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Wednesday, September 29, 2004

Flip-Flop Frame-Up

Democrats need to think more carefully about deploying the Republican frame of denouncing a politician for flip-flopping.

It is of course appalling to call Kerry a flip-flopper on the War, because his vote to authorize force as a way of empowering the President to take credible measures to inspect Iraq for WMD and enlist a real international coalition to police violations was anything but a war vote, certainly not any kind of vote to endorse a reckless policy of pre-emptive war without real support, much in the way of planning, or adequate evidence of threat. Bush's lies and incompetence are the problem here, not Kerry's intelligent and honest assessments of real complexities.

Yes, Bush is the bigger "flip-flopper," I guess. Yes, Republican hypocrites can be endlessly exposed in their opportunistic shifts in chase of cash and power. But, please, please find some other way to frame the thing you expose when you label a Republican a flip-flopper.

Democrats know that nuanced positions in a complex world are necessary. Democrats know that it is good to change your mind in the face of changed evidence.

If "flip-flopper" gets completely entrenched in the puditocracy, it just becomes a button to push with which to dismiss and deride anybody who struggles to govern sensibly and effectively in a world that is actually complex and changing. This must especially be the case in democracies in which representatives are properly expected to be responsive to those they represent.

Do we really want to make it a matter of political commonsense that only a politician who exhibits a stubborn refusal to back down in the face of dissent, disapproval, evidence, or consequences can be invulnerable to derision and dismissal as a "flip-flopper"?

Think it through! This is just as bad as when Democrats expose the corruption of a Republican politician and then bask in the momentary comfortable "populist" Republican framing of -- another corrupt politican! This is just as bad as when Democrats suggest Republicans are the ones who are really the big reckless spenders, who really grow Big Government, etc. Just because Republicans are lousy at governing and good at cronyism, doesn't mean we should use their sociopathic anti-governmental frames to express our outrage at their failures.

Why play into Republican cynicism about the "inevitable" corruption and ineffectiveness and brutality of government? We don't believe any of those things. We fight to make government accountable, effective, and progressive. We think democratic politics can solve problems and make life better for people.

Democrats need to defend nuance, defend flexibility, defend legitimate expenditure to address real problems, defend government as an institution uniquely empowered by legitimacy to reconcile contending ends, maintain order, redress grievances, address systemic ills.

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