In a National Public Radio interview on June 12, 2014, “Fresh Air” host Terry Gross inquired of Democratic hopeful Secretary Hillary Clinton, “Were there positions you believed in as senator but felt that you couldn’t publicly support because it wasn’t the right time yet? That the positions would have been too unpopular, that the public wasn’t ready?”
Gross eventually focused the question on Clinton’s shifting stance on LGBT rights, specifically marriage equality. In January of 2000, prior to her election to the New York State Senate and after eight years as First Lady — during which the lamentable Defense of Marriage Act was signed into law by her husband — Clinton said, “Marriage has got historic, religious and moral content that goes back to the beginning of time and I think a marriage is as a marriage has always been, between a man and a woman." Six years later, Clinton’s view became more nuanced, and she stated she supports state sovereignty in the decision to legalize gay marriage. She conceded, “the way that I have spoken and. . . advocated has certainly evolved and I am happy to be educated and to learn as much as I can.”
In 2008, no candidate supported gay marriage — to do so seemed foolish, as, in the summer prior to the federal elections, only 40 percent of Americans thought gay marriage should be legal. A majority of Americans opposed legalizing gay marriage until about 2012, which is when President Obama came out in support, citing his own "evolution" on the issue. Clinton began to condone gay marriage one year after that.
Yet how much of a ‘learning curve’ should we allow our politicians? Clinton has come under fire, during both her 2008 and her current campaign, for — as Obama put it in 2007 — “triangulation and poll-driven politics,” i.e., altering policy platforms according to shifts in constituent opinion and refusing to make definitive policy statements. Appeasing rhetoric and centrist compromise may seem inevitable in campaigns within a two-party system — especially for a Democratic candidate faced with a Republican Congress, and there is certainly merit to a healthy dose of pragmatism and negotiation in any political climate. Yet politics need not entail prevarication, and, ultimately, the public may be better served by a leader who came to the fore with views sufficiently “evolved” to run.
In the 2007 Democratic primary debate, then-Senator John Edwards emphasized that “big change” cannot come about through “triangulation,” synonymous with “compromise” and indicative of lack of staunch and consistent political principle. This focus on “principle” — deliberate and unchanging — is a continuous fixture in federal elections: this past February, former Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley implicitly criticized Clinton for her reluctance to declare a firmly leftist stance on sociopolitical issues, averring, “The most fundamental power of our party and our country is the power of our moral principles.”
At times, effective policy-making necessitates compromise: in 1996, many liberals lambasted President Bill Clinton’s healthcare reform legislation as an egregious concession to Republican calls for spending cuts in the welfare program, an explicitly “political” move that betrayed core liberal tenets in order to appease a Republican Congress. Yet, a decade after the reform was passed, it became clear “the predictions of doom turned out to be wrong,” and that, in fact, Clinton was able to pursue liberal Democratic goals through a certain tactical bipartisanship. Yet the slippery rhetoric and evasiveness often associated with traditional politicking is wearisome, perhaps to the extent that some voters are pushed to support the reactionary and ridiculous Trump candidacy simply because he “tells it like it is.”
Similarly, Sen. Bernie Sanders’ top strategist, Tad Devine, claims Sanders’ “brand is about the rejection of the politics of our time, not the perpetuation of it.” Sanders has managed to accrue over $15 million in campaign funds while eschewing Super PACs and maintaining a longstanding populist message. The ‘politics of our time’ is one that unfortunately involves an over-flexibility and political maneuvering that leaves voters confused and unsatisfied and allows politicians to perpetually ‘evolve’ into suitable candidates. Tepid policy stances, be they due to uncertainty or oversensitivity to the ‘readiness’ of the public, are a mark of ineptitude, and do not portend successful stewardship of the nation.
Tamar Ziff is an Viewpoint writer.
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