Should We Celebrate Politicians Who Change Their Minds?
Through most of his life Benjamin Franklin, known for his character and self-discipline, used slave labor in his home and doubted Black children could learn as well as whites. Yet he willingly tested his assumption when he helped establish several schools for Black youths. Their achievements, he concluded, revealed his unfounded prejudice. By the end of his life he had become president of the Philadelphia Society for the Abolition of slavery and petitioned Congress for “the Restoration of liberty to those unhappy Men, who alone, in this land of Freedom, are degraded into perpetual Bondage.”
Such admissions of error and a change of political beliefs are uncommon. Even when such changes reflect careful thought, they are often just labeled “flip-flopping” by those eager to gain political points. Critics charge that such changes are signs of deviousness, indecisiveness, pandering and/or a lack of moral principle. Just ask John Kerry, who as a presidential candidate in 2004 was attacked for concluding that the War in Iraq that he initially supported was a mistake – and saying so.
Yet changing one’s mind can be necessary and admirable. American history offers examples when the failure to change proved disastrous. When President Wilson refused to make changes demanded by the Senate for its approval of membership in the League of Nations, that body’s effectiveness at preventing war was dramatically weakened without American participation. Changing one’s mind can be a sign of political prudence and moral courage. The framers of the Constitution understood they had not fashioned a perfect product and so invited changes through provisions for amendment.
Some guidelines can be useful in evaluating a politician who changes her/his mind. The more such tests are met, the more willing we should be to listen and avoid the rush to criticize.
Is the change consistent with Constitutional provisions and democratic values? For the first two years of the Civil War, though he abhorred slavery as a violation of the Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln refused entreaties to free enslaved Americans. He insisted he had no authority to do so under the Constitution. As the war neared an end, however, he championed abolishing slavery, yet insisted it be done by what became the 13th Amendment.
Is the change anchored in facts and explained thoughtfully to the public? During the Constitutional Convention, James Madison argued against language that would protect basic rights, believing it unnecessary because power to abuse those rights was not granted to the new national government. During state conventions it became clear that without a promise of amendments ratification would fail. An implied promise was made and in the First Congress, Madison wrote, proposed and argued for amendments which we now know as the Bill of Rights. As economist Paul Samuelson would put it in the twentieth century, “Well, when events change, I change my mind. What do you do?”
Is the change consistent with long-term national interests versus short-term political popularity/gain? Throughout his Senate career, Texan Lyndon Johnson campaigned against meaningful civil rights legislation. Yet upon becoming president after Kennedy’s assassination, he championed and steered through to passage the Civil Rights Act of 1974 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This enraged Southern segregationists but Johnson defended it as both a moral necessity and an essential measure for American democracy.
Does the politician have a reputation for character, prudence and self-discipline?
On January 10, 1945, Michigan Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg, a highly respected member of Congress, rose in the Senate chamber and delivered what was soon called “the speech heard round the world.” A pre-war advocate of isolationism, Vandenberg proclaimed that World War II’s “gory science of mass murder” meant that America could no longer, as it had historically done, retreat from world responsibility. "I do not believe," he said, "that any nation hereafter can immunize itself by its own exclusive action." Vandenberg went on to play a major role in gaining Congressional approval of both the Marshall Plan and NATO.
Does the politician have the moral courage to explain the change and take the heat of criticism?
In the midst of the Watergate scandal, during his Senate confirmation hearing for Vice-President after Spiro Agnew had stepped down in disgrace, Gerald Ford was asked if he would block the prosecution of Nixon if he was charged with a crime. He responded that “I do not think the public would stand for it.” Yet one month after Nixon resigned, Ford pardoned him. Despite intense criticism, Ford defended his decision as “the right thing to do” and as both an act of conscience and essential to restore the Constitution’s promise of “domestic tranquility” after the civil disruption Watergate had produced. Ford’s decision cost the Republican party 40 House and 5 Senate seats in the ensuing mid-term elections and cost him the presidency when he ran against Jimmy Carter in 1976.
Writer Norman Mailer once said of those who stubbornly refuse to alter their views, “It’s an iron law of life that we change or pay an increasing price for remaining the same.” That is true of those who govern - and those of us who put them in office.
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