This paper analyzes the response strategies the presidential candidates in Korea and in the U. S. use when they deal with the interviewer's accusation of inconsistency and shows the presence of a strategic maneuver for trying to win debates. When an interviewer criticizes politicians who have allegedly changed their views or acted in ways that are contradictory with their earlier statements in political interviews, politicians are often observed to strategically employ category shifts (i.e. agent shift, perspective shift, time shift, identity shift, or dissociation of agenda) to bring about a change in the starting points of discussion, and thus direct the audience attention to the change at hand, rather than the central aspects of the issue. The analysis provides a basis for further considering the action implications of such practices in terms of how the politician's strategic maneuvering response contributes to the resolution of difference in opinion, as viewed by the interviewer and the audience.