As outsider politicians continue to gain power, it's worth remembering one of the reasons why they've had such an opportunity: The political center accepted as conventional wisdom ideas that, in reality, are quite extreme.
Maastricht and other treaties that centralized power in Europe were radical in their ambition. Placing so many countries (with so many competing imperatives) under a single currency is almost a recipe for political tensions.
Angela Merkel's open-door approach to migration is also quite radical. "Wir schaffen das" became a slogan for a utopianism disconnected from the realities of concrete political life.
Turning to the United States: Giving the People's Republic of China permanent normal trade relations was also an incredibly extreme position: It gave an authoritarian regime that had no interest in the free market the ability to intervene in the American economy.
It's also pretty extraordinary to think that a nation would accept as normal almost two decades of economic stagnation (financed in part through massive borrowing)--or to think that a long-term economic hollowing-out would not also lead to great political disruption.
I'm pretty sympathetic to the importance of political centrism (and think one of the benefits of the US Constitution is that it encourages such centrism). But defending the "vital center" is in part about promoting pragmatism--not embracing radical ideology.
So part of recovering a sustainable political center demands learning from how the assumptions of the post-1989 elite consensus have failed or become outmoded. (The point is not to burn it all down; it's to prevent conflagrations that could do great damage.)
Addendum: I expand on this topic in this 2017 piece in @NRO: nationalreview.com/magazine/2017/…
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