Five Steps to Better Campaigns

Mary Meehan

In his great poem about Paul Revere's midnight ride, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow described the stakes: "The fate of a nation was riding that night."

Many Americans feel the same way about this year's presidential campaign. This leads to real gains in voter registration and citizen participation, something we all should celebrate. Yet it also intensifies political anger, personal animosity toward candidates, and a take-no-prisoners attitude. It produces much heat, when what we desperately need is more light on what candidates plan to do if elected.

Five steps could do much to improve this and later campaigns. They would not involve laws but, rather, voluntary actions by campaigns and media. Many campaign pros, addicted to the slash-and-burn method of politics, might resist these changes. Yet millions of voters would welcome them, and the candidates would find campaigning to be less of an ordeal. Everyone could show what Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature."

1. Campaigns should have internal fact-checkers correct their ads before release. When you think the fate of the nation is riding on your campaign, it's easy to rationalize distortions and even downright lies in campaign ads. As media fact-checkers have shown, there are many examples of this in both the Obama and McCain campaigns. So why don't the campaigns have internal fact-checkers go over and correct each ad before it's released? Each campaign could assign one or two of its best researchers to do the job. The ad people would hate this, and they would win some battles; but internal fact-checking might prevent the worst kinds of ads. It would not lead to heaven, but should keep us from the lower rings of hell.

2. On Internet sites, webmasters should decline to run comments from people who refuse to use their real names. Many of this year's lies--that Sen. Barack Obama is a Muslim, for example, or that Gov. Sarah Palin cut funding for special-needs education--are circulated on the Internet by people who use pen names instead of their real names. Such people also supply the rudeness, rage, and obscenities that make some web sites resemble hog wallows or toxic waste dumps.

Webmasters could make a vast improvement in public debate by announcing a policy of no anonymous comments: "If you want to play in this sandbox, you must use your real name. This sandbox is for adults." Those who have been hiding behind pen names would be far less likely to indulge in lies and spiteful gossip if they had to take responsibility for what they write. Some would just quit writing--and who would miss them? The volume of comments might plummet, but the quality should soar.

3. The media should respect candidates' privacy. It's hard enough for candidates to stay human during the ordeal of a long campaign, but harder still when their privacy is shredded. Sometimes, although rarely, there is good reason for a personal question. If there's evidence that a candidate is addicted to drugs or alcohol, for example, that's a legitimate issue. But it's hard to understand why some reporters ask candidates if they ever, ever had a puff of marijuana in their long-ago youth. The relevant question is what they think about current drug laws and the enforcement of those laws.

The media should stop asking candidates to release their tax returns and medical records. Candidates should have the backbone to resist demands that they give up their privacy this way. Voters may have a right to know about potential conflicts of interest, but that can be covered by disclosure laws that are limited to financial holdings and business dealings. We have no right to know how much a candidate gives to charity or other personal information on a tax return. And we certainly have no right to medical records.

We might get better candidates if people realize they don't have to surrender their privacy in order to run for office. And if we have more respect for candidates' privacy, they might have more respect for ours on issues of government surveillance.

4. Candidates' families should be left alone. Sen. Obama is absolutely right about this. When reporters were bombarding him with questions about one of Gov. Palin's family members, Obama said that "people's families are off-limits, and people's children are especially off-limits. This shouldn't be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin's performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. And so I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories."

It's true, of course, that Obama and other candidates deploy family members to campaign events. And it's true that family members get far too much attention in our celebrity-obsessed era. But if the family members never appeared, candidates probably would be accused of hiding them.

Children and teenagers, especially, should be left alone. To reporters and bloggers who want to write about their personal lives, the message should be: "Look, folks, you're not shooting popguns at cardboard targets in a carnival game. These are real human beings, and some are in the very difficult teenage years. Back off; leave 'em alone; get a life!"

5. Candidates should experiment with joint town meetings. Back in June, Sen. John McCain invited Sen. Obama to join him in ten town meetings around the country, using a relatively open format to answer questions from voters. Obama's campaign countered by suggesting just two meetings; but negotiations stalled and apparently died. Even two candidate-organized town meetings, though, could be a valuable experiment. They might help produce a spirit of civility that would make life easier for everyone, including the candidates. They might help prevent personal attacks that distract us from issues. And they might prove at least as helpful to voters as the presidential debates are. They are still worth a try.

It really is possible to have a campaign that's spirited, yet also courteous and civil. Such a campaign would have a better chance of coming to grips with the deep problems that face our country now.

Photo: Citizens look toward the White House