Word: centrists
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...Whether Somalia can rebuild itself as a nation state depends on its ability to create a central government whose power trumps that of any one warlord. And a month after Ethiopia invaded in a lightning advance that ousted the ruling Islamists and installed the centrist Transitional Federal Government (T.F.G.) in Mogadishu, the prognosis has to be: unlikely. The T.F.G. has little popular support inside Somalia and - crucial in a place where muscle counts most - only a hastily reconstituted army of retired soldiers to protect it. The T.F.G. needs help. But from whom...
...wing. A large-scale campaign to evacuate Jewish settlers could produce more clashes like the one that erupted last January in an outpost called Amona, when an army effort to dislodge a few families left 200 soldiers and settlers injured. Another outbreak of violence could bring down Olmert's centrist government, which would probably hand power to hawkish parties who are in no mood to make peace with the Palestinians. As Gershom Gorenberg, an expert on the history of Israel's settlements, says, "Olmert's biggest fear is Jews fighting Jews, and that gives the settlers a stranglehold over...
...count on it. If anything will bring these campaigns back to reality, it could be the electorate."The saving grace is the voters, who at the end of the day insist on real substance," says Bruce Reed, president of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, who was Bill Clinton's chief domestic policy adviser. But then again, he adds, "they don't always get what they want...
...Richard Nixon was managing a fighting retreat from Vietnam. Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine was favored to be his 1972 opponent. Centrist enough to be a favorite of the Democratic establishment, liberal enough to be respected by many on the left, Muskie had impressive credentials: first Governor, then Senator for a dozen years, as well as having been the 1968 Democratic vice-presidential nominee. Muskie delivered the well-received Democratic response to Nixon on election eve 1970, and, as TIME noted, "Some politicians thought his congressional election eve TV speech last November gave him a virtual lock on the nomination...
...lose it he did. Even though Muskie wiggled belatedly left to try to accommodate the ever rising antiwar sentiment among Democrats, it was too little, and he remained basically a centrist to them. The more unequivocal antiwar candidate, George McGovern, won the nomination and got clobbered in the general election...