Friday, November 19, 2004

The Birth of a Moderate: Some people are pushing for Mark Warner, the Democratic governor of Virginia, to run for president in 2008 (doncha hate these 2008 speculation stories?). There's even a blog dedicated to recruiting him. I'm a Virginia resident and a pretty big fan of Gov. Warner. In fact, he's the reason I started calling myself a "staunch moderate".

I was driving in my car listening to the news a few years ago, when a report summarized what the Gov. Warner had done in the past week. I'm still fuzzy on the details of exactly what action he took, but I believe the governor had vetoed a bill that would have made it much more difficult for women to get an abortion if they needed one (good move). Then, the report said, in order to take a moderate stance and not upset conservatives, he also vetoed a bill that would have further restricted the use of guns in the state (another good move).

The reporter used the term "moderate" to make it sound like Gov. Warner was being wishy-washy, trying to appeal to both sides, not making any strong decisions by trying to make liberals happy then turning around and trying to make to make conservatives happy. But I thought, those were two good decisions. That's MY governor!

So he may very well be a good candidate for president. It's, obviously too soon to tell. I don't know where exactly he stands on the war, and we have no idea where the war will be in four years.

Plus, Mark Warner doesn't seem to have a lot of charisma, at least from what I've seen. So he might not be able to attract much interest outside his home state.

But it's good to see the Democrats speculating about strong moderates like Warner. Even if he's just a loud voice in the primaries, he may do the party a lot of good.