Did you hear its a center right country? Newsweek just told me.
I don't know if we're a center-right country, but it sure seems that way when we look at the make-up of the panels on two of our most revered Sunday talkshows: Meet the Press and This Week.
On Meet the Press, we spend half the show with Colin Powell, a Republican, who played an instrumental part in that huge foreign policy disaster called the Iraq War.
Now alot of what Powell had to say, especially about the need for Republicans to stop the trash talk about Arab and Muslim Americans, was extremely admirable, but why exactly do we care that much about where one well liked, but recently fallible, Republican cabinet member stands on the election?
To answer that question, let's go to the Meet the Press panel. David Brooks - conservative, Joe Scarborough - conservative, and then two journalists, Robert Meecham and Andrew Mitchell. That's not even center-right, that's just right.
Not one liberal or progressive voice. You think that frames the discussion?
Does This Week do any better?
Well, yes. They had not 2 but 3 conservatives/republicans, George Will, David Gergen, and Newt Gingrich. Throw in a centrist and typically non-combative Democrat in Donna Brazille, and a journalist - Thomas Friedman and what do you get? Mostly two hours of concern trolling about how Obama can't be held hostage by those spend-thristy libruls in Congress as he tackles this economic crisis in his increasingly likely ascent to the presidency.
I think we'd be served by a better debate. I think Tom and George have to get over their own conclusion that we're a center right country. We might be. We definitely are in the terms these shows are constantly framed. But are we in terms of public opinion on key issues?
Many others have spilled ink on the issue of what is mainstream America. I won't here. But its clear we need a better representation of the full range of American political thought in the punditry we're subjected to on Sunday Morning.