Campaign Ethics and Concerns about Campaign Conduct

Concern about the conduct of American election campaigns has led to several studies of opinions regarding campaign conduct, including survey analysis of citizens and of campaigning practitioners. The Pew Charitable Trusts, for example, has funded studies and programs designed to assess campaign conduct and people's perspectives on campaigns and elections. American University's Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies and the Institute for Global Ethics each found that large majorities of the electorate are pessimistic about the ethical standards of candidates (IGE 1999; 2002; Thurber et al. 2000), but that campaigners mostly consider themselves to be ethical (Medvic 2001; Thurber and Nelson 2000). Carol Whitney (2002, 101), for example, writes, “I have yet to meet a political consultant who admits to doing anything unethical.” Campaigns and campaign communications have nonetheless been explicitly connected with declines in political participation (e.g., Bartels et al. 1998) and political trust (e.g., Fowler 1995; Neustadt 1997), broadening the locus of concern beyond individual campaigns to the United States' political system itself (e.g., Carter 1998; Kolodny 2002; Scher 1997).

Concerns about the impact of campaigns on public opinion and political participation have led to a variety of efforts to encourage “more ethical” campaign conduct. The major professional organization of political consultants, the American Association of Political Consultants, developed a professional code of conduct that all members must sign, but which has no enforcement mechanism (see the code at www.theaapc.org/ethics.html). Some individual political consultants encourage prospective clients to consider ethical campaign practices in advance, or require clients to sign ethics codes. Other groups undertake broader initiatives at the state and local levels designed to encourage ethical campaigning by urging candidates to agree to a code of conduct developed by both campaigns (see, for example, the publications and resources at the Campaign Conduct web site of the Institute for Global Ethics, www.globalethics.org/campaignconduct).

Still other approaches attempt to inculcate into campaign training some consideration of what ethical campaign conduct entails. There are several venues in which campaign ethics are addressed in the political training process. Parties and some interest groups provide campaign training for affiliated candidates. There are numerous books and articles written on campaigning by both academics and practitioners, most of which devote some space to discussions of campaign conduct and ethical considerations (a number of these are cited in Wielhouwer 2003). The principle trade magazine in the political consulting industry, Campaigns & Elections, often contains articles discussing campaign ethics, and incorporates discussions into its campaign training seminars. Several academic institutions have sponsored substantial research and outreach to consultants and politicians in efforts to report on and improve the conduct of American election campaigns; prominent among these are the University of Maryland's Campaign Assessment and Candidate Outreach Project (www.capc.umd.edu), American University's Improving Campaign Conduct program (www.american.edu/academic.depts/spa/ccps), and UCBerkeley's Center for Campaign Leadership (http://campaigns.berkeley.edu), all funded by grants from the Pew Trusts. Finally, ethical concerns are integrated into coursework at the seven universities that offer graduate degrees in campaign or political management (Regent University, George Washington University, University of Akron, Suffolk University, New York University, Florida State University, and the University of Florida). Moreover, many colleges offer undergraduate courses on ethics and politics, with varying degrees of concentration on election campaign conduct.

The Center for Grassroots Politics Campaign Ethics Initiative

The School of Government at Regent University offers a Master's level program in political campaign management. As director of the program, and through the Center for Grassroots Politics, I developed a series of interactive ethics scenarios focusing specifically on campaign conduct. The scenario development is an innovative way to actively engage students in debating campaign ethics, distinct from the traditional method of course delivery—reading and then discussing or writing a short paper about a problem. Because students retain and internalize information with which they interact better than information that they simply read (e.g., McKeachie 1999), I wanted to make the ethical scenarios more interesting, engaging, and interactive. To achieve this goal I adapted actual, rather than hypothetical campaign situations. Students are more engaged when they know the scenario is based in reality and is not a creation of the professor's imagination. In reality, of course, we often find that truth in politics is stranger than fiction.

This understanding has influenced the construction of all my courses, especially in my primary course on ethics and campaigning, “Principled Political Action.” My basic approach in designing the class is as follows: Students develop personal codes of ethics at the outset, and then approach campaign situations and the course readings in that context. I also assume that if students consider difficult questions in advance, they will be better equipped to make ethically coherent and consistent decisions in a crisis. Therefore, the course focuses on a normative framework for considering political realities—it is designed to equip students to make ethically coherent decisions in future crisis-driven environments, like election campaigns. The ethical dimensions of political management are systematically addressed in later courses in the degree program, for which the content of this course lays an important foundation.

The scenarios themselves, however, do not assume, nor do they require an $a$ priori normative ethical framework. They simply present ethical dilemmas as problems that emerge in the course of a campaign. Because Regent University is a Christian graduate school, however, the classes often address normative questions within a distinct normative framework for assessing personal behavior and integrity. The reader should thus understand that the examples below are pulled from student discussions assuming an evangelical Christian ethical perspective.

Of course, whether a student or consultant considers a particular problem to be an ethical dilemma at all is a matter of perspective. For example, one scenario involves a debate over using push polls in campaigns. While academics tend to be universal in their condemnation of push polls (see, for example, the academic-written contributions in Nelson, Dulio, and Medvic 2002a), practitioners are more divided. Nelson, Dulio, and Medvic (2002b) report that in a recent survey of political consultants, 26% consider push polls ethical, 37% consider them ethically questionable, and 38% consider them to be clearly unethical.

In discussion with the University's Instructional Support & Technology Center (IST), I proposed placing a series of interactive scenarios on the center's web site. We developed a framework for student interaction and brainstormed on how different web platforms could effectively communicate the dilemma reflected in each scenario. For example, Carol Whitney's campaign ethics curriculum (1999) contains the following scenario:

Instead of having students read this scenario, we proposed having them experience it through a brief Shockwave animation. In the basic model, students go to the Campaign Ethics web page and read the introduction: “You receive an anonymous donation. What would you do with money from an unknown source?” Clicking on the scenario icon starts a Shockwave animation that begins with an envelope overflowing with $20s and $50s entitled “Campaign Fund” and a note that floats out to the viewer reading (see Diagram below).

After viewing the animation, students click through to the class's online Blackboard discussion board and participate in an asynchronous dialogue about the scenario. The goal of the dialogues is to move students from abstract concept of campaign ethics to concrete applications of ethics, and from a rudimentary understanding of campaigning to a more complex understanding of ethics in context. Table 1 summarizes the Campaign Ethics scenarios, and the ethical issues they raised. Clearly, these scenarios address a wide range of campaign-related topics, including campaign finance issues, civility of campaign communications, lines of accountability in the campaign organization, the use of personal attacks and push polling, and race and gender stereotyping.

Alternative approaches in the online environment include student-faculty interaction in a synchronous virtual class discussion, and bringing in political consultants to provide “expert” commentary on the ethical dilemma posed by the scenario. The utility of the online scenarios is not limited to the electronic classroom experience. For example, students in traditional class settings could:

1. View and prepare to discuss the scenario before coming to class.
2. View the scenario and have a discussion during class (assuming that the course is being held in a smart classroom).
3. View and discuss the scenario as part of a breakout discussion section.
4. Use the scenario as a basis for a short written assignment.

Asynchronous Dialogues, and Digging Deeper

The online asynchronous dialogue format for scenario discussion has the effect, if managed well, of maximizing participation by students who might otherwise not take part in a live discussion. For example, students with little or no campaign experience might feel intimidated by those who are experienced campaigners. The format thus encourages student-directed learning, in the context of discussing what the teacher believes is an important issue, while providing a venue in which all students are required to participate. For example, in the scenario where students receive the anonymous cash donation, a first-semester student without campaign experience made the following posting:

Contrast this with the posting from an experienced campaigner:

The experienced student went on to provide a detailed description, even citing specific Federal Election Commission regulations and rulings, of what could legally be done with the money. Based on the differences between the two responses, I was able to address a critical issue—the financial regulation of campaigning, without explicitly raising the issue myself. The first student had not known that campaign finance was subject to that kind of regulation, and had to change her answer, but it was another student who did the correction in a relatively non-threatening context, simply by giving his own response to the scenario. Students directed the learning experience, after I set the stage with the content. Moreover, this scenario raises the broader dilemma of whether ethical behavior is achieved by simply complying with the law.

Discussions often involved broader questions related to campaign strategy that are not usually considered “ethical,” per se. For example, one scenario is a 3-minute video we shot using local actors, and is viewed through Windows Media Player. In the video, the campaign team is discussing the dilemma of how to handle poll numbers that have plateaued, with their candidate just a few points below the opponent, and with only a few weeks left in the campaign. They debate whether to do a push poll that implies the opponent is a lesbian, but two students also raised other, more fundamental, problems:

The dialogue hit upon another subtheme raised by the students, whether a candidate's sexual orientation is fair game for campaign communications and tactics. While some students had internalized the position that push polling was unacceptable, there was more variation in whether sexual orientation is a character issue that merits action on the part of the campaign. In the exchange below, the student (Student 1) who is reticent to spread the word about the candidate's alleged sexual orientation also ends up proposing that it would be enough to disseminate the candidate's support for the gay political agenda.

Another scenario involves students listening in on a “phone tag” conversation between a campaign manager and a county party chair. In this situation, an African-American Republican candidate wants to walk precincts newly added to his district, but the local party chair fears that the knowledge among the local base Republican voters that the candidate is black will depress voter turnout in the precincts, jeopardizing the candidate's viability. The students are then asked what they would decide to do. The responses allow the class to consider how to address electorate racial bias, and the situation lends itself to addressing difficult strategic realities faced by candidates and voters alike.

The asynchronous context allows information processing to evolve over the time frame allocated for the dialogue. This means that if students miss the point of the exercise they are able to revisit the problem, and are not penalized for not getting to the point of the exercise on the first dialogue posting. Student 3, below, talks around the problem, but doesn't commit to a recommendation; I follow up and hold her accountable for completing the full assignment, which includes making a decision on what they would do.