Between learning from mistakes or adapting to changing circumstances and flip flopping is being able to provide sound reasons for your changing positions.

Kerry's definitely in a bit of disarray in keeping track of all his statements but it just doesn't seem out of line with the emotional turmoil that I'm sure he's experiencing from the bitter attacks the Bush supporters have nailed him with. I'm not sure any thinking and reasoning human wouldn't falter a bit in the onslaught I've seen thrown at him.

Bush has got it easier. He's never showed any real depth of calculation so, in the face of attacks that come at him from the likes of Michael Moore and such, he simply keeps repeating the same old crap over and over. And America is buying it in spite of the fact that none of it is working. Somehow it seems to me that it's preferential for a candidate to be working through the sound reasoning about his positions on very unworkable issues he's saddled with, over the stoic resolve of Bush on his "sound reasons" which simply have not panned out.

How in the hell is having a solid position on an issue an asset if there is no success in its application? Doesn't that call for a very public reassessment? Were I an enemy facing the great might of the United States, I somehow think I'd fear them more knowing they were a bit unpredictable and able to adapt their strategy as conditions changed.

As to your remarks about Carter and Reagan, I truly feel that there was simply a great deal of luck involved in their differences in success. Carter was nailed with the Iranian hostage crisis and a gas crunch that tore apart an economy already on a natural downslide. He trusted military advisors who had been put into place and trained long before his presidency to create a mission that would rescue the hostages. A quirk ended that mission in failure and the public never forgave him.

Reagan's timing couldn't have been luckier. The USSR's communistic empire was in a natural decline and the country had one of the great leaders of the time in Gorbachev already working on reform long before Reagan was elected. I contend that the USSR collapsed not because of Reagan's policies but in spite of them. Timing is everything to the success of a presidency. Certainly Carter's legacy since he left office has been remarkable.