Mr. Moderate

One thing is already certain about the 2008 election results: there will be fewer moderates elected than either liberals or conservatives. The very nature of our two-party biarchy suppresses the middle and accentuates the extremes. Each extreme tolerates the other extreme as a place for incorrigibles who will never “see the light.” But any attempt at achieving power by moderate forces (such as Ross Perot in 1992) will be viciously attacked by both extremes, and this naturally serves to drive most people away from the political middle.

Accordingly, moderates are quite used to being forced to pick between “the lesser of two evils.” Moderates do not usually get to vote for a candidate or cause that they wholeheartedly support. Instead, moderates are usually forced to “hold their noses” and select the least-objectionable from two highly-objectionable extremes. Its no wonder that only about half the people of voting age will even bother to vote on Election Day even if the office of President of the United States is there for the choosing.

Is there any way to make moderates arise and gather in their destiny? I certainly wish there were, but after 15 years of hard work and moderate activism, I’m largely out of possible ideas. Largely, but not totally.

Moderates have one innate advantage: we can engage in the politics of pragmatism without putting our deeply-held principles at risk. We simply make a case-by-case study of which of the two “major party” candidates is the most moderate and choose to support that candidate. We can also try to maneuver moderate staff people onto the office staff of our supported winner(s) so as to increase our influence in the political process. And all of this can happen without even needing to put forward our own candidate in a single race. Instead, we will merely endorse the most-moderate of the traditional 2-party candidates.

Just having a substantial group of moderates available and committed to vote for the most-moderate candidate will tend to pull the main 2-party candidates back towards the middle as both parties are quite capable of performing their own “electability” calculations. But we should really hope that this eventually “builds a bench” of electable moderate candidates who are now willing to declare themselves to be members of a moderate “centrist” political party.

I have some experience in national 3rd-party politics, having served for a time on the National Committee of the Reform Party. I would be quite willing to either advise or lead a moderate political group or party. I will post more about this as time goes by. Meanwhile, please do let me know if you are at all interested in this effort.