellectual and political manifesto for the moderate New Democrat movement and its organizational base, the Democratic Leadership Council. In 1992, the DLC’s president, Arkansas governor Bill Clinton, won the presidency by running on a New Democrat platform. In February of this year, with moderate Democrats worrying anew that the party has drifted too far from the political center, Elaine Kamarck and Bill Galston issued a paper entitled “The New Politics of Evasion: How Ignoring Swing Voters Could Reopen the Door for Donald Trump and Threaten American Democracy.” Once again, Kamarck and Galston warn Democrats that they are evading political reality in ways that may lead to durable Republican majorities. This time around, they write, Democrats have fallen under the sway of three persistent myths: the myth that people of color think and act in the same way, that economics always trumps culture, and that a progressive majority is emerging. But the stakes are much higher than they were 33 years ago. If the new politics of evasion leads to another era of Republican dominance under Donald Trump’s populist-authoritarianism, the result this time could be the end of American democracy. In this episode, podcast host Geoff Kabaservice talks with Elaine Kamarck of the Brookings Institution about “The New Politics of Evasion” and what Democrats need to do to regain electoral competitiveness with much of the American working class, including Hispanic voters. The episode also explores Elaine Kamarck's career in the Clinton White House when from 1993 to 1997 she created and managed the National Performance Review, also known as the Reinventing Government Initiative. The conversation surveys the achievements of that initiative and raises the question of what needs to be done to reinvent government under the present circumstances.

photo: iStock

Henry Chauncey Jr. – better known as Sam – became a dean at Yale during the 1950s when he was still a college senior. He has been affiliated Yale in various capacities ever since. From 1964 to 1971 he was special assistant to Kingman Brewster Jr., Yale’s controversial 17th president, who transformed and modernized the university along meritocratic lines while holding the institution together during the turmoil of the 1960s. Chauncey also served as secretary of the university from 1971 to 1981. In this podcast interview, Sam discusses his father, Henry Chauncey Sr., who was a pivotal figure in the history of meritocracy and one of the central characters in Nicholas Lemann’s 1999 bestseller The Big Test. The elder Chauncey founded the Educational Testing Service in 1947, the entity that still administers the SAT to college-bound high school seniors. Sam also analyzes the changes in American society that impacted higher education during the 20th century, the shifting composition and priorities of university students and leaders at selective institutions, the threats to free speech on campuses today, and the qualities of effective administrators.

For decades, Mona Charen has been one of the most prominent authors and political commentators on the right. A speechwriter for such Republican luminaries as Nancy Reagan and Jack Kemp, she worked in the Reagan White House and has written a nationally syndicated column since 1987. But while she has held fast to the principles that made her a star in the conservative movement, she believes that Donald Trump has “utterly discredited” conservatism. She is now policy editor of The Bulwark (one of the leading lights on the Never-Trump right) and host of the Beg to Differ Podcast. Mona Charen has long been critical of leftist dogma, especially what she views as modern feminism’s undermining of the family and other key supports of American society. But she was also one of the contributors to National Review’s January 2016 “Against Trump” symposium, noting that Trump “represents every stereotype the left has brought forth about what conservatism is really like.” Unlike nearly all other contributors to that issue, she has consistently criticized Trump — and the hypocrisy that her erstwhile comrades in the conservative movement have shown toward Trump and other bad actors on the far-right. Today, Mona Charen is still critical of the left but believes that Trump and his movement represent a more significant existential threat to American democracy. She has moved toward moderation and demonstrated a commitment to civic dialogue and civil disagreement in her writings and podcasting. Join us as we discuss her career and efforts to articulate a realistic, reasonable, responsible conservatism.

Has America lost its mojo? In this episode of the Vital Center podcast, we speak with the Niskanen Center's vice president Brink Lindsey about how the American government no longer seems capable of accomplishing significant, important undertakings — and how that failure is endangering liberal democracy both at home and abroad. Brink describes his personal journey as a "recovering libertarian," from a vice president at the Cato Institute to an advocate for robust social insurance and strong, capable government as a necessary complement to free-market capitalism. In particular, he offers an in-depth explanation of the thinking behind his recent manifesto for Niskanen's new State Capacity Project. He describes how suspicion of centralized state power — shared, ironically, by both the political left and right — led to a degradation in the American government's ability to carry out ambitious undertakings and even to fulfill its basic responsibilities toward its citizens. The result was what he calls "the often-hapless Leviathan we behold today: an American state whose vaulting ambitions are all too frequently mocked by its faltering follow-through." The failure of government institutions during the Covid-19 pandemic was a paradigmatic example of the consequences of declining state capacity. This failure, combined with other recent crises such as the 2007-08 financial crisis, is shaking public trust in liberal democracies around the globe. In this interview, Brink lays out a way to strengthen liberal democracy by bolstering state capacity and laying down the intellectual preconditions for constructive problem-solving. Whether this approach can succeed politically in overcoming the forces of populist reaction and what he calls "civilizational rot" remains to be seen. Photo credit: iStock https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/pennsylvania-avenue-leading-up-to-the-united-states-capitol-gm171350531-20768993?clarity=false