Changing your mind is not a sin

‘My view has changed,” presidential candidate Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin said last March to Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.” “I’m flat-out saying it.”

Walker was having second thoughts on immigration: He had once backed comprehensive reform but was now taking a more skeptical view.

The governor’s critics will note that his change of mind happened to align with political expediency, and they may be right. But the fact that he refused to go through the common contortions of pretending that his past position is really the same as his up-to-date position is worth applause.

One of the highest values in American political culture these days is consistency. If you change your mind, or if you alter your course in light of new circumstances, you risk being tagged with the supposedly deadly label of “flip-flopper.”

You waffled, you licked your finger and checked the wind. You’re a follower, not a leader. If you changed your mind once, you’ll probably do it again and again. You can’t be trusted.

But absolute consistency in politics is as unwise as absolute consistency in any other area of life. Situations alter, relationships strengthen or decline, experience informs our views. We change our minds.

Think of parenting. If you are the parent of a teenager and you hold the same views on raising children that you held when your first child was a toddler, you are an idiot. Yet most of our politicians feel they must undercut the charge of inconsistency by pretending never to have thought or said anything other than what they’re thinking or saying now.

Consider the phrase “day one.” You say such-and-such, a politician’s critics often claim, but five years ago you said something different. On the contrary, says the man or woman who wants to lead: “I’ve said from day one . . .”

When was day one? Maybe it was the first day of that politician’s term in office, or maybe it was the day he announced his candidacy, or maybe it was just a long time ago. You’re never sure. But he wants you to know that from that day to this, he’s been saying the same thing.

And it’s almost inevitable that what comes after that strange phrase — what the politician has supposedly said “since day one” — is a statement so platitudinous that no one could disagree with it anyway.

When Rep. Jim Clyburn, a Democrat from South Carolina, was recently questioned about his not entirely consistent position on free trade — he has sometimes supported it but was signaling skepticism toward the Trade Promotion Authority bill — he responded, “I’ve said from day one that trade is good.” Oh.

Foreign affairs seem to attract lots of talk about “day one.” Diplomats and would-be Presidents are tortured by the thought that their evolving responses will appear haphazard or unprincipled. When, for instance, Secretary of State Kerry recently conceded that the Syrian town of Kobani was being brutalized by Islamic State fighters, he couldn’t simply state the administration’s policy and intentions on fighting ISIS in Syria and Turkey.

He had to explain how the administration’s language hasn’t varied since some mythical “day one.” “We have said from day one,” he explained, “it’s going to take a period of time to bring the coalition thoroughly to the table, to rebuild some of the morale and capacity of the Iraqi Army, and to begin to focus where we ought to be focusing first, which is in Iraq.”

Has the administration really said all that “from day one”? Of course not, but what seems to be important for Kerry is rhetorical consistency over time, not cogent policy right now.

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. Maybe, but I don’t think today’s politicos are themselves little-minded. The problem, rather, is that they think the rest of us are little-minded: dumb enough to think a politician is honest and competent just because he claims always to have said or believed the same thing. In the presidential debate, Donald Trump was asked about his transformation from pro-choice to pro-life on abortion. “I’ve evolved on many issues over the years,” he began. Some friends had intended to have an abortion but decided against it, “and that child today is a total superstar,” adding, “I’ve very much evolved.”

In truth, he couldn’t have evolved in the other direction if he wanted the GOP presidential nomination. But his admission was preferable to the disingenuous claims to ideological immutability we’ve grown accustomed to.

Minds change. Just flat-out say it.

Let’s stop making politicians jump through hoops to explain away shifts in thinking