I'm a radical centrist. Moderates are compassionate listeners and peacemakers, and they look for ways to split the difference between warring factions. That's an important role to play, but it's not taking a stand in what we need to come to understand as the radical center. (I would locate in a place different from where Arthur Schlesinger does--he's the one who coined the phrase and closer to where Michael Lind does.)
There is a tendency for moderates to have their agenda defined by whatever the argument is between the left and the right. Being a moderate in the sixties meant being a Rockefeller republican, a position occupied now by someone like Bill Clinton. But Clinton ten years ago he was not perceived as a moderate among, but as a left-leaning socialist because of the way the discourse has been defined by movement conservatives since '94. I mean a conservative like Joe Lieberman is thought of as a moderate these days.
Where I define the center is quite a bit to the left of Clinton, because Clinton and the kind of DLC brand of Democrat he represents has allowed itself to be dragged way right of center, and they are rightly labeled as GOP lite.
I only have a few minutes now, but I hope to elaborate on this another time. But the characteristics of a radical centrist politics integrate the traditionalism of the right with the cosmopolitanism of the left. It seeks to integrate the interests of big money power with the interests of the powerless, voiceless, and impoverished, both in this country and across the globe. It rejects mindless jingoism, embraces multilateralism and a global vision, while recognizing that real people live in particular places within particular cultures and traditions that must be honored.
To synthesize is not the same as to compromise. A synthesis is a new position that stands its own ground. It isn't a compromise; it's a work of integration. It has its own life, its own integrity.