Learning To Love The Flip-Flop

Mikhail Emelianov doesn't understand Americans' disdain for changing your mind:

Whatever happened to the true political values of flexibility, politicking, negotiation, manipulation, and compromise? There is no need to bring up Machiavelli, but certainly politicians have always prided themselves on shrewdness, not naivete and dogmatism.  Certainly, there’s plenty of good old backstabbing and manipulative lying both in the public sphere and behind the closed political doors, but why aren’t those things popular with the people? Did American populism kill the true political activity? Is American politics basically a beauty pageant at this point?  Where is the strife?

I take up this issue in my book.