Truth Should Speak Louder than Fear & Fabrication
Related subjects: In the Loop, J.E. Robertson, Media, Opinion, U.S. Politics, Vote 2008 Comments Off
Terry McAuliffe, former chairman of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and Howard Dean’s predecessor as chairman of the DNC, has said 2008 will be “the most vicious campaign we have ever faced“. Already shadowy “527 groups” and PACs are running ads and sponsoring the publication of books full of disproven rumor and innuendo, with the openly stated aim of “defeating Barack Obama”. Author Jerome Corsi, who has written a best-selling anti-Obama tome, openly admitted, against the wishes of his publisher, that his book is not intended to be factual, but rather to further the anti-Obama agenda, with the aim of influencing the outcome of the November election.
Corsi’s book has already been widely discredited, as it contains a number of flagrant falsehoods and fabrications, which have been proven false by easily available evidence. Nevertheless, the Guardian newspaper notes that “Fox News’s conservative host Sean Hannity … allowed Corsi to claim Obama wanted to allow women to have ‘abortions’ even after their child was born. Instead of refuting the ridiculous claim, Hannity merely expressed shock.” The claim is an absurd and outright lie, and went unchallenged by the host of the show on which it was made.
And those who aim to drag the political discourse of the United States down to the level of smears, lies and character assassination, who display no fear whatsoever of libel, election fraud, wire fraud or even tax fraud (in cases where actions are clearly designed to benefit a specific candidate), rely on the media to remain so afraid of appearing non-neutral that they never question any of these charges. The result is that political campaigns are under tremendous pressure to “go negative”, even to rely on a strictly negative campaign, aimed at smearing and destroying the character of an opponent with nothing other than lies and manipulations.
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Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign appears to have fallen into this trap: the senator from New York was long touted as the “inevitable” candidate of the Democratic party, but her campaign shifted increasingly to an all-attack posture, and eventually relied on manipulations of the truth and smears of her main rival, Sen. Barack Obama, to make her case. Naturally, her case is made thinner by these tactics, because less of it becomes known; her negative attacks became more familiar to voters than her actual positions, and the attack-strategy failed in the face of an ideas-based campaign from her rival.
Some analysts, and some Republican party operatives, are now saying the campaign of Sen. John McCain either has opted or should opt for an attack-strategy against Sen. Obama. This strategy failed for his senatorial opponent, Alan Keyes, who lost by a landslide, in the biggest margin of defeat ever in a statewide election in Illinois, and it failed for Clinton, who lost to Obama in a much closer contest. Now, in an election year when polls show voters are angry at the dirty tricks, corruption, inaction and manipulation characteristic of Washington in recent years, Sen. John McCain may be persuaded by hardliners to abandon his platform of ideas and bet it all on anti-Obama spin.
The media should play a role in “keeping them honest”, whether it’s McCain or Obama, or the independent candidates, or the 527 groups. Journalists exist for a reason; they have a job to do, and their job is to find out the truth. If a candidate fudges his own record, a journalist should know what documents or what witnesses can confirm or refute the candidate’s remarks. If a candidate or an outside group smears the opponent with innuendo or with outright lies, a journalist should know where to find the truth, find it, and hold up the truth against the smear.
The truth should speak louder, much louder, than lies and innuendo. Our democracy depends on it. And whether or not Republican party campaign strategists are ready to hear it or not, this may be a different kind of voter-motivation climate. There is palpable hostility in the voting public to the idea that campaigns want to manipulate their opinions and their choice. Poll after poll show a convergence of reticence toward sources of political information and a desire for renewal across the political landscape.
Online political browsing and blogging are far above what they have been in any past election cycle, and this is in part a reaction to the increasingly widespread view of voters that they cannot rely on the most widely available sources for the truth, as so much media is now devoted to parroting what one or another talking head spits out, often with zero reference of any kind to corroborate any claims. Open government is increasingly called for by voters and activists, and both parties have highly vocal enclaves demanding truth before fiction in political comment, reporting and campaigning.
Sen. Barack Obama, when he announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination, in February 2007, he said “so long as we’re willing to listen to each other, we can assume the best in people, instead of the worst”. Sen. Obama declared that “This campaign has to be about reclaiming the meaning of citizenship”. But his campaign’s guiding philosophy was best laid out when he said that “our cherished rights of liberty and equality depend on the active participation of an awakened electorate”. That speech, in many ways, framed the overriding themes for the entire 2008 campaign, and his opponents’ failure to understand that has been instrumental in Sen. Obama’s success so far.
This is not an advertisement for Sen. Obama, but a caution to those on either side who would ignore the reshaping of our political landscape, and what has come to be expected of our leaders, since that cold day in Springfield, Illinois. It is a caution to those who seek to score cheap political points, by playing to voters’ prejudices, fears or lack of information. That may play a role in organizing some groups of voters, but there is a much bigger mobilization going on, and it is likely to happen by virtue of new vision and a genuine expression of the truths of the world and the real solutions proposed to deal with them.
Journalists should take as their standard, as their cue, the truth of whatever matter is at hand. Not the competing concepts of possible truth in a controversy, but the actual truths that underly the controversy. The background, the landscape, the measurable. And where campaigns fall back on spin and innuendo, to the detriment of affirmative expressions of ideas for the future, to the detriment of the telling of the actual truth of the world as we are able to observe it, those same journalists who give us what we call the “mass media” should privilege the affirmative and the truth over the endless repetition of smears and rumor, most especially where those rumors have been concretely proven to be false.
At some point, rumor must fade away and be less influential than truth. If those whose job it is to report to the public the truth of their world do not make that happen, if they wait until after the election, out of some faux allegiance to the idea of equal validity of all ideas or all approaches in political debate, then the electorate will be less informed, and the outcome will be less optimal than it would be, were there more information of quality available to the mainstream media consumer.
The work of journalists in this environment is to make it risky to lie, risky to smear, risky to waste valuable time talking about one’s opponent, when one could defend one’s own ideas. The work of journalists is to explore the validity of publicly stated claims, to test the fact-value of material statements made by the candidates or by agents of the candidates or their parties. Right now, we have left this to the false peer-review of campaign operatives giving their spin, against the spin of other campaign operatives. We have choir-members paid by media to tell the choir what they already believe, whether or not fact ever enters the debate.
Sen. Obama has repeatedly challenged the political establishment to make this adjustment, and he has called on voters to recognize the need for it. He has won more votes than any candidate in US primary history, and he has done so against a determined well-funded, deeply experienced attack-oriented campaign. It is not clear that Sen. John McCain has made the needed adjustment to campaign effectively in this environment.
Many in his own party believe he is still running a primary campaign, talking too much to his base. Or that insecurity about his chances necessitates his going repeatedly to the base to shore up his support. But, in the meantime, what appears to be an increasingly negative campaign risks robbing the senator from Arizona, reputed “maverick” and go-it-alone self-reliant political mind, of his chance to compete for the right to say the public knows his ideas and views them as the best for our times. And robbed of that chance, he may lose whatever appeal he would have had to win enough voters in 2008 to become president in 2009.
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