We will never again have just three television networks, all of which are relatively centrist.

But when you get specific, when you actually ask about the actual taxing and spending issues under consideration, people are remarkably centrist, they're remarkably open to compromise.

These populists promise solutions that dispense with the habits and norms of moderation, notably with centrist democratic policies and an internationalism that seeks to promote peace and prosperity. One sometimes wonders whether we are experiencing not so much the end of history as the end of enlightened history, perhaps of the enlightenment itself.