what's so bad about politicizing?

North American Philosophical Publications

What's so Bad about Politicizing?Author(s): Adam KadlacSource: Public Affairs Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Jul., 2009), pp. 227-244Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of North American Philosophical PublicationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40441529 .

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Public Affairs Quarterly Volume 23, Number 3, July 2009

WHAT'S SO BAD ABOUT POLITICIZING?

Adam Kadlac

today's sometimes volatile political climate, one often hears the charge that some issue or other has been politicized. The claim, when made, almost always

constitutes an accusation that something illicit or immoral has been perpetrated by one's political opponents. Thus, writing in the congressional newspaper The Hill prior to the 2006 midterm elections, columnist Josh Marshall contends that "President Bush has politicized national security policy and used foreign policy to divide the country more than any president in modern American history. It'll be a big part of what I believe will be the very dark verdict history will render on his presidency."1

Taking the opposing side, David Limbaugh asks: "Remember when Sen. John Kerry and his Democratic colleagues hammered President Bush for allegedly politicizing the War on Terror? Those charges were entirely bogus - it is the Democrats who have been doing the politicizing."2 And in the run-up to the Iraq War, then Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle called on President Bush

to quit the explanations, to quit the rationalizations, to quit the politicizations, and do what we should do as Americans: Make our statement, make our judgment, have a debate, and send as clear a message to Saddam Hussein as we can, that we are not going to tolerate his actions . . . We ought not to politicize this war. We ought not to politicize the rhetoric about war and life and death.3

A few minutes spent listening to talk radio or watching cable news channels on television are sure to furnish numerous other examples and, regardless of the source, the message is pretty clear: politicizing - especially when it involves certain issues - is bad business, and those who perpetrate it are guilty of more than just poor judgment. At least in the eyes of their accusers, they have done something wrong and therefore warrant stern moral criticism.

Nevertheless, while such accusations are common, it is not at all clear what the charge of politicizing amounts to - what, exactly, politicizing is and why it should be thought morally problematic to politicize certain issues. To be sure, everyone says it's bad, and no one wants to acknowledge that they have been accurately characterized as a politicizer. (Indeed, the typical response to such a charge is to allege that, in fact, one's accuser is doing the politicizing.) But even

227



228 PUBLIC AFFAIRS QUARTERLY

as such rhetoric flies about, almost nothing is said about why politicizing should be so widely condemned, and as a result, suspicion of politicizing functions as an unchallenged influence on contemporary political discourse.

The motive for this paper is a desire to determine which, if any, of the actions labeled as instances of politicizing warrant such condemnation and if so, why. Given the current frequency of the charge, it is important that participants in the political process be able to understand exactly what is being alleged in such cases and when such allegations are warranted. For without this kind of understanding, we risk being distracted by red herrings and becoming insensitive to features of our political life that merit stern denunciation. My view is that while the moral censure of politicizing is sometimes warranted, it more often fails to highlight anything that citizens of a democratic republic should find morally troubling. Ex- plicating this difference is therefore the burden of the discussion that follows.

Viewed most generally, politicizing seems to involve engaging in behavior with the aim of winning elections or enhancing the power and authority of a favored cohort. Thus, if one takes a stand on an issue and, in addition to taking that stand, emphasizes or highlights why such a position constitutes a good reason to vote for oneself or one's party, then one can rightly be said to have politicized the issue in question.4 Similarly, an elected official might perform a particular action - for example, attending the funeral of a popular community leader or initiating military action against an unpopular adversary - with the hope of boosting his or her approval rating and thereby improving his or her own chances for re-election. Some instances of politicizing are therefore acts of speech - as when candidates claim to have particular views on matters of public policy - while others do not involve speech at all. In either case, the focus of most charges of politicizing seems to be the consideration of power that is bound up with the course of action that is taken. The thought, apparently, is that there is something illicit about political figures taking power dynamics into account when trying to decide what to do.

However, I maintain that a mere concern with power is not sufficient for any particular instance of politicizing - in this broad sense - to warrant moral criticism.5 Put differently, one has not engaged in a morally questionable practice simply in virtue of having done something with an eye toward winning elections or enhancing power. Rather, such guilt arises, if at all, when one approaches that issue only with an eye toward these ends and therefore with no corresponding concern for the basic truth of one's claims or the lightness of one's actions. Refining this line of thought somewhat further, it seems that conditions of the following sort must be met for an act to qualify as a morally problematic instance of politicizing:

(1) One must engage in an action, or make a claim, under the guise that one believes that action to be right or that claim to be true.

(2) In engaging in such an action, or making such a claim, one must be attempting to enhance one's political power, or the power of a favored cohort.



WHAT' S SO BAD ABOUT POLITICIZING? 229

(3) One's commitment to the Tightness of the action or the truth of the claim absent considerations of political power must be negligible.

If this analysis is on target, then it follows that much of what gets criticized as politicizing in our contemporary political culture simply fails to warrant the censure it often receives. For, provided that one believes in the truth of one's statements or the rightness of one's chosen course of action, it is unclear why the fact that such an action is politically beneficial should render that same action morally problematic. While it may warrant criticism on other grounds - such as its falsity (if the action is one of speech) or wrongness - the specific charge of politicizing in such a case is insufficiently motivated. Power and authority lie at the center of our political lives, and as long as the pursuit of that power is constrained in some way by a concern for truth and the public good, there is no reason to think of it as morally problematic.

I proceed with this case as follows. In Part I, I examine what seems to be a

paradigm instance of politicizing: Alexander Hamilton's essay concerning the ratification of the United States Constitution in "Federalist No. 1." I argue that, while Hamilton's remarks meet some very general criteria of politicizing, the only way in which he might be interpreted as having done something illicit is if he has advanced his position without any regard for its truth or the common good. Given his evident concern for these matters, however, the charge fails, and Hamilton's work thus serves as a paradigm instance of politicizing that is morally innocuous. Insofar as this judgment rests on generalizable commitments about what is and is not morally problematic in political discourse, reflection on "Federalist No. 1" thus serves to support the criteria for morally problematic politicizing on offer. In

attempting to establish the scope of these conclusions, I then apply this analysis to some contemporary issues that are often thought to be politicized and argue that similar conclusions can be drawn in those contexts. In Part II, I examine some

implications of the position defended, and I conclude in Part III by posing some

questions for further reflection.

I. The (Im)morality of Politicizing

(A) In the opening essay of The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton predicts that debate over the ratification of the newly drafted United States Constitution will be characterized by a certain tension. He writes:

Happy it will be if our choice should be directed by a judicious estimate of our true interests, unperplexed and unbiased by considerations not connected with the public good. But this is a thing more ardently to be wished than seriously to be expected. The plan offered by our deliberations, affects too many particular interests, innovates upon too many local institutions, not to involve in its discussion a variety of objects foreign to its merits, and of views, pas- sions and prejudices little favorable to the discovery of truth.6




On the one hand, says Hamilton, we can earnestly hope that individuals will decide whether or not to support the Constitution only in light of how they believe that support will affect the common good. If one therefore believes that adopting the Constitution is contrary to the interests of the nation, one should oppose it. By the same token, if one believes that the Constitution will serve those interests, one should support it. Ideally, these will be the only considerations that play into one's decision on the matter.

However, Hamilton simultaneously recognizes that the potential impact of the Constitution will awaken in many a concern for matters other than the common good. If, for example, one holds an office that will no longer be necessary under the prospective government, one may be inclined to oppose it simply to preserve one's job. And if, in general, people base their decisions on considerations such as these, the objective merits of the Constitution will fade into the background, and a plan that may otherwise serve the common good will fail to gain acceptance. Hamilton's plea is thus for individuals, as much as possible, to bracket a narrow concern for their self-interest - or, perhaps more precisely, to set aside their immediate reactions to how the Constitution will affect them - and to reflect instead on the soundness of the arguments advanced for and against ratification.7 The Federalist, viewed in this light, is an attempt to articulate these arguments for the public.

But if Hamilton thinks that the Constitution should be accepted or rejected simply on its merits, he makes no attempt to disguise his belief that it should be so accepted. His comments on this score are worth quoting at length because they go to the heart of the difference between morally innocent and morally problematic forms of politicizing.

In the course of the preceeding [sic] observations I have had an eye, my Fel- low Citizens, to putting you on your guard against all attempts, from whatever quarter, to influence your decision in a matter of the utmost moment to your welfare by any impressions other than those which may result from the evidence of truth. You will, no doubt, at the same time, have collected from the general scope of them that they proceed from a source not unfriendly to the new Constitution. Yes, my Countrymen, I own to you, that, after having given it an attentive consideration, I am clearly of the opinion, it is your interest to adopt it. I am convinced, that this is the safest course for your liberty, your dignity, and your happiness. I effect not reserves, which I do not feel. I will not amuse you with an appearance of deliberation, when I have decided. I frankly acknowledge to you my convictions, and I will freely lay before you the reasons on which they are founded. The consciousness of good intentions disdains ambiguity. I shall not however multiply professions on this head. My motives must remain in the repository of my own breast: My arguments will be open to all, and may be judged by all. They shall at least be offered in a spirit, which will not disgrace the cause of truth.8



WHAT' S SO BAD ABOUT POLITICIZING? 23 1

Hamilton is unequivocal in this passage that while he hopes the ratification of the Constitution will be decided on its merits - as the result of a vigorous conversation regarding the best interests of the nation - he does not occupy the position of a wholly neutral reporter of arguments. Rather, he believes that the arguments in support of the Constitution are decisive and that it should therefore be adopted, and he vows to work fervently toward that end.

On this reading, "Federalist No. 1" meets the broad (and morally neutral) criteria of politicizing outlined above. That is, Hamilton is clearly writing with an eye toward a particular result in the impending vote concerning ratification: he wants the Constitution to be adopted. Moreover, he no doubt recognizes that such a result will have positive effects for him personally, and for his closest political allies, since they stood to play a central role in the resulting government. Ratification thus meant political power for Hamilton, and there is little doubt that he was perfectly aware of this fact. On one level, then, Hamilton can rightly be accused of having politicized the question of whether the Constitution should be ratified.

Nevertheless, the charge of politicizing in this case would be odd if it was thought to be a moralistic criticism of the specific content of "Federalist No. 1" or even The Federalist as a whole, since it is not at all clear what such a criticism would amount to or what preferable position Hamilton might be expected to adopt. As a result, while there may be one sense in which Hamilton politicizes the debate

surrounding the Constitution, it does not seem to be a morally problematic sense. Thus, consider the following possible interpretations of the charge that Hamilton has illicitly politicized the debate over ratification.

(1) One might be arguing that Hamilton, as one who stands to benefit from a wide acceptance of the views he advocates, should abstain from advocating them. On this view, the resulting worry would not be that ratification had become

politicized, but rather that Hamilton had been the one to politicize it. However, this charge seems to rest on the highly questionable view that one should always abstain from urging the acceptance of views that are somehow beneficial to oneself. For were that a plausible position, one would never be able to advocate the

acceptance of basic moral commitments - for example, that it is wrong to commit murder or to steal - since the wide acceptance of such commitments presumably benefits everyone, the advocator included.

(2) A more promising basis on which to argue that Hamilton has illicitly politicized debate concerning the Constitution would be to contend that his views have some spurious relationship to truth. Such a charge could then come in two forms. First, one might contend that the claims he is making on behalf of the Constitution are simply false - or, at the very least, poorly reasoned - and, indeed, many critics of the Constitution argued along precisely these lines.9

If, however, the concern is that Hamilton's conclusions are false or his argu-




ments poorly reasoned, then it seems to obscure the nature of the problem to accuse Hamilton of having politicized the ratification of the Constitution. One could much more directly challenge his position by showing why his claims are false or demonstrating errors in his argumentation. Taking this approach, one would then accept Hamilton's plea for the Constitution to be accepted or rejected on its merits, while offering a substantive criticism of his position. That is, one could accept the essentially political nature of the issue in question and proceed to debate the merits of a particular response to that question. A specific concern with politicizing would therefore not be in view.

(3) On the other hand, one might also contend that Hamilton has advanced his arguments without any regard for their truth and has instead pursued the solitary goal of getting others to support a position that is advantageous to himself (or his political cohorts). On this view, the charge is that Hamilton's real aims are obscured by his stated aims and that the substance of his arguments are, in effect, immaterial to the real issue at hand: a straightforward grab at political power. His comments have been specifically tailored to procure wide acceptance of the new government - acceptance which will, in turn, endow him with significant authority and prestige.

This accusation is importantly different from the other charges that might be lumped under the heading of politicizing and, if warranted, seems to be the only one that singles out a practice that could plausibly be seen as morally illicit. On this view, one illicitly politicizes an issue if one takes a stance on that issue that is designed to win an election or enhance one's political power, while simultaneously having no regard for the truth or superiority ofthat stance. The immorality of such an action would then reside in the lack of seriousness with which one has taken both the issue at hand and the well-being of those one hopes will support that position. For one who believes that it is of real importance to take the right stand on a particular issue would certainly be concerned with the truth of his views on that issue. And one who takes seriously the good of those he is trying to convince, will likewise be concerned to convince them of views that are truly in their best interests. The morally illicit politicizer, on the other hand, has no such concerns and is focused instead on the enhancement of his or her own power (or the power of his or her favored group).10

(B) There is, I think, an illuminating connection here between the type of action that I put forward as a morally problematic form of politicizing and other views that have been advanced in both the near and distant history of philosophy. Thus, consider Harry Frankfurt's explication of the difference between two different types of individual: the liar and the bullshitter.

Both [the bullshitter] and the liar represent themselves falsely as endeavor- ing to communicate the truth. The success of each depends upon deceiving us about that. But the fact about himself that the liar hides is that he is attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality; we are not




to know that he wants us to believe something he supposes to be false. The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth values of his statements are of no central interest to him; what we are not to understand is that his intention is neither to report the truth nor to conceal it. This does not mean that his speech is anarchically impulsive, but that the motive guiding and controlling it is unconcerned with how the things about which he speaks truly are.11

According to Frankfurt, then, to accuse someone of being a bullshitter is to accuse one of having no regard for the truth of one's statements. While such a person wishes to maintain the appearance of trying to relate the truth, he is, in fact, after goals that do not require this appearance to square with reality. Rather, those goals - whatever they might be - require only that others believe that appearances square with reality. A bullshitter might, for example, relate an elaborate account of his experiences that bears only a tenuous relationship to actual events, in an effort to enliven a social gathering. Provided that others believe the account to be true, or at least told in a good faith effort to communicate events that actually happened, then he will have accomplished his aim - namely, to enliven the party.

It is this lack of concern for the truth of one's statements that Frankfurt believes to render bullshit morally problematic and, indeed, rather more insidious than lying. For liars must at least be responsive to the truth, if only so that they might obscure it. Bullshitters, on the other hand, need not have any concern for truth at all. Frankfurt thus continues:

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Pro- ducing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statement to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the truth nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all ... He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.12

The liar may pursue questionable ends via questionable means. But his pursuit of those ends must at least come into contact with truths about the world. The bullshitter's pursuits, however, are not constrained even to this minimal extent.

Rolling back the clock somewhat further, one finds that in Plato's Gorgias, Socrates levels a similar criticism at the practitioners of oratory who had gained a measure of prestige in his day. As the dialogue opens, the great rhetorician Gor- gias argues that oratory is "the ability to convince by means of speech in a court of justice, members of the Council in the Chamber, those attending a meeting of the Assembly, and any other gathering of citizens whatever it may be" and that such an ability is "the greatest good, which confers on everyone who possesses it not only freedom for himself but also the power of ruling his fellow-citizens"




(452de).13 According to Gorgias, this ability is valuable because it enables one to obtain all manner of desirable ends. The proficient orator will have "the doctor as your slave, the trainer as your slave, and that businessman of yours will turn out to be making money not for himself but for another - for you, in fact, who have the ability to speak and convince the masses" (452de). For Gorgias, the ability to persuade others thus endows its possessor with a valuable measure of freedom. One does not have to worry about relying on the knowledge or expertise of others, since one will be able to get what one wants in any context in which one finds oneself.

While Socrates refrains from immediately making a straightforward evaluation of such a practice, the tone of his examination is clear evidence of his view that oratory is of almost no value. If, for example, the orator can convince a patient to go against the (presumably good) advice of his doctor, then it is unclear why one should think all that highly of the orator's distinctive expertise. Readers of the dialogue are thus not surprised when Socrates later discloses his assessment of oratory rather more forcefully in his ensuing encounter with Polus:

I'm afraid that the truth may sound rather blunt, and I wouldn't like Gorgias to think that I am making fun of his profession. Whether this is the sort of oratory that he practices, I don't know; our argument just now shed no light on his own views on the subject. But what I call oratory is a branch of something which certainly isn't a fine or honorable pursuit . . . Oratory seems to me to be a pursuit which has nothing to do with art, but which requires a shrewd and bold spirit naturally clever at dealing with people. The generic name which I should give it is pandering; it has many subdivisions, one of which is cookery, an occupation which masquerades as an art but by my argument is no more than a knack acquired by routine. (463ab)

For Socrates, the simple ability to have a desired effect on others is not worthy of admiration. Disconnected from truth or goodness, it is merely an ability to manipulate and, without an assessment of the ends of that manipulation, it is unclear why such an ability should be thought to have any particular value.

Socrates renders a judgment on practices that share important elements with morally problematic forms of politicizing. That is, he is highly critical of individuals who are unconcerned about the truth of their statements, the soundness of their arguments, or the goodness of the values they are trying to inculcate, and who are instead focused largely on other ends - a good reputation or the simple ability to manipulate others in order to get what one wants. Similarly, certain instances of political activity can be called into question for the ways they seek ends other than goodness or truth. Politicizers might represent their views as the result of long reflection on the merits of a particular position, but if their aim in taking such a stand is simply to gain votes by creating a certain perception on the part of their target audience - that is, if they have pandered to that audience - then their actions seem to warrant criticism along the lines offered by Socrates.




Viewed from a Frankfurtian or Socratic perspective, some forms of politicizing can be seen as bullshit or pandering in the hopes of obtaining a very specific end: political power and authority.14

Such an account is perfectly consistent with individual actors having a mul- tiplicity of motives for their behavior. A politician may very well be concerned to promote the common good and, on the whole, speak in ways that reflect his considered beliefs about how best to pursue that good. Nevertheless, there may be occasions when he acts or speaks without an explicit regard for the truth of his statements and instead does what he thinks will best enable him to get elected or secure power for his party. The noble public servant who has all the best intentions might sometimes say what he thinks will be most pleasing to potential voters. He may, for example, have no considered opinion regarding tariffs on imported produce. But when speaking to a convention of Florida orange farmers, he may do nothing to counteract the impression that he is in support of such measures. Such behavior may constitute a questionable instance of politicizing, but it does not entail that the politician in question has no regard at all for the common good. It merely entails that in this particular instance, his publicly observable behavior is being tailored to serve ends other than giving his considered views on the issue in question - namely, the propriety of imposing tariffs on imported produce.

Politicizing thus characterizes specific actions on specific occasions. The relationship between those actions and the character of a particular individual must therefore be established over time and must take into account one's overall habits and dispositions. Just as we are not inclined to judge that one is a coward simply because he or she is cowardly on a single occasion, the fact that one is sometimes guilty of morally illicit politicizing does not necessarily entail that one has the character of a politicizer.

(C) One might press a somewhat different line of thought in response to the view on offer by arguing that it fails to apply to an even more cynical approach to politics that we might be inclined to characterize as illicit politicizing. Thus, consider various elitists who believe both in the superiority of their views and that their views serve the common good. Indeed, they equate the exercise of their own power with the common good. Such individuals are suspicious of open discourse and debate because they do not think the views of the masses are worth taking into account when determining how best to govern. When open debate is, for whatever reason, necessary, these elites think it appropriate simply to engage in whatever rhetoric will enable them to trick the masses into supporting their position. Such actions would seem to qualify as instances of politicizing that many would find distasteful - even morally objectionable - and which nevertheless fall outside the parameters of the account I have been trying to develop since, ex hypothesis these individuals are concerned with the common good even in those cases when they are trying to deceive the masses.15

Two comments are worth making in response to this kind of example.




(1) If the account I have offered thus far is compelling, then there would seem to be a rather straightforward judgment to be rendered on such individuals: they are liars. That is, they know what the truth is (or at least what they believe it to be) and are deliberately acting to obscure that truth in an effort to obtain what they want. And if one is inclined to think that lying warrants moral criticism, then one already has the conceptual apparatus to level that criticism. Invoking the notion of politicizing sheds no additional light on the nature of the offense in question.

To be sure, rendering this judgment leaves undetermined whether lying is sometimes morally permissible, or even necessary, be it in political contexts or otherwise. In other words, one can rightfully claim that someone has lied without necessarily criticizing that person for so doing. Indeed, the elitists in question would likely argue that, since the masses are ill-equipped to handle the issues before them, they must sometimes be lied to for their own good. That debate, it seems to me, can be carried out on its own terms without concerning ourselves with politicizing.

(2) While they may be targeted at different phenomena, charges of politicizing of the sort I have been exploring and a concern for the elitist rejection of democratic procedures nevertheless seem to be grounded in a shared commitment to the value of substantive public discourse. In the case of politicizing, the concern is for the way in which a failure to give sufficient attention to the issues, and one's own beliefs about those issues, undermines our ability to make dialectical progress on the questions at hand. In other words, individuals who craft their remarks in light of goals other than advocating or developing a considered view on the subjects about which they speak cannot be sufficiently committed to any view long enough to give that view legitimate consideration or make a case for that view that helps to advance the public conversation in any meaningful way. Their views, such as they are, are merely strategic tools aimed at achieving goals other than truth.16

When our focus turns to the elitists I have been considering, it is instead the rejection of public debate altogether that seems to set off warning bells in the minds of some. It is not so much that the conduct of such individuals undermines the quality of debate; it is rather that they are attempting to evade that debate altogether. Thus, even if elitist conduct does not qualify as a morally problematic form of politicizing, understanding the reasons why it may nevertheless be objectionable is an important step in the development of any normative account of public discourse - an account that will clearly inform how we are apt to level the charge of politicizing.17

(D) Briefly applying these points to some contemporary examples will hope- fully bring the significance of these distinctions more clearly into view. Consider, then, a political official who initiates some military action against an unpopular enemy while in the midst of a scandal that is threatening to cripple his political effectiveness. Opponents might charge such an individual with politicizing the



WHAT'S SO BAD ABOUT POLITICIZING? 237

military operation in question.18 Similarly, those of differing viewpoints on the question of global climate change are often accused by their opponents of politicizing that issue rather than debating the merits of opposing views.

As suggested in my discussion of "Federalist No. 1," there seem to be three ways one might understand the accusation of politicizing in such cases. Look- ing at these options will thus help to illuminate the content of such charges and provide some guidance in determining whether they constitute legitimate grounds of criticism.

(1) An individual might be criticized on the grounds that because he stands to benefit from a wide endorsement of his view or course of action (be that benefit in terms of public opinion or election to office), he should not be the one to advocate it. But as with Hamilton's relationship to the Constitution, it is unclear how seriously we should take this charge. After all, the action taken might be a good one, and the view being put forward might be true. It is sometimes appropriate to engage in military action, and one position or another on climate change has to be true: either the earth is getting warmer, or it isn't, and human activity is either contributing to that process or it isn't. Any problems posed by the fact that advocates of these positions may somehow benefit politically from that advocacy thus seem to be overridden by the superiority of their stand on the issues. Insofar as a citizenry has an interest in the use of its military and the truth about climate

change (as it clearly seems to have), it will presumably want the best person for the job even if that job has been actively pursued.

(2) One might simply think that a particular exercise of military power is unwise or immoral or that a particular view on the question of global climate change is false. That is, one might think that regardless of its political motivations or

consequences, certain military actions are wrong and should not be undertaken. Likewise, many people, no doubt, think that certain views on climate change are false, whether or not the truth happens to benefit one political party or another.

In that case, however, it is not clear why the notion of politicizing would need to be invoked in order to level a serious critique at one's opponents. One could

simply argue against the Tightness of the military action or against the truth of a

particular view of climate change. For a citizenry that is concerned with lightness and truth, such arguments should be more than sufficient to get one's point across and perhaps undermine one's political opponents in the process.

To be sure, one might have independent evidence that the falsity of a candidate's statement arises from morally questionable sources and therefore warrants some kind of moral criticism. Candidate X might therefore be lying and know full well that his claims are either false or unfounded. But in that case, a perfectly robust criticism would be that he had lied. And if his motives are not so insidious and one simply believes that he has made a false, if sincere, assertion, then it is the merits of that assertion that should be debated rather than the moral disposition of the one making it.




(3) A morally problematic way in which a candidate or elected official might politicize military action or issues of climate change would be to engage in that action without any regard for its Tightness or to make those claims without any regard for their truth. Thus, if a president orders a military strike with the solitary aim of boosting his approval rating or distracting the public from an ongoing scandal, he can rightly be accused of having politicized foreign policy. Similarly, if a candidate's or official's comments about global climate change are made in an effort to pander to the views of a certain constituency and do not reflect the considered opinion of the person making them, then that person can rightly be accused of having politicized issues of climate change.

The grounds for moral censure in such cases are the manner in which an individual's actions or comments have not paid sufficient attention to reality - in particular, to the moral features of a military action or various truths about the environment. Rather than take the time and effort to examine the world and reflect on how best to navigate that world in his capacity as a public official, the politicizer operates by simply making comments that he thinks will secure him or her votes or a boost in public opinion polls.

II. Implications of the Foregoing Analysis

I have suggested that the charge of politicizing - a charge that is prominent in current political discourse - admits of several interpretations, only one of which, if warranted, serves as a legitimate basis for moral criticism. If this analysis is compelling, then it follows that, when evaluating whether or not a given action is an instance of morally illicit politicizing, one must keep in mind that not everything that often goes under the heading of politicizing, in fact, warrants moral censure.

In an effort to round out the view I have been trying to develop, and to highlight its significance for our contemporary political life, it seems beneficial at this point to explore some implications of the foregoing analysis. While there are no doubt more, three strike me as particularly salient.

Assessing the motives of others is epistemically dicey, and so the charge of politicizing should be leveled cautiously, if at all.

Locating the morality of politicizing in a lack of concern for the truth of one's statements entails that when one accuses another of illicit politicizing, one is thereby criticizing the motives ofthat other. Put differently, to charge that another has politicized an issue in a problematic way is to allege that that person has made his or her statements only to gain power and is therefore not at all motivated by a concern for truth or considerations of the common good in the case in question. To make such a charge is therefore to make a pronouncement on the inner workings of another's mind.




Unfortunately, discerning the motives of others is a notoriously difficult enterprise fraught with epistemological perplexities. For unless we are Rylean behaviorists about the mind - and thereby think that all there is to the content of another's mind is his or her external and publicly observable behavior - some aspects of another's motivations will not be open to straightforward observation. Indeed, often all one has to go on regarding such motives is the explicit statements of others regarding what they take those motives to be.19 And provided they tell us that their actions are motivated by a concern for, say, the common good, we will have little basis on which to deny that their actions are motivated in the way they claim. To be sure, we might believe that those actions are predicated on some false belief about the common good and therefore do not successfully accomplish their aims. But that criticism is importantly different from a criticism of another's motives.20

The upshot of this general epistemic point is that those who are concerned to level the charge of politicizing only in cases where it is warranted must acknowledge that their assessment of that warrant often depends on facts that are largely unavailable to them. As such, it seems preferable to withhold confident judgments about the motives of others and instead proceed on the assumption that such motives are what they are stated to be - a sort of charitable hermeneutic in the political realm. Indeed, I suspect that the level of political discourse would be substantially raised if people refrained from making such pronouncements since, instead of attacking the motives of others, participants in the political process would be focusing on the merits of substantive positions and the best ways to translate those positions into public policy. To the extent that such a view is embraced by the public, it may even be politically advantageous to extend such charity to one's political opponents, even in cases where it is not deserved.

One might here reply that this implication has the further, and problematic, implication that instances of morally illicit politicizing can never be objectively identified. Thus, if such attributions are only warranted in light of the motives of various actors, and if those motives are not publicly accessible, then it is unclear how we might ever obtain the evidence necessary to sufficiently ground charges of politicizing. And if such instances can never be objectively identified, then it is unclear of what use the foregoing account can be for our political life.

There are, however, ways to determine another's motives that do not rely on an ability to directly observe these motives. Thus, one might have independent disclosures of the motives of various actors, and in light of those disclosures, one might determine that a particular instance of morally illicit politicizing has taken place. A candidate might, for example, tell a confidant that his comments at a political debate were essentially uninformed and that he was merely trying to say what he thought prospective voters wanted to hear. If others had access to such evidence, then they would thereby have objective evidence that the candidate in question had been unconcerned for the truth of his statements, and that might be sufficient to ground a charge of politicizing.




Moreover, it is questionable to assume that the only value of a theory of X is the degree to which it helps one identify instances of X. Theories do all kinds of things, only one of which is to enable the identification of certain phenomena in the world. In this case, a theory of morally illicit politicizing might lead to the reform of certain behavior on the part of candidates for political office. As they reflect on what is problematic about certain forms of politicizing, they might be less apt to engage in it themselves or less likely to charge others with having engaged in it. Additionally - a driving concern of the present work - working out a theory of politicizing might help to clarify other theoretical concerns such as working out a normative theory of political discourse.

Some charges of politicizing are themselves morally problematic forms of politicizing.

This implication seems to follow straightaway from the general account of politicizing I have offered. That is, one could accuse another of politicizing a given issue with an eye toward winning elections or enhancing political power and, in so doing, have no concern for the truth of that charge. An accusation meeting these criteria would then itself qualify as a morally illicit form of politicizing. Though I have my suspicions, I will leave as a question for others the percentage of charges of politicizing that fall into this category.

To be sure, leveling these sorts of accusations might prove to be a rather effec- tive political tactic if one is unable to engage the substantive positions of one's political opponents or believes that the opposition in fact has superior qualifica- tions. A candidate in such a predicament may thus find it expedient to paint the opposition as unconcerned for the truth, in an effort to gain sympathy with the voting public. But in so doing, I suggest that such individuals are guilty of the very offense they charge their opposition with committing. Indeed, the political expediency of their accusation depends on a widespread disapproval of the kind of action they are performing. Charging others with politicizing would not be politically advantageous if the public did not at least pay lip service to the notion that politicizing is a bad thing to do.

The charge of politicizing can gain little traction in the context of a robust public discourse that is centered around truth and the common good.

Perhaps another way to put this point is to say that if most people - citizens and politicians alike - are concerned with truth and the common good, then a preoccupation with "who is politicizing what" will tend to be replaced by a substantive discussion of various positions and candidates. Rather then being concerned with the motives of others, a robust public discourse will focus on the quality of ideas and an honest assessment of the capabilities of those seek-




ing elected office. And this, I suggest, is the most straightforward check that the public has on the proliferation of illicit politicizing. If charges of politicizing are consistently met with inquiries into the substantive commitments of one's position, it will no longer be expedient to charge others with politicizing or, one hopes, to politicize issues oneself. Absent the political incentive, it is unclear what motivation there would be to engage in the practice. A citizenry can thus curb the practice of politicizing and, in so doing, obtain for itself the benefits of a more substantive public discourse.

III. Concluding Questions

This is by no means the last word on the nature and morality of politicizing, and I do not think that I have answered any and all questions that might be raised by the issues I have discussed. I therefore conclude by raising two matters that seem to deserve further reflection.

First, even if one more or less grants the analysis offered above, the propriety of certain courses of action remains admittedly murky. For example, it is unclear how we are to think about someone who advocates a position that (1) will be advantageous to himself in some way, (2) believes that the position is the right one to

support, and (3) does not believe that the argument being offered is a particularly good one (i.e., believes that there are vastly superior ones available), but (4) believes that that argument is the one that is best suited to convince others. One can therefore

imagine a supporter of abortion rights suggesting that if abortion were not legally permissible, there would be an epidemic of "back-alley" abortions that would be

medically disastrous for the women involved. Such an individual might believe that abortion should be legally permissible but nevertheless believe the likelihood of an

"epidemic" of medically dangerous abortions to be rather low. Nevertheless, since the visceral reaction by potential voters to such a possibility might help to secure

support for his candidacy, he might choose to make that argument in public.21 I confess to not being entirely certain how to assess such cases. According to

the account I have been developing, actions like the one I have described seem to constitute an illicit instance of politicizing. One has made claims in support of a position with an eye toward political power but does not strictly believe in the truth or soundness of those claims. And yet the strategy is not motivated by a

pure concern for political power but rather by a sincere concern for the common

good. The action thus undermines a certain ideal of integrity in public discourse while keeping truth and the good of others firmly in view. The question is thus whether the trade-off can ever be successfully justified.22

Second, in discussing both "Federalist No. 1" and the contemporary examples of military action and climate change, I suggested that one might interpret the

charge of politicizing as a charge that some issue had wrongly been made a matter of public debate, and I dismissed the plausibility of this view by noting




that both the ratification of the U.S. Constitution and national security seem to be perfectly legitimate topics for popular discussion. Nevertheless, it does not necessarily follow that all issues are equally legitimate matters of public debate. One might think that there remains a clear division between issues that should be aired out in the public sphere and those that should not. And in the case of the latter, one might think that opening them up for debate and making them fodder for public policy is to politicize them in a morally problematic way. The question thus remains whether there are some issues that should never be politicized, and, if so, how we are to determine what those issues are.

I think that it is unpromising to attempt any precise criteria for making such decisions in advance of considering a wide variety of particular cases. Rather, it seems preferable to start by considering whether or not a given issue is one that the populace as a whole needs to decide - that is, whether it is clearly a matter that affects the common good. Approached from this perspective, certain issues seem clearly to elicit positive answers: national security, economic policy, health care, social security, the environment, etc. To others, I suspect that we are apt to respond in the negative. For example, various decisions in the private lives of government officials are simply irrelevant to the flourishing of society. It is therefore difficult to see how it serves the public interest to debate what senators have for breakfast.

Clearly, there are a host of issues that fall between these extremes and which will be likely to inspire a wide variety of opinions. But as I have suggested above, the appropriate response to this diversity is to engage in further discussion and debate. For a robust public discourse about what legitimately pertains to the common good is itself an important part ofthat good. Provided that such discourse is approached with a charitable mindset, not having clear answers to these questions can be a sign of health in a society rather than a sign of illness.

University of Virginia

NOTES

Thanks to Talbot Brewer, Andrew Douglas, and Mark LeBar for helpful comments on previous drafts of this paper. I am also indebted to the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia for its collégial and financial support.

1. Josh Marshall, "Whining over Bush Politicizing the War Won't Help Dems," The Hill (September 14, 2006), httpi/ZthehilLcom/josh-marshall/whining-over-bush- politicizing-the-war-wont-help-dems-2006-09-14.html.

2. David Limbaugh, "Now Who's Politicizing the War?" WorldNetDaily. com (March 30), http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp7ARTICLEJD3337804.

3 . "Daschle Blasts Bush for Politicizing National Security," Foxnews. com (September 26, 2002), http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,64055,00.html.




4. Such a focus on power accounts for the fact that politicizing can occur in contexts that are not straightforwardly political. For example, university academic departments are sometimes said to be politicized because their members are concerned with who gets to determine the conduct and future of those departments. While there may be interesting differences between politicizing in political as opposed to nonpolitical contexts, my focus in this essay will be on the charge of politicizing in the explicitly political realm.

5. The choice of terminology here is somewhat tricky. Because 'politicizing' is used almost exclusively in a pejorative sense, one might wonder whether it obscures matters to speak of morally innocent and morally problematic senses of politicizing. Better, perhaps, to reserve the term for actions that warrant moral criticism and to coin another for those that do not. However, part of my aim is to defend the legitimacy of having certain kinds of power relations lie at the heart of our public life. It therefore seems more illuminating to speak of a broad sense of the political - that is, one that covers a wide range of phenomena - and a narrower sense that picks out phenomena that are morally problematic.

6. Alexander Hamilton, "Federalist No. 1 ," in The Federalist Papers, ed. Garry Wills (New York: Bantam Books, 1982), pp. 1-2.

7. I tread lightly around the notion of self-interest here because it seems to be a term that is often too capacious to be informative. As Dennis Chong argues in Rational Lives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), all sorts of seemingly contradictory outcomes can, by some plausible measure, be in one's self-interest, depending on the factors one takes to be relevant in evaluating those outcomes. See especially Chapter 5, where Chong examines the debate in Williamson County, Texas, over whether to grant tax breaks to Apple Computer Company in an effort to entice the relocation of Apple's customer service division to Texas.

8. Hamilton, The Federalist Papers, p. 6.

9. These works are collected in Ralph Ketchum, ed., The Anti- Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates (New York: Signet Classic, 2003).

10. This description thus combines to satisfy conditions (1) through (3) outlined above.

1 1 . Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), pp. 54-55.

1 2. Frankfurt, On Bullshit, pp. 55-56.

13. Citations of Plato's Gorgias, noted hereafter in the text, are from the translation by Walter Hamilton and Chris Emlyn-Jones (New York: Penguin Books, 2004).

1 4. It is also worth pointing out that the lack of concern for truth that seems to characterize the politicizer also characterizes the bullshitter of Frankfurt's essay, On Bullshit.

15. I am indebted to Andrew Douglas for posing this line of questioning.

16. What I have in mind here is what seems to drive the Socrates of the Socratic dia- logues to demand that his interlocutors answer his questions as they truly believe (rather than answering as they think Socrates wants or simply to move the conversation along). See especially Protagoras 331 be, Crito 49cd, and Gorgias 495a.

17. While I am largely sympathetic to the tradition of deliberative democracy, I do not




think that the value of public discourse depends on its ability to justify public policy in light of putatively neutral principles, a possibility that has been called into question by, among others, Stanley Fish, The Trouble with Principle (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999); and Ian Shapiro, The State of Democratic Theory (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005). Rather, I take the substantive discussion of public policies to constitute a dis- tinct human good that is (1 ) more or less independent of the outcome of that discussion and (2) does not necessarily prescribe constraints on the conduct or content of that discussion. Simply engaging in informed debate about the proper direction of society is an important part of human flourishing and one that is undermined both by morally illicit politicizing and the rejection of democracy implicit in the views of some elitists. For an entree into the growing literature on deliberative democracy, see Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Why Deliberative Democracy? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004); and Stephen Macedo, ed., Deliberative Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

18. Indeed, precisely this charge was leveled by many conservative critics of Bill Clinton in 1998 when he ordered air strikes against Sudan. At the time, Clinton was in the middle of impeachment proceedings resulting from the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

19. There are, of course, difficulties even here concerning the degree to which we have direct access to the contents of our own minds. While I am inclined to think that our own motivations are often obscure to ourselves, I do not think that the main point I am here trying to make hinges on that being the case.

20. I take there to be an important difference here between the process of discerning another's motives (which are largely unavailable to us) and that of discerning what another is trying to do (which is more publicly accessible). Thus, if I witness a friend walking to the refrigerator and taking out a gallon of milk, I can probably determine that he is trying to get a glass of milk. However, I may still be rather in the dark as to why he is getting a glass of milk. Is he doing it because he is trying to increase the amount of calcium in his diet, or simply because he is thirsty and drinking milk seems like a good idea, or for some altogether different reason? I won't be able to know unless I ask him.

2 1 . Interestingly, historian Gordon Wood has recently argued that something like this description characterizes the work of the authors of The Federalist, and in particular, James Madison. Thus, Wood suggests that Madison's argumentative strategies in The Federalist do not always square with his considered political convictions even though he sincerely believed that the Constitution should be ratified. If Wood is correct, then Madison would be advancing arguments that he does not fully endorse in support of an end that he does. (Wood, incidentally, makes no such comments regarding Hamilton.) See Gordon Wood, Revolutionary Characters (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), chap. 4, chap. 5.

22. This is a different question from whether certain kinds of arguments should be excluded from public debate, a question taken up with respect to religion by Robert Audi and Nicholas Wolterstorff, Religion in the Public Square (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997). One could therefore follow Wolterstorff in thinking that there should be very few restraints on the types of reasons one can offer to justify public policies, but nevertheless hold that one should offer reasons one believes to be good, rather than simply those that will convince the greatest number of people.



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