Look, You Jerk, Negative Campaigning is Unethical!

[maiforpeace]

Feb 6th, 2012 • Posted in: Commentary

by Rushworth M. Kidder

Let’s say it right up front: Negative, nasty campaigning may be effective — after all, the headline got you to read this far, didn’t it? But it’s unethical in nature, divisive in practice, and fatal to the integrity of those who practice it. Here’s why.

There’s a conundrum baked into America’s political life, which is that the qualities you need in order to get elected are stunningly at odds with the qualities you need to govern after you win. That point is never more evident than in a presidential election year, when three crucial distinctions stand out:

To campaign, you need breadth and agility — a superficial grasp of scores of topics and a fleet-footed peripheral vision that lets you bob and weave among the daily brickbats. To govern, you need depth and stability — a mastery of the few core issues that you’ve decided should define your presidency and the ability to concentrate on them and delegate the rest.

Campaigns are intensely personal. The focus is on “the opponent” — three or four during the primaries and one in the general election. You’ll talk policy, of course, but almost always in the service of defeating a single person. Governing focuses on ideas and policies. Of course you take into account the politics of personalities. But unless you use politics in the service of ideas, the public rightly comes to believe that your presidency is more about your own ego than the nation’s welfare.

Campaigns are about right versus wrong, while governing is about right versus right. Sound bites and bumper stickers are nifty missiles for personal attacks of the I’m-right-you’re-wrong variety, but they aren’t vehicles for deep ethical analysis. If your campaign can gin up slick-witted ways to blast the bad and glorify the good, you’ll be successful — right up until the day after the election. After that, no issue that you face — from immigration to health, energy to education, jobs to defense — is about right versus wrong. Everything is about tough choices between opposing moral views, each with sound ethical underpinnings.

Why should that be? Because in a democracy the really big issues aren’t about right versus wrong. Legislatures don’t debate good-versus-evil questions. If the choice is between deporting illegals or poisoning them, we don’t spend five seconds on it. What’s tough is whether to spend funds on health services for the illegals already here or on border patrols to keep others out. On that, very good people can differ, and each can be morally right.

The fact that there’s good on both sides is what permits presidents to reach compromises. In governing, compromise is vital, allowing you to make progress. In campaigning, however, compromise is a dirty word, meaning you’ve abandoned your principles. Pity, then, the poor candidates who can’t make the transition out of campaign mode. They come into office hypnotized by superficiality, seeing only a black-and-white universe and convinced that those who disagree with them are moral idiots. No wonder they have no defense against blistering vituperation. No wonder the nation grows more polarized. No wonder there’s no progress.

What’s all that got to do with negative campaigning? Simply this: The core ethical values shared (as far as we can tell) across all cohorts of voters in the nation are honesty, responsibility, respect, fairness, and compassion. Candidates who call each other liars, accuse them of irresponsibility, use disrespectful language against each other, unfairly twist others’ words and disregard their meanings — and do it all without a shred of compassion for the next generation’s attitudes toward politics — are patently unethical. They’re sowing the seeds of divisiveness rather than inclusivity, malice rather than kindness, brutality rather than refinement. The more they do so, the more fatally they degrade their own integrity, until they finally hit the wall where they actually believe that the ends justify the means. With that, public trust evaporates. What power is left to rally a nation in times of distress, make promises anyone will believe, or reach across the aisle to work together in emergencies? What power is left to govern?

“But, but, but!” shout the pragmatists of polarization. “Negative campaigning works!” Look, lots of things “work” in the short term. Stealing a car, garroting your competitor, and blackmailing your boss all “work” — for the moment.

And that, finally, suggests a fourth way that campaigning differs from governing. Campaigning is all about the here and now — about unkeepable promises, instant applause meters, and surveys with a half-life of 24 hours. Governing is all about horizons, patience, and vision. If voters care about governance, they’ll telegraph to the candidates, in the plainest of terms, their commitment to integrity and their disgust with negativity. There may be no other way to save a democracy on the verge of paralysis.

http://www.globalethics.org/newsline/20 ... mpaigning/

[Ronja]

THIS
.

[Drewish]

In other words, democracy doesn't work.

[Warren Dew]

Glad you recognize Obama's a jerk, Mai.

Obama outpaces McCain in negative ads

In the first week of ads after the conventions last week, 77 percent of the ads that Democrat Barack Obama aired were negative, according to a report today of the Wisconsin Advertising Project, and 56 percent of the ads that Republican John McCain aired in conjunction with his party were negative.

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/polit ... negat.html

[apophenia]

Most psychologists, from what I understand, have more or less given up on trait theory. Not that trait theory is dead, it's just a much harder sell than originally thought.


Anyway, I'm a little more pragmatic. If getting your candidate into office is a legitimate good, I really am not concerned with the finery. That's just beer and skittles.

[Audley Strange]

In other words, democracy doesn't work.

It depends on what viewpoint you take. If you take the idea of an informed people concerned about their fate choosing a beneficial leader then yes in that sense it is doomed to failure. However if you're bred or engineered to a position of power it works perfectly, you can fuck up all you want and then blame the peasants for their bad choice in the first place and thus less likely to end up with you and your family's brains spattered against the wall of your compound.

Democracy, like any system of government is for the benefit of those who rule not for those who don't.

[PsychoSerenity]

In other words, democracy doesn't work.

Democracy means rule by the people. There's nothing wrong with democracy (although it does require a certain level of education and free access to relevant information in the public). Having a democracy run by a few politicians elected in popularity contests with campaigns funded by interest groups, certainly does have a few issues though.

[FBM]

At the end of the article, it suggests that when people get sufficiently fed up with negative campaigning, they'll make that disgust known either by writing to the candidates or at the poll booth on election day. Politicians, like most of us, will do whatever analysts say works best. They'll keep doing it until it stops working for them, and whether or not it works for them is up to the voters. I don't think we should blame the politicians for doing what has been shown to work; I think we need to blame ourselves for letting it work.

[Drewish]

I think China may soon show us just how failed the democratic experiment is. How sad that cutthroat capitalism, rigid ordered society centered around nationalism, and no political freedom seems to work so well. here's hoping I'm wrong and freedom and self governance somehow carries the day

[maiforpeace]

Glad you recognize Obama's a jerk, Mai.

Obama outpaces McCain in negative ads

In the first week of ads after the conventions last week, 77 percent of the ads that Democrat Barack Obama aired were negative, according to a report today of the Wisconsin Advertising Project, and 56 percent of the ads that Republican John McCain aired in conjunction with his party were negative.

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/polit ... negat.html

The blame game? I didn't post this to point fingers Warren. But if makes you feel better to, go right ahead.

At the end of the article, it suggests that when people get sufficiently fed up with negative campaigning, they'll make that disgust known either by writing to the candidates or at the poll booth on election day. Politicians, like most of us, will do whatever analysts say works best. They'll keep doing it until it stops working for them, and whether or not it works for them is up to the voters. I don't think we should blame the politicians for doing what has been shown to work; I think we need to blame ourselves for letting it work.

Exactly. Though I'm not sure how I can vote differently when I do get to the polling place this November.

[apophenia]

The statistician and scientist Francis Galton was something of an elitest, and believed that the most important decisions should be left in the hands of the most capable. However, he conducted an interesting experiment at a fair, in which the members of the crowd were asked to guess the weight of a large pig. While a sampling of the answers demonstrated guesses wildly high and low and inbetween, when averaged, the mean guess as to the weight of the pig was astoundingly accurate. But elitism is a comforting ideology, even in areas like politics, economics and foreign policy where there are no settled theories, or evidence based results; in that sphere, all it takes is to hang out a shingle. Voila! Instant expert. I'm willing to accept that real experts on these affairs have keener descriptive expertise than the average, but that knowledge is not strongly predictive. However, if Galton's experiment can legitimately be generalized to these fields, perhaps the masses do have a predictive expertise the so-called experts, and the many more "arm chair theoreticians" do not.

[Seth]

The best leader on the planet will be utterly ineffective if not elected, so getting elected is the most essential step. And it's a fallacy to presume that the skills needed to win an election axiomatically preclude the skills needed to govern wisely. For the most part campaigns are not directed by candidates, they are directed and run by professional campaign consultants who know how to get their candidate elected. The candidate himself is usually something of a puppet, saying and doing what he's told to do by the pros, during the election.

As we saw with the election of Obama, this is not always the case though. He was a brilliant campaigner and rhetorician, but he's an extremely ineffective and impotent President. This goes to show that even skilled non-negative campaigners are no guarantee of good leadership.

What matters, and what voters need to look at are core values and beliefs, as revealed by the candidates actions prior to the beginning of the campaign, and particularly by those he grew up with and associated with, as a guide to how they will lead. In Obama's case, he was a good "community organizer" who had never held a real job in his life, he was a Marxist sympathizer and radical Progressive who grew up being indoctrinated into Marxist socialism by his parents and literally everyone around him, and he was a mediocre-at-best Senator who showed little or no leadership ability, and he demonstrated that he was an ideological Marxist and Progressive from the very beginning of his political career.

But he was also very charismatic and, well, black, so he won the black vote because blacks voted for his race, not his politics, and they swallowed hook, line and sinker his vague promises of "change" and "hope" without asking what kind of change he had in mind...until it was too late.

I don't think they are going to make the same mistake again.

[Seth]

In other words, democracy doesn't work.

Democracy means rule by the people. There's nothing wrong with democracy ...

There are a great many things wrong with democracy, which is why our Founders worked so very hard to leash, harness, tie down and obstruct democracy, which is otherwise defined as the tyranny of the majority.

Democracy as "rule by the people," without serious constraints on the people's ability to oppress the minority, is on a short list of Very Bad Things in the political realm, right up there with Communism.

[Seth]

I think China may soon show us just how failed the democratic experiment is. How sad that cutthroat capitalism, rigid ordered society centered around nationalism, and no political freedom seems to work so well. here's hoping I'm wrong and freedom and self governance somehow carries the day

It only "seems to work so well" because you are prevented from seeing the enormous piles of dead bodies with bullets in their heads that keep up Communist China's appearance of "working well."

It's an illusion. Communist China is a hell on earth for everyone but the elite of the Central Committee, and dissent gets you killed, so of course there appears to be unity and nationalism. Fear is what keeps the Chinese in line, nothing more.

Take away the ability of the Communist elite to simply kill anyone who disagrees with them or bothers them and China would shed Communism like a dirty pair of underwear and return to Capitalism in a heartbeat, just like Russia did.

[Warren Dew]

At the end of the article, it suggests that when people get sufficiently fed up with negative campaigning, they'll make that disgust known either by writing to the candidates or at the poll booth on election day. Politicians, like most of us, will do whatever analysts say works best. They'll keep doing it until it stops working for them, and whether or not it works for them is up to the voters. I don't think we should blame the politicians for doing what has been shown to work; I think we need to blame ourselves for letting it work.

I think that an informed voter should know both the positives and the negatives of the candidates. Since we can't count on the candidates to inform us of their own negatives, I think a roughly even balance of positive and negative campaign advertising is good.

I would like to see the candidates emphasizing the negatives of their opponents, rather than demonizing segments of the general population. However, as you note, the politicians can only be expected to go for what works, so I guess demonizing voting minorities like "the rich" is only to be expected as well.

I think China may soon show us just how failed the democratic experiment is. How sad that cutthroat capitalism, rigid ordered society centered around nationalism, and no political freedom seems to work so well. here's hoping I'm wrong and freedom and self governance somehow carries the day

Personally, I find it refreshing that a government that is supposed to be a meritocracy can work better than one that is based on popularity contests.

However, China is starting to have some serious problems with corruption, even if it's not as open as the bailouts and other corrupt patronage in the U.S. yet. They really need to bring back something like the Imperial censorate in a big way.