MiddletownJournal.com

COLUMBUS — It's flip-flop time again.

That doesn't mean getting dressed for the beach, although sticky temperatures in the 90s sure make that appealing.

It's political heat on the presidential campaign trail that generates flip-flop flapping about Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama.

Both are already certified flip-floppers, although neither brags about it.

Everybody knows McCain was against President Bush's tax cuts before he was for them.

When he ran for president the first time in 2000, McCain called the late Rev. Jerry Falwell and the Rev. Pat Robertson "agents of intolerance."

But when the Arizona senator cranked up his current presidential campaign in 2006, he went to Falwell's Liberty University to give the commencement address. Continuing the warming trend, just last February in Cincinnati McCain called the Rev. Rod Parsley, a big-time Columbus televangelist, a "spiritual guide."

After Parsley made what seemed to be some nasty comments about Islam, McCain in May rejected the pastor's endorsement.

Maybe that's a flip-flop-flip.

McCain has nothing on Obama.

The Illinois senator supported public financing for his presidential campaign before he decided not to.

Then he voted on July 9 for legislation that gives legal immunity to telecommunications companies that participated in the Bush administration's wiretapping program after promising to oppose such immunity.

"Accusing one's opponent of flip-flopping is a staple of presidential campaigns," said political scientist John Green. Even admirers of the candidates get in the act. Obama supporters loudly protested his vote on legal immunity for the telecommunications companies.

What matters ultimately, said Green, is whether the flip-flops get traction — meaning whether they end up mattering to voters.

Sometimes they do. Ask John Kerry. Doubts about what Democrat Kerry really thought about the Iraq war — doubts fanned by Republicans — hurt Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign and probably helped President Bush win re-election.

Flip-flops come in handy when candidates try to solve political problems.

McCain, for example, has a prickly relationship with some of the conservative religious leaders who so warmly embraced President Bush in his two presidential wins.

To protect his conservative Republican base, McCain doesn't want to alienate these leaders — by the name-calling he used in 2000. Still, he doesn't want to embrace them too fervently, either, because that might alarm the independent and moderate voters he's trying to woo in the general election.

For Obama, the wiretapping immunity provision was part of broader legislation on the federal government's surveillance powers. He voted for what he called an "improved but imperfect bill" after first supporting an amendment to remove the wiretapping immunity. The amendment failed, but Obama's vote for the broader legislation was seen as an effort to move toward the political center, wooing those same independent and moderate voters that McCain wants.

There's an art to flip-flopping.

"Some candidates can make these shifts very artfully and very cleverly," said Green, director of the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron. "Some just can't do it."

Where do McCain and Obama fit in?

We'll have to wait until everybody gets back from the beach and starts paying more attention to find out.