{"id":57,"date":"2008-01-08T11:51:02","date_gmt":"2008-01-08T18:51:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=57"},"modified":"2008-01-08T11:51:02","modified_gmt":"2008-01-08T18:51:02","slug":"what-i-learned-from-the-democratic-debates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=57","title":{"rendered":"What I learned from the Democratic debates"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nBeing for “change” is good, as long as it’s change in other people. Actually changing your own opinion is bad. To paraphrase part of the New Hampshire debate on Jan. 5:<\/p>\n

\nObama: I’m for change.
\nEdwards: Me too!
\nClinton: Obama has changed his position on health care, the Patriot Act, and fifteen other issues in the past 3 years.
\nObama: No, I didn’t. [Maybe he’s not for change?]
\nClinton: Yes, you did. And you said Edwards was “unelectable” because he<\/i> changed his position on other issues.
\nObama: I never said he was “unelectable”… Anyway, I’m for change. [Maybe he is!]
\nEdwards: Me too! The evil forces of the status quo want to stop us.
\nClinton: What do you mean, evil? I’m for change, too!
\nRichardson: When did experience become a bad thing?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n


\nNow, inconsistency generally isn’t a good thing, as it lies a little too close to “lying” for most people’s comfort. But I have no problem with a leader changing his or her mind over time, as new information comes to light; in fact, I consider this a good<\/i> attribute of a leader. Why is no one willing to step up and say, “Yes, I changed my mind on that issue. Here are the reasons.”? Do we really want a static leader with frozen opinions that don’t respond to the current state of the world? Haven’t we had enough of that already?<\/p>\n

In my opinion, one of the major strengths of humanity is our ability to adapt to changing environments and to come up with new strategies and ideas when old ones don’t work. <\/p>\n

And as for the near-hackneyed concept of “change”, it cannot be characterized as an unadulterated good or bad thing. Does it even make sense to say that you’re for “change”? Changing the status quo could result in improvements or in things getting worse. It’s the quality of the proposed change that matters. I would like to see the candidates stop picking on each other for being for or against “change” and simultaneously for “changing too much” (I’m getting confused as to what the real issue is, and I’m sure I’m not the only one). Instead, how about focusing on what kind of changes they each propose?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Being for “change” is good, as long as it’s change in other people. Actually changing your own opinion is bad. To paraphrase part of the New Hampshire debate on Jan. 5: Obama: I’m for change. Edwards: Me too! Clinton: Obama has changed his position on health care, the Patriot Act, and fifteen other issues in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[29,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}