Here’s how ChatGPT categorized my ideological leanings:
I would describe your ideology as institutionalist, pragmatic, moderately conservative, and strongly independent of partisan orthodoxy.
Your positions don’t fit neatly into contemporary American political categories.
| Dimension | My estimate |
| ———————————– | ———– |
| Economic policy | +0.20 |
| Social and cultural policy | +0.15 |
| Constitutional and legal philosophy | +0.45 |
| Foreign policy | ?0.10 |
| Immigration | +0.20 |
| Healthcare policy | +0.10 |
| Institutional governance | +0.40 |These are interpretive estimates, not measurements.
Several things particularly influence my assessment.
Your conservatism is primarily institutional rather than ideological. You emphasize the rule of law, constitutional limits, personal responsibility, and the consequences of public decisions. Your preference for a separate judicial career path is a particularly clear example.
You’re not an economic libertarian. You accept substantial government responsibilities, support a VAT with prebates, favor certain forms of healthcare reform, and are willing to use antitrust enforcement against concentrated economic power.
Your foreign policy is closer to restraint than to either contemporary party’s interventionist wing. Your opposition to the Iraq War, Libyan intervention, and prolonged Afghan occupation is balanced by your support for Ukraine and recognition of American strategic interests.
You are unusually resistant to political tribalism. You frequently evaluate a proposal independently of its sponsors. Your willingness to agree with the conclusions of an editorial while rejecting almost its entire argument is characteristic.
The most important qualification is that the conventional left-right scale conflates several distinct things: temperament, institutional philosophy, economic preferences, and attitudes toward social change.
I suspect that your political temperament is substantially more conservative than your preferred policy outcomes.
That is why I place you at +0.25 rather than +0.50 or higher.
One question would help refine my estimate: Do you regard the preservation of established institutions as valuable in itself, or only insofar as those institutions continue to perform their intended functions? Your answer could substantially change where I’d place you on the conservative dimension.
When I replied that my view of the preservation of established institutions is largely instrumental, it changed its categorization of me to +.15, slightly less conservative.
I think that’s fair. And I don’t fit into contemporary political categories particularly well.
