The Vital Center

The Niskanen Center
  • 4.8 (47)
  • Politics

Both the Republican and Democratic parties are struggling to defend the political center against illiberal extremes. America must put forward policies that can reverse our political and governmental dysfunction, advance the social welfare of all citizens, combat climate change, and confront the other forces that threaten our common interests. The podcast focuses on current politics seen in the context of our nation’s history and the personal biographies of the participants. It will highlight the policy initiatives of non-partisan think tanks and institutions, while drawing upon current academic scholarship and political literature from years past — including Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.’s 1949 classic “The Vital Center.” We welcome your thoughts on this episode and the podcast as a whole. Please send feedback or suggestions to vitalcenter@niskanencenter.org

  1. Jul 6

    Can Democrats win back the working class, with Joan Williams

    In the wake of the 2022 midterm elections, Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio showed her Democratic colleagues a chart listing the congressional districts with the highest and lowest median incomes. The highest-income districts were virtually all Democratic, the lowest-income districts Republican. The chart was shocking to Kaptur and her colleagues, all of whom thought of their party as the natural representative of the working class. “How is it possible that Republicans are representing the majority of people who struggle?” Kaptur wondered. “How is that possible?” As Joan Williams observes in her recent book Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back, as recently as 2010 Democrats still represented a majority of working-class districts. But in the decades since, the two parties have traded their political bases, with Democrats increasingly becoming the party of the college-educated professional classes; the percentage of Democrats who are college grads almost doubled between 1996 and 2018. This swap has proved disadvantageous for the Democratic Party. College-educated voters’ values and preferences have come to dominate the Democratic Party, alienating much of their former support in the working class, including increasing numbers of minority voters. And since noncollege voters comprise nearly two-thirds of the electorate, and are especially dominant in the rural areas and swing states that disproportionately determine election outcomes, Democrats will either have to win back some of their lost working-class support or resign themselves to near-permanent minority status. Williams is a professor at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, and the cofounder of the Center for WorkLife Law, which is an advocacy and research organization focused on defending the legal rights of employees who are pregnant, have children, or are family caregivers. She is also a progressive who doesn’t believe that the Democratic Party should move toward the political center since, as she puts it, “the third way’s brand of neoliberal ‘moderation’ is precisely what got us into this mess.” But she does believe that Democrats will have to rediscover ways of communicating and connecting with the working class. And, more generally, she feels that progressives will have to decide if they prefer to approach the working class “with more disdain for the ‘deplorables’ or with genuine curiosity about why noncollege voters are unhappy with the Left.” In this podcast interview, Williams discusses her experiences — including marriage to a man from a working-class background — that led her to consider the ways that class as well as factors like race and gender impact much of life in America. She considers the history of meritocracy — which she experienced as a member of one of the first classes of women at previously all-male Yale College — and the movement of college-educated women into professions that previously had been closed to them. And she describes how her research has shown that in politics, working-class voters “want to be talked to in the language that normal people talk to people. And they want to be shown how a candidate is going to improve their lives in very concrete ways. They don’t want fancy policy talk.”

  2. Apr 13

    Recovering the lost genius of liberalism, with Adrian Wooldridge

    Across the developed world, political parties of the center-left and center-right are losing ground to populist parties from the extremes of the ideological spectrum. In the intellectual sphere, the liberalism that historically has undergirded those parties is also losing ground to greater enthusiasm and energy around postliberal ideas, including National Conservatism and Integralism on the right as well as socialism and dogmatic identity politics on the left. Adrian Wooldridge’s important new book, The Revolutionary Center: The Lost Genius of Liberalism is a concise history of the emergence of key liberal ideas — upholding the freedom and dignity of the individual against the claims of groups and the state, insisting upon tolerance in the realm of ideas, and setting laws and limits upon power — in the wake of the European wars of religion and the contributions of thinkers like Edmund Burke and John Stuart Mill during the 18th and 19th centuries. Wooldridge is a British journalist who was the Economist magazine’s Washington bureau chief and is now the global business columnist for Bloomberg. Liberalism, in his view, is above all “a repository of political sense and practical problem-solving. More than any other political philosophy, liberalism created the modern world.” But he argues that contemporary liberalism has lost touch with its radical spirit by veering too closely toward technocracy, market fundamentalism, and identitarianism, while liberal leaders have become a complacent and out-of-touch establishment. In this podcast discussion, Wooldridge recounts the history of liberalism and the difficulties it has encountered in addressing contemporary problems. He maintains that he is an optimist about liberalism’s prospects, because at various points in its history — particularly in the late 19th century and in the years following World War II — liberalism has successfully been re-envisioned and reanimated. He is confident that a new liberal blueprint can be devised, and he offers some suggestions for policies by which liberalism can address the discontents that drive populism including declining social mobility, government underperformance, and social anomie and isolation.

    Recovering the lost genius of liberalism, with Adrian Wooldridge

  3. Mar 26

    Reforming our way to dynamism, with Philip K. Howard

    Philip K. Howard is a New York-based lawyer and civic reformer, who across his public career has tilted against the accumulating layers of procedural law and bureaucratic rule that have made it increasingly difficult for Americans to exercise individual initiative, judgment, and accountability. Since the 1995 publication of his bestselling first book, The Death of Common Sense, he has pointed out that the urge to make decision-makers accountable by subjecting them to highly specified rules has paradoxically produced a system that is both unaccountable and paralyzed. In his most recent book, Saving Can-Do: How to Revive the Spirit of America, Howard argues that legal micromanagement has sapped the sources of American dynamism and effective government, fueling populist resentments.  In this podcast discussion, Howard offers qualified approval of the Abundance movement that he in some ways anticipated by decades. But he insists that the pruning of excessive rules and procedures must also be accompanied by restoring a role for human judgement: “It’s not simply having less to comply with. It’s actually re-empowering everybody — the teacher in the classroom, the principal, the head of the school, whoever it happens to be — empowering them to do what’s right.” By the same token, he criticizes Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative for focusing on cutting the things government does but squandering the opportunity to change how the government does things: “There was not even a pretense that they had an idea about how things would work better the day after DOGE. It was just, ‘Look at how much we've cut,’ and then they wildly exaggerated how much they’d cut. Of course, it was all counterproductive…” Howard resists political categorization and his Common Good organization has worked with Democratic and Republican administrations alike, but his tradition of civic liberalism is increasingly homeless in contemporary politics. He acknowledges that some rules and regulations are essential, but he hopes for a government that can restore space for human judgement in a way that can restore both American dynamism and public trust in government efficacy.

  4. Feb 25

    Rethinking feminism and dependence, with Leah Libresco Sargeant

    Leah Libresco Sargeant is a Senior Policy Analyst in Family Economic Security at the Niskanen Center as well as a writer and journalist whose work focuses on religion and family policy. She is the author of three books, of which the most recent is The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto. In her book, Sargeant argues that liberal feminism — and American culture more generally — champions an ideal of freedom based in autonomy that is poorly suited to human beings as they are. Instead, she advocates for a culture that sees dignity in mutual dependence. Sargeant agrees with feminist critiques from the left that many institutions and structures in society treat women as “defective men,” including the medical research that tests only male patients and the car safety devices that protect male bodies while accidentally injuring female bodies. But she also is critical of a kind of corporate capitalism that sees workers only as economic inputs, and a politics that denies the neediness, vulnerability, and interdependence of humanity. In this podcast discussion, Sargeant lays out the thesis of The Dignity of Dependence. She describes her conversion to Catholicism and the ways in which her experiences as a wife and mother inform her cultural politics. She touches on the global fertility crisis and the paradoxical ways in which it may be driven by prosperity. She further addresses the struggles that many young people have nowadays in dating and forming families, and suggests that they may be helped by social policies (including the Child Tax Credit and baby bonuses) as well as by a greater understanding of the difference between “capstone” and “cornerstone” marriages. And she distinguishes her approach to feminism from other perspectives on both the left and right. She makes clear that as a pro-life feminist she has considerable differences with mainstream feminism, but nonetheless believes it to be “a good-faith tradition of trying to struggle with what it means to be just to women in a world that is often male-normed. It's a tradition that I think has made some serious mistakes and won some significant victories.”

    Rethinking feminism and dependence, with Leah Libresco Sargeant

  5. Feb 5

    From material abundance to mass flourishing, with Brink Lindsey

    Since our species first emerged on the planet some 300,000 years ago, the overriding problem for most humans has been the struggle for food and shelter. But in 1930, the British economist John Maynard Keynes foresaw that economic growth (despite the Great Depression) would mean that in a century, the vast majority of people in developed societies would enjoy mass plenty and only a small number of unfortunates would still struggle with material deprivation. This would mean that “for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem — how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.” But Keynes worried that transitioning to this new problem would present huge difficulties for humanity: “there is no country and no people, I think, who can look forward to the age of leisure and abundance without dread.” Brink Lindsey, senior vice president at the Niskanen Center, has written a visionary new book addressing Keynes’ conundrum. In The Permanent Problem: The Uncertain Transition from Mass Plenty to Mass Flourishing, Lindsey ponders the paradox that people in developed countries live in conditions of unparalleled wealth, health, and technological progress — and yet most people feel disappointment rather than gratitude at the results. We enjoy an abundance of material goods, yet most people are missing out on the sense of meaning, purpose, and belonging that define human flourishing. In this podcast discussion, Lindsey describes the “triple crisis of capitalism” that has brought material prosperity but also social disintegration, sputtering dynamism, and dysfunctional politics. But he also sees encouraging signs that point toward how mass flourishing might be accomplished in developments that include new technological breakthroughs and the growing Abundance movement. Ultimately he hopes for a future in which people will have closer relationships with each other as well as the natural world, and in which humanity’s drive to explore and understand will reach into the larger universe. “Our destiny is up to us,” he concludes, “and therefore we should make the most of that chance. We ought to aim high.”

    From material abundance to mass flourishing, with Brink Lindsey

  6. Jan 21

    Reevaluating the New Liberals, with Henry Tonks

    When most people think about the 1970s, they’re likely to conjure up images of Watergate, oil shortages, disco, and outrageous hairstyles. When academic political historians have thought about the 1970s, they have tended to see the era largely as one in which the forces of conservatism gained strength, setting the stage for Ronald Reagan’s election as president in 1980 and the subsequent decades of “neoliberalism,” in which both parties tended to agree that market forces needed to be liberated from the heavy hand of government.  But a new generation of historians argues that this reading shortchanges many of the Democratic politicians active in the 1970s and the years that followed, particularly the New Liberals. These were the people who wanted the Democratic Party to regain its political momentum by reforming liberalism as well as the party. The New Liberals included intellectuals like Robert Reich and Ira Magaziner, business figures like Felix Rohatyn and Robert Rubin, and politicians including Gary Hart, Paul Tsongas, Jerry Brown, and of course Bill Clinton, who arguably brought the New Liberal project to fruition by winning the presidency in 1992.  Henry Tonks, a historian at Kenyon College, has written a dissertation reevaluating the New Liberals. He argues that while they did pave the way toward the modern Democratic Party, they didn’t capitulate to Reaganism or repudiate their New Deal heritage. Rather, they tried to reinvent liberalism by adapting it to an economy that was becoming more globalized as well as less industrial and more reliant upon financial services and advanced technology. They embraced industrial policy and worried about whether America was falling behind its commercial rivals, particularly Japan. Tonks argues that while New Liberals didn’t correctly diagnose the changes to the economy in all of its particulars, their policy vision retains considerable relevance to today’s politics — and particularly the discussion around the Abundance movement.

  7. 12/16/2025

    Why everyone hates white liberals, with Kevin Schultz

    From the 1930s through the early 1960s, roughly half of Americans described themselves as liberals. But in the decades that followed, liberalism has suffered near-continuous reputational decline. The critics, rivals, and enemies of liberalism sought to redefine its public image downward, and nearly all succeeded.  Among these opponents were the conservatives around William F. Buckley Jr., who attempted to portray liberalism as a combination of militant secularism and socialism or even communism; while a majority of Americans didn’t buy this definition, Buckley and his confreres succeeded in equating liberalism with leftism, to the point that more than half of Americans tell pollsters that the Democratic Party has become “too liberal.” But actual left-wing critics felt that, on the contrary, postwar liberals had betrayed the radical potential of the New Deal and smothered American society in corporate capitalism and conformist consensus. Black civil rights activists, for their part, came to feel that white liberals were treacherous allies, unwilling to push for true equality if it would threaten their own power and position.  Kevin G. Schultz, a professor of History, Catholic Studies, and Religious Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has researched the descent of liberalism’s reputation across the latter half of the twentieth century and up to the present. Why, he wonders, “have so many people come to hate white liberals, including, perhaps, even white liberals themselves?” He describes this history in his new book, Why Everyone Hates White Liberals (Including White Liberals). In this podcast discussion, he concedes that liberalism set itself up for criticism in many ways, but nonetheless concludes that liberalism did not fall of its own weight – it was “assassinated,” as he put it, by its political opponents, who “recognized they could defeat liberalism in America… not by attacking its politics or policies, which generally remained popular,” but instead by “giving it meanings no self-respecting liberal would accept but from which they couldn't successfully escape.” And by mocking the people who upheld that philosophy, the white liberals, the critics gave the word “liberal” so much baggage that the concept of liberalism could no longer be defended — to the point that Schultz now feels the very term should be abandoned.

    Why everyone hates white liberals, with Kevin Schultz

  8. 11/13/2025

    Germany and the dangers of America abandoning Europe, with Jan Techau

    On February 27, 2022, three days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Olaf Scholz, who was then the Chancellor of Germany, gave a speech to an emergency session of the German parliament at which he described the attack as a Zeitenwende – an historic turning point. This watershed moment, he declared, meant “that the world afterwards will no longer be the same as the world before. The issue at the heart of this [change] is whether power is allowed to prevail over the law: whether we permit Putin to turn back the clock to the nineteenth century and the age of great powers, or whether we have it in us to keep warmongers like Putin in check. That requires strength of our own.” He announced a major restructuring of the country’s cautious defense policy, including billions for modernization of the military and a promise that defense spending would exceed 2 percent of Germany’s GDP, a level of spending that Scholz’s party (the Social Democrats) traditionally had opposed.  Three years later, Germany has a new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, who leads the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He succeeded in amending Germany’s constitution to lift the so-called “debt brake,” which means that the country will spend significantly more on defense as well as hundreds of billions on related infrastructure over the next ten years. But will it be enough to allow Germany to deter Russian aggression against Europe — particularly if the United States under Trump withdraws from its post-1945 role as the guarantor of European security? Can Germany develop a defense industry that can deliver under wartime conditions? Can Germany take on the leadership role in Europe that it long has been reluctant to assume — and will other countries accept Germany in this role? Jan Techau is a director with the Eurasia Group’s Europe team, covering Germany and European security. He is also a senior fellow with the Transatlantic Defense and Security Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis. From 2020 to 2023, he served in the German government as head of speechwriting for three ministers in the German Ministry of Defense. In this podcast interview, he discusses the European reaction to Trump’s reelection, the likelihood of Germany’s being able to make the physical and psychological adjustments it would need in order to become the principal provider of conventional deterrence in Europe, the rise of anti-Americanism in Germany on both the left and right, and whether Europeans are capable of keeping peace on the continent without the help of the Americans. He also explains his 2016 diagnosis of what he called “sophisticated state failure,” which long before the Abundance movement was dreamed of predicted that highly developed countries would find it increasingly difficult to get anything done, and that this paralysis would provide an opening for populist uprisings all over the world. “The only lasting way out of sophisticated state failure,” he concluded, “is for responsible politicians to worry less about getting re-elected and start risking their political careers for things that need to be done.”

    Germany and the dangers of America abandoning Europe, with Jan Techau
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About

Both the Republican and Democratic parties are struggling to defend the political center against illiberal extremes. America must put forward policies that can reverse our political and governmental dysfunction, advance the social welfare of all citizens, combat climate change, and confront the other forces that threaten our common interests. The podcast focuses on current politics seen in the context of our nation’s history and the personal biographies of the participants. It will highlight the policy initiatives of non-partisan think tanks and institutions, while drawing upon current academic scholarship and political literature from years past — including Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.’s 1949 classic “The Vital Center.” We welcome your thoughts on this episode and the podcast as a whole. Please send feedback or suggestions to vitalcenter@niskanencenter.org

Information

  • Creator
    The Niskanen Center
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    96
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2021 The Niskanen Center
  • Show Website
    The Vital Center

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