On "Flip-Flopping"

[jducoeur]

I was glancing at the news this morning, and saw yet another reference to the Bush strategy against Kerry: to portray him as a "flip-flopper". And it occurs to me to wonder what this says about the electorate that this strategy makes sense.

I mean, consider the facts. Kerry is a "flip-flopper" in two specific senses:

-- He often takes a fairly nuanced stance on issues. He tends not to be blindly for or against things; rather, he tends to take a very middle-ground position in most cases, and precisely what he says depends on precisely what he's asked.

-- He occasionally changes his mind. I can blame him a bit for not being willing to say that in as many words, but modern American politics are bizarrely harsh on people who do so. But y'know, I have a lot more respect for someone who can change his mind from time to time, instead of sticking to a decision through thick and thin, regardless of later-revealed facts.

In other words, "flip-flopper" is being used as code for "moderate". This is apparently contrasted with words like "bold" and "decisive", which are being used as code for "extremist". I mean, Bush is drawing a very true contrast here. Whereas Kerry generally strives for the political center, Bush is constantly pushing towards the extremes: his views are in every respect more right-wing than any President in my lifetime. (He makes Reagan look like a weak-kneed liberal by comparison.) Whereas Kerry is constantly re-examining the landscape, Bush never changes his mind about anything, irrationally clinging to every decision, no matter how bad it turns out to have been in retrospect. (At best, he occasionally rationalizes that he has completed what he set out to do, and doesn't need to do that any more.)

Is Kerry a flip-flopper? Yes, if you use this definition. But y'know, if you're going to use that definition, a little flip-flopping is exactly what the US could use right now. And it depresses me to realize that a lot of people simply don't have the critical thinking skills to decode what's really being said here...

Comments

Frustrating

[cristovau.livejournal.com]

I have supported Kerry for a while now for a few reasons.

He was a good Congressman. His office always answered the petitions I signed and were primarily in favor of them. He also showed support for the antiwar protest I was in.

He is a moderate, which sometimes means pandering to the wrong sides. This isn't a bad thing for a politician to be involved in, it's a necessary evil. Some of the Democratic candidates seemed unwilling to be politicians. They were unrealistically inflexibility. After 4 years of devisiveness, he is willing to bridge gaps and find compromises and agreements. Good by me.

And I am resolute in my disgust with Bush. He gives Republicans a bad name.

Re: Frustrating

[tpau]

i think it is more that he gives Rep[ublicans a wrong name. what he does/says is at odds with what i and a few others percieve t be the Republican party line...

Re: Frustrating

[meranthi.livejournal.com]

However, he is still the Republican choice for President.

Re: Frustrating

[tpau]

well since he was elected, he is technically most people's choice for president (4 years ago). unless we want to assume tht hte country is exactly 50/50 split...

Re: Frustrating

[meranthi.livejournal.com]

That's not the point. Whether or not his policies are not in line with what you conisder to be the Party line, Bush is still the Republican nominee (I would assume, since there aren't any others). That gives a choice of Kerry or Bush or a third party.

Re: Frustrating

[jducoeur]

This is true, but I have some modest sympathy for the Republican party right now. There's no real way for the Republican leadership to disown Bush: it would be political suicide. The way modern politics are structured, the incumbency advantage is enormous, especially within the party.

I take tpau's point to be that Bush is not representative of the historical leanings of the Republican party, and I think that's true. He represents the relatively recent ascendancy of the extreme right within the party -- the people who thought that Reagan had good ideas but didn't go far enough. I don't write off the party as a whole; I just can't support the current support for the extremists.

(I will admit that I'm damned annoyed at McCain's sheepish support for Bush, though -- he's already a maverick, and is in a position where he can afford to be critical. Hell, if things go where I expect them to in the long run, a bit of criticism of the far right now would probably land him in a very good position 5-10 years down the road.)

My optimistic side views the current state of the Republican party as being very akin to the Democrats when Carter was President: extreme to the point of being out of touch with mainstream American opinion. I'm *hoping* that the pendulum is preparing for a swing back, which is likely to render the Republicans unelectable until they move the party line back closer to the center. (As happened with the Democrats in the time between Carter and Clinton.) But I'm not at all certain that we're there yet, which is why I'm nervous. It generally requires a broadly-scorned error to switch the momentum the other way, and I honestly don't think Abu Ghraib on its own is enough...

Re: Frustrating

[metageek.livejournal.com]

It generally requires a broadly-scorned error to switch the momentum the other way, and I honestly don't think Abu Ghraib on its own is enough...

Abu Ghraib would be enough if it could be laid directly at Bush's door. That's hard, given the number of layers of plausible deniability involved. But here's one that comes a lot closer: Ahmed Chalabi. For years, the CIA and the State Department were saying not to trust this guy; they basically thought he was a con man. But the Pentagon and the White House liked what he was saying about WMD, so they supported him, and paid his organization $335,000 per month (year?) for providing intelligence on Iraq.

Well, last month, US forces raided his office, and the New York Times published a story saying he had told Iran that the US had broken their most important code. But it gets better: other sources are apparently reporting that he was always working for Tehran; that he was an Iranian agent funnelling us misinformation that served Tehran's interests. (The notion of an anti-Saddam Iraqi expatriate working for Iran makes perfect sense, of course, given the long Iran-Iraq war.) The US was basically paying for the privilege of getting lied to.

This is something that people can get scornful about (nobody thinks they would ever fall for a con man), and it can be pinned on Bush and his inner circle. The people whose job it is to evaluate trustworthiness said Chalabi wasn't trustworthy, but Bush ignored them because he wanted to go after Saddam, and Chalabi's allegations made it easier. A little bit of critical thinking (such as Kerry keeps applying) would have saved us a world of grief.

(Here's a new allegation I read this week: George III's focus on Saddam can be traced to the very start of his presidency. The day he was inaugurated, he met with Clinton, who, as is traditional, passed on a few last-minute bits of advice. He warned Bush to watch out for Osama bin Laden, North Korea, India & Pakistan, and Saddam, in that order--and gave reasons for worrying about each. Bush thanked him, but said, "Your priorities are wrong. I'm moving Saddam to the top.")

Re: Frustrating

[jducoeur]

I wish I agreed, but I honestly don't think most people care all that much about Chalabi. I concur that he *could* turn into the critical scandal, but so far I have absolutely no evidence that it's the kind of things that will seize the common imagination.

Really, I think it'll only turn into a proper scandal if clear evidence turns up that Bush knew that Chalabi was a con man, and worked with him anyway, and I don't think that'll happen.

Here's a new allegation I read this week: George III's focus on Saddam can be traced to the very start of his presidency.

Oh, come *on*. That's not new -- people have been saying that for his entire presidency. It's not an allegation; it's utterly clear from the historical record. Sadly, no one much cares. The people who want to support Bush simply counter with, "Yeah, but Saddam deserved it, didn't he?"

As scandals go, this one's a non-starter *unless* things in Iraq break down so badly that the finger-pointing really starts in earnest...

Re: Frustrating

[metageek.livejournal.com]

Really, I think it'll only turn into a proper scandal if clear evidence turns up that Bush knew that Chalabi was a con man,

Yeah, you're probably right.

George III's focus on Saddam can be traced to the very start of his presidency.

Oh, come *on*. That's not new -- people have been saying that for his entire presidency.

Sorry: I should have said that what was alleged was new evidence of his intention. I'd read stuff tracing it back to 9/12, and maybe earlier with some of his aides, but this has him declaring his intention on his inauguration day, before he had any nonpublic information at all, which means he had decided based purely on his own prejudices.

As scandals go, this one's a non-starter

Definitely--I didn't mean it as a new scandal; I just mentioned it in passing. It could be used as extra kindling in the scandal that he lied to get the war started, though.

Re: Frustrating

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

It generally requires a broadly-scorned error to switch the momentum the other way, and I honestly don't think Abu Ghraib on its own is enough...

Well, the shrub has retained a lawyer to advise him on the Valerie Plame grand jury issue, which suggests he's got some vulnerability there.

Re: Frustrating

[metageek.livejournal.com]

well since he was elected, he is technically most people's choice for president (4 years ago).

No, he lost the popular vote.

unless we want to assume tht hte country is exactly 50/50 split...

To within the margin of error, it is--he lost the popular vote by only a few thousand votes.

[elizabear.livejournal.com]

I saw an editorial about that very image in the Globe today, probably the same one you saw. My reaction to it was different, based on my work experience with Genuity. I think Kerry is doing the right thing by investigating things, exploring and questioning, before he makes a decision he is willing to stand by and attach his name to. The problem is that this is happening in front of the general American populace, and they can't see it as a good thing, someone who gets all his facts and opinions together before making a stand, but rather as someone who seems like he can't take a position and stick to it or who waits to figure out where he wants to stand.

As an example of how different things seem with good spin, here's my work story:
My boss, a VP, was very attracted to new ideas. His path towards a goal was very much a zig-zag, and an idea mentioned in a morning meeting could be the exciting new departmental procedure or goal shortly after lunch. Every time he heard a good idea, he would grab it and implement it as policy until it became obvious the plan a) needed more development to be feasible, b) was shown to not be the best course, or c) it was replaced by some other newer and better idea. It drove me freaking nuts - short-attention-span boss for sure. I would pass on everything that was happening to the supervisors who worked for me so they would be fully in the loop and able to work on implementation plans or rebuttals with me, but we did not let all of this impact the people who worked on the front lines unless and until it became clear that we were actually going to do whatever it was. About 75% of the time, the grand plans faded away into nothing, and our staff never knew the difference. Unfortunately, my reluctance to leap into the gap with my boss translated to him as me being "unwilling to embrace change". Ugh.

When I quit, two of my supervisors were promoted to manager to replace me. The first negative feedback I heard from my old employees about them was "Ever since you left, we're getting jerked around a lot - there are a lot of things we hear about that never happen, we're told to do something and then we're told not to do it anymore, and we're always changing gears and we never know what to expect." I had to laugh, because it wasn't that the environment had changed, it was that the buffering had gone away.

So I think Bush has people buffering for him, and while Kerry is not the master flip-flopper, his policy decision process is too visible for the majority of Americans to deal with, and he needs to draw the curtain a bit more.

[metageek.livejournal.com]

So I think Bush has people buffering for him, and while Kerry is not the master flip-flopper, his policy decision process is too visible for the majority of Americans to deal with, and he needs to draw the curtain a bit more.

I disagree, actually. Kerry's got a 20-year Senate record for George III to, ah, interpret; he has changed his mind on things over the years, so there's no way he can avoid the flip-flop label. And it's not just the decision-making process going on here--as Justin said, his positions are more nuanced than the questions he's asked, so he just can't avoid it: he gets asked simplistic questions, he gives honest answers, and people interpret that as changing his mind.

I don't think there's an easy solution, though. He can't just give more complex answers to the simple questions; he's already getting labelled as too wordy. Maybe (to tie this in to Justin's other post) the answer is for him to get passionate about nuance, to try to get people angry about George III's idiotic simplicity.