Keller @ Large: Time To Slow Down Politics

BOSTON (CBS) - America has always been a place full of people in a hurry.

Consider the adjectives we use to describe our history, none of them passive: many of the colonists were "fleeing" religious persecution; the Salem witch trials were a "rush" to judgment; and all our "revolutions," industrial, cultural and political.

We are the land of fast cars and fast highways to accommodate them, fast food, and instant gratification. That's just the way we are, and the technological revolution hasn't exactly slowed things down.

But in the spirit of the small but growing backlash against the speed of modern life – things like the slow food and slow living movements – this seems like a good time to recruit followers for a slow politics movement.

Slow politics suggests that we be less knee-jerk reactionary to things that happen.

As we watch the president-elect briskly abandon some of his core campaign promises, that should tell us something about how time can change and modify even the most emphatic rhetoric.

Slow politics is already in place in the many checks on rushed action, and perhaps some of those who've railed against the slow pace in Washington in the past will now embrace it.

Slow politics elevates the importance of deliberation and allows for dissent to be heard; at its best, it promotes compromise and small, measured steps over feverish confrontation and political overreach.

There may be moments to come that call for instant reaction and hurried activism.

But think how much better off we'll be if everyone at all levels at least tries to chill out.

Listen to Jon's commentary: