Political ethics usually falls into two categories. One is the public domain and the other is the private domain. Political ethics describes the distribution of power. Who has it and how do I get it. One of the movies, The Godfather, is regarded as the best film in the last century.
Michael Corleone, the son of Vito Corleone, the Godfather, makes two provocative statements that reflect how distribution of power occurs as well as personal and public ethics. Michael quotes his father when asked how he is certain that a particular action will be taken. He responds by saying, “My father said that he made him an offer that he can’t refuse.” Later, Michael responds to the family lawyer, Tom, with these words. “Tom don’t let anybody kid you. It’s business. It’s not personal.”
Both these lines are the most often quoted and remembered and they relate to ethics and our current political scene.
“I made him an offer he can’t refuse” is statement that describes transactional exchanges in the extreme so we can see them in today’s run for the presidency by Harris and Trump. The Godfather performs an act for someone who is an undertaker whose owner of his place of business has raised the rent to a level that this individual cannot afford. The Godfather takes care of the dilemma with the implied threat. He also says that someday I may need your services to help me. The Godfather’s son is murdered by a rival mafioso gang. Vito Corleone goes to the undertaker and says, “Fix him up so his mother can see him without all the wounds to his face.” The undertakes does just that.
The essence of the political campaigns is that candidates will give the group they are addressing what they want or need. Trump, however, seems to tell everyone he meets something that is so extreme as he adds to his thousands of lies. It usually starts with “nobody has done more for______.
He says now that he will not support a national ban on abortion or permit the drug companies to cancel their abortion drugs. Yesterday, the head of the pro-life movement said that “he just tells you what others want to hear to get his vote.” After a conservative push against him for this action, he says that he will vote for abortions up to six weeks when most women don’t even know that they are pregnant. Likewise, he says he is pro-labor when just days later he indicates to corporate America to just fire those on the picket lines. He speaks out of “both sides of his mouth.” People fortunately are catching on to his transactional approach to any group that he meets.
In a recent exchange with CNN for her first interview Harris indicated that her values haven’t changed, but she provided her value-based reasons on why she has changed her decisions on certain issues such as fracking. She wants the votes from others but doesn’t lie to get them. Her transactions seem honest. Trump don’t seem to be ethical because of his constant lying. Harris doesn’t flip-flop after making a policy made public.
“It’s business. It’s not personal.” Trump recently has had to walk back behaviors which he claims were business and not personal. Yet they were personal to others. Showing up at the Arlington National Cemetery to speak at the graveside of people who had lost their sons’ lives in Afghanistan was a giant error. He said that the people whose children died invited him. The people in charge of the cemetery had indicated BEFORE he came that cameras were not permitted on that sacred ground. An officer who attempted to stop them was brushed aside. Laws are for other people. Later when he was caught in trying to explain why this happened, he used a familiar strategy that “he didn’t know about the phone call to his campaign people.” This coming from someone who has called our troops “losers.”
His mocking of others and school yard bullying tactics are his business which become personal to others very quickly.
His ongoing theme is that the democrats and Biden and Harris made a switch of who he was campaigning against as he whined about the switch. Trump is supposed to be someone knowledgeable about sports. He once tried to buy an NFL team. The NFL refused to allow him to do that given his history of bankruptcy and other questionable behavior. There is a video of Trump going before the licensing bureau for casinos. He was their because he indicated that they permitted the Indians to get more breaks than he got. “They look just like me so why should they get more than me.” His whining is legendary. But his anger toward the switch from Biden to Harris was a coup (his word) should never have occurred if he knows so much about everything. Everyone knows that you take people out of the action in a game and send others in based on who you think is the strongest in that moment. Some people play better than others across the time of the game.
In essence Trump makes everything personal that is the business of a campaign. Harris shrugs it off as a well-known playbook of Trump.
The heart of political ethics is TRUTH. Trump campaigns with the business of lies for he knows that eventually if they are repeated enough, they will transform to Truth, and it has worked for him.
Sisella Bok, Ethicist and wife of a past president Derek Bok of Harvard, wrote a definitive book, Lying: Moral Choice in Private and Public Life. Her book is about lying and moral choice in private and public life. Bok wrote in her book that “you benefit enormously from a world which in which a great deal of truth exists.”
The personal domain or private truth telling makes our world more livable and political campaigns are no exception. The repetition of lies reshape our culture for repetition enables a lie to become a truth. Political policy is about issues that are in the public domain. Personal deception and trickery cloud the thinking of others regarding what should be private and what should be public. It strikes me that Tim Walz’s statement puts it best. “Stay out of my damn business.” Sissela Bok would agree!.
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