To Hillary: In Praise of Political Flip-Floppers Everywhere

Debate moderators, the main stream media, bloggers, and television superstars never seem to tire of the Gotcha question, as Hillary pointed out to Tim Russert in this week's debate: But, didn't you support drivers licenses for illegal immigrants --- gun control, gay marriage, abortion, universal health care, and Iraq ---- before you started opposing it?

This is a magnificent season for the ever so sanctimonious flip-flop cops.

And they have much to work with. Almost all the current crop of presidential candidates, both Republicans and Democrats, are flip-flopping all over the place.

But Gotcha questions are almost always self-serving ploys, and pundits and political reporters, of all people, know it. The constant trumpeting of these trick questions quickly becomes tiresome and ultimately not very illuminating. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds adored by little statesmen, wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson.

With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. -- 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' -- Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood?

It would be sheer folly to expect unwavering constancy or even, complete honesty, for that matter, from politicians during an election, much less during a nominating process.

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage, as H.L Mencken once said.

Americans have become cynical about politics and politicians. They expect candidates to pander to the polls and compromise - to become liars, unprincipled political opportunists. The public knows, at some level, that family values and political consistency have nothing to do with presidential leadership. You can't really be a good politician, or a good president without being somewhat of a morally flawed human being. The too-good-for-this world politicians --- George McGovern, Barry Goldwater, Adlai Stevenson, Michael Dukakis, Jimmy Carter --- have had an annoying habit of losing elections.

Americans know they need a president with a different skill-set: someone who will take care of them and their needs and is not too fastidious to do what it takes to win. Witness the astonishing popularity of the flawed Rudolph Giuliani among the Republican family values set.

Only the most naïve think that keeping never varying positions over decades has anything to do with being an effective president. In fact, given the fast changing world, the ability to alter one's mind and course of action - in the face of evolving challenges - is a higher virtue to be sought after.

A politician shouldn't have the same opinions and concerns during the primaries, as he has in the general election ... and during governing. That would be stupid.

Campaigning politicians are expected to charm and cajole relevant constituencies, to pander, to bob and weave, and to continually cobble together disparate interest groups. These are the skills - making political moves and having the capacity and courage for bold, persistent experimentation - an effective president will need.

But the scorekeepers, mostly reporters and political analysts (especially Tim Russert), continue to play this sophomoric game for their own aggrandizement, as if it illuminates an essential element of character or leadership.

Good presidents should have an agenda - a strategic vision, a fundamental core of beliefs, ideas, and a burning passion; but they should also be pragmatic, flexible, cunning and be able to demonstrate the capacity to grow and change.

A friend of mine from a Wall Street Investment bank tells me that his annual bonus - which makes up 90% of his yearly compensation - is determined not by a percentage of money he made for the bank last year, but by how much they anticipate he will make in the following year. They don't care what he did before - he may have lost an account, or he may have been lucky, not likely to be repeated. His multi-million dollar bonus is based on what they expect him to make in the future.

This should be our modus operendi when picking a president. We should judge a candidate on what, we believe, he (or she) is really going to do when he (or she) becomes president, and not by whatever gibberish they have to spout to win the nomination.

We need to pick a president who is going to be able to deal artfully with a most complicated, dangerous geopolitical situation; someone who can cobble together a coalition of Arab states which will make it possible for the US to get out of Iraq ...who can create an international climate that dries up anti-American terrorism, who can win over the Europeans and the Asians, and who can preserve and restore American hegemony, without being a bully.

It doesn't really matter who opposed the Iraq war first and most ardently, or who apologizes the most for this or that vote or gaffe. This has nothing to do with what we need for our safety and prosperity. What matters is which candidate has the depth and dexterity to get us out of one of the stickiest and scariest situations America has ever faced. The maneuvering is going to take a deft and delicate hand, someone who can cut and run and change in a constantly fluid world.

These skills are, coincidentally, similar to the skills that it takes to get the nomination. There once was a clever and rich New York politician named Howard Samuels who, leading in all the polls, was a shoe-in to get the democratic nomination for governor and win the election. Howie the Horse, as he was known, started giving high fallooting speeches about what he would do as governor.

He forgot one thing on his way to the inauguration: he hadn't won the nomination yet. Hugh Carey, a fighting Irishman, kept campaigning on traditional democratic themes. No surprise here. Carey won the nomination, and went on to run a great centrist campaign for governor, winning two subsequent terms.

The moral is: you have to win the nomination first and do whatever it takes, then you can think about what kind of campaign you want to run in the general election; then you can think about how you want to govern and what you want, and can, accomplish.

The history of the great presidents of yesteryear has shown that campaign themes/promises .... and subsequent governing, often have little to do with one another. Nor would we want them to.

All of our great presidents have shown - for lack of a better phrase - a great deal of "ideological malleability" and pragmatism. Thomas Jefferson reviled public debt so much that in 1798 he proposed a constitutional amendment that would have prevented the federal government from borrowing. But in 1803, when presented with the opportunity to vastly increase the size of the United States by purchasing vast swaths of land known as the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson quickly abandoned his fears about borrowing monies.

During the campaign of 1860, Abraham Lincoln persistently promised not to interfere with slavery in the Southern states. But when the Southern states declared their independence, Lincoln soon issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in states that had seceded from the Union.

Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1932 campaign was based on his pledge to cut taxes as a way to deal with the Great Depression. He did nothing of the sort of course. His opponent, Herbert Hoover, tagged him as a "chameleon in plaid", but FDR went on to become one of our greatest presidents by increasing taxes and spending. In 1960, John F. Kennedy ran on a platform that shamelessly exploited fears that the U.S. had fallen grievously behind in the arms race against the Soviet Union --- the Phantom Missile Gap. We hadn't, of course, as it later became obvious.

Lyndon B. Johnson pandered to his conservative southern roots during the 1960 election and yet, as president, he pushed through the most extensive civil rights reforms ever enacted.

The first rule in politics is: if you don't succeed in the short run, there will be no long run.

But somehow the voters knew, when these wannabe presidents were running, that they were tough enough, nimble enough, and artfully pragmatic enough to successfully negotiate through some of the thorniest problems this country has ever faced: Slavery and Rebellion, the Great Depression, World War II, the threat from Communism and the Civil Rights struggle - to turn into inspired leaders.

Candidates with uncompromising ideals are very appealing. But ultimately politicians who practice calculated compromise tend to be our most successful presidents. Had these great presidents clung steadfastly and bull-headedly to their campaign positions, our country would be far worse off.

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Comments

[miketm9]

“What matters is which candidate has the depth and dexterity to get us out of one of the stickiest and scariest situations America has ever faced."

You're kidding me. Iraq is tops in our country's list of "scariest" situations? Forget WW1, WW2, the cold war, and the civil war; heck the war for independence and the war of 1812, Iraq is one of the scariest. This statement alone is what is wrong with the left in this country. The rest of the article is unbelievably apologetic for flip flopping, but this one disgraceful line is unbelievable.

Mike

[mcearlgrey]

Thanks at least for stating unequivocally how low your standards are, so we know not to trust anything else you might have to say.

[repubstheirownworstenemy]

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I've never read more bloviation in defense of double-speak bullshitting by politicians in my life.

I expect my leaders to remain open to input and flexibility. But when someone like Ms. Clinton gives completely opposing viewpoints about substantive issues in the course of a campaign - much less two conflicting answers to the same question in the same paragraph during a debate - well that's just the kind of bullshit I want people like Hillary to be called on. We've had seven years of that shit from Bush and we deserve better.

[jlxn]

Thank you for a well thought out essay.

[cadawa]

Dear Blake,
Your antidote for the destructive rampage of the Bush years is another candidate that will do or say anything to attain power?
None for me, thanks.
I don't think waving a fist at Iran shows any ability to deal complicated foreign policy decisions, do you?
Face it Blake, Ms. Clinton and the big dog have sold out big time. They find it much easier to screw us and pocket the money than stand up for what's right.
She will serve the plutocracy well and the rest of us hardly at all.
Obviously, you don't have a clue about the mood of the country. Watch the Democratic base run for the door if you and friends insist on shoving her down our throats.

[Mack20]

You keep lumping yourself in with mainstream America. A better preface to those comments would be “we left-wing, elitists want a president…” You have no clue what real Americans want. Working people who have never met a seven-figure Wall Street broker paid on some crazy forecast for next year. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.

Oh, and your list of “too-good-­for-this-w­orld politicians” is utterly ridiculous. All of those guys, every one of them, are LOSERS. Plain and simple. I could write volumes about every one of them but they are not that important. Carter has been trying to establish some kind of relevance for the last 30 years. He will go down as one of the worst Presidents in modern history. And his post presidency has been even worse. Eight years of Carter is a scary nightmare. The “Misery Index” would have doubled, he would have given two or three more malaise speeches blaming all of us for his shortcomings, and Alaska would now belong to the Soviets.

[jsarets]

I agree that intellectually honest people necessarily change their minds. But so do intellectually dishonest people. So if we're supposed to judge candidates by how smoothly and subtly they change positions, we're still left guessing as to their true intentions.

We do indeed face tough challenges that require deft political gamesmanship. But Americans are deeply divided as to how they interpret these challenges, and the candidate most likely to win the presidency has been sending intentionally mixed messages.

Hillary has made it plenty clear that she is the slickest and nimblest player of any of the candidates from either party. If I had any idea how she intended to deal with the "rest of the world", maybe I could support her. But I haven't seen anything to suggest she's not a vastly more tactful clone of Giuliani.

An essential part of my personal understanding of America's foreign policy challenges is that they are fueled by our own mixed messages. We've embraced unilateral military action, abandoned the illusion of a moral high ground, and gone rogue on the "rest of the world". We've got them on the edge of their seats, totally off-balance, wondering what the heck we're going to screw up next.

They don't "hate us for our freedom", they hate us for our hypocrisy and opacity. We say one thing and then do another. We can't be trusted. Our intentions are unknown and presumably sinister. We have a horrible track record of using our superpower status to bring peace and prosperity to the world. The world is losing faith in America, and America is losing faith in itself.

Against this backdrop we propose to elect a president whose primary qualification is her political poker face. The American people can't get a clear read, and neither can the "rest of the world". She won't be able to restore faith in America both at home and abroad, and no amount of political savvy will be able to overcome her disturbing lack of transparency.

[MsLiz]

Exellent discussion of reality. Hannity loves Bush and Reagan for their principles. You are the Hannidote!

I know that many comments assume you are referring to Clinton, but you never mentioned any specific candidates. You may have been thinking of Mitt or Rudy for all anyone here knows.

[DatelessNerd]

It's not a matter of WHETHER a candidate changes their position. It's a matter of WHY a candidate changes their position.

Hillary Clinton bases her positions and her senatorial votes not on what's best for America, but on what's best for her political career.

That's not the same as changing one's position because of better information or better reasoning. Hillary Clinton has always been a weathervane. She would rather be President than be right, which is why she should never be President.

[jenevieve]

Hillary's progressive bona fide's aren't very impressive, but - you know what? - I like her. I trust her. She's smart. She's pragmatic. She knows what to do to get the job done. When she becomes president, she is going to have a great sh-load of extremely serious problems to deal with. Iraq. Maybe Iran. The national debt. Iraq. The economy. Health care. Iraq. Global warming. Education. Israel/Palestine. Restoring the constitution. Restoring the U.S. reputation. Iraq. Balancing the Supreme Court. Racism. Corporate power. On and on. It's going to take someone who can talk to anybody and everybody, and who can make them feel like they're being heard. I know without a doubt she will do things I don't like - as Bill did - but I also know (think) that she is the only candidate on either side who has what it will take to start to get us out of the deep, dark hole where we now find our country, thanks to Bush, et al. So, this article expresses ideas that need to be expressed right now. Not all questions can be answered simply. A leader must be able to adjust to changing circumstances. Sometimes in politics, "what works" takes precedence over "what's right." To change minds and hearts, you do not begin at the polar opposite position; rather, you begin at the position that is as close as you can get to their position, and then inch them along to the position you want. It's going to take a savvy mind to bring us out of the hole we're in. She's got it. No one else does.

[davedave]

in praise of liars and sociopaths?

as mr. slave would say in south park, "jesus christ!"

d

[beckylu]

too late it has already happened, 2000 and 2004 GWB certainly has not lived up to anything in his campaign promises and instead done just the opposite. Except for all of the no bid contracts his admin has awarded his cronies, in secret nondisclosed meetings.

[Janelynne]

Russert is a reknown schmoozer with the office of the Vice President. Remember when he recounted Libby's words about Plame whilst they chatted about "Meet the Press", vis a vis, the programming the VP really wanted. Russert is a journalist, right? Fourth Estate and all that jazz...

[AristophanesJones]

Thank you for giving Lyndon Johnson credit where credit is due.

[NewHampster]

Exactly the reason I've supported and will continue to support Hillary until she is elected President.

"Americans know they need a president with a different skill-set: someone who will take care of them and their needs and is not too fastidious to do what it takes to win."

Hillary knows how to win, why we need to win and I trust her to run the country for me.