I noticed a post by an old college friend on Facebook who works for the Wisconsin Democratic Party with a new political ad campaign against Scott Walker, a Republican running for Governor of Wisconsin. While I know little about Wisconsin politics, what I find interesting, is their use of the "flip flop" argument against Mr. Walker (with a twist of Transformers).
However, many cases, including John Kerry result where data and/or facts have changed, resulting in a different claim. This begs the question, for what are officials elected? Are they elected to deliver specific votes on specific issues, promised through the bond of a vote? Or rather, should officials be elected based on trust in their judgment to act in the interest of the greater good when presented with data?
The reason that campaigns are run based on promises of future tactical action is likely because the public demands it. A more rationale way to evaluate candidates is to analyze how they acted on specific types of available data, as it is more representative of how they will act in the future. It will be interesting to see how the discourse comes into fruition for this Fall's elections, as the arguments should center around how one candidate performed during a recession (where results will not be measured in isolation of greater economic challenges) versus another which will measure results in isolation.
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