Quotes of the Day

The last place you'd expect to hear a politician promoting a centrist initiative to seek bipartisan solutions is at a political party convention. But here was Indiana Democrat Senator Evan Bayh telling TIME that he's trying to form just such a group of legislators. These Democrats would reach out to GOP moderates in search of consensus — and a voting block in the Senate — for middle-of -the-road compromises to break gridlock.

Bayh, a leader of the New Democrat movement and the chairman of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), is calling his new group The Third Way. For you centrist aficionados, the term was trendy among middle-of-the-road stars of the ‘90s, like Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who used it to describe the shift in their political parties away from liberal-labor welfare dogma ad toward market-oriented social and economic policies.

Bayh insists The Third Way group he wants to form in the Senate won't be a think tank like the DLC, but rather a "results-oriented" voting bloc intended to achieve deadlock-breaking compromise bills on such critical issues as health care, education and the budget. "It's going to be very practically focused on specific legislation, trying to come up with consensus on things in the center to break some of this gridlock and to deal with some of the partisanship," Bayh explains. He's been huddling with two like-minded centrist Democrats, Senators Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Tom Carper of Delaware, to assemble the group.

The Third Way is being born out of frustration, says Bayh. "We are accountable for accomplishing things, producing results," he explains. "And if you can't have 100 percent of what you want, well, 50 or 60 percent is better than nothing. But there seems to be so many people who want to go home and say, 'You know what, we didn't do anything on health care, we didn't do anything on the economy or education. But you know what, we didn't give an inch. So support us. I just find that to be a pretty sterile approach to things, but it seems to be the dominant approach. Everybody plays to their base."

Playing to the base, however, is what Democrats and Republicans want to do at the moment. With the presidential race so close, the almost evenly divided Senate up for grabs, and now even the House in play, Democrats and Republicans have never been more hostile to each other on Capitol Hill. Nobody seems interested in bipartisan compromises with so much up for grabs.

That's a mistake, argues Bayh. Sure, Kerry wants to fire up the Boston delegates for three months of political trench warfare. But, "I think a fair amount of humility is in order here," Bayh cautions. "We're going to have one of the most unified conventions ever. But the largest group of voters isn't going to be Democrats, and it's not going to be Republicans, and it's not going to be independents. The largest group is going to be non-participants. What does that say? That says a lot of people have concluded that it just doesn't matter. That ought to worry us all. And a lot of it is because of this brain-dead partisanship, uncompromising ideology, and the gridlock that they both produce. And our democracy is suffering as a consequence."

Bayh clearly is trying to assume the mantel of retiring Louisiana Democrat Sen. John Breaux, who loved to break party ranks and craft compromises with Republicans on such politically charged issues as prescription drugs and Bush's tax cuts. Breaux, however, formed his centrist coalitions on the fly, depending the bill that was on the floor. Bayh says he's going to take a more "systematic" approach with The Third Way. "We're going to take a look at what issues are likely to come up or ought to be addressed in the upcoming session of the Senate and have an agenda for what we think is a reasonable consensus approach on how to deal with them," he says.

For the moment, Bayh is only organizing centrist Democrats. Once that's done, he'll see if he can sign up moderate Republicans, some of whom have already expressed an interest in joining. Bayh claims he's already alerted Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle that he's forming The Third Way and maintains that "Tom is supportive."

Maybe for public consumption. But Daschle, who's charged with enforcing party discipline among Senate Democrats, can't be happy with the prospect of a centrist bloc throwing its weight around. The Senate Democrats are unified on defeating George Bush and retaking that chamber, but ideologically they're about as together as a Balkan legislature, with liberals, conservatives and "Dealocrats" like Breaux constantly feuding behind closed doors. Yet Daschle has no choice but to be "supportive." Although Bayh is not talking for the moment about how large his group will be, he can probably sign up at least a dozen incumbent Democratic senator for The Third Way, and as many as a half dozen Democratic Senate candidates — moderates like Erskine Bowles in North Carolina, Tony Knowles in Alaska and Brad Carson in Oklahoma — are potential recruits if they win in November.

"There are just enough of us who've gotten fed up with just not getting enough done," Bayh told TIME. "When we had decent prosperity, maybe we could afford the luxury of gridlock. But we've got big challenges we better start addressing, and most of them will only fester and grow with the passage of time. They're not going to get any easier."

• DOUGLAS WALLER/Boston
• At a partisan convention, Evan Bayh talks about finding common ground