Left-Moderate-Right

Understanding politics is difficult without first understanding the map of the political landscape that each of us uses to map one's position. The dominant map of politics underlying most political dialogue in America and most of the industrialized world is this one dimensional left-right political spectrum.

Subconsciously most people will also assign some sort of population distribution to this line. The simplest assumption is to use a (possibly skewed) bell curve to make a guess about the relative frequency of each type of opinion. I think that many people, especially those who are only mildly interested in politics, will make that assumption. The other common distribution would be to envision two overlapping bell curves (possibly of different heights) with peaks near the liberal and conservative positions.

In the normally distributed left-right spectrum the moderates occupy the consensus position. The two parties in this view are subverting the will of the people to serve partisan ends. Bipartisanship is perceived to be the solution to this problem since it keeps either the far left or the far right from taking politics too far off course. Since most people are in the center, both parties need to moderate their views to keep from losing moderates, independents, and swing voters.

In the two overlapping curves distribution the moderates act as a bridge between polarized factions. The two parties faithfully represent their voters in this view, but they want to take the country in radically different directions. Bipartisanship is again perceived to be the solution to this problem since it allows a divided populace to work together and compromise when it's necessary for the good of the nation. Both parties need to keep a big tent that attracts moderates while still motivating the far right or left within their coalition.

Under these (and almost any other) reasonable population distributions the left-right spectrum casts the moderate position as the will of the majority or as the glue that holds society together. The existing political establishment relies on widespread acceptance of one or both of these narratives for its continuing legitimacy.