Thursday Thought

I'm extremely proud to have a President who has announced his support for marriage equality. That's pretty freakin' awesome. It's also kind of sad that it's 2012 and it's taken this long, but that's neither here nor there. 


But this picture from Faux News Nation (of course, who else?) got me thinking.

Why do we consider 'flip flopping' in our politicians a bad thing? I'm not trying to say that it's always not a bad thing. But consider this headline, and Obama's "flip flop" on marriage equality. 


Why is it that growth, change, and evolution in our beliefs is considered mature, good, the process of life, growing up, etc. in regular people... but in politicians it's "flip flopping" and somehow bad? Are our politicians supposed to hold the same beliefs from their first speech to their last? Somehow despite their gained life experience and meetings with "real Americans" they're supposed to never waiver, never change their minds, never 'evolve' on an issue, never realize they might have been wrong in the past. Really? 


Now I agree that flip flopping is bad when people clearly have no reason for it, or are just trying to appease voters/donors/whoever pays their bills, or are clearly lying. But if a politician comes to the public, as President Obama has, and says "Look, I've been thinking about this issue, and I know in the past I said this, but now after thought, discussion, meeting people, growing, etc, I realize I was wrong and I now believe this is right," why do we give it the derogatory term of "flip flopping"? Normal people grow, change their minds, realize they were wrong, start to believe different things, based on their own growing life experience. But we expect different from politicians? Even when they give a heartfelt explanation for their change in opinion? 


Politicians, congress men/women, Presidents, etc, they are all people. I think we forget that sometimes. We try to hold them to these infallible standards that we don't hold anyone we personally know to. I agree that because of the nature of their job, they should be held to a higher standard than your average Joe Schmo (or Josephine Schmosephine). But we need to stop continually calling them 'flip floppers' when they have a true change of heart.