Can a Divided Nation Come to the Center?

I'm a big fan of content churned out and published by Harvard Business School.  Earlier this month, HBS released Problems Unsolved and a Nation Divided.  It's a continuation of their U.S. Competitiveness Project, launched in 2011, as a "multi-year, fact-based effort to understand the disappointing performance of the American economy."  I encourage everyone to read this 70 page document (linked above).

Some of the most critical findings in the study relate to the political paralysis that is crippling our political system and henceforth, our nation.  As I read about and studied this topic, I couldn't help but think about the polarization, divisiveness, political correctness and bully-pulpits that are running rampant in the following arenas:

• Federal government (Washington D.C.)
• State and local governments
• Media (especially national)
• Social media platform discourse 
• Universities
• Corporations

The HBS authors (Michael E. Porter, Jan W. Rivkin, Mihir A. Desai, and Manjari Raman) delve into an eight-point plan for Washington, first released by HBS in 2012 (page 34).  This plan includes but is not limited to simplifying the corporate tax code, easing immigrant for highly skilled individuals, creating a sustainable federal budget, reforming entitlements, and developing America's unconventional energy advantage.  

I believe there are great ideas and intentions that can be applied to the eight-point plan.  These ideas and intentions can be gleaned from across the spectrum of political associations: liberals, conservatives, libertarians, independents, etc.  In order for gleaning from various viewpoints to occur, however, there has to be an awakening and move to radical centrism.  Such a movement would look to address reform opportunities by using pragmatic approaches that would close the ever-widening gap between emotionally driven vs. data driven discourse and solutions (The modern day skew towards emotion is odd considering we've never had better data or data Web sites at our fingertips).  

Emotions and ideals are crucial elements of our culture, but I believe the level of polarization and name-calling (stemming from emotional idealism) in our nation is choking out realistic, common sense solutions and viewpoints.   I completely realize that there will always be zealots on the far right and far left.  Additionally, some issues are inherently difficult to find common ground on simply due to the nature of the issues.  That said, immediately shutting down political opponents, university classmates or social media users due to their stances on particular issues only leads us further down a path of paralysis.  

Can our divided nation come to the center to address the issues laid out by the HBS authors?  The 2016 presidential race makes me extremely skeptical but hopefully over time, we can come together to address the glaring problems that are hurting the U.S. economy in a globalized world.  There are plenty of folks beating the drum for radical moderatism.  Just open your eyes and ears to media outlets and viewpoints that aren't far right or far left leaning.  You don't have to agree with someone 100% to learn from them.  That's a truth I try to keep top-of-mind.