Even though Lincoln never actually said it, his apocryphal quip that "You can please some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but never all of the people all of the time" seems apt.
Yet, the truth might be that you can't please any of the people any of the time.
As suggested in a 1990 Stanford study, we may just instinctively prefer any policy as long as it's not the one picked by our leaders.
The Stanford researchers asked students to rate a university proposal to divest from South Africa as well as an alternate plan (that, rather than divest from SA companies, would invest in companies that withdrew from SA). When the university plan was only a "proposed" plan, not yet officially rubber stamped, students gave it an average rating of "10", significantly higher than the "8" they gave to the alternate plan. However, if the university plan was presented as a fait accompli, a surprising thing happened: students' dropped their average approval to about an "8.8" while the alternate plan rose in popularity and edged out the university plan with an "8.9."
No wonder leaders say they're damned if they do or don't. As the researchers surmised, we may naturally value a policy when it's out of reach, but dis it when it's a done deal.
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