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Gary Donaldson, David S. Brown. Moderates: The Vital Center of American Politics, from the Founding to Today., The American Historical Review, Volume 122, Issue 5, December 2017, Pages 1611–1612, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/122.5.1611
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Historians of American history have all too often avoided the political center. These centrists are, of course, unexciting and even boring. But they are the group that has truly moved the nation forward. Historians (along with the American press) want to look at the fringes where all the drama is, where there is excitement, something to report. The “vital center” is usually slow and uninteresting. But the center in politics gets things done; it compromises and moves the nation. It has taken David S. Brown, in his wonderful book Moderates: The Vital Center of American Politics, from the Founding to Today, to remind us that there is a vital center and that, whether they win or lose, the centrists have always been there, always pushing the nation forward—or at least waiting in the wings for their opportunity to reemerge and make the nation great again.
Brown pulls together a strong base for America’s entire political history, from the nation’s founding fathers to modern politics. We have all tried to find the defining links in the histories of the two great national political parties from the beginning of the nation’s history until now. We have all asked the same questions: Where does this president or that president fit into the great pantheon of presidential history? How did Jackson, Lincoln, or the Roosevelts change the nature of the American political system? Brown answers all those questions by looking at the nation’s political center. And he finds a thread of moderation that runs, as he sees it, from the Adamses (from John to Henry) to the Lodges (Henry Cabot to Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.) and on to the Bushes (from Prescott, who represented Connecticut, to the two presidents from Texas). At first glance, Brown seems to see the nation’s political moderates in the New England–Northeast liberals (Republican moderates) within the Republican Party. That analysis is, at first, a bit disappointing: perhaps Brown has a political opinion, an idea he wants to convey to his readers, an ax to grind. But in his final chapter, he finds moderation in Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama, all Democrats who are too often pigeonholed as liberals. And this is not an add-on chapter, an afterthought. To Brown, America’s political moderation runs the full gamut from the Adams family to Barack Obama.
