Candidate conduct pledge is misguided

A Times Editorial
Published December 23, 2006
Pinellas County Commissioner Karen Seel reflects the frustration of many voters who were disgusted by the distorted, negative attacks that set a new low for local sleaze in the 2006 political campaigns. But the answer is not a government-written pledge that would encourage candidates to play nice.

A proposed county ordinance backed by Seel is well-intended but misguided. It would create a Code of Ethical Campaign Practices, and candidates in Pinellas would be asked to sign it voluntarily. The proposed oath would ask candidates to pledge to reject campaign material that distorts or misrepresents facts. They would agree to avoid making an opponent's race, gender or sexual orientation a campaign issue and speak out against anyone who raises such personal issues.

Of course, these are ideals all candidates should embrace without signing a government form. And under the proposed ordinance, there would be no one determining who broke the voluntary pledge and no penalties for those candidates who signed on and then waded into the mud. The idea would be that the media would shame candidates into behaving better by publicizing who didn't sign the pledge - or who did and then violated it.

But policing the tenor of political campaigns, even in a voluntary way, is not government's role. That is best left to independent groups unaffiliated with candidates or the county courthouse. Citizens for Fair Campaign Practices, a local group that effectively served this role for a time but has now disbanded, is one such model. There might be other variations that would work as well.

Seel acknowledges that she would prefer another method of cleaning up political campaigns than approving a county ordinance, which the County Commission is expected to air at a public hearing in January. But she sees no other viable alternative. That doesn't mean government-sponsored standards are the way to go, no matter how generic and well-meaning they sound.

In tone and volume, the 2006 campaigns were often depressingly negative. Yet voters did an admirable job slogging through the muck and rejecting many of those candidates who engaged in the worst name-calling. That should send a stronger signal to future candidates about how to conduct themselves than any voluntary pledge that county government hands out.

A clean campaign pledge? Can't hurt

By HOWARD TROXLER, Times Columnist
Published December 19, 2006

Did you think the 2006 election was the worst ever when it came to sleazy campaign attacks?

It's the normal way to run a campaign these days. File your papers. Set up a bank account. And launch into accusing your opponent of being a bad person.

Why? Two reasons.

First, the insiders say that it works.

No matter how stupid or ridiculous the accusation (for example, that a candidate supports child molesters), somebody believes it.

Even if only one person out of 100 buys it, that can make the difference in a close race.

It's not even necessary for voters to believe every accusation literally. Just a general cloud of suspicion is enough.

Attack ads also work by getting people not to vote. This explains why political advertising, as opposed to almost any other kind, can be so sneering and cynical.

When Ford and Chevrolet advertise, they want a bigger share of a big market. It's in everybody's interest to sell as many cars as possible.

But when campaigns advertise, they don't care how few people vote - as long as their side gets the most.

In a couple of races in 2006, the attack ads were so clumsy or offensive that they seem to have backfired. But unfortunately that's the exception.

Here's the second reason that sleazy attack ads are the general rule: because candidates never believe their own ads are sleazy.

Never once, not in nearly three decades of following elections, have I heard a politician or a campaign manager admit to using unethical ads. Their defenses always boil down to (1) He Hit Me First and (2) Well, It's Technically True.

Something happens to a lot of people who run for office. They naturally think of themselves as The Good Guy. Inevitably, that means the other candidate is The Bad Guy. And it's okay to attack bad guys.

So any attempt to change the culture of attack politics has to consider these two factors: Attack ads tend to work, and nobody admits that his own ads are bad.

This brings us to Pinellas County, which is considering a "code of ethical campaign practices." The idea is that the county would offer candidates a chance to sign a pledge to run clean campaigns.

Candidates wouldn't have to sign the pledge. Neither would there be any punishment for signing it and then breaking it.

But the hope behind the proposal is that candidates who made the promise and then broke it would suffer in the court of public opinion.

The pledge includes a promise not to distort or misrepresent facts, make personal innuendoes, attack opponents on the basis of religion, race and so forth, and to repudiate any outside attack made on those grounds.

That last point is important, because many attacks these days come from the Democratic and Republican parties, or their surrogates, instead of individual campaigns. It would be worth it just to see an outbreak of candidates publicly disavowing the sleazy tactics of their own parties.

We should be a little queasy about the government being involved in the standards for campaigns at all. If Pinellas were proposing to judge which candidates were being "unethical," this would certainly be a bad idea. And yet our system has become so brutally cynical, so awful, that maybe the pledge would do some good. It is hard to see how it could hurt, anyway.