We now have a presidential nominee for both major parties. They both say they are going to give us a different kind of political campaign. John McCain and Barack Obama have both promised to present a respectful and civil presidential campaign. Will it really happen? Is it possible that in the months leading up to November 4th., we will see a campaign in which the candidates discuss and debate major issue and avoid the low-road politics, to which we have all grown so accustomed? I’m hopeful but I do have my doubts.
We have grown familiar with gutter politics that certain strategies even have names. To attack an opponent’s character is to Bork an opponent. To swift boat an opponent is to misrepresent or lie about a critical fact in your opponent’s biography. This campaign has added a new technique. A campaign might Reverend Wright or Reverend Hagee an opponent by creating the impression that the opponent shares a set of beliefs with someone the candidate, at some time in the past, has associated with.
Such strategies have been around ever since politics began. Plato even discusses some of them in The Republic. Now, however, the internet has turned dirty politics into an occupation. Political research agencies are paid tens of thousands of dollars to dig up or manufacture dirt on your opponent. In order for one of these tactics to work, there must be a small kernel of truth which can then be distorted and exploited.
Both parties do it, but my observation is that Republicans are better at dirty politics than Democrats. Republicans will even do it to other republicans, as John McCain learned in 2,000. As he ran for the Republican nomination against then candidate George W. Bush, an email was sent to thousands of voters in several primary states that McCain had fathered a black child (totally untrue) and that his wife was a drug addict (also untrue).
In this campaign, emails were sent that claimed that if Giuliani became president he would put a Catholic priest, who had been accused of child molestation, in his cabinet. Calls were made to Republican primary voters, disguised as a legitimate opinion poll, which mentioned John McCain favorably and reminded listeners that Mitt Romney is a Mormon and that he spent the Vietnam war in France as a missionary (true but irrelevant). Emails and bloggers have described Barack Obama as a Muslim (completely false). He has been accused of being unwilling to salute the flag and that he is really some kind of subversive.
These kinds of dirty tricks and almost never done by the candidate or the candidate’s campaign. They are usually done by what is called 527 organizations. The 527s are organizations formed to help one candidate and hurt another but are separate from the candidate’s organization so the candidate cannot be held responsible for what they do. They are the slimy, low-life, bottom-feeders of political campaigning. Politics is a rough and tumble game, and as Harry Truman famously said, “If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.” But the 527 organizations have brought politics to a level of nastiness we have not seen in the past.
If 527organizations are really beyond the control of a candidate and the candidate’s campaign, we cannot hold a candidate responsible for what they have done. However, we can, and we should, hold candidates responsible for not publicly and directly dissociating themselves from the ugly things that 527s do. In the past, few candidates have done this, but this year all three of the major presidential candidates, Clinton, McCain and Obama have made an effort to distance themselves from things some of their supporters have said and done. I think that is a good sign. Perhaps, we will get a new more civil kind of politics.
It is important to note here that the reason candidates go into the gutter with their politics is because it works. We, the voters, allow them to do it. We love to see a candidate we dislike pilloried, even when what is claimed is a fabrication or a serious stretch of the truth. We hate it when a candidate we like is attacked, even when the attack is primarily true.
If you really want to put a stop to this ugly kind political communication, there is something we can do. We can make sure that candidates we support know that our support is contingent on their willingness to run a reasonably clean campaign. If we would all do just that, we could change politics in a single season.
