I'm involved with Unity08 because America is in trouble. Partisanship has bred inauthentic rhetoric in Washington, causing Americans to tune out; this "tune-out" has created an environment where the extremists on either side have much louder voices than most Americans, who are centrists. This insincerity, posturing, and group-think has become endemic to Washington politics. What is needed is a renaissance in leadership that sets party aside and focuses on advancing the core ideals of our nation. Unity08 accomplishing its goal of a unity ticket would be a big step in that direction, and I look forward to helping it succeed.

An essential ingredient in this success will be building the right kinds of online communities. The last few years has seen an explosion in online communities and the amount of time Americans spend within them. Leveraging these for good will enable Unity08 to disseminate its message, build momentum and learn from those we encounter. Using the Internet will be especially important in communicating with young people - some of whom have not, until now, been politically active.

About the same number of middle-aged Americans say they “go online” as do young Americans. However, if you drill a little deeper, a dramatic difference exists in their integration of the online world into their daily lives. First, younger people spend much more time connected to the Internet - whether by cell, PDA, laptop or desktop. Many people under 35 are connected to the Internet in some way during most of their waking hours. This is nearly impossible to imagine for their parents. Second, a large majority of those parents see “going online” as a discrete task or activity, rather than as a pervasive medium that serves as an integral part of their lives.

Herein also lies a significant difference in political action. To Gen X’ers (like myself) and younger, the Internet is even more vital as a coalescing social fabric than the television was to our parents or the town square was to theirs.

But, Unity08 asks - what tools should be used and what should not?

Clearly a blog and a network of bloggers will be essential for giving the movement voice and visibility. There are exceptions to every rule, but generally speaking, blogs lack an essential ingredient of community in that they are mostly one-way. For the reader, they are usually “drive-by” - the visitor reads a post, one out of 200 or so leave a comment, and few if any return to that particular thread of conversation. It’s a struggle many bloggers are coping with - the idea of topical persistence. Even the small percentage who use news aggregators seldom return to an individual posting to see - and possibly participate further in that particular conversation. So, blogs are excellent at giving voice to people and ideas - the modern equivalent of countless town criers - but their lack of persistence can come at a high cost if a movement expects too much of them.

Successful political movements need persistence - many movements in history had unifying roots around which ideas and action coalesced - people, places, things and ideas to which the larger community could turn (and return) to for news, conversation and calls to action.

Online forums and bulletin boards offer persistence and lend themselves well to modes of “many-to-many” community behavior. They ask a little more of their participants than blogs, but give much more in return. These spaces are today’s equivalent of the town square. Come and go as you please, exchange ideas and an argument or two, and we’ll probably see you again tomorrow...

There are publishing systems now that combine the media aspects of blogging with the community and conversational aspects of online forums.

I’d like to ask all of you fellow geeks what tools you think we should be looking at during this next stage.

Ideally, Unity08 will deploy technologies that inform and engage, draw people in to speak their minds, collaborate on new ideas, and grow together. These tools will draw people back when needed, disseminate information in a timely way, and be able to ask people to act quickly when needed. They will tug at you when something is going on, but they won’t disturb you.

After all, the technological goal is no different from the organizational goal - bringing disparate people, ideas and tools together to turn a common vision into reality.

It wasn’t the happiest, this 230th birthday of ours. Here in New York, the fireworks defied the rain. Americans gamely oohed and ahhed at the starbursts, waved tiny flags and sparklers, and ate corn on the cob and ice cream. But the whole time we had this sick feeling in the pit of our stomachs, like children in a family where divorce is in the air.

We’re well on the way to becoming the Divided States of America. E pluribus no longer unum -- if it ever was, but at least it used to be an ideal to aspire to, an illusion we took pride in. When we pledge allegiance now, we’re only paying lip service to “one nation, indivisible”; our hearts belong to one fractious faction or embattled vision of it. (“Under God” or not? Huh? Wanna make something of it?) And those fragments are falling into a state of war with each other.

That was the message of a somber report on ABC’s 20/20 last week, “A Country Divided: The State of Our Union.” Texas journalist Bill Bishop and statistician Bob Cushing examined vote counts in all 3,100 American counties for the last 14 presidential elections. Over the last three decades, they found a dramatic trend they call political segregation, or “The Big Sort”:

[Across the country], the margin of victory [for either Republicans or Democrats] has steadily widened in every presidential election since 1976. In 2024, the overwhelming majority of counties were decided by margins of 20 percent or more. The number of Americans living in these landslide counties has doubled over the last 30 years. Today, half of all Americans are living in polarized communities.

Birds of a feather squawk together in cyberspace, too, of course. And on one level it’s natural. Most people prefer to “read, be among, watch, live with, worship with, vote with, people who are like themselves," in Bishop’s words (though speaking for myself, it bores me silly). So what’s new?

The bedrock identity, “We’re Americans,” that used to connect us down below all our differences has eroded alarmingly, that’s what. Our disagreement about what “America” is, and should be, has become nearly absolute. And so we’re shrinking away from one another, retreating into mutually inimical Americas that, like matter and antimatter, cannot coexist in the same space. It’s been shown that “like-minded people are pushed to more and more extreme positions when they group together.” The more we disagree, the less we talk to each other, and the less we talk to each other, the more we disagree – and demonize and caricature each other. This is the vicious cycle ABC News points to when they warn that “the polarization is feeding on itself.”

Two of us bloggers recently tried to bridge that widening gap. “Funky Dung” of Ales Rarus, a conservative Catholic, and “amba” of AmbivaBlog (moi), a post-traditional “spiritual nomad,” deliberately decided to get into a dust-up over the most divisive of issues, gay marriage – but we vowed to keep it civil. The result: people on both sides came out in the open and said what they really felt. Here is the one comment, from Funky’s camp, that really shocked me:

What we have here is competing notions of "the good". And when we disagree about what "good" means, we can be as civil as we want to be, but it really is best to simply put up a sturdy wall between our tribes. Multiple generations hence (and only then) will we be able to peel back the gates and see whose societal norms were really the wiser.

That’s how bad it is: we’re ready to secede from each other.

I’ve written this long, dark prelude to remind us what “Unity08” – how starry-eyed that sounds! – is up against. The political polarization Unity08 is tackling head-on is both a symptom of the disease and a cynical exploitation of it by both parties to gain power – just as the media exploit it to adrenalize ratings and make money. But is not the disease itself. The “disease” is a very real disagreement about what is good – a disagreement in which each side has carried off half of America’s best values. Centrist campaigners here and elsewhere are banking on the strategy of downplaying the hot-button values issues that the polarizers play up, acknowledging them as “important” but not “crucial.” I’m not sure that strategy will work, because that’s where people’s heart, gut, and identity are. Unless we can get all sides talking and listening to and learning from each other again, at least postponing their plans to withdraw into gated communities, anything like “Unity” in politics is a pipe dream. And we won’t be able to put America back together again.

The Declaration of Independence has become the meme of this political season. In addition to Unity08’s “Declaration of Independence from Politics Without Purpose,” which goes out to the leaders of Congress this Friday, hopefully with well over 10,000 signatures (hint hint), Minnesota’s Independence Party has its own “Declaration of Independents” (“When in the course of Minnesota events it becomes necessary to break the bonds of extreme partisanship, special interests and divisive politics . . . “), and the National Centrist Network (new name for the Centrist Coalition), where other centrist bloggers and I recently joined the board of directors, has, uh, independently planned its own Declaration of Independents. Florida’s new history education law centers on “the universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.”

What appeals to us, I think, about this bold founding document at this particular political moment is that it was written and signed by a bunch of fed-up guys with the guts to say “Enough!” It embodies a clean break, a firm stand, and a new beginning based on simple, visionary principles. Today, the yoke of big money and partisanship and lobbying has become as burdensome to our democracy, and as necessary to throw off, as the Crown of George III had become for the Colonies. Still, I wonder whether a Declaration of Interdependence isn’t the document we really need.

[To be continued. In Part II I’ll muse about what and how we can learn from each other without agreeing -- and why I think the Left has even farther to go than the Right.]

The last poll done by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think-tank that specializes in mapping black public opinion in America, shows that 40% of all black Americans identify as moderate. Thirty-three percent of black Americans identify as liberal and 27% as conservative. If a plural majority identifies as moderate - and is thus arguably the ‘black political consensus’ - then why are black moderates not a major force on the Internet and in politics, with people debating the merits of our views and strategies? Indeed, it appears as though moderates are a silent plural majority in Black America.

As someone who identifies as a moderate to conservative with a strong libertarian streak (in the November 2024 election, I cast 56% of my ballot for Democratic candidates and 44% for Republican ones, and was a Bush-Obama split ticket voter in my home state of Illinois), this concerns me. Before starting my blog, I had conceived it solely as a black moderate site, but there was a huge challenge: there isn’t enough black moderate material to intrigue folks. Part of this could be that partisans and ideologues - left and right - are more passionate about the issues, and more assertive about expressing those viewpoints.

For example, a Google search for “black moderates” generates only 851 results (versus 151,000 for “black conservatives” and 20,000 for “black liberals”). “Moderate blacks” brought up 1,130 results, versus 25,900 for “conservative blacks” and 790 for “liberal blacks”. “African-American moderates” only had 14 results, versus 781 for “African-American conservatives" and 133 for “African-American liberals”. “Black centrists" turned up only three results. You get the point.

Luckily, more black moderate voices are coming to the fore to fill in the gap. There are a few self-described black moderate blogs and websites. Dell Gines, Angela Winters of Politopics, The Literary Thug, and PlezWorld are some black moderate bloggers who blog on a regular basis. Rafique Tucker, is a Democrat who blogs from a moderate-liberal perspective, Dennis Sanders of The Moderate Republican is a moderate-liberal who focuses on GOP politics. The black moderate-conservative flank is represented in the blogosphere by Cobb and Robert A. George, who are moderate-conservative Republican bloggers; Mahndisa Rigmaiden, Conaway Haskins, Scott Wickham, and Avery Tooley, a hip hop moderate-conservative blogger. Websites include Blackprogress.net and the websites of the always intriguing moderate-conservative commentator Tony Brown and newspaper columnist Stanley Crouch. Many of these individuals are independent voters, who seek to move issues facing black Americans above partisanship and go across the aisle. Others are affiliated with a party, but seek common ground on issues.

Outside of the Internet, there have been growing calls for black centrism of various forms over the past few years. In America, there is John McWhorter, the author of the bestseller Losing The Race: Self-Sabotage In Black America and Authentically Black: Essays For The Black Silent Majority. McWhorter is often mislabeled as 'conservative' because of certain views on race and class, but he voted for John Kerry in 2024 and is a social liberal. There is Carol M. Swain, an independent legal and political commentator based out of Vanderbilt University who is socially conservative but fiscally liberal.

In Congress, there are Rep. Harold Ford Jr., and Rep. David Scott - both moderate-liberal Southern Democrats - although Rep. Ford Jr. in particular has taken much heat from liberals, conservative, leftists, and rightists for not toeing their line on various issues. Not to mention Rep. Sanford Bishop, Jr., a moderate Democrat from Georgia. Douglas Wilder, who once served as governor of Virginia, was elected mayor of Richmond in 2024. There is Mayor Ray Nagin in New Orleans, La. Cory Booker, a moderate Democrat, was just inaugurated yesterday as mayor of Newark, N.J., that state's largest city. Of course, Colin Powell - a moderate Republican and former Secretary of State - remains in the mix in certain arenas.

So there is hope for blacks who cluster in or near the center, be we moderate, moderate-conservative, or moderate-liberal. The black ’silent majority’ in the United States in particular must raise our voices, or else others will continue to claim the mantle of ‘black political consensus’, and our views on particular issues will continue to not be heard. When I regularly see black moderates on Black Entertainment Television, TV One, CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News Channel plus the broadcast networks, then I will know that we are in the mix.

One of the underlying characteristics that binds us as Americans is our willingness to take risks.

Can one think of any greater risks than those assumed by the signers of the Declaration of Independence, whose courage we mark on the July 4th holiday?

The 56 signers of the Declaration shoved all their chips onto the table:

And for the support of this Declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

The signers stepped boldly forward—think of John Hancock’s unmistakable signature, large and clear and forceful enough to be read at a distance. They faced what many considered to be insurmountable odds against the greatest military forces on earth. They were turning away from their British identity, sundering personal and business relationships built over generations. Many of them, including Benjamin Franklin, would see their families divide. As the large number of colonial “loyalists” suggested, there were many reasons why “reasonable” people would not take this extraordinary step that was at least as likely to lead to ruin as to a glorious new day.

Some later observers, from the gulf of several centuries, have attempted to diminish the luster of the signers’ courage in various ways. Yet when one takes the perspective of the signers at the time they acted, one cannot credibly overlook the immense uncertainty they knowingly embraced.

The signers chose action because they were committed to the emergence of a distinct American way of life that required a distinct American way of self-rule. Americans would not be subjects, we would be citizens. As the signers well understood, if the Americans succeeded in breaking the grip of the British Empire, they would then undertake an unprecedented experiment in creating a large-scale democratic republic.

Our celebration of the July 4th holiday tends not to focus on the original events. Perhaps it should. It’s challenging to ask oneself, to what ends would we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor?

Gratefully, we don’t face challenges of the magnitude of the Revolutionary generation. Yet we do face significant challenges. And it’s the failure of the political class to meet those challenges that has impelled many of us to join Unity08.

Having been active in politics for many years, I’ve been fascinated by the reaction of numerous politically involved people to Unity08. The vast majority of people I encounter react positively, comprehending its need and possibilities at once. Yet, a good number then say that while they’re glad it’s happening, and they support the idea, they don’t want to put their own political positions or relationships at risk.

That may sound reasonable, until one thinks about it just a bit more…We don’t have to look back to the signers of the Declaration of Independence or the founders of the Republic to encounter Americans who are putting everything on the line for our nation. At this moment, thousands of America’s best men and women are risking everything in a horrific war zone.

That willingness to risk what is necessary when the stakes are high represents a distinctive part of “the American Way.” In the new movie, Superman, the hero no longer fights for “Truth, Justice and the American Way,” but for Hollywood’s new locution: “truth, justice and all that stuff.”

Maybe all that “American Way” stuff sounds a little archaic and embarrassing to some people who see themselves as sophisticated or highly educated. Maybe it’s just a small gesture to minimize our generations’ debts of honor to those who have made our current national life possible.

This writer, at least, will continue to think of the American Way--the American Way of risking everything for the good of the nation. The risks anyone faces in challenging today’s failed political system are pretty insignificant in comparison with those of our ancestors or our soldiers in the field today—and a small price to pay to try to pass along our generations’ advantages to the next.

If you signed the Declaration of Independence , thank you. Your Congress may not thank you, but your country does.

But if we put our heads together we can make this Declaration even louder. How can we make sure that the Declaration of Independence gets sent around the country thousands more times- and signed by everyone who reads it?

Make the Declaration be heard around the country (and especially in Washington DC). Post your thoughts here! Be inventive. Be funny. Be brazen. Be bold.

In “Call for Lobbying Changes Is a Fading Cry, Lawmakers Say,” Washington Post reporters Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and Jim VandeHei depict another example of political maneuvering at the expense of the American people. The article validates the notion that a new political movement is needed to change the way politics is played – a movement like Unity08. Read the article here.

Days after Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) announced his resignation as majority leader and Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty to corruption charges, House Republicans “flooded the office of House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) with urgent pleas for lobbying reform.” And Hastert, who was hardly an advocate for campaign reform, responded with a surprising proposal: “A ban on privately funded travel by lawmakers and severe restrictions on lobbyist-paid meals.”

Hastert said this just ten days after DeLay stepped down: "We need to reform the rules so that it is clear, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what is ethically acceptable.”

But since then, little progress has been made on passing the bill. In fact, as of today (over six months later), the House has yet to “name negotiators to draft the final package.”

In a private meeting with GOP leadership, House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) “voiced support” for reform. But when it came time to support the bill publicly, Blunt “had vanished” – many speculate because he was “locked in a tight race to replace DeLay.” Blunt's chief opponent for majority leader, Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), “gained a clear advantage in the race by publicly calling Hastert's travel ban ‘childish’ and by privately assuring colleagues that he would weaken the bill if he were elected. Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.), the candidate for majority leader who championed the most dramatic changes, finished a distant third.”

And even if the bill is passed, the most likely result is a “minimalist package that would allow members to say they have responded to the Abramoff situation and other scandals but would do little to crimp their ability to accept lobbyist favors.” The reason: “... the political storm has mostly passed and that the need for more intrusive efforts to alter the congressional culture and the lobbyist-lawmaker relationship is less urgent.”

Is this the type of leadership that America deserves on important legislation? Send a message to Congress that you will not stand for their political sidestepping. Sign the Declaration of Independence from Politics without Purpose.

Talk more about campaign reform in our Shoutbox.

How bad has it gotten with polarization in this country?

How far have the Bush administration and its surrogates moved the goalposts on long-held conventional wisdom as to how the United States operates in its often adversarial relationship between the press and the government?

How deep has ideological ire gone on the left in terms of infighting between once vital parts of the liberal opinion making establishment?

The answers to the questions: (1)VERY bad. (2)VERY far. And (3) VERY deep.

Either there’s an awful lot of useless, perfunctory rhetoric going on -- or the United States may now be at a crossroads. Possibly a scary one.

During the 1980s some Americans decried the politics of polarization practiced by the late Lee Atwater in George Bush’s first Presidential campaign. Given what’s going on these days, the Lee Atwater Era now seems like a 1960s Love In.
Polarization has seemingly become the order of the day. It seems to be considered wimpish and naive to seek a more healing kind of politics, one where politicians, opinion-makers and people who literally have a microphone seek to find common ground and encourage aggregating interests -- as opposed to aggravating interests, sparking outrage among some of those interests and running campaigns based on the theory that the winning side is the side that gets more of its members to feel that the country must be saved by repudiating the other side’s CHARACTER and MOTIVES (and in some cases patriotism) as well as their policies.

It’s fitting that Unity08 is now issuing its Declaration of Independence since many Americans want to be free of this new form of -- can we be BLUNT? -- what was previously known as “gutter politics” that the political establishment has fallen into. The appeal is no longer to intellect and reason; the effort is to arouse feelings of resentment outrage so people vote AGAINST something or someone. Or some group.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the administration’s new war against the New York Times. There have been big conflicts between government and the press in American history before. But you can look and you will not quite find a parallel to what you’re seeing now: GOP opinion-forming publications and some GOP politicians urging that the Times, its editors and reporters be prosecuted due to what it published using info leaked form official sources.

No matter what, in the PAST it was a “given” -- even in the Nixon administration -- that you didn’t threaten to use the federal government to overtly go after the press. “Prosecute” is clear in meaning: it’s to try to throw editors and reporters in jail.

Add that to the administration’s crackdown on whistleblowers (and a court decision weakening protections to some whistleblowers) and if this happens the U.S. will LOSE the kind of free press that we have had for centuries. In a time when there is virtually no real Congressional oversight, unfettered press oversight will vanish or be crippled.

Why? Because ANY party in power can use government power to tightly control the flow of info so only Big Daddy’s Feel Good News Reports (that coincidentally help the part in power retain power) are what see the light of day.

For people who consider themselves centrists and moderates this is especially troubling; centrists and moderates tend to read and consider BOTH SIDES a lot more than the most lockstep partisans on the right and left who in some cases read only what they already agree with and quote only info that supports their preconceived ideas (which may change totally if their party shifts its position)

Does this mean that yours truly and others who are upset MUST be “liberals” or “close liberals” or “transgender” ideologies? Not at all. Some Republicans are enormously concerned.

This week MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, in no uncertain terms, noted that if he had to opt for Thomas Jefferson’s warning about government power or following the White House he’d opt for Jefferson. And the former Republican Congressman from Florida also said that what we’re seeing is a split between the traditional Republicans and the “establishment Republicans” who will do whatever the White House says or wants (and change their position and jettison their once passionately-defended principles in a mega second).

Scarborough declared: “You gotta admit-it’s frightening. More so to us who know how Washington works and know how power can corrupt and know how power can be abused. I believe friends, we are in dangerous times for those of us who believe like Thomas Jefferson -- that Washington is not to be trusted with unlimited police power.”

And the Democrats? Some Democrats are on a total war footing.

But enough about trying to get rid of Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman.

The other big war has been raging between The New Republic, a longtime Democratic opinion stalwart that has undergone various shifts of ideological orientation over the years, and Daily Kos, the mega-blog of the left. Both are excellent news and opinion sources. But the sniping between the two has recently reached a fever pitch. My grandfather subscribed to the New Republic in the days when it supported the New Deal; I have gotten it for years and still do (when it now is closer to the DLC). It has been a Democratic institution, but some now claim it is really virtually Republican.

The bottom line is that on the left and the right these days there is a tendency to want to if not eliminate other sources of opinion and thought then to undermine those other sources so they don’t have credibility or power to challenge you. There was a time in American politics when the assault was less on news sources (the press; reporters, and opinion journals) and more on ideas and policies and on actual political figures.

But that has shifted. And, to be sure, some people hurl around adjectives saying that all of this is a sign of “fascism” or almost “Communistic” or “Stalinism” on the right and/or left.

What it signifies is that we’re in an era where some folks want to PURGE the idea and fact menu to offer a “pure” version -- “pure,’ meaning what THEY agree with and think. Just look at the assault on “fact-based reporting” -- as if trying to do news reports by sifting out facts and packaging them is hideous thing.

The political polarization is now spilling over into an area where some want to accentuate differences to either create intellectual and informational polarization or to whack into institutions so they follow Their Boss’ way of thinking and don’t deviate from the official line.
Joe Scarborough is right. Which is why, more than ever, even if you don’t believe in voting for a third party, you have to applaud Unity08 and its declaration of independence. “Independence?” Why, how 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries!!

Waiting until 2024 to send Washington a message may be too late. Even waiting until this November is risky.

Every day wasted in the blame-game politics of Congress is another day without good schools, another day without affordable health care, another day without serious progress toward energy independence.

So sign the Unity08 Declaration of Independence today – right now – and then go get your family, neighbors and friends to do the same.

With your own added fireworks this Fourth of July, who knows? Maybe somebody in either party will hear the noise, wake up and start talking sense for a change.

President Bush is the third George to hold the office – and maybe this George III and those in Washington (red coats or blue) won’t listen any more than the other one did. But the stakes seem just as high now as they were then. America is on the line.

You don’t need to leave your party to declare your independence. All you need is to add your signature and, like Paul Revere, spread the word to all your neighbors.

A curious thing I often hear both sides argue about is what this country's founders would currently want for the nation, how they'd see us, etc. Sure, as if any of us have a clue what men who lived in 1776 would think about today's world. They'd probably be pretty intrigued by the cars and all the tasty foods. Ben Franklin would probably enjoy our delicious popsicles and other assorted frozen delicacies, while Thomas Jefferson and George Washington may want to take one of those Dodge Chargers out for a test drive. Something tells me they'd make a beeline for the Dodge dealership. Don't ask me why, it's just a hunch.

But let me take this seriously for a moment, join this vast "what if" club and offer that I think the founders would find our democracy to be quite fantastic, thank you very much. We are, after all, the most powerful country in the world and one hell of a free society. High-fives all around from the founding fathers on the overarching freedom stuff. Well done America. Bravo.

However, I think it's a safe bet that there would also be things they may not find as heartening. The bickering. The backbiting. The Moores. The Coulters. The intellectually dishonest bombs that each side throws over the fence at one another. No pretense of reasoned debate anymore. Just talking heads and screaming blogs.

No...Tom, George and Ben wouldn't be too fond of the signal to noise ratio in politics today. And they'd probably be smart enough to realize that the reason more people don't come out to vote is not because they're lazy. No, this country isn't filled with lazy people. What we do have, however, is a very tired nation. This partisan nonsense wears people down so they don't have any fight left in them. Count me in that group. However, there comes a point at which people get sick of being tired, and that's usually the time when they're the most dangerous.

Yes, look closely, and you won't see a country divided. We all see that we're better than polls, pundits and talking points. We are a people who believe in a collection of very powerful ideas and who would fight and die to maintain them for this generation and those to come. And where would you find the greatest number of these people? Well, you already know the answer. All this talk of a moderate majority is true.

However, there are a few sticking points. For example, the question I'm often asked about my blog Donklephant, and centrism in general, is "What exactly do you stand for?" I think it's a fair question, considering that terms like "centrist" or "moderate" bring to mind images of a) a person being ripped apart by people on both sides (a political tug of war, if you will), and b) a person who can't make up their mind about anything. And this is where I'm supposed to say, "Nothing could be further from the truth."

Well, I can't. Moderates, centrists...yeah, we can be wishy-washy. We change our minds. We do, on average, take a little longer to come to a conclusion. And frankly, isn't that what's lacking in the current body politic? Because right now all we're being presented with is a reality that you'd find in the halls of a fictional high school from some cheesy 80s teen movie, not in the halls of government. Who do we have to blame for it? Take a look in the mirror folks. We've sat on the sidelines for too long now. It's time to do something about this nonsense. And so...Unity08.

Listen, I'm not going to ramble on about what Unity08 stands for, where it should go or what they should do. They've got a good vision and the team to make it happen. But what I will say, and continue to say, is that an idea like this is long overdue. Something tells me the founders would think so too.

Of course maybe they'd want more delicious frozen treats and faster muscle cars. Your guess is as good as mine.

As the need for money created the “permanent campaign,” with Members of Congress always thinking as candidates, the wedge issue mentality has made both idea-sharing across the aisle and even civility hard to come by.

Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill used to do battle during the day and share a drink and a joke at night. Can you imagine George W. Bush and Nancy Pelosi sharing anything? Can you imagine either wanting to spend any time with each other?