What About The Middle?

Asks Dan Radmacher, the editorial page editor for The Roanoke Times (Va.), about political centrists: "Where have all the moderates gone? Studies of voting patterns in Congress show a more polarized body than the nation has seen in 100 years. For decades, a graph of congressional political leanings would have mirrored that of the population at large: a bell curve with a few extremely partisan members on either end of the spectrum and the great mass somewhere in the middle. Now, that's been inverted. Thanks to decades of gerrymandering on the part of both parties, the nation has been divided largely into congressional districts that are safe for one party or the other. That puts the real competition for the seat at the party primary level where moderate candidates have difficulty surviving. The middle has been abandoned, leaving a huge gulf between two partisan extremes."

He continues: "Back when Ronald Reagan was president, he and then-House Speaker Tip O'Neill were famous for being able to duke it out politically, then meet for a drink. Knowing each other as individuals made them less likely to engage in vicious political attacks against one another. [Sen. Claire] McCaskill wondered whether the dismal 14 percent public approval rating of Congress was a sign that the public was nearing a tipping point where a third party might have a real opportunity to gain power. Short of that still extremely unlikely shift, McCaskill sees some opportunity for making things better. For instance, Sen. Joe Lieberman recently took McCaskill up on her suggestion to alternate Democrats and Republicans around the table during meetings of the Homeland Security Committee he chairs. Before, members of the two parties sat across from each other....But I do know this: Politically, Congress does not look like America. Most Americans are not ideological. The most abiding interest of most Americans is not the state of the Democratic or Republican parties, but the state of the nation."