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Matt's "Third Party Stump Speech We Need" Matt's weekly column for The Washington Post Video from Matt guest hosting on MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan Show The Daily Beast names Matt one of nation's top centrist commentators Colbert roasts Matt (viewer discretion advised!)  Follow Matt on Twitter
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Welcome to my web site, where I'm hoping we can save the republic together while having a little fun in the process.
Apart from my Washington Post column, our public radio show "Left, Right & Center," and my growing TV work, my current project in that regard is to promote an independent presidential candidacy to shake up the system in 2012. We're in another political cycle in which both Democrats and Republicans will fail to offer ideas equal to the magnitude of our challenges when it comes to jobs, schools, health care, the deficit, the global economy and more. The reason? Both parties are prisoner to interest groups and ideological litmus tests that prevent them from blending the best of liberal and conservative thinking. And neither party trusts you enough to lay out the facts and explain the steps we need to take to truly fix things—in fact, their pollsters tell them that if they do, you'll vote them out. Our best hope to change the debate is a third party movement that can expose the hoaxes both parties are peddling while pointing the way toward common sense answers in the "extreme center." To help nudge the process along, I wrote a policy-heavy version of "The Third Party Stump Speech We Need" for The Washington Post, along with this column on why we need it. David Brooks praised the speech's "big ideas" in this New York Times column; Mara Liasson of NPR's "Morning Edition" featured some of it on this segment on third party prospects. If you like the speech, please share it with everyone you know who thinks we need a new direction. If you have ideas for what else belongs on the agenda, please let me know. You can find columns I've written with different angles on why we need a third party here, here, here and here. Another on how a third party might target Congress, not the White House, is here. I'd also urge you to check out Americans Elect, a breakthrough group that is in the process of securing ballot access in all fifty states for an independent ticket in 2012. They'll then run a national online nominating convention in the summer of 2012 (in which every registered voter can be a delegate) to put an independent ticket on the ballot. The political establishment is seriously underestimating the potential of Americans Elect to become a disruptive force in national politics. When the day comes next year when the group announces it has 50 state ballot access, the floodgates will open in terms of press, candidate and public interest. You might also get involved with No Labels, which is organizing a district-by-district corps of "radical centrists" to build a constituency for the politics of problem solving we need—rather than the partisan posturing we've been stuck with. Tom Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum's new book, "That Used To Be Us," is an essential guide to where we need to head as well. My own thinking builds on the two books I've written—The Two Percent Solution: Fixing America's Problems In Ways Liberals And Conservatives Can Love (2003); and The Tyranny Of Dead Ideas: Revolutionary Thinking For A New Age of Prosperity (2009). Both were long-term "idea" books and remain relevant today. You can learn more about the books and see some of the press coverage here. On the site you'll also find some old favorite articles from my archives, and other fun stuff I've written, including some children's poetry (that's right, children's poetry—have a look!). Please do sign up to get my new writings as they appear, or to follow me on Twitter. If you have ideas for things I should be writing about or talking about on "Left, Right & Center," please let me know. In the end, in a democracy, we get the government we deserve, and I'm wagering most of us think its time we deserved better. That iron law of politics still holds—politicians will scramble to lead any parade that forms, even if it means telling the truth. Let's get busy organizing the right parade, and together we might just save the country.  |
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