The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

Depends on How "Moderate" Your Definition of "Moderate" Is

Greetings to all newcomers (including the ones I failed to greet months ago!) ... but I'd like to pick a tiny bone with an old-timer. I dunno, Dahlia, maybe if you are located somewhere out beyond Dennis Kucinich then John McCain doesn't look like a "moderate," but if you're located anywhere in the American mainstream, it's hard to know what other expression to use. He sure isn't a man of the left, and he is not now and never has been a member of the Democratic Party, but he is a Republican who has put his name on legislation dealing with climate change (co-sponsored with Joe Lieberman), with campaign-finance reform (with Russ Feingold), and, most controversially, with immigration (with Teddy Kennedy). All of these bills represented, for better or for worse, attempts to find compromise, bipartisan, "moderate" solutions to otherwise intractable problems, and pretty much everyone on the out-Right of his party hates him for it.

Though lots of people would like to rewrite history now, his views on Iraq were also, at the time of the invasion, smack in the middle of the moderate center of American politics and differed little from the views of, say, Hillary Clinton. Since then, they have evolved in a way you might not like, but at least are remarkably consistent, unlike the views of, say, Hillary Clinton. He was for the war; he criticized, rather harshly, its execution; he now thinks we should stay and fix it.

But that's not the point, since I'm not making a political argument here but a linguistic one. The word moderate, dull and uninspiring and boringly unradical though it is, deserves to be saved from total evisceration. Also, I'm sensing this rapidly growing desire to paint McCain as a closet winger and a fully paid-up member of the vast right-wing conspiracy, now that he's the candidate. But if McCain's not a moderate Republican, what is Mike Huckabee? A stark raving lunatic Republican? (OK, OK... I realize the answer may be yes)