Governing Toward the Center

This article helped with the author the National Magazine Award (the oscars for magazine writers).

His position - neither the Dems or the Republicans have a majority of popularity. Each party needs the centrist vote - the Dems got it with Clinton, the Republicans got it during the last election. I thought the article was going to be about an ownership society - the type of society promoted by Bush (kind of), privitizing social security and so forth - the same type of society promoted by Thatcher in Britian.

His article, however, devolves more into a look at political power and how political parties achieve it. I find this topic much less interesting than what an owernship society would really mean. Is this a plausible idea? As in Britian, the right is too busy fretting about gay marriage and pro-life causes to stay focused on their economic agenda. Clinton and Blair basically stole everything that worked from Conservative economic policy and promoted a more lenient and understanding cultural agenda. But ideas about an "ownership" society were promoted during Clinton's reign - job training programs, welfare reform, home ownership rising. His biggest failure was actually a non-ownership society reform, healthcare. I wonder about the merits of this, certainly it works in some cases. To be continued...