Reading about the Democratic debate in Pennsylvania yesterday (which I unfortunately missed while traveling for work), there was one thing that especially struck me. It somehow came up that a response to a 1996 questionnaire indicated that Barack Obama was in favor of state-imposed bans on handguns. Now the Obama campaign claims that the response was a mistake made by the staffers who filled out the questionnaire on the candidate’s behalf and that he has, in fact, never been in favor of such a restriction.
Let’s say for argument’s sake that Obama hadactually changed his position since 1996, and had decided that he was no longer in favor of state-imposed bans on handguns. There is little question that he’d be accused on all sides of inconsistency and duplicitousness.
But does everychange in position over one’s political career really have to be so discrediting? Are there not arguments that might well show such voltefaces to be signs of increased credibility and reliability?
Are politicians not allowed, like the rest of us, to continously study and debate issues and evolve their positions on them? Indeed, out of all people in this country, politicians and other leaders have widespread access to experts in the issues in which they are charged with addressing. They are privy to special reports, panels, testimony, and networks that the common American would have to exert considerable effort and expense to obtain. Of all people, are not politicians the most ripe to have their opinions challenged and either strengthened, weakened, or nuanced? Isn’t that exactly what the Democrats and others have been demanding of the Bush administration regarding Iraq?
Obviously the motivation for the change matters. And of course, politicians don’t normally seek office in order to learn and decide on the job. They go with a set of values and political choices inside of them, which their voters have discerned in combination with the candidate’s character to best represent their interests. Do politicians, then, do a disservice by changing their positions? If they undergo a substantial change of position — say, even, a switch from one party to another — are they obligated to resign their position as representatives for their constituency?
I ask all these questions because in the past several years, many of my own positions on various issues have been shifting and evolving. When I hear about candidates changing their opinion on something, I often sympathize. You can speak with conviction about one side, and a short time later after further thought and with more information, you can speak with conviction about the other. Don’t we want our leaders to be thoughtful like that?
We live in strange times. Though enormous quantities of information travel at the speed of light, we still live in a world of imperfect information. We’ll never have all the details about everything, and in this age of the 24-hour, always-on news cycle, leaders encounter more and more pressure to have an answer — a perfect answer — right away, and to be consistent on that answer. Is that healthy for us as a nation?
Speak up.
Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of Flickr user Goombay.
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