Forgive me, please, for all this organizational and psychological talk.  I've been in the car for 15+ hours over the last 24, with another 5 to go, and I've been listening to *shudder* a lot of talk radio, because there's just not much else to do.  And I've noticed something that bothers me.  Today I was listening to some Senator on the subject of some candidate's position on immigration.  It was pointed out to this person that the two of them used to disagree on some policy issue related to immigration and the guy basically said "Yeah, that's true, we used to disagree, but the other guy thought about, and after a while he changed his mind.  After all, immigration is a really complicated issue."  And you know what, that seemed perfectly reasonable to me.

There's been a lot of talk lately about "character" in politics.  And that's well and good; I would guess we all want somebody with character, whatever that is.  But character doesn't mean sticking to your guns no matter what.  We don't elect platforms, we elect people.  And that goes for business, school and nonprofits too.  I *want* somebody who, if confronted with evidence to the contrary, is big enough to change their mind.  That seems like a really good thing to have in someone in power.  Yeah, I guess there is a balance here.  I mean, I want to trust that somebody has a spine and can stick up for what they believe in (which hopefully is something close to what I believe in).  At the same time, I'm OK giving up some control to that person.  When I get a plumber to come out to the house I don't tell him how to fix a leak; I assume he knows more about that than I do.  I watch him, though, and make sure that what he's doing seems reasonable and is fixing the problem.  If he starts drilling holes in the wall I ask questions.  But, in general, he's the plumber and I'm not and there's a reason I hired the guy.  If he said he was going to fix it with a U-pipe and then realizes he needs a T-pipe I might ask questions (especially if it costs more) but I'm not going to insist he use that U-pipe even though it's now obviously not the right solution to the problem.

So yeah, go ahead, flip flop.  It's called changing your mind and it's a very adult thing to do.