But the moderation that gave heart to liberals has roots in Kennedy's upbringing in the cozy neighborhood of Land Park in Sacramento, a picture-perfect family enclave in midcentury California.
Adam has been a big fan of this Aristotelian golden mean idea for many years and Adam and I have talked about this for many years because I think Aristotle is often, well of course he's Aristotle, he's often right.
He recognized that nationalization and the means of production types of socialism were no longer going to be popular, but that the welfare state was viewed as kind of the middle – the new middle way.
In his eyes, it seems to be obvious that the sound middle ground of justice itself is a quantitative equality between different terms, and that a just exchange is therefore an exchange of equal values.
The middle-of-the-road approach, that sounds boring, but the approach where you can both be fascinated by the big questions and still keep your feet on the ground and actually look at it scientifically.
Essentially a pragmatist and conservative in political terms, he long ago accepted that compromise was required if the Republic was to succeed, a middle way all factions could live with for the moment.
Perhaps the perfect symbol of that is the fact that he unveiled his party's middle-of-the-road platform earlier this month, standing next to the word change in the smallest font imaginable.
Aristotle is clear that moderation means everything in moderation and that sometimes includes an excess of an emotion when it is appropriate to the circumstance, right?