David Brooks On Being a Moderate
Commentary from David Brooks is hit or miss for me.  Sometimes he strikes me as one the best and brightest, honest and analytically sharp.  Other times his work can be so off base and so clearly partisan, despite being framed as moderate, I swear to never read him again.  Maybe that is part of being a moderate too.  Writing like that and having reactions like mine.  Maybe not. 

In this column Brooks does both.  His description of being a moderate is smart.  If more of us understood this, we would come to political deliberations with both more realistic expectations and a tool box with more options for working things out.  At the same time, Brooks starts his column by painting one of our most extremely immoderate candidates as more moderate than the fundamentally moderate incumbent.  Despite this, the analysis is worth reading.  Here is a taste, one of the most thoughtful insights provided.

"...In America, moderates revere the fact that we are a nation of immigrants dedicated to the American dream — committed to the idea that each person should be able to work hard and rise. This animating principle doesn’t mean that all Americans think alike. It means that we have a tradition of conflict. Over the centuries, we have engaged in a series of long arguments around how to promote the American dream — arguments that pit equality against achievement, centralization against decentralization, order and community against liberty and individualism.

The moderate doesn’t try to solve those arguments. There are no ultimate solutions. The moderate tries to preserve the tradition of conflict, keeping the opposing sides balanced. She understands that most public issues involve trade-offs. In most great arguments, there are two partially true points of view, which sit in tension. The moderate tries to maintain a rough proportion between them, to keep her country along its historic trajectory.

Americans have prospered over the centuries because we’ve kept a rough balance between things like individual opportunity and social cohesion, local rights and federal power....."