President Donald Trump is a Republican. But often, and more so than any president in memory, he lacks a consistent political ideology. …
“We’ve never had a federal elected official, let alone the leader of a party or the president of the United States, who is so easily moved from one position to another without offering any sort of justification or apology or explanation,” Michael Barber, a political scientist at Brigham Young University, says.
Researchers like him have long tried to understand the power of leaders and the willingness of the public to hold them accountable. And rarely do they get a real-life experiment like Trump to help them answer some huge questions at the heart of democracy:
How much power do presidents have in swaying public opinion? Will the base always follow even if a president swings wildly from one position to another? CONT.
Brian Resnick, Vox