Project Director Peter Loge joined NPR’s Cross Currents with Scott Widmeyer to talk about political discourse in 2020. You can listen to the show on iHeartRadio here.
Amid virus fight, campaign season brings ethical quandaries
Peter Loge, professor of Media and Public Affairs and director of the Project on Ethics in Political Communication at George Washington University, said candidates need to be careful that they don’t appear to be exploiting the pandemic crisis. And politicians that focus too much on their success battling the coronavirus take a risk: If the pandemic turns worse, so could their candidacy.
But Loge said candidates shouldn’t refrain outright from using their COVID-19 record on the campaign trail, given that crisis response is a crucial barometer to judge office holders.
The Truth Can Be Clickbait
Project director Peter Loge talks to FutureHindsight about ethics in political communication. Loge quotes a communications professional saying the truth be clickbait, and argues that Richard Rorty was write when he said we need to be loyal to - and work toward - a dream country rather than the one we wake up in every day. You can hear the conversation here.
Pete Buttigieg’s Ethical Rhetoric of Civil Religion
Project director Peter Loge writes that former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s rhetoric was both effective and ethical. You can read the full piece here.
“Former Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg roots much of his rhetoric in appeals to a prophetic vision of American civil religion. Such appeals are effective, ethical, and can be used by candidates across the political spectrum.”
Our National Story Requires Aspirational Political Rhetoric
Political rhetoric matters. Political leaders can use rhetoric that speaks to “the better angels of our nature” to draw us together, as President Lincoln urged in his first inaugural address. Or they can use rhetoric to sow fear and distrust, and push us apart. Political leaders in the United States have an obligation to the former.
The United States, more than many nations, is a rhetorical space as much as it is a physical one.
Phrases like “All men are created equal,” “Land of the free, home of the brave,” and “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” are as much a part of our landscape as the Lincoln Memorial and Mount Rushmore (themselves symbols of ideas and ideals). Borders of course matter – taxes and health care change as you cross from the US into Canada – but the character of the country inside those borders is a function of political rhetoric.
Pamphleteers made the case for rebellion against the British before the shots were fired at Lexington and Concord. As Bernard Bailyn wrote in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, the pamphleteers established the premises and “defined the assumptions” of the American Revolution. Bailyn opens his book quoting a letter from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson in which Adams writes, “What do we mean by the revolution? The war? That was not part of the Revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The Revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected…before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington.”
Political leaders, and would-be political leaders, have rhetorically constructed our American identity ever since. They have told us that the United States is a “shining city upon a hill,” as Rev. John Winthrop wrote in 1630 on the voyage to what would become the colonies, and as President Reagan reminded us several hundred years later. They calmed us by insisting that “we have nothing to fear but fear itself,” as FDR did in his first inaugural address. And they reminded us that the American promise is still unfulfilled for too many, as Dr. Martin Luther King did on the National Mall in the summer of 1963.
Our nation is a story itself. Our story constructs a coherent past that explains our present, and points to our future.
This story is incomplete – it is a myth more than a report. As the philosopher Richard Rorty wrote in Achieving Our Country, “Stories about what a nation has been and should try to be are not attempts at accurate representation, but rather attempts to forge a moral identity.” Our story glosses over slavery, treatment of Native Americans, religious and ethnic discrimination of every flavor, and much more. But the story still matters because in showing us at our most idealistic, it shows us what we can become.
The best political rhetoric acknowledges our nation’s flaws and mistakes. It is honest and humble.
The best political rhetoric brings us together to face and account for our flaws and to move forward together. It uses language to help us create a “more perfect union,” while acknowledging that we will inevitably stumble along the way. It recognizes, to borrow from Langston Hughes’ 1935 poem Let America be America Again, that America never was but that it will be.
We always need such rhetoric. We always need to be reminded that we play an important part in our national experiment. Sometimes the need for a rhetoric that hopes that we are on the side of the Lord more than it insists the Lord is on our side is especially acute (to again lean on Lincoln). This is such a moment. We need our political leaders at every level to remind us that ours is a nation “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” as Lincoln did at Gettysburg.
We need political rhetoric brave enough to say that we are far from perfect and that together we must commit to being better.
Our democratic experiment may never fully succeed. The point of democracy is after all the process of democracy. No bell will ring if we “win” democracy and no one will get a prize at the end. But our experiment can fail. We can surrender and say that since our union can never be perfect it must be torn apart, that our individual differences matter more than our shared dreams. We can give up and settle for a United States that’s a map and not an idea. Or we can raise the quality of our discourse and demand that our leaders do the same.
Now is the time to be brave, together.
Avoiding Attractive, Insidious Ethical Temptations in Political Communication
The Ethics of Campaigning During a Pandemic
“The coronavirus pandemic is reshaping the ethical considerations of campaigns and advocacy groups in 2020…
During a recent webinar hosted by Loge that C&E participated in, experts agreed that campaigns shouldn’t be shy about fundraising during the pandemic — they just need to calibrate their language to the moment when many donors, particularly small-dollar givers, are possibly dealing with lost work or worse.”
Read the full story from Campaigns & Elections
SMPA ethics project works to compile ethics textbook in first year
The Hatchet, the student newspaper at The George Washington University writes about the first year of the Project on Ethics in Political Communication.
Ethics in Political Communication on C-SPAN
C-SPAN’s Steve Scully interviewed Project director Peter Loge on The Weekly podcast and radio show about ethics, the media and the 2020 election.
Political Communication Ethics
Project director Peter Loge joined the Campus on the Common podcast at his alma mater, Emerson College, to talk about political communication ethics. You can listen to the conversation here.
Interview on Sirius XM
Project director Peter Loge was interviewed by Tim Farley on the Morning Briefing program on the SiriusXM POTUS station about the importance of how we talk about impeachment and politics.
The link between poor decisions about money and ethics
Project Director Peter Loge writes in Campaigns and Elections that the little ethical decisions to which don’t pay attention are the ones that matter most.
“In his 1936 essay "The Crack Up," F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that the big blows that you notice are not the ones that do the real damage. The real damage is done by the small blows that you don’t notice until it’s too late. The same is true of ethics. The big and obvious decisions are easy to spot and respond to. The little decisions that you don’t notice in the moment have a way of adding up doing damage that may be irreparable.”
How we talk about what happens next matters
Project director Peter Loge writes in The Hill that how we talk about impeachment matters at least as much as what we do about it.
“What the nation does next in this moment matters a great deal. Given the centrality of language to our democracy, how we talk about this moment matters a great deal as well. Everyone who discusses the allegations against the president has a responsibility to do so in ways that do not undermine, and ideally that strengthen, the system of ideas on which our democracy relies.”
Project Director Peter Loge on Sinclair Broadcasting
"There’s a huge difference between demanding the press do better and calling a cornerstone of our democracy somehow an opponent or enemy of that democracy."
Project on Ethics in Political Communication director Peter Loge on presidential candidates attacking the free press in a clip aired on Sinclair Broadcasting stations nationwide.
Project Director Peter Loge on WRNR
Project on Ethics in Political Communication director Peter Loge was a guest on WRNR’s Eastern Panhandle Talk with Rob Mario and David Welch.
Peter Loge on SiriusXM POTUS
On June 19th, Project director Peter Loge was a guest on Tim Farley’s show on SiriusXM POTUS.
The Hill: Advice to new graduates and summer interns: You have an obligation to be an ethical advocate
“Dear 2019 graduates and interns heading to DC,
If you are reading this, you are probably thinking about a career in Washington. As someone who has spent more than 25 years working on the politics of public policy, I applaud you. Our democracy needs smart, idealistic, and hard-working young people like you. As you pour into the cafeterias in Longworth and Dirksen, and the bars in Adams Morgan and along H Street, indulge a bit of unsolicited advice from someone who has been around for a while: Find your ethical foundation, and stand firmly on it.”
The GW Hatchet: SMPA launches project examining ethics in political communication
“The project will provide resources to support education about ethics in political communication, promote research and host events and discussions on the topic, according to the initiative’s website.”
GW Today: Political Communicators Tackle Ethics Questions
Daily Campus (UConn): Obama appointee, GWU professor talks ethics in political communication
“We don’t teach our students, the future political leaders, that there’s more at stake than Tuesday’s election. That Tuesday’s election only matters because of what happens on Jan. 15, when the new representatives are sworn in,” Loge said.
