In recent days, Mike Pence, the governor of Indiana has given us a political analogy to Erwin Schrodinger's famous thought experiment in which he posited that there were situations in quantum mechanics where a cat could simultaneously be both alive and dead. In Pence's case, in the course of one week he both attacked as an unjust smear, the criticism that a bill he signed on religious freedom implicitly gave license to individuals and businesses to refuse customers if serving them violated their beliefs, and also demanded that the bill be "fixed" before the end of the week. Thus the bill in question was both perfect as it was, but also in urgent need of fixing. Call it quantum pandering.
These days Pence might prefer to be living in a world of quantum indeterminacy. In 1935, Schrodinger dreamed up his scenario in response to an interpretation of quantum mechanics in which various possible realities remained piled up upon one another -- "super-positioned" is the word physicists use -- until they were observed, at which point these many states would "collapse" into something definite. In Pence's case he was faced with the task of appeasing two core constituencies of the Republican Party: the Christian right who abhor gay marriage, and the business community, which doesn't want to alienate potential customers. The problem for Pence is that neither is a subatomic particle, and both want definite results, not the blurry miasma which politicians prefer to inhabit.
The difference between quantum pandering and the more familiar political syndrome of flip-flopping is the element of time. John Kerry could get away -- sort of -- with the phrase "I was for the war before I was against it" because people are allowed to change their minds. We enter the political equivalent of quantum reality when the two contradictory positions are near simultaneous. Flip-flopping, hardly more noble, usually represents a politician's craven recognition that a pander isn't working. Quantum pandering is not about the times changing, but rather the need to appease two irreconcilable points of view at the same time.
A near-heroic example of flip-flopping took place in 1961 when Robert Wagner ran for his third term for Mayor of New York City as a reform candidate, in essence running as an incumbent on a "throw the bums out platform." The bums in this instance, were the very political machine, the operatives of Tammany Hall, who had put him in office for his first two terms. Mitt Romney came closer to the quantum pander during the 2012 campaign when he both defended the health care plan he championed in Massachusetts and attacked Obamacare, which was based on that very plan.
The Pence drama is but a warm up to the 2016 presidential election, which promises a rich smorgasbord of quantum panders. How will the Democrats tap into anger at wealth inequality and the impunity of the banks without alienating the deep pockets of Wall Street? Will Rand Paul find himself caught between the libertarian abhorrence of foreign adventures and Republican allegiance to defense spending; or rights of privacy and government surveillance? For those planning to keep score at home, a flip flop becomes a quantum pander when it occurs within the same week, as politics works operates slightly longer timescales than quantum mechanics. Do you agree Dr. Schrodinger?