As the 2016 election season unfolded, it often seemed that moderates were difficult to find. In fact, today’s bitter partisanship encourages us to deny that there ever were any real moderates in American politics.

But Elizabethtown College Professor David S. Brown maintains that centrists, operating under a broad canopy of coalitions, have come together time and again to reshape the nation’s electoral landscape. He points to John Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., and Bill Clinton as examples of moderates who used compromise to advance their own agendas as well as the best interests of the country.

Brown is the Raffensperger Professor of History at Elizabethtown College and the author of Moderates: The Vital Center of American Politics From the Founding to Today.