6
Aug
2008
Flip-Flops aren’t just for the beach!
In the 2004 presidential campaign John Kerry’s (D) presidential bid was almost entirely destroyed by accusations that he was a ‘flip-flopper.’ This came mostly after he said about the war in Iraq, “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it…”
It appeared that 1) he couldn’t make his mind up, and 2) he changed his positions for political gain. Kerry did not look Presidential. He looked weak. To mock him, people dressed up like flip-flops, George W. Bush repeated the accusation, and it stuck. It stuck good. John Kerry lost.
This election both John McCain (R) and Barack Obama (R) have been accused of being ‘flip-flopers.’
What both of them have going against them is their time in the U.S. Senate. A body that only gets things done when Senators compromise and change their positions on issues. Unfortunately for John McCain, he has been in the Senate many, many more years than Barack Obama. This allows people to dig up times where he has changed his position and ‘flopped.’
Politico, along with PoliFact, has an excellent analysis that lays out the major issues that both presidential candidates (especially Obama) have ‘flip-flopped’ on. They rate each ‘flop’ on a ‘flip-o-meter‘ (Ratings of No-Flip, Half-Flip, and Full-Flip) However, the mere existence of a ‘meter’ seems to mock any charges of ‘flip-flopping.’ Politico itself notes:
[T]he presidential race has featured so many alleged flip-flops by either Obama or John McCain … that the charge itself is in danger of losing some of its potency. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to determine on which issues the candidates have actually reversed their positions, and whether their shifts were indeed motivated by political expediency (the implication behind most flip-flop charges) or changing circumstances.
We’ll see if charges of ‘flip-flopping’ resonate like the did in 2004, but I somehow don’t think they will.