Steve Benen on Maddowblog gets a bit het up about President Trump’s changes in position:
One of Donald Trump’s most important early flip-flops came just 11 days into his presidency. As a candidate, Trump broke with Republican Party orthodoxy and endorsed lowering prices on prescription drugs by using Medicare’s negotiating power. That, however, did not last.
On Jan. 31, after a meeting with executives and lobbyists from the pharmaceutical industry, Trump denounced the idea he used to support, calling it a form of “price fixing” that would hurt “smaller, younger companies.” Trump had one set of beliefs, he heard conflicting information, so he adopted a different set of beliefs. …
Now, however, Trump is adopting an entirely different set of opinions on many issues, not as part of some grand ideological rebranding, but because some folks gave him new information he found compelling. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) explained this yesterday by saying, “Some of the things that were said during the campaign, I think he now knows simply aren’t the way things ought to be.”
That’s an exceedingly polite way of saying, “Trump had no idea what he was talking about when he ran for the nation’s highest office, but a variety of people are now guiding him new directions.”
Some sympathetic figures may find all of this vaguely encouraging. Perhaps it’s a good thing, optimists will argue, that the president is acquiring new information and drawing new conclusions. It’s at least preferable to him ignoring evidence and sticking to old assumptions that never really made any sense.
All of which brings up the question of how and when someone should change a position. Generally speaking, everyone takes positions on issues that are wrong. In the science community, these are called hypotheses, used to attempt to explain some observation. Scientists then attempt to falsify, that is, disprove their hypothesis. Those hypotheses which survive numerous such challenges are accepted on a contingency basis, that basis being that it may still be disproved in the future, but for the moment we’ll go with it.
Transferring this to the non-scientific world isn’t that much of a stretch, but for one thing – we tend to attach our egos, our prestige, into our hypotheses. Scientists are not immune to this problem, although the better ones manage to disconnect it. But outside of the science community, the prestige that goes along with backing a given position on an issue is inevitable. It’s not even necessarily a bad thing. After all, if someone comes up with one good position on an issue, maybe they’ll have more. Sure, give them prestige.
But when a hypothesis fails, then what? The ego and prestige resist being wrong, of course. A prominent example is the Kansas economic disaster, brought on by Governor Brownback’s position that lower taxes will spark an economic Renaissance. He wants Trump to replicate his position on the Federal level – and then surely heaven will follow.
It’s a choice bit of madness for a former star of the GOP who is beginning to lose the support of his own party. I suspect he’ll disappear – or at least should – into the swamp once he’s a former governor. Unfortunately, like the economist he relied on, Arthur Laffer (one of the great nominative determinism examples), he’ll probably linger on and assume an air of respectability, unearned in reality, but still palpable.
But I digress.
The proper response when a position on an issue results in an unpredicted (and negative, of course) result is that the position should be changed. This is what a mature adult human should do.
But President Trump is outside of this model of human behavior. During the campaign, he didn’t hesitate to promise whatever would please his audience most, without regard to realities on the ground. Now that he’s discovering issues are far more complex than his shallow knowledge base encompassed, he changes his positions.
It sounds reasonable, but it’s not. From Steve:
The Wall Street Journal noted a similar shift this week on the U.S. Export-Import Bank.
During the campaign, Mr. Trump was skeptical of Ex-Im Bank, which funds U.S. trade deals, calling it “unnecessary.” The bank has been a target of Republican criticism, which Mr. Trump seized on.
But that view changed earlier this year after he talked to Boeing Co. CEO Dennis Muilenburg, who explained to him what role the bank plays, according to people familiar with the matter.
Explaining his new position, Trump told the Wall Street Journal this week that he “was very much opposed” to the Export-Import Bank, but “it turns out [that] lots of small companies will really be helped.”
The problem is that he simply goes with his latest information. Boeing is the primary beneficiary of the Bank. Sure, they’ll present a positive case. And for all that he once opposed the Bank, now Trump wants it.
And we’re seeing this with other issues as well. All of a sudden the health issue is complex. How will the wall play out? Is he really still planning to increase the military budget by such a large increment as promised during the campaign, while dropping taxes? Or who will grab his ear next?
He’s not a scholar and not a politician. He doesn’t appear to know how to study, how to apprise positions and how they’ll affect the future.
He simply promises, says he’s wrong, takes the next position that comes along as dictated by current company, and continues on.
And that’s dangerous for the United States.
