Both parties' extremists seem determined to lose the next elections

Almost no one disagrees that our two political parties, the oldest and third oldest in the world, have become increasingly extreme and estranged over the last decade. It's a startling contrast with the state of political conflict in the dozen or so years after the fall of the Soviet empire.

In 1992, Bill Clinton ran on a moderate Democratic Leadership Council platform and, after the implosion of Hillary Clinton's healthcare plan and the election of Republican congressional majorities in 1994, mostly governed accordingly.

This was the natural reaction of a politician who found an unusually wide range of policy positions acceptable and who was aware that Democrats had lost five of the six previous presidential elections by an average of 10 percent of the popular vote.

In 2000, George W. Bush ran as a compassionate conservative, distancing himself from the abrasiveness of congressional Republicans and the militant liberalism of congressional Democrats.

This was the natural reaction of a politician with a narrower range of acceptable policies and an awareness that hostile mainstream media would do everything possible to delegitimize a confrontational approach.