One of the great myths of American politics is that voters like candidates who have the courage of their convictions.

It is an incessant whine of the Man on the Street: “These guys, they don’t believe in anything,” he’ll say. “They gotta take a poll before they go to the bathroom. I wanna guy who has the guts to stand up for what he thinks is right.”

Which sounds good, but it’s not what the American voter really wants.

What he wants – what we all want – is a candidate who will stand up for what we believe.

The only problem with that is that this is a big country and people believe a lot of different things, many of them contradictory.

What’s a poor candidate to do?

Well, he takes polls to find out what a majority wants, then tries to craft his message to satisfy those desires.

That may not be the most noble approach in the world but it’s the way you get elected. And if you’re not elected, what difference does it make what you believe in?

I’m sure that “Real Conservatives” and “Real Liberals” are shocked – shocked! – at this cynical attitude. Which is why so few Real Conservatives or Real Liberals are ever elected to anything!

Push-me-Pull-you political candidates are the inevitable result of our two-party system. When you only have two major political parties, each of them national in scope, both must appeal to a diverse, national constituency, which results in opposing candidates who cannot afford to be too far apart on the issues.

Indeed, one could argue that the Democrats lost power in the ’80s and ’90s because they came to focus on too narrow a segment of their political coalition. You could also make the case that Republicans are suffering the same fate right now.

If voters really wanted a candidate who stood up for what he believed in, regardless of the popularity of the conviction, John McCain would be the runaway leader in the polls.

As a presidential candidate, McCain is a virtual encyclopedia of unpopular issues. If it weren’t for his unpopular stances, he wouldn’t have any stance at all:

• At a time when the war in Iraq is about as popular with voters as diphtheria, he is for staying the course.

• He also favors a kinder, gentler immigration policy aimed at helping immigrants become U.S. citizens. This at a time when a good share of the nation – and particularly his part of the nation – has expressed opposition to that approach bordering on the hysterical. It wants a punitive immigration policy; one festooned with fences and border guards and midnight roundups.

• He is perhaps the chief Washington advocate of campaign-finance reform, favoring restrictions on the ability of corporations and special interest groups to influence elections.

Voters don’t care much about this one way or the other, but lobbyists, whose job it is to influence elections, hate it.

Consequently, money for McCain’s campaign has pretty much dried up and his candidacy is about to disappear beneath the waves, leaving only an oil slick.

So much for the rewards of political courage in our electoral system.

If you really want candidates with a clear, hard edge, who believe as you do, you’d best seek out a multi-party, parliamentary system. Some countries have six or seven parties vying for attention all across the political spectrum.

In a system like that, you should be able to find someone who speaks your language. In our system, probably not.

In our system, we get candidates with outward diversity – black, white, man, woman, Catholic, Protestant – but who, underneath, are pretty much the same person.

So stop complaining about our wishy-washy candidates. They’re the kind we demand.

Don Kaul is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-losing Washington correspondent. His e-mail is This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . Article courtesy of www.MinutemanMedia.org.