Last week, the moderators of the Republican debate showed video clips of Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio discussing their previous views on immigration, stances that they have each now changed. This stunt clearly put them on the spot and incited their opponents to attack them as "flip-floppers." But, while they were the targets de jour, candidates in both parties have been criticized for changing their positions on essentially every major issue.
Are political pundits and the candidates themselves encouraging us to select a presidential candidate who claims a position and holds to it forever? Or, is the political rhetoric and media chatter that demonizes changing one's mind actually sabotaging our ability to make the right choice? Maybe a candidate with the courage to flip-flop is just what we need.
In academia, changing one's mind is a virtue. Scholars are taught to avoid terms like "never" and "always." As new information is revealed through study and experimentation, our perspectives on how the world works expand. This expansion demands that we evolve our thinking to explain our newfound knowledge. Researchers typically gain respect by rigorously challenging their own work to see if it holds up under pressure. It is culture of questioning.
For example, consider the story of kuru, a fatal neurodegenerative disease found in an aboriginal tribe in Papua, New Guinea in the early 1950s. Originally believed to run in families, scientists embraced two discoveries on the nature of kuru over the next thirty years that upended the original hypothesis: first, they transmitted to kuru to chimpanzees, demonstrating that it was an infectious rather than a genetic disease. Then, almost twenty years later, they learned that diseases of this type were transmitted solely by a human protein that could change its shape, a never-before-described pathogen.
These flip-flops not only allowed scientists to suggest changes in behavior that completely stopped the spread of kuru, but also revealed a new disease paradigm that was later linked to Alzheimer's, Huntington's and Parkinson's diseases, type II diabetes, and familial hypertension. The researchers were recognized by Nobel prizes in 1976 and in 1997.
Or consider a sea-change in thinking that happened in the world of workplace design. At the turn of the twentieth century, "scientific management" was considered the best way to squeeze productivity out of workers. Jobs were broken into small pieces, and manufacturing lines were created so that employees could quickly and efficiently execute the same action over and over again.
But future management researchers discovered that performing mindless, repetitive tasks with limited social engagement was lonely, mind-numbing, and ultimately unsustainable. They proposed new ways of working that offered more variety, social interaction, autonomy and satisfaction -- a flip-flop that has made the workplace far more humane, and work production more sustainable.
The ability to change one's mind in response to new information is not limited to researchers; the American public does it too. Although our partisan political rhetoric does not suggest it, Americans have demonstrated repeatedly that we're willing to consider other perspectives and change our thinking. Think of women's suffrage, prohibition, racial integration in schools, and same-sex marriage. Remarkably, once a revolutionary position gains support from key influencers, wholesale societal transitions in thinking can occur roughly on the timescale of two presidential terms in office.
So if flip-flopping has value, even, at times, for politicians, then why do candidates present their views as static? Our hypothesis: There is no money in it.
Success in politics is increasingly associated with devotion to positions that crisply define one's perspective. Political donors and activists tend to hold more polarized views than the average citizen. Indeed, although the Senate has become increasingly polarized in its ideologies over the past 60 years, the American public has not. So, while much of the American populace remains moderate and open-minded, we are being governed by leaders who are increasingly extreme and unwilling to consider new perspectives. We deserve better.
To be sure, random and extreme shifts in direction will certainly erode public trust in our leaders, but extreme steadfastness does not serve leaders well either. At the end of 2015, Gallup reported that, for the first time in its records, dissatisfaction with government was ranked as the top problem facing the country, and an earlier poll by the Pew Research Center identified gridlock and the inability to compromise in congress as the biggest problems with government.
Perhaps our candidates have lost sight of the true purpose of politics: engaging with one's populace to support the achievement of collective goals. When politics are practiced well, debate and negotiation result in progress. The near absence of this thoughtful approach limits our potential. Charges of flip-flopping do not honor our nation's intellectual foundations.
Let's hold candidates to a new standard. Rather than evaluating them based on the strength of their convictions, let's ask them to explain how their thinking has evolved, and how they integrate the perspectives of others. We have repeatedly chosen to walk the path of change; wouldn't a leader with the courage to join us be the nicest change of all?
Allison M. Vaillancourt is vice president for human resources and institutional effectiveness and professor of practice in the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Arizona.