Lord J would be a great politician for one reason: he sits on one extreme side of the political debate.
You mean that I'm out of the mainstream. I'm not sure whether this is an amusement of mine or more appropriately a frustration, but here it is: Popularity does not make a thing true, and people don't seem to want to acknowledge that, especially when they're on the popular side of the equation. From where I sit, it's most of you who are the extremists--often reflexively so and with no awareness of it whatsoever. But when I talk about political extremeness I'm talking about ideologies themselves; what you're talking about is the numbers game and that is almost worthless as a measure of ideological integrity.
I identify as "very liberal"--almost as liberal as a person can be--because I see lots of problems in the world that require progressive change as opposed to keeping things as they are or backtracking to the customs of an earlier era. But "very liberal" implies that I'm out on the frontier of the classic left-right political spectrum, which is misleading. Not only are there are all kinds of people to the left of me, even in this country, but that spectrum is of limited use outside predefined argument. Actually, to be perfectly honest with you, I hate that spectrum. Left, center, and right: They're all bogus. The imagery came out of France centuries ago and the relevancy hinges upon there being a legitimate politico-economic debate with viable choices in the party system to represent all plausible interests. Neither exists today. American politics today is a battle between nebbishes, lunatics, and lobbyists. The spectrum is obsolete. I have no loyalty whatsoever to any political party or platform. I only care about results.
The problem, if I may, is that your definition of "extreme" compares my positions to those of the mainstream. I mentioned that already, but I just want to reiterate what a terrible way that is to judge the merit of an idea. One need only look back as far as 2004 to see that, when we reelected Bush and bolstered the Republican majorities in Congress. The majority is never wiser than the wisest individuals, and often far short of it.
But perhaps it would be even more useful to describe in brief how exactly I might not be extreme by my own grasp of the concept. Admittedly I lied a wee bit. There are a handful of positions where I might consider myself extreme. But in general I consider my positions well-placed. How could I not? On abortion, for instance, my view is that controlling one's body is the second most important right there is, while unborn babies are not even persons yet. If you accept those premises--and both are supportable in the courts of evidence and logic--then my position of "abortion on demand" is not extreme in the least: It's judicious, humane, and almost inevitable. It never comes up in this country, but there is a whole other dimension to the abortion debate: forced abortions. I'm not in favor of those any more than I am in favor of criminalizing abortion. In my view, deviation in either direction is what's extreme, because it avoids or worsens the problem.
Most people who judge ideas by their integrity rather than their popularity (or context) would say the same thing of themselves: Their positions are the opposite of extreme, where the axis is not left to right, nor popularity to unpopularity, but reasonableness to unreasonableness. People rarely choose, out of context, to be extreme (i.e., unreasonable), and when they do it is often an expression of frustration stemming from perceived powerlessness or an intractable quandary.
I don't know if I would make a "great politician" or not. I'm not very charismatic, my positions are too esoteric for lay audiences to comprehend through a few flimsy soundbites, and my interest in political power as a vehicle for the advancement of humanity is not nearly as high as you might think. I detest the thought of having mooks for colleagues, or for bosses. I don't know how electable I would be, nor how effective I would be if I were actually able to gain office.