DARMAN: The Noble History of Flip Flopping

It is worth remembering, before the depression sets in too deep, that flip-flopping has a noble history in this country. In his first run for the presidency, Abraham Lincoln vowed not to force the end of slavery in the South. But by his second Inaugural, he could swear that, God willing, "every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid with another drawn by the sword." Where was the greatness when Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964? In the fact that a white politician, who'd come of age in Jim Crow Texas and had been a sometime segregationist in the Senate, knew he was sacrificing his party's domination of the South—and did the right thing all the same. What made Bobby Kennedy's antiwar campaign of 1968 so remarkable? In part, the fact that he had been the fiercest of cold warriors, a lieutenant to Joseph McCarthy himself. Schoolchildren know what grace means in America: I once was lost but now am found,'twas blind but now I see.

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For Robert Feldman, a professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, flip-flopping on the campaign trail is a very human trait.

"Politicians are like the rest of us," he said. "In everyday life, we say things to make ourselves look better, get people to like us, get a job. We all lie, to a greater or lesser extent. It's the same with politicians."

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