Leubsdorf: They’re all ‘flip-floppers’

Candidates often adapt past positions to suit present realities, and it’s standard practice for their rivals to assail those changes. It’s easy to see why voters get confused. The fact is that no presidential candidate is consistent on everything. And in most cases, their current positions are more significant than their past ones, because they more closely signal their presidential intentions.

In recent years, congressional Republicans have often taken “all or nothing” positions, reflecting polls showing Republicans far less amenable to compromise than Democrats. So, too, did Trump, to a greater extent than other recent presidents. A classic example was when he was offered an immigration compromise in 2019 that funded the wall he was extending on the country’s southern border if he’d accept legal status for hundreds of thousands of “dreamers,” young people brought illegally to the United States as small children.

In the morning, he signaled his openness to the deal. After lunch, he reversed himself, presumably after pressure from his most fervent anti-immigration adviser, Stephen Miller. And though Trump consistently called for the badly needed infrastructure upgrade that President Joe Biden and the Democrats ultimately enacted, he rejected the compromises the Democrats wanted, saying he wouldn’t work with them while they were investigating his administration.

Trump’s attitude represented a sharp change from the practice of Ronald Reagan, who was a far more pragmatic president than his more ideological campaigns suggested. “I’d rather get 80 percent of what I want than go over the cliff with my flags flying,” said Reagan, who acquiesced on tax increases he opposed to get the promises of spending cuts he sought.

Unlike Trump, Biden worked with a bipartisan Senate coalition to achieve a compromise infrastructure bill. Harris, who was part of that and other negotiations, shows every sign of being similarly pragmatic, as she has in adapting past positions in her current campaign.

When she first sought the presidency in 2019, the early Democratic debate was dominated by liberal Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Both backed Sanders’ plan to extend Medicare to provide health insurance for all Americans, a proposal notably opposed by Biden.

Harris proposed a combination that adopted the Sanders plan of government health insurance for all but kept a role for private insurers. Though a potentially palatable compromise, it was something she had great difficulty in explaining, and her candidacy never gained traction. An aide said recently it’s something she no longer favors.

The same is true with fracking, an important issue in pivotal Pennsylvania, and defunding the police.

It’s a safe bet Trump will raise these issues in their Sept. 10 debate, as he has on the campaign trail. But there’s no sign yet that his contentions of flip-flopping have dented Harris’ momentum, though some interviews with undecided voters showed a desire for more specificity.

There’s a reason most candidates prefer to provide generalities to indicate their ideological thrust, rather than offering specifics that opponents can attack.

Carl P. Leubsdorf is a columnist for Dallas Morning News.