Was Richard Nixon a 'Moderate Hero'?

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He's the interesting contrast of a truly villainous creature mixed with an accidental humanitarian. Not all of his domestic policy was that bad either, with some glaringly obvious exceptions that make modern "liberals" and conservatives alike cringe.

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Being a moderate hero, to my understanding of the phrase, has less to do with your political positions (many of Ben's are by no conceivable definition of the word "moderate" moderate at all), and more to do with your insistence, in much the same vein as many media and center-right talking heads and pundits, on appearing to be moderate, bipartisan, nonpartisan, etc., without regards to ideology. What is most important to the moderate hero is that he be perceived as moderate, by agreeing with everything that the establishment and vehemently attacking everything that the establishment hates.

Amusingly, this is the opposite of Bush, whose actions were done based on how he viewed the world and how he thought, with very little thought to how they would be viewed. However, with his bipartisan, "restoring honor and dignity to the White House" schtick, his 2000 election was a moderate hero's election.

So, it doesn't really matter whether or not you support a moderate or a centrist; what matters is that you support who the establishment supports, who the mainstream supports. The moderate hero is never revolutionary and rarely even evolutionary. The moderate hero's goal is to be accepted as "serious" by the ruling elite. Sometimes, of course, that means playing the part of a faux-populist, pretending to be the voice of the people. Rarely is a moderate hero the voice of the people, however, but instead what the elite or the establishment believes that the voice of the people is and, more importantly, should be.

In the real world, anyone who pretends to be a "centrist" or a "populist", while really towing the establishment line (your Evan Bayhs and Mark Warners) is a moderate hero.

Am I the definite source of moderate heroism now? That's kind of cool.

Its certainly the best description of a hack I've read.