People change their opinions. As my husband says, “I always reserve the right to get smarter,” paraphrasing Konrad Adenauer, the former chancellor of Germany.
But when politicians reverse course and change their opinions, political pundits, critics and others often call them out for lack of consistency, and might label them a flip-flopper, U-turner or backflipper.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has been criticized for changing his mind on on everything from immigration policy to abortion, depending on who he is talking to and when.
Likewise, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has been accused of reversing her stances on private health insurance, fracking and other issues in order to win new voters.
Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, has drastically changed his mind over the past few years, as well. Before Trump was elected president in 2016, Vance publicly called him an “idiot” and privately compared him to Adolf Hitler – before going on to accept Trump’s offer to run for office together eight years later.
At the start of Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz’s political career in 2007, he received an endorsement from the National Rifle Association for his support of gun rights. But Walz had what he called a “reckoning” after the 2018 Parkland high school shooting in Florida. He went on to support and approve gun safety measures as Minnesota governor.
Some voters demand that politicans’ beliefs should be stagnant, as if they were preserved in amber.
The reality is, as much as people sometimes forget, politicians are humans, too. They have all the same strengths and flaws as the rest of us. When I teach a course on the American presidency every fall, I often point out that perspective can change depending on which side of the desk someone is sitting on in the president’s office.
Hundreds of years of flip-flopping
Thomas Jefferson, the third U.S. president from 1801 through 1809, was a huge advocate for limited government when he ran for office in 1800. Jefferson and his anti-federalist allies called sitting president John Adams at one point a “royalist.” Jefferson accused people in the Federalist Party, who wanted a strong national government, of trying to set up a monarchy in the United States.
Before Jefferson became president, he embraced the idea of a very small national government with restricted powers. He emphasized the importance of strong state power and a very limited national budget.
However, once he was elected president, he was given the opportunity to buy 530 million acres in North America from France, in what we now call the Louisiana Purchase. This doubled the size of the U.S. by adding land from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains.
Jefferson bought this land without input from Congress, demonstrating a stark reversal of his previous policy that de-emphasized the federal government.
Jefferson was aware of this conundrum and, in a letter to American politician Levi Lincoln in 1803, wrote, “The less is said about any constitutional difficulty, the better: and that it will be desirable for Congress to do what is necessary in silence.”
Jefferson knew that he was flip-flopping, but he also believed the Louisiana Purchase was in the country’s best interest.
People change their opinions. As my husband says, “I always reserve the right to get smarter,” paraphrasing Konrad Adenauer, the former chancellor of Germany.
But when politicians reverse course and change their opinions, political pundits, critics and others often call them out for lack of consistency, and might label them a flip-flopper, U-turner or backflipper.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has been criticized for changing his mind on on everything from immigration policy to abortion, depending on who he is talking to and when.
Likewise, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has been accused of reversing her stances on private health insurance, fracking and other issues in order to win new voters.
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