Candidates need to be "FIT".

• Author: Vatz, Richard E.
• Position: POLITICAL LANDSCAPE - False, irrelevant and tasteless claims - Essay

VIRTUALLY EVERY POLITICAL campaign loudly and indignantly complains that its opponents engage in the dreaded activity of "negative campaigning,' a practice nearly universally condemned as unfair or, worse, corrosive to the entire political system. Polls repeatedly show that the public agrees. One showed 82% of Americans deploring negative political advertising, but what precisely they oppose is not all that clear. In addition, most analysts believe that most varieties of negative campaigning work, at least to some degree.

Interestingly, the consensual opposition to negative campaigning is not matched by a consensus on what exactly constitutes negative campaigning, nor does it often acknowledge the obvious fact that there is what we call, for lack of better terms, "acceptable" and "unacceptable" negative campaigning. While recognizing that no formula--however detailed--always will permit us to distinguish "acceptable" from "unacceptable," we would like to advance the general understanding of negative campaigning by offering a few categories that we believe should be the starting point for such discussions.

We start with the obvious: all candidates argue that voters ought to support them because their opponent is less desirable for some reason. Such a contention necessarily requires some type of negative campaigning. No reasonable observer should maintain generally that negative campaigning--such as criticizing an opponent's political decisions, recorded votes, speeches, stated priorities, career history, or even close associates, memberships, and financial holdings--is inappropriate or unacceptable. However, there are what consensually should be seen as unacceptable campaigning attacks. Consistent with this argument, we call the categories that we would like to see employed in public discussion of such negative campaigning the "FIT" test: false claims; irrelevant claims; tasteless claims. Statements, photos, or any other political communications that reasonably can be said to fall into one of these categories should be deemed to be "un-FIT" for political campaigns. Relying mostly on the 2008 presidential primaries, let us see how the "FIT" test might be applied.

False claims often are the easiest to identify. We recognize that disagreements on truth and falsity will occur. Our argument simply suggests that we ought to be evaluating political campaign claims partially on this basis and condemn the false ones. So, when false claims were made...