Flippin' and Floppin'
Tuesday, Mar 09, 2004; 8:54 AM
I've been giving some deep philosophical thought to this whole 'flip-flop' business, which seems to be the FCC-approved F-word of the presidential campaign, at least this week.
Can it really be that both candidates are spineless tacticians who change their positions at the slightest provocation, just to vacuum up votes? Or is that just typical campaign rhetoric?
Is changing your mind in politics really such an awful thing?
Do we really our politicians to be so cautious about future attacks that they're afraid to explore new ideas or think out loud? After all, if you stick to the same old stale talking points, you can never be accused of flipping. Or flopping.
At the same time, if presidential aspirants don't have a cohesive approach over the years to fundamental matters of war and peace and the economy--or at least a logical progression--that raises some serious concerns.
I also wonder whether these back-and-forth charges just cancel themselves out as voters give up on figuring out who deserves the championship in the flip-flopping sweepstakes.
On one side, Andrew Sullivan lays out the case against JFK:
"Over the many years that John Kerry has been in the United States Senate, the Democrat from Massachusetts has accumulated an astonishing ability to have been on every side of most issues . . .
"Take a couple of obvious issues in American politics. Affirmative action. As writer Michael Grunwald recently pointed out, in 1992, John Kerry made something of a splash attacking racial preferences as counter-productive and divisive. Kerry worried out loud about whether such racial set-asides encouraged a 'culture of dependency.' It seemed like a brave statement of the time - from a man willing to challenge Democratic orthodoxy. But almost as soon as he had uttered those words, Kerry backtracked. His current position is blanket support for all affirmative action. His campaign website brags that he has 'consistently opposed efforts in the Senate to undermine or eliminate affirmative action programs, and supports programs that seeks to enhance diversity.'
"On another critical issue, education reform, Kerry once took on the all-powerful teacher's unions whose resistance to weeding out poor teachers and allowing parents greater choice in schools has been a huge drag on improving performance and raising standards. In 1998, he supported giving head teachers more leeway to fire bad teachers, end tenure and allow for real reform. Now, he's once again a tool of the teachers' lobby. His campaign brochure promises to 'stop blaming and start supporting public school educators,' and to give them 'better training and better pay, with more career opportunities, more empowerment and more mentors.'
"You can point to a long litany of other issues where Kerry has taken one position and then regressed to another. Even in this campaign, he started out as pro-war (he voted for it in the Senate) and then, sensing Howard Dean's appeal, swung against it. In the Senate, he voted for the Iraq war resolution and then against the $87 billion needed to fund the reconstruction. On trade, Kerry's record has been consistently - yes consistently! - in favor of free trade. But as soon as John Edwards' charismatic protectionism seemed to threaten his momentum, Kerry shifted back to talking about 'putting teeth' into labor and environment protections in free trade agreements." |
