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Honor in campaigns
Speaker
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Why should candidates refrain from lying? Why not tar and smear your opponent and dispense with ethical concerns?
Indeed, if you believe that real issues are at stake, such as the future of the financial system, the fate of medically uninsured families, the risk of future terrorist attacks and the essence of civil liberties - how can you ethically refrain from anything that wins an election?
What is it to the millions of families who depend on the income of a lone breadwinner who can't afford to see a doctor when they get ill if an ad says that John McCain enjoys torturing puppies? What is it to the families of those killed in a terrorist attack if an ad says Barack Obama is a secret muslim fanatic?
Indeed, if you believe that real issues are at stake, such as the future of the financial system, the fate of medically uninsured families, the risk of future terrorist attacks and the essence of civil liberties - how can you ethically refrain from anything that wins an election?
What is it to the millions of families who depend on the income of a lone breadwinner who can't afford to see a doctor when they get ill if an ad says that John McCain enjoys torturing puppies? What is it to the families of those killed in a terrorist attack if an ad says Barack Obama is a secret muslim fanatic?
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The picture is more gray than this. Elected officials usually have speciality which they really care about, and then tote the party line for other issues. Lobbyists are only effective on issues in which senators do not already have strong points of view.
I asked a question - why should the non-corrupt politician refrain from lying?
Why? because honesty is a value that is severly under-rated.
Why?
Why shouldn't a candidate's loyalty to working families or national defense take higher priority?
. . . J . . . John?
How does launching an ad calling Obama a secret muslim make you lose sight of wanting to protect the country from a terrorist attack?
How does calling McCain a racist make you lose sight of wanting to get insurance for people who can't afford it?
It sets a bad precedent (or president?).
As in, if they lie to the voters to win an election, just how much of what they have told you is lies? If they are committed to saying anything to win, including that the other candidate is a racist, mother fucking paedophile that stole your bike in sixth grade then what's to stop them lying about the important things such as what they're going to do about health care, education, war, taxes, recovery of your six-speed etc.?
And once they get into power, why wouldn't they continue lying to you in order to stay there?
Shit, it was probably that lying fuck that stole your bike in the first place.
So from a politicians point of view, you shouldn't lie because the consequence will be that the public doesn't trust you?
Not only is that not entirely born out by experience, it supposes that there is no problem with lying so long as your supporters are sufficient in number to elect you and they aren't bothered enough by your lies to vote for someone else.
Give me a specific example of a non-corrupt politician.
Right.
This is an 'end justifies the means' debate, right?
The usual answer is that if one freely lies and cheats to do good, the good ends up being horribly subverted by the lying and cheating. Also personality traits are not independent - people who are liars are rarely kind, good and principled in every other area.
Because if a politician truly cares about the country, they will go about improving it in the best manner possible, and many, including myself, believe that utilitarianism is not the best course of action for the good; rather, one should always act so that they would want others to act the same in their position. Would a candidate want another candidate to smear him, etc., or would they want the election to be about the issues, the issues which they believe they are in the superior and correct stance.
Of course, if you think the people are stupid misguided slobs wholly unfit to govern themselves (as a lot of politicians seem to think), then there's nothing wrong with lying, for exactly the reasons mentioned in the OP.
Being a liar makes you corrupt. You can't be an honest liar.
Interesting inquiry in the OP, though, I'll be back after this meeting.
Honesty only really matters if the people you represent care about honesty. The idea that people favor honesty is itself a falsehood.
Honesty doesn't mean jackall about your other values.
Honestly, I think Obama is lying to us RIGHT NOW. I think he's too intelligent to honestly be all gung ho about ethanol, but that he's using that lie to get into power so he can do a few non-horrible things and make some connections on the way.
I don't think he has a choice there.
I think this is true of some people in our US Presidency thread, which I think has been extremely hypocritical in its treatment of the Republicans. (As a caveat, I hate the Republicans).
However, not everyone's like that.
A lot of die-hard party affiliates seem to think people are unfit, misguided slobs as well. It's incredibly hard for someone with firmly held beliefs to think that someone might examine a set of circumstances and come to a different conclusion than they did.
I think people expect dishonesty from politicians. Maybe not outright lying, but how many times has a changed or softened stance on an issue been characterized as "nothing to worry about because they're pandering to get elected and don't really believe that" by supporters and "a display of a lack of understanding of the issues and a tendency to flip-flip" by opponents?
Habitual lying connects to a lack of respect for others, both because you think they can't see through your lies and because you don't respect their right to know the truth and make informed choices.
It can be a sign of an overactive imagination.
Lying to gain power can mean you love power for its own sake.
I wouldn't go so far as to call people stupid and misguided, nor wholly unfit to govern themselves. I think it's more along the lines that the voting public is, in general, a selfish, petty, easily frightened, willfully ignorant mob easily swayed by finger-pointing and simple "solutions" to complex problems. Most politicians come from the same lot.
I think this is a good answer.
The politician who lies to get his way has already decided that he must deceive the people to get his way. He has decided that his opinion is better than that of the people, and that he knows what is best for them. That is not democracy. It is tyranny. A politician who lies to get his way is usually just a greedy man, but if he really believes that he is lying to do right, then he is an aspiring tyrant.
Such a man (or woman) should not have power.
I also believe that you can somewhat accurately judge a future administration by the culture of its campaign. So by supporting a campaign that thinks all ends justify all means, you are effectively supporting an administration with the same mentality.
This was my idea as well. When you tell a lie, you are a thief. You take away that person's right to learn the truth. How can I trust someone who lies? How can I vote someone into the most powerful position in the world who I know lies to me?
Is it really a lie if it's accepted as the truth?
And, you're in a pretty hopeless position here... you can either abstain from voting or vote for a third candidate who has no reason to lie, since he/she isn't going to win the election anyway. I don't think there has ever been honesty in politics. But, there hasn't really been honesty in much of anything people do, whether it's relationships, work, etc.
To be an effective leader requires trust from those following the leaders. What occurs during the election process is a foreshadowing of what will occur during office. If you have persons running for office that do not act in an ethical manner during their campaign, then what expectation should I have of them to act in an ethical manner once in office?
None.
Honesty builds trust, which leads to a higher degree of confidence in our leadership. If we are confident that our leadership can be trusted, then we are more likely to support their endeavours. A leader without support is just an ineffectual tool. Look at what has happened to Congress and how impotent the current leadership there has shown themselves to be.
Well, I'm Dutch, so I can't vote anyway. :P
In Dutch elections I just vote for the lesser evil, last elections I voted for the socialists because I did not consider another right-wing 4 years would be healthy for the economy. I was not alone in this and now we have a slightly more left wing government as opposed to the slightly more right wing government we had before that.
I am not expecting anyone to never ever lie, that would be hopelessly naive, I do expect politicians to play by the democratic rules...those include "not lying to the rest of the country, otherwise we can't know who we vote into office".
Yup
Further, it makes it a good lie. The best lie.
Politics, like poker and the practice of law, is in part a confidence game. The goal is to get the person with the power (the electorate, the other players and the jury in my examples) to place their confidence in you. When they do so, you can present an arguably true explanation of something, and if your opponent in the game has earned less confidence than you, his or her arguably true explanation of the same thing won't convince anyone. In poker, the goal is to make your opponent have more confidence in the immediately apparent explanation of your actions than in an alternate explanation. If you bet big well, your opponent should think you have something big. If you bet big and your opponent has no confidence in you, they'll assume you've got nothing.
To tell a lie (to bluff) is to take a risk with that confidence. If you are called out on your lie, and sufficiently, you lose your investment in that lie, and increase the barrier to gaining the confidence of your target audience. A good lie in a campaign could have several characteristics. It could present a significant barrier of time and energy invested to debunk it, it could be worded in such a way as to be semantically true but misleading, or it could be trivial so that, when debunked, doesn't cost you much.
If you simply dispense with ethical concerns and just lay into the "he has butsecks with the children" lies, that's a big lie, and a big confidence investment. When you get called out, you lose your investment and your remaining capital is devalued. Alternatively, if you run a really honest campaign for a long time, you get a lot of leeway later on down the line to play loose with some statistics or make some small misrepresentations of your opponent. (especially if your opponent has a history of misrepresenting him or herself) I think this is what you're seeing with both the Obama and the McCain campaigns.
Essentially, I'm saying it's not specifically bad to lie, but it can be very unwise and you have to be damn sure you aren't throwing your stack into a pot you're sure to lose.
1) If the press decides you are lying repeatedly and egregiously enough, then the "Al Gore narrative" sets in and you lose the election. Interestingly in this case, it doesn't actually matter if you really are lying.
2) How you campaign gives some indication of how you govern. And as George Bush and Dick Cheney have proven, an ability to lie easily combined with a desire for power (which is automatic if you're running for major office) is a disastrous combination in a government. And I think people realize that more clearly now.