The voice of radical moderate America

I nominate Dave Ross. He is sort of the Johnny Carson of the quick hit liberal commentators - mellifluous, centrist by temperament, wacky but never crazy, indignant but never angry.

His spots are about the same length as an old school Ian Shoales bit (is that a great picture or what? here's what Ian's up to lately) . Shoales mastered the art in his NPR pieces of talking in doubletime and wrapping up early (I'd like to link to one, but he uses Realplayer), but Ross is so measured in his cadences you never really notice the time constraints. And he keeps his cool. He never falls so in love with a joke, or gets so pissed off over an issue, that it interferes with his primary mission of producing a well-crafted bit of radio commentary. The older I get, the more I respect this.

A couple recent favorites:

• On stimulus packages - "If 2008 never happened, we'd all be rich...as well as a year younger."
• Obama fears - A liberal commentator who can quote both Obama and Fred Astaire!
• Fill in the blanks - A succinct call-and-response on Citigroup bailout #2 (or was it #3?)

I think Ross is remarkable in part because he hasn't (yet) drifted into some odd social pose. He makes liberalism seem almost...normal.

Other have not been so lucky. Andy Rooney wears the nutty old man shirt a little too comfortably (he can still bring the heat, though, when he wants to - in his 90s). Jim Hightower and the late Molly Ivins (whom I admired), slipped into a folksiness that no one really believed. Molly, identified as a populist by Wikipedia and herself, developed her special brand of populism at Smith and the Columbia School of Journalism.

No, I think Dave Ross has it right. As Obama has demonstrated, sometimes it pays...to just state the obvious.