It seems to me that the Democratic presidential candidates who are not current members of congress have those who are senators/representatives over a barrel.
Back in the day, most decided that the prudent course of action was to authorize military force in Iraq. They came to this decision based on the available information, much of which now hovers somewhere between suspect and disproven.
However, now that we have a bigger picture to look at and the congressmen have to make more decisions about what the next step in Iraq is, the congressmen who made a decision based on faulty information now face a catch-22:
1) Basing their decision on the new, and with any luck more accurate, information, they can vote against continued funding or whatever other Iraq-related measures come before them. This gets them accused of flip-flopping on the issues and not supporting our troops.
2) They can maintain a position in accordance with their previous pro-military action vote. This gets them accused of supporting their political opponent and not being a real Democrat.
There is no good way out of this quandary, except for the candidates who never had to make a decision on record before more complete and more accurate information was available. They can claim that the whole thing is a theoretical exercise for them, so it doesn't matter.
I would rather vote for someone who makes the best decision based on all the available information, and is not afraid to re-assess his position when new information becomes available. I do not trust someone who figured out a set of political positions at the age of 16 and has kept them for the last half century or more without considering the impact of new social/political/medical/financial/technological developments.
Changing a position on an issue is not the worst thing a person can do. Ignoring new information is infinitely worse, as is putting the party ahead of the good of the nation.
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