In their recent join writings, the American Enterprise Institute’s Normal Ornstein and the Brookings Institution’s Thomas Mann, reflecting a center-right and center-left perspective, offer thoughtful critiques and analyses regarding the drift towards irrational and extremist positions in politics today. In a recent op-ed piece in the Washington Post, they examine the roots of the current, continuing gridlock. In it, they point out that “…serious debates about policy avenues in these areas are impossible if half the political arena believes that climate change is a hoax, and if one political party is animated by the Grover Norquist no-tax pledge and the Mitt Romney vision of a nation of 53 percent makers and 47 percent takers.” And, that “…the broader pathologies in our politics remain. For all the problems that existed in previous decades, in a system designed not to act with dispatch, there was a strong political center, with responsible bipartisan leadership. The same cannot be said today.”

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