"ONE thing about me, I'm a very honourable guy," says Donald Trump, in a line that I would certainly pinch if I were ever mulling a presidential bid, as he is. As he prepares for the possibility, however, he has a few hurdles, one of them being that he used to be pro-choice. Last week, in an interview with CBN (the Christian Broadcasting Network), he explained the switch:
I'm pro-life, but I changed my view a number of years ago. One of the reasons I changed—one of the primary reasons—a friend of mine, his wife was pregnant, in this case married. And she was pregnant—and he was going to—they were going to—he didn't really want the baby. And he was telling me the story. He was crying as he was telling me the story. They ended up for some reason, amazingly, through luck, because they didn't have the right timing, he ends up having the baby and the baby is the apple of his eye. He said it's the greatest thing that's ever happened to him. And you know here's a baby that wasn't going to be let into life. And I heard this, and some other stories, and I am pro-life.
As an aside, there was an interesting editing decision in the CBN story linked above. The transcript I gave is from the video clip; the transcript they use trims out "They ended up for some reason, amazingly, through luck, because they didn't have the right timing..." It may be a clean-up edit, but that part of the story makes me curious about the couple in question; as Amanda Hess points out, Mr Trump's version makes it sound like the husband was willing to pressure his wife. I wonder if CBN meant to obscure it. Their edit makes it sound like the woman wanted the baby, the husband didn't, and the woman overruled him, it being her body and everything. Commenters, am I overthinking that?
In any case, Mr Trump has offered a relatively good template for how a candidate can explain a change in his or her views. First, we see the full acknowledgment that a change has transpired, with no effort to soft-pedal the previous stance. We have a tacit acknowledgment that an explanation is necessary. Then we have a story that gives the cause of the effect, and the cause involves new information leading to new thinking—in this case, a personal experience that happened in the meantime.
Social conservatives are sceptical. LifeNews.com, for example, wants more explanation. Partly they have doubts because it just so happens that the new view is more politically convenient than the old one. Some of the credibility problems no doubt come from Mr Trump himself, a much-married New York business mogul who has never before been allied with the cause. But we do see a certain willingness to let Mr Trump explain himself.
Could this template work in other cases? Think back to Tim Pawlenty's switch on cap and trade, for example, which I found so irritating a few weeks ago. In that case, Mr Pawlenty minimised his former views (by saying that other candidates had also been worried about climate change), and didn't offer much explanation of the switch. He did say it would be a "ham-fisted, unhelpful, damaging thing to the economy", but presumably he was aware of the cost projections at the time he supported cap and trade. A more compelling account, in my book, would have been to say that in light of the continuing difficulties with the economy, he had concluded that cap and trade, being expensive, could not be considered a top priority in the near future. Several of our commenters argued that it's more convincing to change your views on a policy proposal, such as cap and trade, rather than a moral issue, such as abortion. That may be correct, but I think the key in both cases is to give a causal explanation for the change.
(Photo credit: AFP)
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