Watching the commentaries on Fox News about President Obama’s most recent press conference, I was irritated, but not altogether surprised with the way Republicans pundits judged him as boring and dodgy while the Democrats applauded him at every turn.

My summation: I thought he was very well spoken and honest about his priorities and I didn’t really care if he came off as boring as Bill O’Reilly emphasized. It was a press conference for crying out loud.However, it seemed he darted around several key questions about his budget plan and the AIG bonuses and offered confusing projections concerning the deficit.

So where do I fall? Conservative? Liberal? The answer is none of these.

I don’t like labels as it is, but if you absolutely had to call me something, I guess it would be a moderate. Sadly, it’s a term that’s been widely misunderstood for a long time, receiving mounting criticism from pompous conservative figureheads like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh.

“Moderates are not passionate in their ideas,” so said Rush Limbaugh during his morning radio program.

That remark was followed up by his guest, popular radio host Mark Levine, who said that moderates were really just conservatives who were abandoning their principles.

In his book, Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto, Levine explains that conservatism draws directly form the principles laid down by the founding fathers in the Constitution.

Sure, I used to consider myself a Republican, an old family inheritance, but I learned that the issues were much too important to set my faith in a blind belief of principles that don’t answer every problem we encounter. For instance, how do we really know what would the founding fathers have said about an issue like global warming?

Republicans, like Limbaugh, call it a hoax, a ploy set out on destroying the jobs of honest oil and coal workers. They say that global temperatures have only fluctuated slightly in recorded history and no atmospheric hot spots have been detected that would tend to support this theory. Proponents of the theory, like Al Gore, say atmospheric carbon levels are increasing at 1.9 parts per million every year.

I just can’t imagine that after years of expelling chlorofluorocarbons and industrial carbon into our atmosphere, we haven’t done some damage. Still, I believe there’s good science on both sides of the issue. So what is this mindset that assures millions beyond a doubt that it’s a big sham and others that we need to pour billions into clean air initiatives?

It all comes back to what it means to be a moderate. Limbaugh would have you believe a moderate is someone who is up in the air about his or her opinions, unable to make a decision on the important issues of our day. But I say a moderate is one who has strong opinions that may fall on either side of the political spectrum, one who listens to reason when determining their priorities. I know it’s a hard concept to swallow for some.

It seems like every issue now is drawn along party lines. I, for one, refuse to see the world so black and white.

I frown on abortion, I don’t think healthcare is a universal right and I’m not particularly fond of the welfare state. But I’m not a Republican.

I think science is one of our most important investments, I believe finding alternative forms of energy and I wish we would just get the hell out of Iraq. But I’m not a Democrat.

I didn’t vote for either McCain or Obama in the presidential election. I guess I’m just a sucker for underdogs. But more than that, I really just wanted to distance myself from the absurd rhetoric and mudslinging

You see, a wise man once said withdrawing in disgust is not the same thing as apathy. These days, I find I can’t withdraw enough.