Friday, May 30, 2014

MAY 30, 2014

      I think moderation is probably the wisest principle on which to run a democracy like ours.  I think President Obama knows this, which is why he's a pretty good president.      

 

    There are times when moderation won't work, of course.  When Lincoln said, "This country cannot exist half slave and half free," he may have known he was invoking our bloodiest war.

     The trajectory of putting a man on the moon or all men into the voting booth would have been different with out the extraordinary measures of Kennedy and Johnson. 

    

     When Franklin Roosevelt promised to heal "a third of a nation, ill-clad, ill-housed, ill-fed," he knew moderation wouldn't do it.

 

      But mostly it will.  We have problems with gun violence because have so much of it.  Fewer with knife or hammer assaults.  Moderate laws work there.

    So I think we can look on Obama as a moderate, successful president with one of our two wars over;  the other, ending; and the economy recovering – moderately. 

 

     I have no idea who our next president will be.  But I think our national fondness for moderation is one reason the Tea Party won't score big gains this fall.

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