From Old Man Joe’s Sunday column:

Gee labeled as “hogwash” any notion that being a Mormon might cause Romney to govern differently as president, and he offered his own record of inclusiveness as proof.

“I’ve lived with that for 28 years. I’m a Mormon and I’ve run five major American universities, one now twice, and initially I got a lot of questions along the lines of, ‘Well, he’s not going to be in support of women; he’s not going to be in support of African-Americans.’ ”

Like so many mainstream Americans, Gee is a frustrated centrist. Politics is “controlled by the wings,” he said, and the whole presidential nominating process almost guarantees that ideology will trump pragmatism in next year’s campaign and beyond.

“Far be it from me to say that we ought to go back to the old smoke-filled rooms, but I’ll tell you something, I think they did produce some good candidates. We’ve got to right this system. The primaries have been moved so far out in front that by the time we even start focusing on politics, it’s over, and so much of the citizen voice is not heard.”

But surely, the Internet and a bazillion blogs have created opportunities for more participation and discourse?

“I don’t see it as opening up more discourse,” Gee said. “What I see it opening up are more opportunities for people to act pugilistically. I think what we have is a lot more hand-to-hand combat over inane issues. We don’t have the kind of controlled political discussion we used to have. I miss that. I really do.

“What are the blogs about? Communicating, yes, but they’re about communicating one’s particular ideology. They’re not about conversation. They’re not about thoughtful conversations about what people should be doing and what the world is really like.”

I would say that most anyone who has worked at the levels of higher education he has, and has worked with the approval of his peers, is hardly a centrist. A “centrist” on a college campus could very well be a mild Troskyite in reality.

It is a minor point, but I do not promote an ideology, as conservatism is negation of ideology. However, if Gee wants to have a “conversation”, then lets chat about what it was like for him to be an adult member of a church which, prior to 1979, didn’t allow blacks to join. But perhaps I’m acting too pugilistically by bringing up this sore subject.

Maybe Gee wants to go back to when liberal elites like Walter Cronkite and Joe Hallett told us everything we needed to know and no one questioned their motives. But I can’t imagine anything healthier for a free society than the free flow of information… other than maybe putting an end to the public school regimes and thus put bow tie-wearing education bureaucrats out of work.