After doing my homework I've concluded that Johnson couldn't really be considered a moderate...
Johnson is definitely not a moderate.
This is why I have often complained that there ought to be three, not just two, metrics on those political quiz websites. They have done a pretty good job separating the Left/Right aspect from the Anarchy/Authority aspect, so that you can compare how far left or right a person's politics lie--and Johnson was very far left--but there really should be a foreign policy metric as well.
On a Hardball interview about 15 years ago, Chris Matthews was interviewing Al Sharpton, and he asked Sharpton who his favorite president is. Sharpton replied, "Johnson. Well, except for the Vietnam War, I would have to say Johnson." It's hard to think of Johnson and only think of the Great Society. We also think of the war.
If you could separate into three spheres of thought, domestic economic policy, cultural norms, and foreign policy, then you could better analyze the question. You could say, who is the farthest left or who is the farthest right without letting either the cultural aspect or foreign policy come into it. Of course, there are those who will argue that foreign policy is affected by, and affects, one's socioeconomic policy agenda, but too many assumptions have to be made to make that fit neatly into the algorithm. Is the war a result of the desire to keep the sea lanes open for free trade? Is power projection a means of protecting one's investment or is it the result of a desire to keep the citizens safe? Do sanctions result from a humane desire or do the result from a punitive desire? Did the president get good advice before committing troops? We would need to know the answers to these questions and more if we were to capture foreign policy within either of the other two categories. By creating a separate category, such questions need not be answered. Indeed, they could be avoided altogether since domestic economic policy would stand alone separate from the rest.
(For example "Are you a globalization junkie?" is a question that could stand alone. Globalization can be motivated from the left or from the right. It can stem from a desire to ensure an even playing field, or it can stem from a desire to benefit US corporations. We do not need to probe further in this question which is the case because foreign policy is separated, the Left/Right questions can probe those important distinctions with other questions in another part of the test.)
Anyway, what happened to the moderates? They lost in primary elections. Because of the system that has existed for nearly 50 years, it is difficult for moderates to win intraparty contests. Primary contests used to be decided by a process that was cynically referred to as secretive meetings in smoke-filled rooms. Those secretive meetings in smoke-filled produced contests between Nixon and Kennedy, between Dewey and Truman, etc. You wouldn't have a candidate such as GW Bush emerging. They would look at his resume and note that his greatest accomplishment was selling Alex Rodriguez for 25 million dollars. Not really presidential qualifications.
