Political veterans Sarah Isgur and Mo Elleithee talk with Peter Loge about the ethical responsibility of political communication professionals.
The below is a lightly edited transcript of a Google Chat with Mo Elleithee and Sarah Isgur, moderated by Project on Ethics in Political Communication director Peter Loge. The chat took place from 10a - 11a on Friday, January 24th. The conversation has been edited for grammar and clarity.
The Participants
Mo Elleithee is the founding Executive Director of Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service, the first institute of its kind in the nation’s capital. Before launching the institute in 2015, Mo spent two decades as one of the top communications strategists in the Democratic Party, most recently as Communications Director and chief spokesman of the Democratic National Committee. A veteran of four presidential campaigns, Mo was Senior Spokesman and Traveling Press Secretary on Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign. He served as a senior advisor and strategist for Senator Tim Kaine’s campaigns for Governor and US Senate, and has worked on numerous other statewide and local races in every region of the country. @MoElleithee
Sarah Isgur has worked in all three branches of government and on three presidential campaigns, including serving as the Deputy Campaign Manager for Carly Fiorina’s 2016 presidential campaign, and was a fellow at Harvard University's Institute of Politics. She most recently served in the Department of Justice as Director of the Office of Public Affairs and Senior Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General. Sarah took her bachelor's degree from Northwestern University. At Harvard Law School, she was President of the Harvard Federalist Society and staffed the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. Sarah is a staff writer at The Dispatch, a political analyst for CNN, and a professorial lecturer in the School of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University. @whignewtons
Peter Loge directs the Project on Ethics in Political Communication and is an associate professor in the School of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University. Over the past 25+ years he has served in senior staff positions in the US House, Senate, and Obama administration and has led, helped lead, and advised numerous organizations and campaigns. @ploge
The Conversation
Peter: As political communication professionals, do you have any ethical obligations? If so, to whom or what [do you have them]?
Sarah: Yes. And the job matters too. If you are working for the government, you have a responsibility to the public that is different than working for a campaign, for example. Transparency is a great example of an area where your ethical obligations would be different in those two situations.
Mo: For me, it's pretty simple. The job is to be the best advocate for your boss, while being honest and informative. You want to put your boss out there in the best possible light, but not at the expense of the truth.
Sarah: OK well leave it to Mo to have such a well put answer. Agree! (Here I am all in the weeds on expedited FOIA requests...ha!)
Peter: But there is a bit of a difference - Sarah, when you worked for [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions, was your job different than when you worked for candidate [Ted] Cruz? The former is government – you’re welcome for my sliver of your salary there – the latter was trying to win a partisan race.
Sarah: Right. But maybe to marry the two points—it’s not that your ethics are different it’s that you’re applying the same ethical principles in two very different situations. For example, my job at [the Department of Justice] was not always to defend my boss. I worked for the public, the department, AG Sessions, Acting AG Rosenstein, Bob Mueller, the FBI, etc. So at DOJ, transparency with the media and the public took on a much bigger role. Whereas when I was on a Carly [Fiorina's] presidential campaign, my responsibility was to get Carly elected president. And that meant making my best case every day toward that end. Different goals.
But my ethical responsibility was always to work toward that end goal like Mo said while being honest and informative with the media.
Peter: Similarly, Mo had you been [at] Commerce rather than the [Democratic National Committee], would your responsibilities have been different?
Mo: Maybe. Sarah's absolutely right that in government, the stakes are much higher. Ultimately, you work for the public. Taxpayers pay your salary. That's obviously not the case in politics. But, having said that, they both rely on the same thing... trust.
Sarah: And credibility!
Mo: Whether you're flacking for a candidate or for the government, credibility is your currency.
Sarah: That should be on a bumper sticker we hand out to kids, Mo
Mo: If you lose that, you are no longer able to do the job. Period. Yeah, it's the number one thing I say to young people who come to me for advice.
Sarah: It’s hard to convince students sometimes that the goal isn’t to lie in the most clever way. Or to make sure you don’t get caught. That’s where movies and TV get it very wrong.
Mo: 100% agree.
Peter: I want to push on this string a bit. Sarah, in a recent piece in The Dispatch you wrote that one argument for Citizens United being bad is that it undermines confidence in democracy. Your piece had a lot in it, lots of pros and cons, but building on that one element do political advocates have an obligation to do things that do not undermine faith in democracy, and when possible to increase that faith?
Sarah: So my answer to that is that there's a lot in the eye of the beholder there. I doubt everyone agrees on what undermines faith in democracy. For example, is running a campaign that says Washington is controlled by big dollar donors and is out of touch with everyday Americans like you undermining faith in democracy? Yeah it kinda is. But if you believe that is true, it’s also an important thing to say so you can change the system.
So I think our country is sort of built on the idea that we are always striving toward a more perfect union, which implies it ain’t perfect now. It’s OK to run a campaign that makes your case for what area needs to be better.
Peter: Mo, Citizens United is something of a Democratic talking point - how do you see the argument that the perception or argument around the ruling itself matters, just as the content of the decision may matter?
Mo: From a communications perspective, it's an interesting example. Because there are different motivations that drive this argument.
There's the purely political one. Democrats believe that Citizens United gives an unfair advantage to the other side because historically, there's more money on the Republican side. So for a lot of folks, on both sides, that reality drives their thinking, and they let the messaging flow from there.
But there are obviously deeper issues at stake as well. Proponents would argue that this is a matter of free speech. Opponents would argue that this is a matter of equal access to the democratic process. You could argue that both of those positions can be made on equally strong ethical grounds.
Peter: Do advocates have an obligation to find that ethical, compelling, argument? Sometimes with our students, as you both note, ethical and effective seem to be at odds - but should we be looking for ways to be honest and effective? Put another way, can the truth be click bait?
Sarah: That’s why we get paid the big bucks! The best people at these jobs find ways to keep their credibility and be engaging!
Mo: Absolutely, it can. In fact I learned far too late in my career that most of the time the truth can be far sexier.
Sarah: I'm very here for this...
Mo: But...and this is the thing that keeps me up at night now...People too often don't trust the truth.
Sarah: Oh that's depressing.
Mo: Or, maybe more accurately, there are different truths for different tribes.
Sarah: I actually had this conversation recently with a very thorough reporter as we discussed anonymous sources. And people at this point trust anonymous sources MORE than on the record sources. It’s a huge problem [because] then the interests of the source and the reporter are aligned to keep it on background but the public suffers for not being able to judge the credibility of the source for themselves.
Mo: A great example of this is the Mueller report. My side gig is as a Fox News contributor. The day the full Mueller report was released, I spent the day reading up on it, and then watching the commentary on CNN and MSNBC.You would have thought that the truths outlined in the report were going to result in the President's immediate removal from office.
I went into the Fox News green room later in the day to do an evening hit. And when I walked in, it was as if I walked through a door into a different reality. People in there were high-fiving each other, claiming total exoneration.
Sarah: TOTALEXONERATION
Peter: I feel like Webster's missed an opportunity for the word of the year.
Sarah: 😂
Mo: Same report. Same set of facts. But very different realities. That's a VERY real challenge for political communicators. At least the good ones that want to act ethically. For those that prefer to trade on division, you couldn't ask for a better set-up.
Peter: We've all done this though, right? All three of us have worked on campaigns, all have been pundits, and all teach. We've spoken on background and not for attribution, and have all spun like mad to make our boss/side look good (or at least not awful).
I was a [Chief of Staff] in the House during Clinton's impeachment, my view is different today than it was then in part because of the accusations, but also because then my office was in [the] Longworth [House Office Building] and now it's at GW.
Sarah: Hahaha! Location, location, location
Mo: Yeah, I can see a lot more clearly from a distance.
Sarah: To Mo's point though I think one of the biggest challenges on the horizon is audience. Do you have an ethical obligation to reach past your base? Or is it ethical to only talk to a small segment of the population who is already inclined to your view?
Mo: I think about it a little differently. The decision to mobilize versus persuade is an age-old question. Good campaigns do both, but the balance is a strategic decision. Whether or not you do it is less important to me than HOW you do it.
Sarah: I agree that has always been in the calculation but before everyone at least saw what you were saying...they just weren’t persuaded. Now you can choose to ignore them entirely.
To your point, if a president ONLY goes on Fox News...they aren’t even talking to a huge chunk of the country and vice versa, when candidates refuse to go on Fox News. That’s different than persuasion vs turnout these days
Mo: I think that's right. When I was the DNC communications director, I didn't engage at all with Fox. That was a mistake.
Sarah: So people may find it fun/weird that the show that I probably talked to the most during my time at DOJ was Maddow’s.
Mo: So now, I am a contributor there [Fox News] because I want viewers there to see that all Democrats don't have horns. My problem is that if I (and others) didn't do that, they would absolutely believe we all had horns. Because that's what they hear, right?
So back to my earlier point... I have no problem with conservatives watching a conservative media outlet, or progressives watching a progressive one.
Sarah: There's a lot of ethics around media tied up in all this convo too, obviously.
Mo: But when communicators go on those networks to fire up their base by lying or telling conspiracy theories, that's where I think there are ethical failings.
Peter: I don't want to lose the role of the media in this - critical discussion for a future chat.
What about those who say 'we should be better, but the stakes are so high we need to do this now...'
Sarah: That’s the worst argument I've ever heard.
Mo: They're wrong.
Sarah: If a student turned in that argument, they would not pass.That's a way to really regret some of your choices later in life not just in comms.
Peter: But it's used all the time by advocates. It's the basic ends/means claim.
Mo: And they are not good advocates. It might help them in the short term, but they far more often regret it later.
Sarah: And it often doesn’t help much in the short term, either.
Peter: "I don't want to push this misleading position to elect Trump/Biden/Sanders/etc but if I don't then Trump/Biden/Sanders will win and everything will be worse..."
Sarah: Or the "They did it first" version of this same convo.
Mo: I could brazenly lie to a reporter to win a news cycle. Or even an election. But the next time I talk to that reporter, my credibility is shot. And it starts to spiral out of control.
Sarah: Exactly. You aren’t of any use to your boss if nobody can believe what you say.
Mo: Now, that calculus is being tested in the current environment where communicators have far more platforms than the media to get their message out.
Peter: But if winning the election means we do climate, choice, budget, whatever your top issue is, isn't burning one relationship worth it?
Sarah: Peter, to your question, I think it is a thing bad communicators tell themselves for the easy way out. If you're good at your job, it shouldn’t be an either/or. If you can’t make your case on the merits, you don’t have a good case or you aren’t good enough to make the case.
Mo: Not to be hyperpartisan here, but look at the current administration.
A lot of conservatives are able to justify all of this, despite their distaste of the President's lies, because they got tax reform and conservatives on the bench. But each fight gets harder as the public trust declines.
Sarah: And let me take one from the other side from a few years back. There was a study published by some climate scientists where they fudged the numbers to bolster their case they got caught (you almost always get caught is the other side of this coin) and it has WILDLY hurt the climate activists [because] the other side now just says "we don’t trust anything you say." Those scientists who made that choice hurt their argument more than they probably are even aware. It’s so so so dangerous.
Peter: This seems like a good note to wrap on.
Mo: Great. I'm going to go put my horns back on.
Sarah: I’ve seen them. Very fashionable.
Peter: Any closing thoughts from you both?
Mo: Only thing I'll say is that as [a] professional political communicator, you have an obligation to both your boss and to the public. They are not mutually exclusive.
If you think they are ethically mutually exclusive, I'd err on the side of the public. Because if you think they are mutually exclusive, you're probably working for the wrong boss. (I love the view from the ivory tower of academia!)
Sarah: My closing thoughts: As an attorney, I have had the benefit of listening to a lot of Supreme Court arguments made by some of the best advocates of our day. The big thing that they always do: cede the weakest parts of their argument and serve as sources of trustworthy information for the justices. The spin and the lying and the means justify the ends stuff that is glamorized in the pop culture version of 'politics in the movies' is usually the least effective means of persuasion. So aside from ethics, you also aren’t being effective!
And as you can see from this convo, make friends across the aisle. I'm better at my job for knowing Mo and the conversations we've had.
Mo: Amen.
Sarah: But it’s getting rarer these days and that's going to make people less effective too.
Mo: It's easier to make some ethical calls when I know the person I'm working against. Relationships matter.
Sarah: <praise hands>
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This Chat is modeled on the FiveThirtyEight Slack Chats, thanks to whoever over there came up with the idea. Special thanks to Blake Reinken who first suggested this when he was a student in SMPA and to Conor Kilgore who refined the idea and helped make it happen.