My friend, Monica, who I visited in New York last week, went on a rant about Obama’s flip-flopping.  And, yes the man sometimes changes his mind.  But is that a really bad thing?

I thought about some of my flip-flops. 

I listed a house recently that I told the sellers I thought I could sell for $859,000.  That’s what I thought the comparables showed when I did the market analysis.  Given the information I had at the time, $859,000 looked like the magic number.  But then the comps changes, and I did a flip-flop.  We needed to lower the price to $795,000 based on some new sales and listing information.  Would it have been better to stick to my original position?  No.  Flip-flop was the way to go here.

Then, when I got married (both times), I took a vow that said I’d stay married to the guy for better or worse ‘til death do we part.  And both times, yes, I flip flopped. 

My first husband was a lovely man, and we will be friends for life, and we could have gritted our teeth and stayed together until one of us died, but instead we re-created our relationship from that of mismatched spouses to great friends.

The second husband was a lovely man who was a “recovering” alcoholic, and it was a pretty good marriage until one night, after a really hard day at work, he had a beer.  After that, I had to decide between my own personal safety and my commitment to the marriage.  And when I issued a “Sweetie, it’s Betty Ford or out of here,” he did not choose Betty Ford.  So I did another flip-flop. 

Presidents face totally tough decisions every day.  And if we have a choice between a president who is (1) totally rigid, and might act on incomplete or erroneous information and never change direction, or (2) one who has the flexibility to acknowledge making an error and changing direction when he’s made a bad decision, I would vote for Candidate Number 2.  

So I, for one, do not think that a flip-flop is necessarily a bad thing.  If it’s part of a pander thing, that is bad.  If it is a position that is changed as a result of new input and thoughtful consideration, I’d prefer that to dogged rigidity.