This One's Not Really About Sarah Palin

There have been so many accusations made against Governor Palin, the majority of them false or misleading, that focusing on "The Bridge to Nowhere" story seems trivial.

But I'm not writing to address the verity of the accusation made regarding that infamous bridge, an accusation that at least had the virtue of being neither scurrilous nor tawdry.

In short, the claim is that she was "for 'The Bridge to Nowhere' before she was against it." It's an obvious allusion to Senator Kerry's gaffe in the 2004 presidential campaign, and it's one pundits and politicos can't seem to resist invoking.

But it's not news simply because a politician changes her position, and it wasn't news simply because Kerry changed his vote on the supplemental appropriation for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Politicians change their minds, and their votes, for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it's a legitimate reaction to another change: to the facts, to one's understanding of the facts, to the bill in question, and, occasionally, to a sincere change of heart.

Sometimes it's a political decision, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Pandering is certainly nothing to be proud of, and pretending that you support something you don't (and won't) just to get elected is something I find particularly objectionable. On the other hand, deciding that a compromise measure is better than nothing-at-all can be a very good thing, though personally I think bipartisanship is overrated.

All politicians pander, certainly all those who stay in office more than one term. It's really a matter of degree. What made Senator Kerry's shift on the troop-funding vote noteworthy was, first, that he already had a reputation for flip-flopping. Say what you will about his opponent, but most substantive criticisms of President Bush pertain to positions he's consistently held or his tendency to become too entrenched on an issue. (Yes, there are exceptions.)

Kerry's reputation only made him vulnerable to charges that he wasn't reliable or a man of principle. What really gave those charges legs was the sheer idiocy of the way he expressed himself: "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it." We all say stupid things, but Kerry picked a particularly inopportune moment to say this one.

How quickly we forget even recent history, and how easily we're taken in by shoddy analogies. Politicians should face scrutiny whenever they change their positions, but let's stop hearing that all such changes are akin to Kerry's position change on the $87 billion and the infamous statement that accompanied it.

They're not. And they actually never were before they weren't.

UPDATE (9/9/08, 5:56 pm): I made a minor change to the original text. I would have preferred doing so by leaving all the original language intact but "striking out" those words I wished to change by running a line through them. Unfortunately, I don't know how to do that. If you do (my email program has that feature), please let me know.

In any case, the paragraph that begins with "Kerry's reputation only made him vulnerable to charges that he wasn't reliable or a man of principle" used to begin with "But that's only what made Kerry vulnerable to charges that he wasn't reliable or a man of principle."

UPDATE (9/10/08, 8:50 pm): Maureen Dowd had a typically sophomoric article in today's New York Times, light on the research and heavy on the futile attempts to sound cute and clever. I mention it here because it included this penetrating piece of analysis: "Why was Sarah for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against the Bridge to Nowhere, and why was she for earmarks before she was against them? And doesn’t all this make her just as big a flip-flopper as John Kerry?" (Sorry for not providing a link: I'm still trying to figure out how all the bells and whistles work.)