Two sides of the story! - NICE FLIP-FLOPS, BARACK

[Karl]

NICE FLIP-FLOPS, BARACK

A DISAPPOINTING BACKDOWN ON GOV'T. SPYING


IS BARACK OBAMA a Manchurian candidate after all? The minute that Obama became the Dems' presumptive nominee, he traded his cloak of liberal-oriented change for the same thing that he saw John McCain wearing around town, a stylish pair of flip-flops.

Last week, he exhibited some convoluted back-tracking on campaign finance, but Friday's flip-flop on the U.S. Constitution - and the right of the government and corporations to spy on you - is a less inside baseball, and a lot more serious. When Obama was wooing liberal Democratic primary voters, he promised to filibuster any bill that gave retroactive immunity to lawbreaking telecom companies. But now he won't - he says only that he'll "work" to remove it from the final bill . . . kind of in the way that the Washington Nationals are going to "work" real hard between now and September to win the National League East.
Good luck with that, Barack.

While the campaign-finance and domestic-spying flip-flops seem a lot different - both are rooted in the same principle, and it's a dubious one. Obama seems to be winking at his supporters and saying: 'You know I'm the best guy and I'll do the right thing once I get to the Oval Office -- so let me say or do whatever I think I need to for now, in order to make sure I actually get there.'

But while none of this changes the all-important fact that his opponent McCain would be a disastrous third Bush term for America, Obama's underlying message is still a morally dubious one. The best way to show America that you'll be a stand-up president is to be a stand-up candidate for the job. Saying one thing and doing something else on a core issue like the future of the Constitution is a bad signal.

Obama's actions since claiming the nomination show how ridiculous the wildest Manchurian candidate-spinning Obama haters truly are - pushing the idea that he's somehow unpatriotic or un-American. In fact, Obama is a politician with a (mostly) good message and a great story who really, really wants to be the president of the United States - and will do or say whatever it takes to get himself there. Is there anything more all-American than that? *

[Karl]

Two sides of the story! - 'Tis better to flip than flop

'Tis better to flip than flop

Wednesday, June 25, 2008
By Reg Henry, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

As one who stands tall like a lighthouse in a storm, the waves beating futilely against my rock foundations, my literary lamp has always shone in regular intervals to keep simple mariners away from life's shoals.

Ah, yes, even my critics concede that the message of this column is as consistent as a foghorn on a murky night, always sounding the same dreary note, over and over, until simple and complicated mariners alike cry out at last: "Why doesn't he write something different? Why can't he change his mind for once in his life?"

That's easy. Because I do not want to be accused of flip-flopping, which is among the worst things one can do in American public life, next to wearing a bad toupee.

This is somewhat strange. Americans are a people who often choose to change their jobs, their homes, their religions, their spouses, their noses, sometimes their breasts and often their political allegiances.

Yet if one of their elected representatives dares change his mind on an issue of the day, then woe be unto him. That hapless lawmaker then hobbles through life to the imagined sound of the eponymous piece of casual footwear much favored by beach-goers ... flip, flop, flip, flop.

Oh the shame! This was Sen. John Kerry's fate in the last presidential election. How dare he change his mind on the Iraq invasion in the light of new information? It was positively un-American.

Except, of course, it wasn't. The American people are always changing their minds -- they are fickleness personified. It stands to reason that their representatives be allowed to change their minds also, to the extent that they have one.

This was pointed out long ago by no less an authority than Ralph Waldo Emerson, the 19th-century giant of American letters (and how his mail carrier complained about the sack of mail): "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

The second part of this quote is rarely mentioned, which is a shame because it is insightful. That hobgoblin of foolish consistency, Emerson went on, is "adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."
As it happens, I can think of a little statesman who adores a foolish consistency. It seems pointless to name him now given that I have been a foghorn warning about him and we still landed on the rocks.

Between this little statesman and the divines who supported him, the flip-flop was firmly established in his reign as a terrible political offense. He rarely changed his mind, with the result that for 71/2 years we have not heard the dreadful flip, flop, flip, flop sound -- just flop, flop, flop, flop.

Well today, I am going to change my mind. I am going to reject a foolish consistency in favor of a wise inconsistency. Hobgoblin be gone!
Lighthouse of consistency that I am, I will embrace my inner flip-flop if it means doing something sensible. And I will give a pass to the presidential candidates if they wish to change their minds, too.

Actually, there has been a lot of that going on. Sen. Barack Obama, apostle of a different sort of politics, threw away his new hymnal and rejected public financing. Sen. John McCain changed his mind and is now for offshore drilling. There are other examples too, and each is accusing the other of flip-flopping. This has about as much credibility as Saucy Shirley criticizing Naughty Nellie for flip-flopping at a chastity symposium.

Personally, I don't care that Mr. Obama has decided not to foolishly throw away his fund-raising advantage so that he can win. Neither do I fault Mr. McCain for changing his mind about offshore drilling if he thinks that people who like scenic oil rigs adorning their seascapes are an important constituency and the prospect of gas coming down in price in 20 years is irresistible.

Of course, if politicians constantly change their minds, if they are windsocks in a gale of issues, that is one thing. But changing minds about this issue or that issue while generally hewing to a broad philosophical outlook isn't flip-flopping -- it's what adults called maturity.

It amazes me how a great nation has become so fixated on childish slogans -- "cut and run," there's another stupid one. In fact, the absurdity has reached such a level that these slogans cross-pollinate each other. To some confused minds, we can't cut and run because that would be a flip-flop.

What the heck is wrong with leaders changing their minds when they encounter a changing world? The trouble is that "ideology" is too close to "idiocy" in the dictionary and some people have become confused.