Joshua Bentley published in 2019:
One option when a politician changes positions is to simply announce the new position without acknowledging any change occurred. Ignoring the flip-flop may allow the politician to avoid awkward questions about it, if the issue has low salience for key stakeholders. For example, during the 2008 presidential campaign Barack Obama criticized John McCain for proposing a commission to study the recent financial crisis on Wall Street. “A commission,” Obama said, “That’s Washington-speak for we’ll—we’ll get back to
you later” (Jacobson, 2010, para. 2). However, after his election, President Obama created commissions to deal with the BP oil spill, the national debt, nuclear energy, and bioethics. PolitiFact reported that the White House declined to comment on its story. It may be that most voters had little interest in the issue of government commissions, and even Obama’s political opponents were not motivated to attack him over it. Thus, ignoring the apparent inconsistency was a viable strategy.Another situation in which politicians may be able to ignore their flip-flops is when only their partisan opponents are concerned with the flip-flop, or when the flip-flop has become commonplace in Washington. Between 2013 and 2018, for example, Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, and Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, both changed their positions on filibustering judicial nominees. When Democrats controlled the Senate, Reid supported eliminating the filibuster (to allow Democrats to confirm their judges) and McConnell opposed it. Later, when Republicans controlled the Senate, McConnell supported the elimination of the filibuster and Reid opposed it. PolitiFact found that both men performed full-flops, but neither senator attempted to justification the
change. The mostly likely explanation for the change seems to be naked partisanship; however, because most Republicans and Democrats were guilty of the same thing, and because each party’s base supported its actions, there was little reason to address these
flip-flops directly.If politicians try to ignore their flip-flops, they run the risk of looking foolish when someone questions them on the subject. We found several cases in which politicians announced new positions and did not explain how they had arrived at them until journalists or voters challenged them on the change. A few politicians tried to continue ignoring the issue by dodging the questions or giving non-responsive answers. Most attempted to deny or justify their flip-flops. We believe a more effective and ethical strategy in these situations is to announce the reason for the change up front. Failure to do so may insult the intelligence of key stakeholders.
