Lane Wallace's post on The Atlantic this morning gets at something I've wondered a lot about with regard to the public sphere. Why is it that so few public figures (as well as private leaders of organizations, churches, etc) have a significant "I was wrong" moment? Wallace's analogy comparing this revision of personal and organizational theories and beliefs (or more often, lack of revision/rethinking) to the way in which scientists are continually obliged to admit error and change their minds and methods is a powerful one.
Wallace notes that Stevens, once in favor of the death penalty, eventually changed his position on the controversial topic after forming "an opinion based not in abstract principle but in years of sorrowful observation of how the death penalty was actually being administered."
"That is, of course, what all good scientists are supposed to do," Wallace writes. "We develop theories, and then we test them, or see how they play out in real life. If reality doesn't behave the way the theory predicted, we're supposed to use that information to modify and improve our theories and opinions. What makes that anecdote about Stevens notable is how few public figures -- or even private individuals, for that matter -- manage that kind of measured re-evaluation of their beliefs or positions, despite how often our theories about business, economics, foreign policy or human behavior prove themselves less perfect in practice than they sounded on paper."
There's often an almost automatic sense of scandal when a politician is revealed (usually through an opponent's ad campaign) to have "flip-flopped" on a given legislative issue. Certainly such instances are interesting to highlight, and well worth exploring, but a change of heart or mind is in itself hardly a character flaw.
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