SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR BEHIND POLICY INSTITUTES
SOUGH T ‘A RADICAL CENTRE THAT OFFERED SOLUTIONS TO THE BIG PROBLEMS’
Ted Halstead, an author and social entrepreneur who helped create Washington- based policy institutes that groomed a generation of public intellectuals and sought to redefine the middle of American politics to solve some of the country’s most pressing challenges, died Sept. 2 in Spain. He was 52.
The cause was the impact of a fall while hiking alone in the mountains in Mallorca, according to his wife, Véronique Bardach. He lived in Boynton Beach, Fla.
With his chiselled features, grey- blue eyes and well- coiffed hair, Halstead established himself quickly as a social presence in Washington in the late 1990s. He arrived after having started an environmental think tank in San Francisco at 25 and propelled himself into the mediasphere with editorials, books and TV appearances.
Author and business executive Arianna Huffington and foreign affairs scholar Walter Russell Mead were among those who helped advance his ideas and connect him with policymakers.
Halstead, who co- founded the non- partisan New America Foundation ( now New America) in 1999 and later the Climate Leadership Council, possessed a keen fundraising ability and unshakable belief that with enough persistence he could forge broad political alliances. Working on issues including health care, income inequality and climate change, he focused on forging The Radical Center, as he put it in the title of one of his books.
Sherle Schwenninger, who helped start the New America Foundation, described this vision not as one “that split the difference between left and right” but as “a radical centre that offered solutions to the big problems.”
In the crowded Washington ideas industry, New America carved out space for young writers with new ideas. “The old think- tank models don’t make sense anymore,” Halstead said in 2001. “There’s a new generation of aspiring public intellectuals who don’t have easy entry into the world of ideas.”
In starting New America, he received seed money from public affairs mandarin Bill Moyers and early contributions from Google chief executive Eric Schmidt and the Macarthur Foundation.
The group’s work contributed to the policy architecture of the Affordable Care Act and supported ideas such as “baby bonds,” a proposal to narrow the wealth gap by giving every American at birth a modest federal grant. Sen. Cory Booker campaigned in part on that idea as he ran for president this year.
New America’s fellows went on to hold prominent positions in the nation’s policy and media establishment. Among them are Karen Kornbluh, who served as U. S. ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development during the Obama administration; Laurie Rubiner, the executive vice president at Campaign for Tobacco- Free Kids and a former chief of staff for Sen. Richard Blumenthal; and the journalists Margaret Talbot of The New Yorker and Jonathan Chait of New York magazine.
He stepped down in 2007, and a decade later, Halstead helped create the Climate Leadership Council as a way to bring together policy shapers, environmentalists and fossil- fuel polluters to find common ground and resolve the impasse over cleaning up the climate. He said he thought the political will had stalled over partisan agendas on Capitol Hill, not because of a lack of desire to solve the problem.
As chief executive of the Climate Leadership Council until his death, Halstead had been a relentless promoter of a carbon tax and dividend plan. The dividends would be equal to the tax revenue, and federal officials would ease some environmental regulations as part of the deal.
He enlisted a bipartisan group of prominent policymakers to explain that industries’ ability to pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere without cost was a market failure that should be corrected. The group included former Treasury secretaries James Baker III and Lawrence Summers, former secretary of state George Shultz, former chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers Gregory Mankiw and former Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen.
Top executives of Conocophillips, BP, the utility giant Exelon, Goldman Sachs, Jpmorgan Chase and Procter & Gamble’s largest division endorsed the idea.
Halstead recognized that Republican opposition to any tax was an obstacle to his climate plan. But in February, he said that gaining the support of major corporations was “a Republican jailbreak moment” that would “lead to ever more Republicans coming on board.”
Robert Stavins, a professor of energy and economic development at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, said in an interview that the plan was a serious blueprint “that looked like the future of Democratic proposals.” But the Democratic Party has shifted to the left with its Green New Deal, he said, and Joe Biden has adjusted accordingly.
Edward Allen Halstead was born in Chicago on July 25, 1968, and grew up in Brussels, where his father worked. He graduated in 1990 from Dartmouth College with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and worked with the Green Corps, a community- service program.
He once told the Washington Post the experience convinced him that the environmental movement was far behind the times, so he started his own public policy group, San Francisco-based Redefining Progress, with a $ 15,000 grant from the Echoing Green foundation. He also received a master’s degree in public administration at Harvard’s Kennedy School in 1998.
In addition to his wife of 14 years, survivors include their daughter, his mother, his father, stepmother and a sister.
After marrying, Halstead and his wife bought a catamaran and spent four years working remotely from sea with their dog, Ria. In a 2011 Cruising World article, he recounted how they fumbled their way through at first.
“In our haste to prepare for our trip, we found little time to improve our distinctly subpar sailing skills,” he wrote. “In our first weeks on board, Véronique provided near constant entertainment with such repeated inquiries as ‘ What’s the boom?’ and ‘What do you call the left and right sides again?’”
They eventually sold the boat to a couple they met in Bali who were convinced they should start their marriage the same way.
As they awaited the birth of their daughter, Bardach recalled, her husband regularly meditated on the peak of Mallorca’s Moleta des Coll as they discussed the implications of bringing a child into a troubled world. One day on returning from a hike, he said he would focus on climate change.
Halstead then went out and proselytized in his usual upbeat, self- assured way. During a 2017 TED Talk titled “A climate solution where all sides can win,” he flashed a photo of darkeyed, curly- haired Naya as he recounted how his toddler was “under the mistaken impression that this conference is named in honour of her father.”
As the laughter died down, he offered, “Who am I to contradict my baby girl?”
WE FOUND LITTLE TIME TO IMPROVE OUR DISTINCTLY SUBPAR SAILING SKILLS. ... VÉRONIQUE PROVIDED NEAR CONSTANT ENTERTAINMENT WITH SUCH REPEATED INQUIRIES AS ‘ WHAT’S THE BOOM?’ AND ‘ WHAT DO YOU CALL THE LEFT AND RIGHT SIDES AGAIN?’ — TED HALSTEAD