THEY'RE *ALL* FLIP-FLOPPERS!!

Sorry for the absence, gang. All the summer hoopla has commandeered the majority of my free time. Plus, with the two major parties all but decided on their sacrificial lambs, I mean nominees, there seemed to be precious little to blog about. We know who the players are, we know what the stakes are, and from this point on it's just a matter of comparing campaign rhetoric to voting records, and choosing which candidate is less likely to provoke the Apocalypse.

For my part in this little passion play we call democracy, my loyalties are with Obama. I do like the Bobby Kennedy-esque aura, even if I doubt that even Bobby Kennedy could have lived up to the hype. These are cynical times, my friends, and voting seems less and less about picking the best man for the job than it does about choosing the lesser of two evils.

But in my research, my endless channel surfing of all the news programs (including the erstwhile Fox News), I'm starting to hear more and more the long-expired term "flip-flop". You veterans of the red state/blue state wars will remember this term as the nugget that very well may have cost Kerry the presidency in 2004. Karl Rove, Nazi douche bag extraordinaire orchestrated the notion that Kerry was far more malleable on the issues than Bush. This, to the Red State Kool-Aid crowd, signified that he could not be trusted to keep his word. He would promise one thing and then later glibly abandon his convictions to acquiesce to the prevailing winds of our fickle political landscape. Evidence, no doubt was to be found in Kerry's willingness to go to war in Vietnam, only to come home and speak out against it later on.

The Democrats accuse McCain of flip-flopping, the Republicans accuse Obama. Not since the recent Wimbledon have we seen such endless back and forth. They point to incident after incident where each candidate has changed their position. In the end, what does it all mean? If both major party candidates are both guilty of changing positions, NEITHER party can hold it out there to try and make the other guy look bad.

The sad truth is, they're politicians. They're liars and cheats. I'm reminded of the scene in the Hunt for Red October where the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs privately confides to Jack Ryan: "I'm a politician - which means when I'm not kissing babies, I'm stealing their lollipops. But it also means I keep my options open." These guys want to be elected, it's no secret. And that means they're BOTH going to try to appeal to as many people as possible. Abraham Lincoln famously said "you can fool some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." Wise words, considering he was a Republican. And yet every election we see candidates try to prove Honest Abe wrong. Perhaps it's enough to fool 51% of the people, at least until November 3rd.

When it comes to this question of "flip-flopping", I think we need to research it before judging it. Elected officials change their minds all the time on issues - it's not just the domain of the Democrats, nor is it the domain of republicans. Why do candidates change their views on issues? Is it just to get elected? Possibly, but I suspect this is a pretty simplistic viewpoint. When a candidate says something in a speech, odds are it's been filtered through a number of campaign workers, from the speechwriter to the handlers, so that by the time the candidate says it into a microphone, it's been scanned for any potential blowback. Even if a candidate forgets how he may have voted on some bill years back, his staff is paid to remember for him, and to not let him contradict a previous voting record. That is, unless the situation has changed...

One could argue that in 2000, Bush never had intentions of sending troops into Afghanistan. But then 9/11 happened, and the rules changed. Did Bush flip flop? No. The situation changed, necessitating a change in view. Circumstances can radically alter a candidate's view. Now far be it from me to defend Bush; I think he's a war criminal, and I've made no secret of it. But it bears mentioning, if only to remind our neocon friends that flip-flopping can, and often does, have totally legitimate reasoning behind it.

Remember, Reagan (the poster child for all things conservative) used to be a Democrat. Does that make Reagan the king of all flip-floppers? Watch the howls of righteous indignation come pouring in from the right wing when you ever *suggest* such a thing. Things changed, candidates change along with them.

In the 1980's our government was cozying up to people like Saddam Hussein, because we wanted Iraq to go to war with Iran. We gave them money, weapons, we even sent experts to train their soldiers. There is a famous picture from the late 80's showing Donald Rumsfeld happily shaking hands with Saddam Hussein. It seemed like a good idea at the time, I guess. Did we flip-flop since then? By Karl Rove's standards, we absolutely flip-flopped. Same Saddam, same Rumsfeld, total reversal in policy. That's how you define a flip-flop, yet no one points it out. At least no one on the Republican side...

Also in the 1980's, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, we supported the "freedom fighters" who eventually repelled the Soviets. Among those freedom fighters was a guy named Osama bin Laden. That's right gang, our government gave weapons, money and training to Osama bin Laden in the 1980's because it served our needs at the time. Did we flip-flop since then? The same Republicans that were in charge then are in charge now, and both Saddam and bin Laden quickly got moved over from the "Friends" list to the "Enemies" list. Things changed.

Another one: John Kerry went to war in Vietnam when his powerful daddy could have prevented it with one phone call. Lots of powerful Washington people kept their kids out of harm's way in war time by using their influence. John Kerry went - we felt it was his patriotic duty to fight. Then after seeing what went on firsthand, he came back and publicly spoke out against the war in Vietnam. Was he flip-flopping? Republicans would have us believe he was. But the simple truth is, his viewpoint changed based on his experience.

And so it goes. As the facts change, as situations evolve, we all come to view things differently over time. Something that once seemed like a good idea can quickly look like a bad one. This isn't just true for politicians, it's true for the rest of us as well. In any case, both candidates have changed their stance of more than one issue over time, so this term "flip-flop" has become a meaningless term. If they're all guilty of it, then no one gets to accuse anyone else of it.