When is it OK for leaders to change their minds?

Earlier this summer, in-depth profiles of vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance and his wife Usha Vance in The New York Times and The Washington Post told the same essential story: Wow, look at how much they’ve changed their minds!
More than two dozen friends, former co-workers and classmates shared their surprise at Usha Vance standing in the box with former President Donald Trump, especially since earlier “she was generally appalled by Trump, from the moment of his first election,” one friend recalled in the Washington Post story.
And for vice presidential candidate JD Vance, his dramatic shift is well-known, dating back to a time when he fostered meaningful friendships with liberal classmates. The story in the Times recounted how the Yale law student brought homemade baked goods to a transgender-identifying law student recovering from transition-related surgery. Vance said at the time, “I don’t understand what you’re doing, but I support you” — later sending along an autographed copy of his book, “To Sofia, a good friend and fellow midwesterner, and, despite being a godless liberal, a great person.”
What’s most striking about both profiles is the widespread cynicism invoked by these changes in political views — with Usha Vance called an “unprincipled opportunist” by online commentators, someone who would “debase her beliefs for her husband” and “lick as many boots as possible” in order to maximize her husband’s chance for political power.
Other commenters on the Times article called JD Vance‘s shift from past positions reflective of a “shallow and hypocritical character” and a “special brand of cynical opportunism” — conveying a “lesson in how unscrupulous people will sell out their scruples for ambition to power.”
“He plainly has few if any core principles whatsoever,” wrote GAC from Montana, describing Vance as “putty in Trump’s hands” — embodying “a cynical, transparent, purely personal desire to accrue power at any cost.”
Yet this same individual added, “people should be allowed to change their minds as they mature and history is full of politicians who have flipped on issues, sometimes based on genuine reflection and a change of heart motivated by concern for public welfare.”
When is it OK for a politician to change positions? While it’s natural to raise questions about motives, why do we so often come from a place of cynicism — resistant to allowing leaders space to shift views, when so many of us make our own adjustments after being exposed to new information and experiences?
In a recent car ride with thoughtful, politically engaged friends, I asked them to tell me more about their long-standing hesitance toward Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, including in his new campaign for office.
“He’s changed his mind so often,” they both expressed, as central to their concerns.
The governor’s new level of concern about college DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs was brought up as an example, compared with where they say he started. This Utah couple both felt this evolution represented more of a political calculus, than a genuine change of heart — advantageous, they believe, because these programs had become less popular generally among conservatives.
“Is it possible the governor could have grown more concerned as he learned more about the effects of these programs,” I asked.
They demurred — unsure they were comfortable giving him the benefit of the doubt. When news broke that Cox had chosen to vote for Trump after the assassination attempt, they and others have seen this pivot as yet more evidence of strategic changeability. Yet Cox (and others) noted their desire to unite not just the Republican Party, but the nation — a sentiment widely felt in the 24 hours following the assassination attempt.
Both in his own communications with President Trump and in interviews since, Governor Cox has reiterated his motivation to be a positive influence within the Republican party. Other leaders in Utah who know Cox well, as Sam Benson reports, describe this as coming from “his unquenchable idealism” rather than mere “political necessity” — with Don Peay, who oversaw Trump’s 2016 campaign in Utah, saying “I’m 100% convinced that Cox did it because he felt it was the right thing to do.”
One reason leaders’ perspective changes receive heightened suspicion are the clear incentives they have to move in one direction or another. Scholar Jean Hartley, writing about the challenges of public leadership, highlights the unique levels of pressure on political leaders to maintain “a critical mass of political support” from their constituents, which is what grants them authority through elections. That is a very different kind of context than most people have influencing their decision making.
Allegations of shifts-with-incentives are numerous on both sides of the political spectrum. The Clintons and Obamas were against gay marriage, before they supported it, as many voters shifted views. Bill Clinton signed The Defense of Marriage Act in September 1996, codifying the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman.
And during the 2020 Democratic presidential contest, Joe Biden shifted his positions on the Hyde Amendment, which bans the use of federal funds in nearly all abortions and could hurt him politically. After reiterating his support for the amendment in March of 2019, which he had long supported as a Catholic, Biden announced in mid-June that he would no longer support the amendment.
Others point to the shift in Sen. Mitt Romney’s positions from the time he represented Massachusetts to when he became Republican candidate for president. When Romney successfully ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002, he sought to appeal to voters with deep concerns about access to health care and a woman’s right to have an abortion.
During his first presidential bid in 2007, Romney told debate moderator Anderson Cooper, “on abortion I was wrong” — a shift that Romney insisted was sincere. “I’m proud to be pro-life,” he added, “and I’m not going to be apologizing to people for becoming pro-life.”
Despite this, many found it irresistible to portray this as a merely strategic shift prompted by the voters he needed to convince. Romney’s wife Ann would later lament what she said was “a billion dollars” spent juicing up a narrative he was a “flip-flopper.”
This brings to mind the iconic debate between former President George W. Bush and John Kerry. Even though then-Sen. Kerry came across to many viewers as uniquely thoughtful and balanced, after the debate, the Bush campaign attacked the Democratic nominee for “waffling” and “indecisiveness” — believing they had “found an issue where Kerry is vulnerable,” as one communication expert observed at the time.
Former President Gerald Ford likewise said of his Democratic opponent for the White House, “He wanders, he wavers, he waffles and he wiggles. … Jimmy Carter will say anything to be president.”
That aligns with one concern being raised about Vance. “The change in character is both remarkable and creepy,” wrote Ernest from Middlebury, Vermont, in an online comment. “How could anyone or any voter trust a word he has to say?”
Once again, any possibility of genuine learning is passed over for what is taken for granted as cold, strategic calculation. Why is it so hard to give elected leaders the benefit of the doubt?
In an exhaustive 2023 review of studies regarding the problem of mind changes in political leadership, Kyle G. Fritz, from the University of Mississippi, points to studies dating back 45 years that found that people tend to evaluate someone who experienced an attitude change as “weaker, more indecisive … more unstable, and more unreliable than someone who remained unchanged” — something researchers called “the waffle phenomenon.”
Later studies revealed that it was shifts on principled issues more than pragmatic policies that are judged more harshly by voters. One 2017 meta-analysis of studies exploring attitude changes across various issues (marriage equality, immigration reform, the death penalty, environmental initiatives) found repeatedly that leaders who change their moral opinion are generally judged to be “more hypocritical, less effective, and less worthy of support.”
This effect can be mitigated when a leader provides a full explanation for changing positions, notes Fritz — one that goes beyond “pithy” soundbites and acknowledges the complexity of the issue. Yet the pressure on elected leaders is clear.
“Fearing backlash and the charge of hypocrisy,” Fritz says, “political leaders may purposely pretend to hold an earlier position publicly while privately believing and behaving according to their new position.” Ironically then, fierce judgment against political leaders who appear to be hypocritical can lead them to become legitimately hypocritical, he observed.
Since it’s almost impossible to know for sure whether a particular leader is displaying genuine growth and learning compared with strategic shift for political advantage, this ultimately comes down to how much constituents trust a leader.
Michael Maccoby wrote in Harvard Business Review two decades ago about the tendency of some in a corporate context to see a leader who shares their views “as better than she really is — smarter, nicer, more charismatic.” That underscores an accompanying tendency “to give that person the benefit of the doubt.”
It’s not hard to see the same dynamic at work in reverse when evaluating someone whose views we dislike — coming to see them, perhaps, as “worse than they actually are,” which would likely reinforce a tendency to interpret actions and choices in the poorest possible light.
When asked whether politicians changing their minds on key issues represented a “sign of growth or inconsistency,” scholar Alan Humason remarked how how a defining hallmark of good scientists is willingness to “re-think” a conclusion when new evidence is introduced.
In a similar vein, Humason suggested that for politicians who are seeking to represent constituents well and improve their lives, “an occasional re-think” would seem essential.
There’s a long tradition of educators, inventors and entrepreneurs speaking of the value of learning, growing and changing. “Only fools and dead men don’t change their minds,” wrote early industrialist John H. Patterson. “Fools won’t and dead men can’t.”
“No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it,” Albert Einstein also famously said. “We must learn to see the world anew.”
The renowned scientist, famous for his own shocking discovery that time, weight and mass are relative, rather than constant, also added, “New frameworks are like climbing a mountain — the larger view encompasses rather than rejects the earlier, more restricted view.”
“There should be no shame or regret involved in changing your mind,” writes Dew Langrial — admitting that she has “often faced criticism for changing my mind,” noting that she tries to “avoid stubbornness” and “not to be rigid in my opinions.”
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