The Centrist Solution

How We Made Government Work During a Golden Era of Bipartisanship

Joseph I. Lieberman

• Publisher: Diversion Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781635769050
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Conservatism & Liberalism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The four-term senator shares behind-the-scenes stories illustrating the lost art of aisle-crossing—and how to make American democracy function again. Senator Joseph Lieberman offers a master class in effective government by revealing events from his forty years in elective office—which spanned from the Vietnam War era to the Obama presidency—and shining a light on historic acts of centrism and compromise. He was an up-close witness to a not-so-distant era when Republicans and Democrats worked together (and even became friends), and problems actually got solved. Today we need these examples more than ever. Having two fiercely opposed political parties is what John Adams dreaded "as the greatest political evil under our Constitution." If American government is to work, it must do so in the center—where open discussion, hard negotiation, and effective compromise take place. In this vivid account of his political life, Lieberman shows how legislative progress and all-inclusive government occurs when politicians reject extremism and put country before party. The Centrist Solution shines a light on ten milestones of centrist success during his time in government—from the Clean Air Act of 1990 and the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the repeal of the military's anti-gay "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy—as well as his vice presidential run alongside candidate Al Gore, and his experience being vetted by John McCain to be his potential running mate on the 2008 Republican ticket. In the telling, Lieberman extracts clear lessons and proven methods of collaboration that can carry us forward after years of partisan warfare and legislative inaction. The centrist solution leads to government truly of the people, by the people, and for the people—a citizenry looking for solutions, not destructive extremist standoffs. "Reprising successes and failures, he ends each chapter with 'Lessons for Centrists.'... A heartfelt plea to legislators and the constituents who elect them." — Kirkus Reviews "The wisdom offered in this magnificently timed book serves as a reminder of history's powerful examples of bipartisanship, almost completely forgotten in today's environment of ever-changing party dogma and misplaced priorities." —Jon Huntsman, former Governor of Utah (R) and US Ambassador

1

The Roots of American Centrism

America’s founders were educated in the Greek classics, Judeo-Christian theology, and the philosophy of the Enlightenment—all of which guided their creation of a centrist government.

In Greek philosophy, Aristotle held that the middle way between extremes was the best way. Harmony that moderated extremes was the goal. Courage is a favorite example of Aristotle’s centrism. Courage is a human virtue, he said, but if taken too far to one side becomes reckless and dangerous. If it slides too far to the other side, it becomes cowardice, which is also dangerous. The center point of courage—between the cowardly and reckless—is the place to be.

Aristotle’s lesson is memorably illustrated in Greek mythology. Daedalus builds wax-and-feather wings for himself and his son Icarus so they can escape the control of King Minos by air. Daedalus instructs Icarus to “fly the middle course” between the heat of the sun and the cool of the ocean. But Icarus is infatuated by his ability to fly and goes higher and higher, closer and closer to the sun until the wax on his wings melts, the wings separate from his body, and he falls into the sea and drowns. That was a large price to pay for leaving the centrist course!

America’s founders were well-educated in Greek philosophy and mythology, but it was Judeo-Christian theology that influenced them more. There, they also found great value placed on the center path. In the Talmud, Rabbi Judah offers a parable that reads like Daedalus:

There is a highway that runs between two paths, one of fire, and the other of snow. If a person walks too close to the fire, this person will be scorched by the flames; if too close to the snow, this person will be bitten by the cold. What is the person to do? This person is to walk in the middle, taking care not to be scorched by the heat nor bitten by the cold.

Maimonides, the 12th-century Spanish-Jewish philosopher and scholar, wrote:

The right way is the mean . . . namely that disposition that is equally distant from the two extremes in its class.

Christian texts are full of appeals for personal and societal moderation as the natural result of living Christian values.

Evil consists in discordance from their rule or measure . . . This may happen by exceeding the measure or . . . falling short of it.

Therefore, it is evident that moral virtue observes the mean. (St. Thomas Aquinas)

Let your moderation be known unto all men (because) the Lord is at hand. (Philippians 4:5)

All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me but I will not be brought under the power of any. (1 Corinthians 6:12)

Many leaders among the founding American generation brought to our nation’s shores a belief in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. The theologian who most influenced them was John Calvin.

“There is no kind of government more salutary,” Calvin wrote, “than one in which liberty is properly exercised with becoming moderation and properly constituted on a durable basis.”

Calvin’s Protestant reform theology can be described as centrist, sitting as it does between the “extremes” of Anabaptist liberalism and Catholic legalism. Although Calvin was a theologian and religious leader, he had strong political views—centrist political views—based on his wonderful phrase: “becoming moderation.”

“The purpose of political government and law,” Calvin said, “is to cultivate civil restraint and righteousness in people, and to promote general peace and liberty.”

Michael Novak, the Roman Catholic theologian, wrote that the American eagle took flight in the eighteenth century with two wings: One was the Calvinist faith of the founders, particularly their knowledge and love of the Bible, and the other was the philosophy of the Enlightenment. Our forefathers were very much aware of the Enlightenment’s great European philosophers, including Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Hume, Locke, and Bacon.

Those great thinkers believed in the primacy of reason and embraced the scientific method of their time. Tolerance, particularly religious tolerance, was very important to them. They advocated for a government that upheld civic virtue and protected freedom of religion and speech, as well as individual equality and opportunity.

The operative political strategy of the Enlightenment was centrist. In his “Spirit of the Law,” Montesquieu writes that the essence of his political philosophy is “the spirit of moderation.”

Voltaire’s guiding philosophy for government, meanwhile, was one that has been repeated by political centrists since he wrote it in the eighteenth century: “The perfect is the enemy of good.”

In other words, the compromises that centrist politics require are the best way to solve society’s problems and bring about progress. If you accept only “perfection,” you will not solve or build anything. Voltaire’s pithy statement is not only a wise comment on the general imperfection of the human race, but also an inescapable fact about the impossibility of achieving perfection in the work of political leaders who must find common ground to produce results.

The great values of Faith and Enlightenment motivated and directed our founders as they drafted America’s Declaration of Independence in 1776 and our Constitution in 1787.

In the case of the Constitution, there were large and fundamental differences of opinion about America’s future government that needed to be reconciled. Compromises were therefore imperative to achieve the unity America needed to secure its independence from England.

However, there were no disagreements about our founders’ purpose in adopting the Declaration of Independence at the Continental Congress at the State House in Philadelphia in the summer of 1776. The resolution for independence from England passed unanimously. Differences of opinion arose around the actual words the delegates chose to explain their Declaration, and those choices have greatly influenced American history since.

The Declaration preceded the Revolutionary War. America’s values were therefore declared before its boundaries were secured, meaning the words chosen for the Declaration were important. They emerged from admirable discussion, negotiation, and compromise among the delegates to the convention. The most important phrases of the 1,337-word Declaration constitute some of the most important words ever written in the English language:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

To make clear how determinative those sentences are, the Declaration immediately goes on to say: “To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the government.”

In other words, the new nation was being established for the primary purpose of implementing the universal declaration of human rights made in the first paragraph. But there was not unanimous support for the words Thomas Jefferson proposed for that pivotal paragraph from the outset. The original language he sent to the other four members of the Drafting Committee of Five (John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Robert Livingston of New York, and, may I say with some parochial pride, Roger Sherman of Connecticut) was:

We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable.

Franklin asked that the words “sacred and undeniable” be replaced by “self-evident.” Why? Walter Isaacson, a great Franklin biographer, believes Franklin was reflecting the philosophy of the Enlightenment, particularly as he had learned it from David Hume, the philosopher with whom he had become friendly during the years he was in London. Franklin wanted the new nation to be founded on rationality, not religion. Everyone, including Jefferson, looked up to Franklin—who was much older and more worldly than the other delegates in Philadelphia. Jefferson himself was thirty-seven years younger than Franklin. The Committee accepted Franklin’s edit, but John Adams was not satisfied with the result. He wanted to add words that reflected the other wing of Michael Novak’s American eagle—Calvinist Christianity. He asked that the Committee add the sentence: “They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”

In the spirit of compromise, Jefferson and the Drafting Committee—and ultimately the Continental Congress—accepted the amendments that both Franklin and Adams offered, resulting in the timeless words of the Declaration that have defined our national purpose and shaped our history since then.

That was not the only compromise in the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. Take, for example, the section listing the misdeeds of the British Crown that justified the Americans’ claim to independence. Jefferson originally included the charge that Britain had forced slavery on the colonies. The Drafting Committee accepted that wording. When it came before the full Congress, however, some of the delegates argued that this language went too far and would offend people in Britain who might otherwise support the American Revolution. In the interest of moderation, pragmatism, and unity, that charge against Britain was removed from the Declaration.

As significant as these compromises were in leading to unanimous adoption of the Declaration of Independence, they were modest compared to the great differences that had to be bridged to reach agreement at the Constitutional Convention eleven years later.

When the delegates left their home states for Philadelphia in May of 1787, there wasn’t even unanimous consent about the purpose of the convention. A majority agreed that the Articles of Confederation were not working well, primarily because the states had too much power and the national government too little. But most of the delegates saw the convention only as an opportunity to modify the Articles to achieve a bit more authority at the center of the US government. A few delegates had larger goals. They wanted to abandon the Articles and write a new Constitution for a new, stronger national government. Alexander Hamilton of New York and James Madison of Virginia united in making this case in the Federalist Papers. With the support of the hero of the American Revolution, General George Washington, they ultimately prevailed.

But it wasn’t easy, and it required more than the force of the Federalist Papers’ reasoned arguments and Washington’s stature. It required hard, practical compromises to protect and strengthen their experiment in independent self-government. The states were, after all, very different from one another. There were large and small population states, and slave and free states. They had different ideas about how much power they should give the citizenry in the republic they were creating, and how much authority should be added to the new national government and taken from the state governments.

Like all compromises, the great ones reached in Philadelphia at the Constitutional Convention were not perfect. Remember Voltaire’s warning that the quest for perfection cannot be allowed to block the achievement of good results. In the end, the delegates wrote a Constitution and strengthened America in a way that has sustained and guided our nation since. In fact, it changed the vision of government throughout the world. And it only happened because the delegates in Philadelphia came to the center and made difficult, imperfect compromises.

First, most of the delegates ultimately accepted that it was necessary to write a new Constitution for a new government—but they still had to work out their differences about its form and content or they would not have the votes necessary to adopt a Constitution and send it back to the states for ratification.

When it came to the new national legislative body, there was a consensus that it should have two chambers. That was what the delegates were familiar with from Britain and had adopted in all of the states, except Pennsylvania, which had a unicameral legislature. But how would they apportion representatives from the states to the new Congress, and how would they select the representatives? Those were very divisive questions. Large population states were pitted against small ones; slave states against free ones.

The large population states naturally wanted representation in both chambers of Congress to be based on population. They were led by Virginia which, together with Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, contained almost half of the young country’s population. But the small population states at the convention—led by New Jersey—were larger in number, and they wanted each state to have equal representation in both Chambers of Congress. Without their support, no Constitution would be adopted at the convention. This dispute threatened to break up the convention, and effectively end the American experiment. The delegates were gridlocked during the summer of 1787. The breakthrough came when the Connecticut delegation, led by Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth, proposed what became known as the Connecticut Compromise. It was sensible and simple: Representation in the House would reflect the population of the states, but in the Senate each state would have equal representation regardless of its population.

Would enslaved Americans who constituted 40 percent of the population of the Southern states at that time be counted in the apportionment of seats in the House? The Southerners wanted the slaves to be counted, but, of course, not to be freed. Many of the Northerners argued that if Black slaves were to be counted, they should be liberated.

James Wilson of Pennsylvania, appreciating that the larger population states like his, Massachusetts, and Virginia needed the support of some of the Southern states to adopt a system of representation based on population, proposed that seats in the House be based on the “free population” plus 3/5 of the slave population. This dehumanizing compromise not only left slavery in America untouched, but gave the Southern states about a dozen more seats in the Congress, and a dozen more votes in the Electoral College.

Nine states supported the 3/5 compromise; only New Jersey and Delaware voted against it.

The anti-slavery forces were upset by the 3/5 compromise and pressed for a ban in the Constitution on international slave trading into the US. In other words, although the Constitution would not alter the status of the current slave population, they wanted to legislate an end to the importation of more slaves. The Southern states opposed that, and another compromise was reached. International slave trading would be banned in America but not until twenty years later, at the earliest, in 1808.

There were also various proposals for how to elect members of Congress, many of them not really democratic. Hamilton proposed that the House be elected for set terms by the voters, but that the Senate be elected for life by a new group called “Electors” who would be chosen by the state governments. Charles Pinckney of South Carolina recommended that members of the House should be elected by the people, and the Senate should then be elected by the House. Some argued that both chambers should be popularly elected, but that proposal was defeated in a vote.

Then, a compromise was offered to have the House popularly elected and the senators chosen by their state legislatures. That process was adopted and stayed in effect until the 17th Amendment—which required the popular election of US Senators—was ratified in 1913, more than 125 years later. It is important to understand that although the delegates to the Constitutional Convention wanted to create a republic based on classic, liberal principles, they were also landed aristocrats who worried about what the citizenry might do if there were no limits on the new power they had in voting. Thus, they chose the state legislatures, which were generally controlled by establishment figures, to elect the members of the US Senate, one l...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• More Advance Praise for The Centrist Solution
• Also by Senator Joe Lieberman
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: The Nightmares of John Adams
• 1: The Roots of American Centrism
• 2: A Personal Case Study: The Sources of My Centrism
• 3: The Making of a Centrist Elected Official
• 4: My Unexpected Centrist Path to the US Senate
• 5: Finding the Bipartisan Center in Partisan Washington
• 6: A Centrist in the White House
• 7: Al Gore Breaks a Barrier
• 8: The 2000 National Campaign
• 9: Bipartisan Centrism Under Bush 43
• 10: Uniting in the Center After 9/11/01
• 11: My Centrist Presidential Campaign in a Party Moving Left
• 12: How I Became a Third-Party Candidate
• 13: An Independent Democrat in a Republican Campaign
• 14: Centrism in Support of President Obama
• 15: The “No Labels” Way Forward
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author