Why Can’t We All Get Along?

Divisive election-season politics is again stirring fantasies about a new, sensible party, but third parties don’t catch on in the U.S.

Wally McNamee

A History of American Conservative Movements

It was inevitable. This election season has been so tumultuous, so bitter and bloated with radical rhetoric, wild ideas, and even wilder characters, that we are now witnessing the return of the Terribly Sensible Party.

It’s what the citizenry say they want, especially when they’ve been beaten down by enough dinnertime robo calls and TV attack ads: a sensible, moderate, eminently reasonable party that embraces the best ideas of Democrats and Republicans alike. It will arise from the middle of the political spectrum any time now, just as soon as centrists and people of good will from both sides see how right it is.

What would such a party look like in practice? We got an idea recently from a pair of major op-ed columnists (the Terribly Sensible Party exists mainly in the minds of op-ed columnists). The moderate-liberal Thomas Friedman wrote in The New York Times earlier this month that “the level of disgust with Washington, D.C., and our two-party systemâ€