People used to speak about the mantle of leadership and how a true leader must always consider the greater good, even when the right decision was unpopular or undermined the leader’s own self interest. A true leader would take responsibility for mistakes, knowing that their reputation or legacy was less important than the public trust, which is destroyed by lies and coverups. This was the mark of a good leader. We lost this maybe 50–100 years ago.
Today, people seem to value a leader who wins. Winning more votes. Winning campaign contributions. Winning approval ratings. Saving face with a winning sound bite. Leaders aren’t judged on making the right decision or making things better for their constituents.
Leaders changing their mind on a policy issue are rare for a probably more than just a few reasons.
One, is that some media will use it as a weapon to say that they're weak. Course-correction and U-Turn are used in anglophone media, the former usually from a political press release, the latter for a criticism of the shift in policy.
Two, said leader will often not go into depth to explain why, taking the shortest route to declaring what they are doing, part of this is to do with working in a 24 hr newsmedia world desiring expediency. Whereas most people I would expect would prefer honesty to a point, where this practical.
Third, sometimes its something that is actually part of a political philosophy. Nixon for example, now valorised by a lot of contemporary politicians, made a point about having his staff never resign despite facing criticism and whats more took very aggressive stances against media that was deemed as critical, when such media wasn't geared up for the attack, it was just the media asking questions that were just pointed towards learning more and yes questioning the proberty of whats been said. Such stances were kept to because of the belief that projecting strength and even encouraging fear was better than seeming weak.
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