Coinage

A rare post about someone else's coinage: "flip-flopping," which I guess would be Karl Rove's. I was listening to a report about whether or not Obama would label the Armenian genocide as genocide, and since he campaigned on doing just that, the commentator referred to the possibility of him not doing that as a flip-flop. She also referred to Clinton and George W. Bush's breaking similar pledges as flip-flops.

I don't doubt that there exists such a thing as a flip-flop, and certainly when a campaign promise is both made and broken for political expedience, it would be a candidate for being a flip-flop, but ever since the 2004 election, "flip-flopping" has really muscled genuine mind changing and reconsideration out of the way and out of the picture. It may very well be that both preceding presidents judged labeling the Armenian genocide as genocide wasn't worth giving up whatever they wanted from Turkey at the time, and if that were the case, I think that's great. I don't need a campaign promise kept if it's leading us into one of them nose-face-spite situations.

If real flip-flopping is anything, it's a pretty intense charge because it amounts to alleging that a promise was made falsely. If Clinton, Bush, and Obama all knew that they'd never be delivering on the promise to the Armenian-American community that they'd label the genocide as genocide, THAT would be a flip-flop, but it would also be straight up cold.