The best centrist party 1; Statement of principles

The best political party that Americans can devise would be based on the following facts, considerations and principles. These are antithetical to the Democratic, Republican and all other parties grounded in ideology. Therefore, these considerations and principles can be major factors only in a new pragmatic (centrist) party.

USAF, Alaska, January 2012

• The Centrist Party’s (or another name, e.g., Moderate Party, Pragmatic Party, etc) goal is to maximize benefit to the public interest from government policy and actions
• The Centrist Party defines the public interest as being an optimum balance between serving American national domestic and foreign interests, defending its economy, defending personal freedoms and protecting the environment
• Reliance on political and religious ideology makes government less efficient and effective than reliance on pragmatism
• The Centrist Party therefore rejects ideology to formulate and implement political policies; Policies grounded in ideology must compete on the merits with other policies for acceptance; Policies inspired by ideology will be accepted, rejected or modified based on a neutral, pragmatic assessment of the merits
• The Centrist Party employs a pragmatic point of view to assess political issues and policy. Policies will be based on all competing viewpoints, including the pragmatic point of view.
• The Centrist Party believes that to serve the public interest, the preferred political policies that are win-win propositions to the extent possible for stake holders and the public interest in general.
• The Centrist Party believes that to serve the public interest, policies should be debated and formulated in as transparent a manner as possible with as little unmerited influence by special interest money as possible. All members of the public and all special interests are invited to assert any policy arguments they wish, but those arguments will be accepted, rejected or modified based on their merits and in the context of service to the public interest.
• The Centrist Party advocates establishing one or more powerful incentives that reward elected leaders for putting service to the public interest before service to special or personal political interests, for example, by providing more public financing for elections than the combined financing provided by special interests, or equal public financing for bona fide candidates if special interests choose to not make any campaign contributions to the candidate or the candidate's party.

Afghanistan, Paktiya provence, January 30, 2012

Those simple principles allow a pragmatic centrist party to easily identify and adopt the best policies depending on the facts and circumstances. These principles take into account major problems that led to the failure of our political institutions and policies. They confront the human flaw that elevates self-interest (the drive for re-election) above service to the public interest. They also provide a means to blunt the power of special interest to subvert politics to serve special interests at the expense of the public interest.

Those guiding principles can lead to policies generally considered liberal, e.g., more government or regulation, conservative, compromise or none of those depending on the facts and circumstances. Since ideology is not paramount, facts will be less distorted. Accepting facts and logic as guiding principles for forming policy from the left, right, compromise and elsewhere requires strength of character. Personal character is something not tested in ideologues - they retreat into ideology and that can result in wrong policy positions when facts or circumstances contradict their ideology. Facing the discomforts of unvarnished reality is the psychological cost of rejecting ideology.

However, by rejecting ideology the Centrist Party has intellectual flexibility and freedom to problem solve that no other modern political party has. Entrenched political and religious ideologies dominate and constrain the creativity and open mindedness of all other political parties. In short, ideology has significantly impaired the effectiveness of existing political parties and it renders many politicians worse than useless.

Afghanistan, Zabul provence, Shah Joy district, 

January 31, 2012

If advocates for any policy (liberal, conservative, socialist, libertarian, etc.) grounded in any ideology wishes to compete within the framework of a transparent pragmatic party, these principles force that policy to compete openly on the merits against competing policies that are grounded in facts and reality. These guiding principles revive the currently defunct competitive marketplace of ideas in U.S. politics.