There’s much to like here. The distinction between “substantive” vs. “procedural” centrism is interesting and has merit. However, framing “substantive” centrism as a failure by denigrating “political success” as inferior to some inherent absolute centrist value of right or truth is loading the dice.

I don’t buy it. The author is using the term “political success” as a pejorative to dismiss pragmatic realism. The Venn diagram intersection of Centrists with shared policy values that he envisions as a foundation for building centrist solutions is vanishingly small.

I’d propose another centrist category without the straw-man taint. Let’s call it “dynamic” centrism. You can have centrist policies without Centrists. The basic notion here is that a centrist policy is inherently a compromise between values held dear by political tribes who represent an overwhelming majority (80%+) of the electorate, have diametrically opposed policy preferences, will always find the centrist solution to compromise their values, and therefore be unsatisfactory but politically successful.

It’s is indeed “Time to give centrism a try.” But it’s only going to work if the centrist policies are recognized to be pragmatic, mutually unsatisfactory, compromise solutions that are forged out of debate between often incompatible political values. The only truly shared foundational value here is the recognition that we are a big country with diverse political values, finding a way to respect those differences and accepting that any centrist political success will inevitably be a pragmatic and unsatisfactory compromise.