The Trouble with Moderation

Here's the simple reason why there are so few successful moderates (if that isn't an oxymoron). It takes us too long to say things. Ideologues on either side are able to state their positions in handy-dandy little sound-bites (viz. Dean or Bush on the Iraq War), while moderates often actually try to at least consider both sides of an issue before we take a position. Sometimes, shock of shocks, we even try to explain our positions in more than a half-sentence.

This is what got Kerry into ten tons of trouble during the last campaign. He made the mistake of trying to explain the intricacies of his positions - on Iraq and other things - and the Bush crowd was able to pick out obnoxiously out-of-context little quotes ("I actually did vote for the 87 billion ... before I voted against it" and so on) and use them to great advantage. It's a great deal easier to win when you're the one who gets to take things out of context and not the one who has to then spend days trying to put them back in.

Why do you rarely see moderates (of either party) on the Sunday talk shows, and even more rarely on the sets of such fine programs as "Crossfire" [stop hurting America], Bill O'Reilly, or "Hardball"? Because moderates tend not to provide those nasty little zingers that get whipped around so freely by the Pat Buchanans and Al Sharptons of the world. And it is those zingers, sad to say, that people like to watch.

I'm sure I'll be writing more about the convergence between 'news' and entertainment in the future, but this is one area where it's become quite obvious in recent years. Moderates have found themselves largely excluded from political dialogue as brokered by the media, mainly because they haven't been able to find a way to become as effective at getting out their message as those on the extreme left and right. I'm clearly guilty of this as well. The problem is, I don't think it's a bad thing. Sound-bites aren't good. Just because we've become acclimated to "headline news" and on-demand ... well just about everything ... doesn't mean we shouldn't stop and listen sometimes and really take the time to understand the complexities of a given issue. Congress would certainly get away with a whole lot less that way.