Flip-Floppers Make Better Presidents

August 6 2004
Counterbias.com
Kimberly C. Elliott

They call him a flip-flopper like it's a bad thing. 2004's Republican talking points surely mandate calling John Kerry a flip-flopper on an hourly basis. Flip-flopper, flip-flopper, flip-flopper!

This sneering, exceedingly childish label beckons adult Americans back to the playground where such inane labels are hurled in wonton cruelty among nice kids and bullies alike with abundant  disdain and mocking laughter. Dummy! Wimp! Freak-face!

Children make such attempts to manipulate, intimidate, influence, control, or hurt one another in a language newly learned and barely understood. Such unsophisticated rhetoric constitutes cruelty amongst children, but this beginner's brand of bashing is not the exclusive domain of pre-adolescent tyrants-in-training. Traitor! America-hater! Flip-flopper!

Like other banal uses of language, name-calling does not hold up to any sort of scrutiny. It does, however, invite a particular type of response – "I am not"! The ensuing dialogue tends to follow the standard playground-established pattern: Are too! Am not! Are too-flip-flopper, flip-flopper,
flip-flopper!

As many adults and children alike have learned, this argument lacks an argument. In other words, neither party stakes any substantive claim and no relevant evidence is presented or necessary. The name-caller wins merely by eliciting the "I am not" response, for it legitimates the charge.

If Kerry were to claim in response to Republican
name-calling that he is not a flip-flopper, his claim would affirm two Republican-created fictions: first, that the term flip-flopper has whatever meaning Bush supporters ascribe to it; and second, that being a flip-flopper is bad.

Flip-flopper is a term whose definition does not show up in ordinary English dictionaries, so if we are going to use the term, we will have to make some assumptions about its meaning. Dictionaries provide definitions for flip-flop; "a backless sandal held to the foot by a thong", for instance. In the 2004 Campaign's name-calling context, though, a more likely choice from among the various usages is something akin to "a decision to reverse an earlier decision".

So, in Bush-Cheney-Speak, a 'flip-flopper' is a person who makes a decision to reverse an earlier decision. Bush supporters might say a "flip-flopper" is whatever John Kerry is; he is the very embodiment of a flip-flopper, the original, one and only flip-flopper, and nobody else even can be one because nobody else is John Kerry. In this case, the claim that John Kerry is a flip-flopper says nothing about him, only that you may substitute the phrase "flip-flopper" for "John Kerry". 

If instead you prefer the former definition, then Kerry is a flip-flopper in that he is a person who makes or has made one or more decisions to reverse one or more of his earlier decisions. This too is a value-free statement. 

Although reversing or retracting a decision is neither inherently bad nor inherently good, partisan name-calling imposes a value judgment on the label flip-flopper through tone, context, and intent to convey disdain for flip-floppers. Implied meanings notwithstanding, flip-flopping often is the right thing to do.  

Here are some examples of good reasons to flip-flop: 

• A situation has changed, and your prior decision has become less relevant, appropriate, or adequate to guide your actions in the present and/or the future.

• Additional information has come to your attention or has become available, enabling you to make a better decision than the one you made before.

• Your prior decision was not perfect, and you
  believe you have found a way to improve upon it.

• You have learned from your experience, and you want to make a new decision with the benefit of what you have learned.

• You now believe that a prior decision was a
  mistake.
  

Do we not want a president who has a demonstrated capability and willingness to learn and to improve himself and his job performance over time? Can we agree that all human beings, including U.S. presidents, make many imperfect decisions that can be refined or retracted to adjust to changing circumstances and to improve outcomes?

By rebuking Kerry as a flip-flopper, many Americans effectively exalt leaders who will not retreat from their decisions no matter how grave the consequences. Arguably, no such leader exists, although some leaders are more stubborn and less adaptable than others.

Suppose, for example, that a president is vehemently opposed to abortion. Suppose his ideas for reducing the number of abortions include erasing governmental recommendations for the use of condoms to reduce both the occurrences of pregnancy and the sexual transmission of disease. Some of this president's other ideas include withdrawing U.S. taxpayer funds from all medical providers who might utter the word abortion, so that pregnant women will not think of abortion when considering their options. Suppose that thousands of vital health-care providers cannot replace the lost U.S. taxpayer funds, so they cease to provide services altogether, eliminating the only sources of contraception for millions of people throughout the world.

This president advocates abstinence as the sole solution to all these problems, advising people who don't want to make a baby to just avoid sexual intercourse. Suppose that this president's policies fail to reduce the number of abortions. Instead, they dramatically increase the number of unplanned pregnancies among women who lack access to contraception, add more children to the world's poorest populations, increase the frequency of risks, injuries, and deaths women may sustain in pregnancy and childbirth without prenatal and postnatal care, increase the demand for abortion worldwide, and exacerbate the AIDS pandemic.

If this president cannot think of a single mistake he has made during his presidency, if he hasn't developed the habits of lifelong learning, or if he believes that his ability to be re-elected, or elected for the first time -- whatever the case may be -- depends upon his unceasing certainty in his every decision, then the massive human suffering his decisions both create and sustain are utterly irrelevant because his decisions are already made. There is nothing to think about -- all is decided.

A flip-flopper, however, faced with such crushing results and human misery emanating from his decisions, might change something. For example, a flip-flopper might change his policy on condoms, admitting that using condoms reduces the likelihood that either pregnancy or disease transmission will result from sex. He may continue to say that abstinence is even more effective than condoms for these purposes, but in a dramatic, favorable flip-flop, he might expound a little bit to admit that talking about abstinence doesn't help at all. Women and men must actually have no intercourse, ever to render abstinence an effective way to prevent pregnancy. 

Another thing a flip-flopper might do is use some U.S. taxpayer funds to make contraception available to everyone in the world who does not want to make a baby, but who still may experience heterosexual intercourse. This would prevent countless unplanned pregnancies, which tend to precede most abortions, so maybe a flip-flopping president would enact new policies to help achieve his goal of reducing the number of abortions occurring in the world.

Many Americans seem to like the idea of having a president who makes up his mind and sticks to his guns no matter what. Bush often does that (or at least that's the picture his handlers paint of him), but like anyone else, he also makes or agrees to new decisions sometimes. For example, Bush used to decide each day to drink large quantities of alcohol, but one day he flip-flopped on that decision. On another day Bush decided to accept Jesus Christ as his savior, and to become a born-again Christian. A few keywords should
suffice to remind us of a few other big Bush flip-flops: cocaine, Chalabi, Geneva Conventions.

Maybe Bush's supporters would say that his are the good kind of flip-flops. If so, they're coming around to a more sophisticated way of looking at flip-floppers by acknowledging that flip-flopping is neither inherently bad nor good. Rather, some decisions are better than others for achieving certain results. Knowing this means that if we
care about the results we get, we can support making better decisions to replace any previously-made, less beneficial decisions.

A dip into even the shallow end of the American history pool offers significant perspective on both the peril and the promise of flip-flopping. For example, Bush's relentless attack on Kerry for his alleged flip-flopping may remind us of George H.W. Bush's excruciating presidential experience with a politically costly flip-flop. The elder Bush famously promised Americans, "read my lips: no new taxes" before he became our president and raised our taxes. Perhaps the younger Bush's disdain for flip-floppers exempts his own father.

Recent history also reminds us that Saddam Hussein was a U.S.-armed and supported military dictator in Iraq when the elder Bush was our vice president and Ronald Reagan was our president. At that time, our government supplied weapons to Iraq to wage war on Iran, and condoned through complicit silence Hussein's practice of using U.S.-supplied weapons to kill many of his own citizens. Later, the U.S. obviously changed its policies toward Iraq and Hussein, invading the nation and deposing the leader for allegedly still having the weapons the U.S.  provided and for killing his own people, which our government did not like, in retrospect. Hussein's extended relationship with the U.S. suggests that flip-flopping is a significant, but seldom mentioned feature of U.S. foreign policy.

Courage sometimes is required to stick to a decision regardless of how painful doing so becomes. Some very good decisions are fiercely opposed. For example, President John F. Kennedy's decision to force the racial integration of schools in the U.S. was both good and violently opposed. Enacting that decision required courage of the president and of many other Americans.

Courage also is required sometimes to displace an existing decision, even one passionately made and touted. For example, many politicians fervently advocated racial segregation and bigotry in the U.S. prior to and during the Civil Rights Movement, but later publicly embraced racial integration and tolerance. Few Americans would have admired such leaders for their self-assurance or decisiveness if they had stuck with their earlier decisions to enact bigotry and to maintain inequality through social policy.

If Americans one day elect an infallible president, I will support the president's refusals to reconsider any of her or his decisions. This year, however, it appears that our two major candidates both are mortal beings who fall short of perfection. Accordingly, I want to fire the resolute incumbent who rarely improves upon his own ideas and who seems to consider doing so a personal and political weakness. In 2004,  I want to elect the flip-flopper, a person who reflects, learns, and adapts to changing conditions without apology.

Kimberly C. Elliott currently resides in Denver, and is a graduate student in rhetorical criticism.