The trouble with the "bipartisan moderate"

This election cycle I've been troubled by the media's fetish for moderate, bipartisan candidates. Before I go any further, this is not a post about Obama, or any other candidate specifically. Rather, I want to examine a problem I see: some issues have no moderate position, and those issues are of critical importance to the country.

Now, many issues have lots of policy positions, the bulk of which could be characterized as moderate. The immigration issue, for example, could support about as many policy positions as there are policy makers. Indeed, the failure of our federal government to pass comprehensive immigration reform is rightly seen as a failure due to Washington's "dreaded partisanship". Beyond just immigration, I would venture to say that most domestic policy is subject to moderate, compromised solutions.

There are issues, though, that have no moderate position. In fact, to call them issues in itself is part of the problem. A better word is principles. Issues imply what I talked about above. With an issue, reasonable opinions exist on each side which can be compromised in the process of reaching a bipartisan consensus. Principles, on the other hand, are non-negotiable either/ors. The problem with the last seven years of our country is that principles have now become issues.

Torture as official policy is now an issue. To have as our foreign policy the doctrine of preemptive strike against a country that has not attacked us is now an issue. Breaking the laws of Congress at will is now an issue. Elimination of habeus corpus is now an issue. Since the founding of our country, these have not been issues, these have been principles. To change our policy on any one of these issues was to deviate radically from the way things had been.

A distinction for those of you who are thinking, "Chops, what about all that nasty stuff the CIA did in the last century? How is that different from what is going on now?" The distinction is that all of the activities described above are not only out in the open, they are now government policy. The CIA (and the Bush administration, before leaks brought these things into the open) justifiably hid this sort of reprehensible conduct from the public. It is one thing to deny habeus corpus in secret, but when we passed the Military Commissions Act, we endorsed. We embraced it as a country. We said, "this is who we are."

So, back to the idea of a "bipartisan moderate". Here are three fallacies concerning this supposed politician:

1) There is no moderate position on the above principles. For example, you either believe that we should torture, or you don't. To say that waterboarding is an "enhanced interrogation technique" which somehow is a middle ground is a cynical hedge, as transparent as it is empty.

2) Advocating for things like torture and preemptive strike is not politically equivalent to advocating against torture and preemptive strike. Though you wouldn't know it by listening to the media or the politicians, the latter is a long-standing principle since the days of our founding fathers and an accepted norm of modern human rights. The former is a radical departure that has no historical equivalent in our country, and is the hallmark of the most despicable regimes in the world today. To treat them equally is to circumvent a discussion of the basic nature of our country.

3) You do not become a "moderate" by holding some liberal views and then endorsing an abandonment of the above principles (I would say "conservative views", but really these views are not conservative in the traditional sense. Instead, they are a radical departure that does not have a name yet). Guiliani is not a "moderate" because he advocates for gun control and is nominally pro-choice while at the same time advocating unprovoked bombing of Iran and the elimination of civil liberties. McCain is not "moderate" (nor a maverick) simply because he has more "liberal" views on immigration. The democrats in Congress who signed the MCA are not moderates simply because they crossed "party lines" to sign that bill.

Now, dear reader, you may not care about those issues I've identified as principles. Fair enough. I'm not out to convert anyone. Also, you may think we are going in the right direction. Again, not out to convert you. My views are clear. After all, this is a democracy. You can vote for who you want based on what is important to you. The purpose of this post is to point out that the discussion of these matters in the media and by the politicians has been inadequate in comparison to the historical significance they represent. We are now a fundamentally different country then we were seven years ago. In this next election, as a country we must make an either/or decision. We either adopt these changes, or we reject them. None of us will be moderates. There is no middle ground.