Ethicality

Ethics are generally seen as synonymous with morality, but I find morality to be more black and white than ethics. While people can have a set of morals that are static (ie stealing is wrong), ethics deals more situationally (ie is it right to steal from the rich to give to the needy), but both terms tend to be very subjective. People base their morality and ethicality on religion, their upbringing, zeitgeists, influential figures, and a variety of other sources. It also seems that politicians have a special code of ethics set aside solely for themselves. Many things we see in politics, the general population concedes to and at times are proponents of politicians doing things that if their neighbors did, they would see at the very least as nasty behavior if not downright unethical.

Every so often when I turn on the tv, I see a commercial produced by one candidate that simply say mean things about the other candidates, or skewing something to make the other candidate look insincere/like a liar/ etc etc. If anyone besides politicians gossiped on such a huge scale, everyone would hate them. However, just because of the people at stake, no one sees it as trivially as gossip. It doesn’t end there. Many politicians take it further to lie about the other candidates or intentionally trick people into thinking the candidate is something they’re not. Push-polling is one example of this. “Would you be more or less likely to support Obama if he was involved with Hamas?” was a question recently asked to a largely Jewish population by GOP pollsters. IF he was involved with Hamas, the answer would probably be ‘Less’ for a population larger than the Jewish. This statement is legal only because the IF is thrown in there. Anything can be said in these polls, even the most blatantly fallacious statements as long as the IF is there.

Even though this is legal to an extent, is it really right? I can find no way to justify the ethicality of strategies like push-polling. It leads me in fact to think that the candidate sending out these messages is the untruthful devious one, if not incredibly insecure. But as Allen Raymond says of persuading voters to think two candidates are involved in a scheme when he’s working for a third unnamed candidate, “There really is no right and wrong in politics. There’s legal and illegal…if you want to tell me it’s illegal, well, that’s up to you. But as far as my ethics? My ethics are fully intact.” Is he here then equating ethics, right and wrong, with legal and illegal? Politics is a tough game, but I feel like, out of anyone in the country, politicians are the ones I would want to be more concerned with right and wrong than with legal and illegal. Maybe if politicians actually cared more about ethics and morality, it would be easier for the lower and middle class to get a break on taxes. Yes, you may be able to justify it as ‘legal’ to give your millionaire friends higher tax breaks than the people who need it, but is that really right?

The fact that politicians have the ability to make laws does not help either. It means those with power keep the power and keep themselves safe under that power. The fact is, politicians are not completely devoid of morality. They too have grown up with ideals and the majority claim a religious affiliation (which is a whole other facet I won’t get into), but these people know what’s right and wrong, and manage in many cases to suppress that feeling for personal gain. Politicians truly are a special breed.

Slander in Politics

I have had an exciting political week, what with the VP debate and Seth McFarlane (the creator of Family Guy) came to Miami to promote Obama. I found the debates interesting and thought both candidate held his/her own. Personally, I think that through Palin’s beauty pageant training and debate boot camp, she pulled out a decent debate. But I can’t help but wonder how genuine her knowledge is. How many times did she avoid questions or change them around to something she could answer. We knew Biden would have to be careful and avoid the possibility of looking demeaning toward Palin, which would have given the Republicans a field day. He did this by attacking many of McCain’s policies, but only directly challenged Palin once when he asked her to clarify her war policy. One thing I noticed and don’t quite understand is that Palin says Obama points too many fingers. Seriously? If we look back at past elections, the Republicans constantly slur the Democratic candidates, and the Democrats just take it. Why aren’t the Dems fighting back? One of my current reads, The Political Brain by Drew Westen looks at this phenomena in more detail.

Basically, one conclusion that we can draw is that those who participate in polls don’t want to see slur campaigns. But the Republicans keep doing it, and they keep winning! One definite conclusion I’ve come to regarding activism, is that it’s much easier to rally people around an injustice, ie against a war, rather than something positive, like say, raising money for an orphanage. I think the same goes for political campaigning. When one party slams the other, everyone gets riled up and cares about the flaws of those who are being attacked. When a party says something good about policy, the result is generally more lukewarm because it’s not marketable.

When I think of the type of person I would like to see as president, it’s someone who has good ideas and a well laid out plan; not someone who can only point out the flaws of others to make him/herself look good. I think this must be the general consensus of humanity, based on the polls saying just that, but this doesn’t work out in reality. Emotion decides SO much in politics. People see the attacker as strong, and when Dems don’t defend themselves or counterattack, they’re seen as weak. Maybe people don’t want to think that that’s how their brains work, but the facts are undeniable. Westen points out many campaigns in which the Dems have a policy of not attacking Republicans and decides this needs to stop. There are so many issues on which Democratic candidates can call out Republicans for their hypocrisies, like how Republicans often tout Dems for being unpatriotic when the actual person they’re speaking to has served in the armed forces while he avoided military service. Let’s take a look at this in action.

This website shows us slander and personal attacks in action. Please note, that while it’s “not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee”, it is paid for by the Republican National Committee. I’ve been looking, and simply can’t find any examples of this published by the Democratic National Committee. If you find one, I would love to see it. The comebacks aren’t working. Nothing positive is going to come out of protesting comments; at the very most, comebacks only make the attacked NOT look bad. Although I don’t like to see it, and I wish it didn’t come down to this, there’s a good possibility that the Democrats are going to have to learn to make the first strike if they want to win over the public.