THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 16, 1995 TAG: 9501130008
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial [Notebook]
SOURCE: Patrick K. Lackey, editorial writer
LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines
Waffling has gotten a bad name in politics, and for good reasons.
1. A politician for sale to the highest bidder must waffle back and forth until the highest bid is received, for once the politician commits, the bidding is done.
2. A politician caught in a lie will claim merely to have waffled.
3. A politician who leans whichever way opinion polls tell him to lean has to waffle whenever new polls show the public mind changing. (Or worse, the public may simultaneously favor two or more conflicting proposals. For example, the public prefers from its federal government lower taxes, bountiful benefits, a strong national defense and a balanced budget. Who wouldn't?)
4. Bill Clinton. During the 1990 presidential campaign, Young Republicans sailed frozen waffles like Frisbees at Clinton the candidate, and they were not for breakfast.
To hear some talk-show hosts tell it, waffling was one of the 10 original sins. Any change of mind back and forth, or simple indecision, is seen as proof of a congenital lack of conviction.
And yet how many bad decisions might have been avoided if only politicians had waffled. Politicians of conviction believed we could whip the North Vietnamese without breaking a sweat, or certainly without raising taxes.
Wafflers usually are negative thinkers, the ones who say, ``Now wait a minute,'' or ``But the emperor has no clothes.''
Perhaps the most brilliant defense of waffling was made this week by House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a man few expected to waffle.
He said, ``We're are not going to get trapped into doing something dumb just so you all can say we're consistent.''
He stopped short of saying, but more or less implied, ``We're not going to do something stupid, just because we signed a Contract With America saying we would.''
Technically, Gingrich did not waffle - he flip-flopped. To truly waffle, his position should go back and forth a few times, a la Clinton, and his speeches should be vague. But in these speeded-up times, one change of mind counts in some circles as a waffle, as proof of lack of commitment.
It should be noted that politicians, like journalists, are generalists, which is to say they have to deal all the time with issues they know little about. If they approach every issue as though they were born knowing what is best, the nation soon will be closed for repairs.
A promise kept would be nice, if only as a novelty, but there's something to be said for waffling. by CNB