Donald Trump's policy surrealism

Donald Trump has pioneered something beyond mere flip-flopping

Trump's trippy world
(Image credit: Illustrated | Images courtesy Scott Olson/Getty Images, iStock)

Anyone familiar with American presidential campaigns knows that there are few worse things to be than a flip-flopper. The voters plainly want candidates who know what they believe and have always believed the same things, who won't waver or adapt to changing circumstances, whose opinions on policy will be fixed in place forevermore.

It makes a certain degree of sense. What if you elect someone, only to find him changing his views wholesale and governing in a completely different way than the voters intended? That's why so many candidates accuse their opponents of being that low-down dirty cur known as the "flip-flopper." One popular early TV ad format was to portray your opponent on a weather vane, shifting with the wind: Here's a Hubert Humphrey ad in 1968 with Richard Nixon as the weather vane, and here's one four years later where Nixon put George McGovern on the weather vane. Then there's the famous Michael Dukakis ad showing a guy in a suit (representing primary opponent Richard Gephardt) doing back-flips, and of course George W. Bush's ad with John Kerry windsurfing this way and that.

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Paul Waldman

Paul Waldman is a senior writer with The American Prospect magazine and a blogger for The Washington Post. His writing has appeared in dozens of newspapers, magazines, and web sites, and he is the author or co-author of four books on media and politics.