Kansas’ Jerry Moran and Sharice Davids sure are boring on Twitter. That’s great | Opinion
A shameful confession: I live too much of my life on Twitter.
What can I say? I live and breathe news. Twitter — despite Elon Musk’s gutting of the place — remains the best place to see what smart people are saying about current events. That’s true in Kansas and Missouri, where hashtags such as #ksleg and #mogov are a handy way to track the arguments that matter most.
Twitter is also useful for taking the measure of our regional politicians.
It’s because of social media that I know that Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri is endlessly intent on “owning the libs.” (He seemed congenitally unable to sell his recent book on manliness without promising his audience that liberals hated it, and also that liberals hate the Bible.) I know that his colleague Sen. Eric Schmitt is forever nattering on about “climate alarmism.” And I know that across the border in Kansas, Sen. Roger Marshall is angry — always angry — about China and immigration.
Put the three men’s Twitter feeds together and you get a steady parade of provocation, culture wars and Fox News clips. It’s the bad political equivalent of the Atkins diet: meal after meal of red meat intended to rile up their audiences. The only real question is whether all that rage is meant more to inspire allies or anger critics. Probably both.
Either way, it’s exhausting.
So I’ve come to appreciate the virtue of boredom in politics. Give me a politician who puts his or her head down, does the work — or, at least, sees that work as serving constituents instead of keeping them in a froth — and isn’t constantly declaring war against anybody with a different viewpoint.
Give me Sen. Jerry Moran and Rep. Sharice Davids.
The two couldn’t be more different. Moran is an older white Republican from western Kansas who has been around seemingly forever. Davids, a Democrat, is a young gay Native American.
But they do share one characteristic: Their social media feeds are mostly informative and blessedly dull.
Just in the last few days, Moran has tweeted about the big new cancer research grant to KU Medical Center, an aviation conference in Wichita and — almost charmingly — about the Kansas wheat harvest.
“With wheat harvest underway, I encourage drivers across Kansas to be courteous and look out for trucks and combines,” he wrote Friday.
Needless to say “gentle encouragement and caution” is not often a flavor you find from online politicians.
Similarly, Davids’ feed is filled with the sort of civic boosterism that used to be the bread and butter of politicians: a Juneteenth celebration in Prairie Village, a meeting with Wyandotte County Democrats, a picnic with Missouri Congressman Emanuel Cleaver.
There’s not a lot of red meat. It’s great.
That’s not to say the two don’t have their points of view. Moran regularly posts criticisms of President Joe Biden. Davids last week wrote about “extreme efforts to take away our right to choose” abortion. He’s conservative. She isn’t.
Unlike some of their Kansas and Missouri colleagues, though, Moran and Davids don’t seem to see social media as primarily or exclusively a place to wage perpetual ideological battles.
You don’t come away fired up very often. That’s not always a bad thing.
I’m not naive: “Boring” can be a pose every bit as much as being a firebrand. Davids is a Democrat trying to keep her seat in a district custom-built by Kansas Republicans intent on her defeat, so dullness might just be a survival tactic.
And for Moran, the flip side of boring is that he just isn’t very bold. He doesn’t take strong stands that enrage me — but he also doesn’t take strong stands, period. Sometimes (say, when Donald Trump is threatening to undermine American democracy) that’s a problem.
Still, Twitter is good at showing you which leaders are committed to service, and which ones are putting on a show. In politics, boring can be a blessing.