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Presidents Have History of Flipping Positions
Aired November 25, 2003 - 14:53 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, ANCHOR: You don't have to be a pundit to take a double take when you see a Republican president pushing to expand Medicare and the dean of the liberal Democrats objecting. Kind of an inside-out debate, isn't it?
Well, such is politics. And it got us thinking about presidential flip-flops or perceived presidential flip-flops through history. And that brought us to one of our favorite presidential historians, Al Lichtman of American University in where else? Washington.
Professor Lichtman, good to have you back with us.
ALAN LICHTMAN, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY: Thanks, Miles.
O'BRIEN: All right. Let's talk about the current appearance of a flip-flop.
The president of the United States, a Republican, and putting in place a $400 billion entitlement plan for Medicare that rivals things back to the Great Society of 1965. What gives there?
LICHTMAN: What gives there is the poll you just saw. This is something the overwhelming majority of Americans want.
The irony of the Bush administration is that he came in as a staunch conservative, and he turns out to be one of the biggest spenders in all of American history, rivaling Lyndon Johnson, rivaling Franklin Roosevelt. We've got all this spending for homeland security, for the military and now for this Medicare prescription drug benefit.
Give the people what they want and build up those deficits like Richard Nixon did in 1972 to get the economy through 2004.
Here's the scoop. It's one thing to get elected. It's another thing to govern. It's yet another thing to get re-elected.
O'BRIEN: If you're a real to the bone conservative, you're not very happy with Mr. Bush right now, then.
LICHTMAN: That's right. And unfortunately, there don't seem to be that many true to the bone liberals or conservatives. In Washington today, political principal whether of the left or of the right seems to be utterly sacrificed for expediency and political power.
We have a tremendously polarized Congress, a polarized political parties, but not seemingly on principal, more for political advantage.
O'BRIEN: Interesting. So the rhetoric is polarized. The action is down the middle.
Let's go back to the previous administration, Clinton, of course, signing into law welfare reform, which took, you know, millions of people off the welfare rolls. There you have a Democrat doing that.
That seems kind of inside-out, kind of Lewis Carroll, to me. What was going on there in his presidency?
LICHTMAN: Well, what was going on there, of course, was a big tradeoff as he was going into the presidential election of 1996. And not surprisingly we're doing that today. He traded off welfare reform for minimum wage increases, and he wanted something on which he could campaign.
This was also part of his attempt to forge the so-called middle way, to be a new Democrat, one who could even imagine to end an entitlement program of the New Deal.
O'BRIEN: Now, we've mentioned Nixon just a few moments ago. Nixon to China is one of the famous examples of all of this.
If Richard Nixon could go and make peace with the Red Chinese, as he would have call them at one point in his career, then anybody can make a flip-flop of any proportion.
Remind us historically why Nixon did that.
LICHTMAN: Nixon did that because he was facing, what looked like at the time, a very tough presidential election in 1972. Didn't prove to be that way. And his strategy was to pump up the economy and make major surprising breakthroughs that would make him invulnerable in '72.
He went to China as the hard-hitting anti-Communist who could somehow make peace with the largest nation in the world and bring them back into the family of nations. And he went to Russia and got the ABM treaty and the SALT treaty.
O'BRIEN: Go figure.
All right. There's got -- There's one president that, it would seem, for those who haven't read history perhaps close enough professor -- FDR. There was a person who stuck by his guns. Right? Or did he have his own flip-flops once he got in office?
LICHTMAN: He had a huge flip-flop. In the campaign of 1940 with the world engulfed in war, he promised American mothers that he was not going to send their boys off to fight in a foreign war.
And, of course, that was followed by American involvement in World War II, an involvement that Roosevelt favored. And Roosevelt was the guy who was putting into place the preparedness and aid programs that, of course, got us into World War II. O'BRIEN: So we never...
LICHTMAN: The right thing to do, but a big flip-flop.
O'BRIEN: We never know who we are electing, do we? Maybe there's something about the water in the White House. Who knows?
LICHTMAN: It's the water all over Washington, I think. And it's not just the president, Miles.
O'BRIEN: All right. Well, you're drinking it, too. Be careful. \
Professor Alan Lichtman, American University in Washington. Thanks, as always, for giving us an historical perspective.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired November 25, 2003 - 14:53 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, ANCHOR: You don't have to be a pundit to take a double take when you see a Republican president pushing to expand Medicare and the dean of the liberal Democrats objecting. Kind of an inside-out debate, isn't it?
Well, such is politics. And it got us thinking about presidential flip-flops or perceived presidential flip-flops through history. And that brought us to one of our favorite presidential historians, Al Lichtman of American University in where else? Washington.
Professor Lichtman, good to have you back with us.
ALAN LICHTMAN, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY: Thanks, Miles.
O'BRIEN: All right. Let's talk about the current appearance of a flip-flop.
The president of the United States, a Republican, and putting in place a $400 billion entitlement plan for Medicare that rivals things back to the Great Society of 1965. What gives there?
LICHTMAN: What gives there is the poll you just saw. This is something the overwhelming majority of Americans want.
The irony of the Bush administration is that he came in as a staunch conservative, and he turns out to be one of the biggest spenders in all of American history, rivaling Lyndon Johnson, rivaling Franklin Roosevelt. We've got all this spending for homeland security, for the military and now for this Medicare prescription drug benefit.
Give the people what they want and build up those deficits like Richard Nixon did in 1972 to get the economy through 2004.
Here's the scoop. It's one thing to get elected. It's another thing to govern. It's yet another thing to get re-elected.
O'BRIEN: If you're a real to the bone conservative, you're not very happy with Mr. Bush right now, then.
LICHTMAN: That's right. And unfortunately, there don't seem to be that many true to the bone liberals or conservatives. In Washington today, political principal whether of the left or of the right seems to be utterly sacrificed for expediency and political power.
We have a tremendously polarized Congress, a polarized political parties, but not seemingly on principal, more for political advantage.
O'BRIEN: Interesting. So the rhetoric is polarized. The action is down the middle.
Let's go back to the previous administration, Clinton, of course, signing into law welfare reform, which took, you know, millions of people off the welfare rolls. There you have a Democrat doing that.
That seems kind of inside-out, kind of Lewis Carroll, to me. What was going on there in his presidency?
LICHTMAN: Well, what was going on there, of course, was a big tradeoff as he was going into the presidential election of 1996. And not surprisingly we're doing that today. He traded off welfare reform for minimum wage increases, and he wanted something on which he could campaign.
This was also part of his attempt to forge the so-called middle way, to be a new Democrat, one who could even imagine to end an entitlement program of the New Deal.
O'BRIEN: Now, we've mentioned Nixon just a few moments ago. Nixon to China is one of the famous examples of all of this.
If Richard Nixon could go and make peace with the Red Chinese, as he would have call them at one point in his career, then anybody can make a flip-flop of any proportion.
Remind us historically why Nixon did that.
LICHTMAN: Nixon did that because he was facing, what looked like at the time, a very tough presidential election in 1972. Didn't prove to be that way. And his strategy was to pump up the economy and make major surprising breakthroughs that would make him invulnerable in '72.
He went to China as the hard-hitting anti-Communist who could somehow make peace with the largest nation in the world and bring them back into the family of nations. And he went to Russia and got the ABM treaty and the SALT treaty.
O'BRIEN: Go figure.
All right. There's got -- There's one president that, it would seem, for those who haven't read history perhaps close enough professor -- FDR. There was a person who stuck by his guns. Right? Or did he have his own flip-flops once he got in office?
LICHTMAN: He had a huge flip-flop. In the campaign of 1940 with the world engulfed in war, he promised American mothers that he was not going to send their boys off to fight in a foreign war.
And, of course, that was followed by American involvement in World War II, an involvement that Roosevelt favored. And Roosevelt was the guy who was putting into place the preparedness and aid programs that, of course, got us into World War II. O'BRIEN: So we never...
LICHTMAN: The right thing to do, but a big flip-flop.
O'BRIEN: We never know who we are electing, do we? Maybe there's something about the water in the White House. Who knows?
LICHTMAN: It's the water all over Washington, I think. And it's not just the president, Miles.
O'BRIEN: All right. Well, you're drinking it, too. Be careful. \
Professor Alan Lichtman, American University in Washington. Thanks, as always, for giving us an historical perspective.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
