Read My Flips : It’s No Sin to Change Your Mind, Say the Experts; But as Bush Has Discovered, You Can’t Look Indecisive Doing It

First, he flipped. Then he flopped. And though the President referred to the inevitability of “a little broken china up there” when Congress and the White House clash on an issue as divisive as the budget, the sound you heard last week was not the crash of flying porcelain.

It was the ker-thunk of plummeting presidential popularity. George Bush didn’t just change his mind on one of the hottest issues of the day. He changed it, then changed it back.

On the morning of Oct. 9 at a press conference, the President said that he would consider raising income tax rates for the rich in exchange for a cut in the capital gains tax. These were surprising words from the man who had instantly retrofitted his nerdy image in 1988 with six harshly memorable words--”Read my lips. No new taxes.” Hours after last week’s press conference, though, the President reversed himself during a meeting with 16 Republican senators.

UCLA history professor Robert Dallek, a presidential scholar and biographer, imagined what might have transpired between Bush and the senators: “He speaks his mind and feels he’s not being a wimp and that he’s being courageous (in agreeing to higher income taxes to help reduce the deficit). Then the senators in his party come down against him and say, ‘Listen, this is what has helped us hold the presidency all these years, are you gonna throw this away? Don’t make that mistake.’ So he slips back to the posturing and now he’s in a very bad place, he looks weak and is ineffective.”

And how. Last week, the President’s approval rating swooned to 51 points, the lowest in his presidency and a full 21 points lower than his mid-August rating. With congressional elections less than three weeks away, Democrats across the country have been licking their lips.

Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) summed up Bush’s dilemma this way: “He’s got to choose between being a responsible President and an effective leader of his political party and it’s a hard choice for him.”

Other quarters were less kind. The headlines--using verbs such as “waffle” and “backs away”--were especially damaging to Bush because of the so-called “wimp factor” that lurks perilously close to the surface of the public memory.

This newspaper trumpeted, “To Tax or Not to Tax.” Just imagine: a man who has carefully cultivated a tough-guy image now compared to Hamlet, one of literature’s most celebrated wimps. Ouch.

“It would have been a lot more damaging if it had said, ‘To Tax the Rich or Not to Tax the Rich, ‘ “ suggested Thomas E. Mann, director of government studies at the Brookings Institution. “There’s no doubt that this hurts him immediately, that people begin to question his steadfastness, his strength, whether he has core beliefs. . . . All of those things are natural responses to reading all those headlines.”

What would make a man of the President’s stature change his mind on so primal an issue? Psychologists who study decision-making say the process is personal and variable, but some studies suggest that decisions made under extreme pressure are later regretted--or reversed.

“Anxiety is an influence on decision-making,” said Richard Kinjier, a psychologist at the University of Arizona who has studied the subject. “In anxiety-provoking situations, people are less satisfied and less certain about their decisions. The rule you can extract is that if you are in a highly anxious state, put off a decision until you are calmer. In a highly anxious state, you make decisions you regret.”

On the other hand, said Kinnier, some anxiety is desirable.

“There’s actually an inverted-U relationship between anxiety and decision-making satisfaction. If you are without anxiety, you are also less likely to make a decision you’re happy with. A moderate amount of anxiety is optimal. It’s the same relationship with test-taking. If you are not nervous at all about the exam, you’re not motivated to study. If you’re too nervous, you may block.”

In the President’s case, said Kinnier, “he’s under high pressure, not only for what’s going on with the budget, but what’s happening in the Persian Gulf. With so much anxiety surrounding him, perhaps he’s more likely to feel uncertain and uncertainty is associated with his flip-flop.”

A mind is not always such a terrible thing to change. A chief executive officer may easily be forgiven for changing his or her mind, or even making a bad decision. But indecision is a cardinal sin, eroding confidence, undermining authority and--worst of all--making the chief executive look bad .

“People have an implicit theory about what leadership should look like--principled, determined to stick with policies and commitments,” said Philip Tetlock, a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley. “Insofar as George Bush doesn’t do that, he falls short of that implicit standard and he has suffered in the recent polls. Changing your mind isn’t always perceived as a sign of weakness, but it often is. It means that you have to be very careful in putting the right spin on it, and how to do that is very much a matter of art and not science. Changing your mind can be portrayed as judicious and wise, or unprincipled, confused and indecisive.”

After all, Richard Nixon, a fierce anti-Communist, opened the door to the People’s Republic of China. Jimmy Carter, determined to create detente in U.S.-Soviet relations, shelved his plans when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. (He would get into trouble later with his perceived indecisiveness over the American hostages in Iran.) Ronald Reagan, who seemed rabidly opposed to new taxes, simply gave them a new name--”revenue enhancements”--and pushed them through. (Reagan also changed his mind about negotiating with terrorists for the release of American hostages, but kept the matter secret. When the secret became public, he faced the most serious crisis of his presidency.)

“Presidents change their minds all the time,” said Dallek. “That’s the nature of American politics. . . . Presidents can shift ground if it appears to the public that they are moving in constructive and realistic directions.”

Thus, when Bush changed his mind last spring and decided that, yes, there would be some new taxes after all--that there was no other way to overcome the massive deficit--his popularity dipped briefly, but rebounded. That’s because, specialists say, the electorate liked what he said during the campaign of 1988, but were also able to read between the lips. We never really believed he wouldn’t raise taxes, we just believed he wouldn’t raise them as high as Dukakis might have.

“We did focus groups last spring,” said Democratic pollster Paul Maslin. “Most of the stuff we got was people saying we knew he was never going to stick to (the no-new-tax pledge). The first reversal was not deadly. The most damaging thing by far is when you bounce back and forth more than once and that’s what’s happening to Bush right now. It’s not that he’s made just one reversal, he’s made two or three. He’s being pulled and tugged, he’s not sticking to his guns. . . .”

Mike Driver, USC professor of management and organization, said that one of the President’s problems is that his “role” style, or how he likes to be perceived, is quite different from his “operating” style, or how he really makes up his mind.

Driver has just co-authored a book called “The Dynamic Decision Maker” in which he describes five basic decision-making styles.

A “decisive” person, said Driver, uses a moderate amount of information and comes to a very firm, focused decision. Once a decision is made, he said, “they move on and don’t look back.” An example of this style is Ronald Reagan or John Wayne’s movie characters.

A “flexible” person reaches a decision easily, but likes to keep his or her options open. “They can drive you nuts because they don’t stick to things,” said Driver, “but their philosophy is that you’ve got to keep moving because the universe is constantly changing.” A flexible example: Gerald Ford.

A “hierarchic” person takes in lots of data, analyzes it carefully and comes up with elaborate plans with built-in options. “Their long-term goals don’t change, but they’re concerned with getting everything just right,” said Driver. This style is exemplified by Richard Nixon and to some extent, he said, Jimmy Carter.

An “integrative” person takes in a huge amount of information but sees things in many dimensions and conceives of many creative solutions and approaches. This person is interested in working in groups rather than alone. Adlai Stevenson was an example of this style, said Driver, “but our country is not receptive to that kind of leadership.”

Finally, a “systemic” decision maker is a combination of the hierarchic and integrative styles, and is a very slow moving, highly original thinker. “We don’t see this kind of person in politics,” said Driver, but in business, exemplified by Harold Geneen, who was responsible for turning around ITT.

With Bush, said Driver, “What you see is not what you get. What we see is a strong effort to portray himself as flexible, but my guess is that beneath all that he is very hierarchic. He reminds me a lot of Kissinger, who didn’t feel that the man on the street could be trusted with everything. There’s a tendency in the hierarchical style to be elitist. . . . If he had really been flexible, he would have gone along with Congress (on the budget).”

One of the disadvantages for politicians dealing with sensitive issues is that the debate takes place in public. In the business world, the debate generally takes place behind closed doors.

“Business leaders are too smart to get caught up like this,” said Nirmal Sethia, who teaches a course on executive decision-making at USC’s School of Business Administration. “You rarely find indecisive people, because they don’t last that long. Few box themselves into a corner the way Bush did.”

Still, with the exception perhaps of former N.Y. Yankees majority partner George Steinbrenner, who used to fire and rehire managers and others with an elan seldom seen in the business world, corporate executives are as vulnerable as politicians to the damage caused by flip-flops. Steinbrenner wasn’t vulnerable to getting fired for constantly changing his mind about who managed the team--he owned the Yankees, after all--but his public image and the team’s record certainly suffered from the indecisiveness.

“Some people feel so good about themselves unjustifiably that no matter what decision they make they find a rationalization for why it’s a good one,” said Kinnier, the psychologist.

Consumers react to bad decisions the way the voters do, only they cast their votes with dollars. Dissatisfaction is immediately discernible at the bottom line. For instance, Coca-Cola erred famously in 1985 when it changed its century-old soft drink formula without taking into account long-standing customer loyalty to the flavor. The company was forced to put the old Coke back on the market, allowing archrival Pepsi-Cola to trumpet victory in the “cola wars.”

Baruch Fischhoff, a psychologist at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University who studies decision-making, said he was sympathetic to the budget pressures on the President, but confused by Bush’s statements.

“What I found distressing, as a citizen, was that this is an important issue, and you’d like (Bush) to have a consistent perspective or see the evolution of a perspective, and I didn’t see it. Bush is someone who takes positions and tries not to make many concessions and when he does, he does it in a certain way. He deviated from that. He has always been predictable. He sticks tough and when he makes compromises it’s when the deal is there. You see what he’s after. And this seems to be different from that. He had been publicly resolute on capital gains, and all of a sudden . . . he was changing his position in a direction that was unclear.”

Some analysts think that Bush didn’t change his mind at all, that perhaps he meant all along to raise tax rates for the wealthy in exchange for a cut in capital gains taxes. Two days after Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution called the flip-flop “one of the worst misjudgments of his presidency,” Mann allowed for the possibility that “it all looked much worse than it actually was. . . . It is theoretically possible that Bush believed he’d be willing to trade capital gains for that modest change in the (tax rate) all along. (The problem is) not one of changing his mind but what he defines his leadership role to be.”

Exactly the problem, said Sethia. Bush’s trouble, said Sethia, may not be simply that he flip-flopped on a big issue, but the underlying lack of vision that his indecisiveness unsheaths. (This lack of well-defined goals was referred to during the campaign by Bush himself, you might recall, as “the vision thing.”)

“The value of a CEO or a leader is to help people articulate their dream and help them in implementing that dream or vision,” said Sethia. “That is not happening. He is not being decisive and that is what is showing up.”

If the President and the Congress pull together a budget deal this week--the stopgap funding measure keeping non-essential federal business open expires today--the resulting euphoria may do much to bolster Bush’s sagging popularity.

“If there is a demise of this presidency, this could be the turning point,” said Dallek, the presidential scholar. “But who knows? Two years is a long time. One has to keep in mind that Democrats and Congress do not enjoy high praise from the public, either.”

Still, public officeholders sometimes need to be reminded: the voters change their minds, too.

Anatomy of a Decision

Sept. 29: The White House drops its longstanding demand for a cut in the capital gains tax.

Oct. 6: President Bush says he might be willing to raise income tax rates for the wealthy but does not mention capital gains.

Oct. 9: Bush says he might accept a higher income tax rate for the wealthy in exchange for a cut in the capital gains tax, “if it can be worked in the proper balance . . . “ But hours later, during a meeting with 16 Republican senators, he changes his mind. He will not endorse higher income taxes, the senators say. Later that day, the President refuses to clarify his stance on the tax issue, saying, “Let Congress clear it up.”

Oct. 11: Bush says he is no longer flexible on trading lower capital gains for higher income taxes. “My view,” he says, “is that it’s not going to happen.”