Collateral Damage

The 2008 presidential election campaign between candidates Barack Obama and John McCain was a particularly bruising battle that may have set new low-water marks for negativity. Not only was the contest replete with personal rather than issue-centered ads, the McCain campaign (which one observer for Time characterized as "uniquely dishonest") so often distorted or misrepresented certain campaign issues that the goal seemed to be little more than winning the election at all costs. And those costs were high indeed, not only in terms of dollars spent but also with regard to the basic credibility of the campaign messages. Fundamentally, it was open season on the ethic of honesty itself, and, unfortunately, the 2012 presidential campaign delivered only more of the same. Such behavior appeared to reach its full development in the venomous public debate leading up to the passage of the health care reform bill in March, 2010. Opponents of the bill characterized it in the most dire terms, claiming that it would take away choice in the health marketplace, lead to death panels that would pull the plug on grandma, and start the Europeanization of America (presumably, a reference to creeping socialism). All of these claims were flat-out exaggerations, or worse. Moreover, these same opponents pointed to polls purporting to show that a majority of Americans opposed the bill, which they said justified their own opposition to it. Ironically, missing from this debate was any honest acknowledgment that their own very vocal and coordinated distortions of the bill’s provisions might have contributed to the public’s negative view of it in the first place. Unfortunately, the disinformation that infected this particular public policy discussion was only one example of what seems to be a growing practice in the public arena (Scott, 2010). Perhaps one of the most telling examples during the early part of the Obama administration was the confusion that swirled around the subject of the President’s religion, with allegations mostly from conservatives that he was a Muslim. While polls indicated that broad sectors of the public harbored some uncertainty about this matter, more than twice as many of those self-identifying as Republicans held this view despite its denial by fact-checking sources on the internet and virtually no corroboration from mainstream news media. How could such an incorrect belief have arisen, or been perpetuated? Most who held this view reportedly claimed that they heard it in “the media,” but only right-wing outlets were voicing it. In his widely-acclaimed book, The Republican War on Science, Chris Mooney examined the anti-science, anti-intellectual bias of the George W. Bush administration and found that it contaminated both their practices and policies to the detriment of broader American interests at home and abroad. While I would like to say that, unlike the Republican war on science, the tendency toward negativity and dishonest public discourse is a curse on both major political parties, after the recent campaign I think that the Republicans, under the initial guidance of prominent tacticians like Lee Atwater and more recently Karl Rove, seem to have perfected the genre. Regrettably, with the intense interest in the outcome of the 2010 mid-term election and the perception that so much was at stake, such practices continued full-throttle in the fall campaign and to an even larger extent in the 2012 Presidential election. These practices prompt us to ask about their ill effects. After so much distortion of facts and circulation of outright lies during the campaign, what are the lingering consequences? Do those who orchestrate these practices really think that, after the votes are cast, everybody suffers amnesia? What about possible deeper corrosion to the overall ethic of respect for truthfulness or even the morality of such practices? While we all may find the practices distasteful, I view them as more than a personal annoyance, with considerably higher stakes. This is because such tactics as spin, exaggeration, misrepresentation, and flat-out untruthfulness may come with significant political and social costs that at the very least compromise the integrity of the voting process on which a healthy democracy depends. These are not trivial and emerge if the resulting public misinformation and obfuscation distort our collective judgement about which version of objective truth is best supported. Decisions we need to make as public citizens, for example, may then be compromised because we are thinking incorrectly about impacts of policy on various sectors of the population, particularly minorities and the disadvantaged, or we are inaccurately assessing public risk from such threats as global climate change. How can effective public policy be formulated if the electorate itself is so confused that it cannot express an informed opinion at the polls? If, for example, a large minority of conservative voters is misinformed about something as straightforward as a president’s religion, how can they be expected to express a thoughtful judgement on more complex matters such as tax or health care proposals, or global climate change (which they do by choosing among different candidates at the polls)? In addition, social costs emerge if such practices undermine respect for the principle of honesty that the wider society may esteem and require for smooth functioning. At the same time, misleading the public for purposes of short-term political gain raises unsettling ethical questions, particularly for a political party that wraps itself in the embrace of “family values” and sees no hypocrisy in the practice. All in all, I think it should be clear from these considerations that the various forms of untruthfulness that so often comprise political discourse in American today (and no more so than in debates about global warming and health care) at least have the potential for wide and under-appreciated adverse effects across our society.