Like many Americans, I make sure that I am home on Wednesday night and that the kids are in bed by nine o’clock, so my wife and I can watch “The West Wing.” As a confirmed political junkie (it’s my job), it is easy to imagine my delight a few weeks ago when my top issue appeared as a feature. Martin Sheen’s character, President Bartlett, was delivered a challenge by his opponent for reelection to sign a “positive campaign” pledge. This is it, I thought, our issue — on which we have been laboring in the trenches since 1998 — has achieved national prominence.

At the Institute’s nonpartisan Project on Campaign Conduct, we work to encourage political candidates to reach agreements with their opponents about the ground rules they will follow during campaigns. In the last two federal elections, we piloted the project in Ohio and Washington states, brokering agreements between a number of congressional and statewide candidates that helped them keep their races on the high road. This year we are working across the nation to do the same thing, in partnership with local organizations and citizens.

And “The West Wing” was about to help us!

But my hopes were dashed when the story line made it clear that the characters with whom the audience is supposed to be sympathetic viewed the pledge as a cheap political trick by a lightweight who just couldn’t handle a tough discussion about issues. My visions of mainstream exposure were crushed, and I thought I would be best served by forgetting about the whole episode.

But something has happened since then: Election campaigns have begun. It took place almost imperceptibly, with a news item here, an appearance there. Candidates are being “certified” by their secretaries of state, fundraising mailings are arriving in mailboxes, party conventions are being held. And this week, a major exchange between the Democrats and the Republicans occurred.

Public Opinion Strategies, a top Republican polling firm, issued a very public memo to Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives, all of whom are running for reelection this November. “Be aggressive,” the representatives were told. “There is no new tone in politics.”

Meanwhile, the Democrats seem to be fulfilling the pollsters’ prediction. The Democratic National Committee released a video this week attacking President Bush for a series of what it calls “broken promises” over, among other things, the environment, Social Security, Medicare, and education. The brief moratorium on political criticism that followed September 11 seems to be a dim memory.

One might imagine, given all this, that I am concerned about the tone of the upcoming elections. But instead, I am hopeful. Why? It has to do with that “West Wing” episode that made me feel so bad. Truth be told, it’s not only the West Wingers who think ethics pledges are a naïve attempt to turn politics from street hockey into civic ballet. Hard-bitten political insiders sometimes do, as well. Politics, after all, is an exercise in drawing distinctions: If I run for office, I had better believe myself to be the best suited for the job, or I may just as well vote for my opponent. My task, as a candidate, is to convince others that I am the best, too. If I am a challenger, my job is doubly hard, as I have to convince voters that the incumbent is doing so poor a job that she or he must go. Doesn’t a “no negative campaigning” pledge simply take all of the differences out of politics, relying on a nostalgic and silly idea that candidates should just passively say where they stand on issues and let voters make up their minds?

No. And what is more, voters — who tell researchers they are fed up with overly harsh campaigning — don’t want things to get suddenly super-nice either. It is this realism on the part of the electorate that has me so optimistic. In fact, when we asked citizens in bipartisan polling about what sorts of things ought to go into a code of conduct for candidates to sign, the idea of agreeing to say nothing negative at all about an opponent received very low marks. The top four ideas:

• Agreeing not to use any language or images that define other candidates based on their race, sex, or other personal characteristics (75 percent see this as “very important”)
• Agreeing to participate in forums where the public can question candidates directly (69 percent)
• Agreeing to participate in public debates (67 percent)
• Agreeing not to make any personal attacks on the other candidates (64 percent)

And the bottom four:

• Agreeing not to say anything negative at all about the other candidates (43 percent)
• Agreeing not to publicly question another candidate’s patriotism (42 percent)
• Agreeing not to publicly question another candidate’s honesty or integrity (40 percent)
• Agreeing that if one candidate breaks any of the rules, then all the rules are off, regardless of the agreement that both candidates signed (38 percent)

That is, Americans think that promising to say nothing negative at all about an opponent is a silly idea. They believe it’s not “negativity” that’s objectionable, but unfair attack campaigning. They want access to candidates’ ideas in the form of debates and forums, and they want to hear about the differences between those running for office as they make their choices going into November.

Political consultants and other insiders might be surprised to learn how worldly Americans are about politics, while at the same time hoping for a better kind of campaign.

This year, Democrats will attack Republicans and vice versa. They will argue about tax cuts, how best to respond to (and be prepared to respond to) terrorism, education reform, Social Security, the environment, and energy policy. Perhaps more so than in recent years, there are clear — and highly divergent — policy directions to be presented to the U.S. electorate. And the stakes are high.

Seen in this light, are codes of campaign conduct an attempt to eviscerate politics? Not at all. In fact, they are exactly the opposite. Codes of campaign conduct can help foster this debate by taking off the table the personal, irrelevant accusations and criticisms that citizens have time and again said they do not want to hear, opening a space in which the grand argument that is American politics can take place.

Politics may be like street hockey, but the voters know that even a hockey game has rules.

(c)2002 by the Institute for Global Ethics

“The eugenics movement was a shameful effort in which state government never should have been involved. We must remember the commonwealth’s past mistakes in order to prevent them from recurring.”

WASHINGTON
When seeking accommodation for their injuries, disabled workers do not have the right to automatically trump coworkers who have seniority, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week.

The ruling gives U.S. employers the right to maintain seniority systems and the valuable incentives they provide, even when faced with an injured worker seeking reassignment under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

The ADA requires employers to make a “reasonable accommodation” for injured and disabled workers, rather than allowing such workers to be easily and summarily fired.

In 1990, US Airways baggage handler Robert Barnett, who suffered a back injury while on the job, was transferred to the airline’s mailroom under that provision of the ADA, the Washington Post reported.

Two years later, Barnett was ousted after two other US Airways employees with seniority sought his mailroom job. Barnett sued, claiming that US Airways had violated his rights of reasonable accommodation.

The Supreme Court rejected Barnett’s case with a 5-to-4 vote, ruling that seniority systems serve a valuable function that should not be always eviscerated by ADA provisions, the Post reported.

Writing for the majority, Justice Stephen Bryer claimed that “the typical seniority system provides important employee benefits by creating, and fulfilling, employee expectations of fair, uniform treatment.”

Allowing disabled workers to automatically leapfrog a seniority system could injure other workers’ rights, the Court ruled, noting that a case-by-case approach to resolving such complaints is required to balance all workers’ needs.

The Court returned Barnett’s case to a lower court for reevaluation, USA Today reported.

WASHINGTON
Regardless of income, blacks and Hispanics in the United States pay higher interest rates on refinancing loans than do whites, a watchdog group claimed last week.

Citing statistics from bank loans made in 2000, Allen Fishbein, general counsel at the Center for Community Change, a housing advocacy group in Washington, said that “the market isn’t working as it should.”

The group’s report charted racial disparities in lending rates being charged to minorities and whites — a problem that surprisingly gets worse as incomes rise, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

The center found that upper-income blacks and Hispanics were three times as likely as upper-income whites to pay inflated interest rates on refinancing loans.

Such inflated-rate loans, called “subprime,” were assessed against an average of 50 percent of African Americans, 30 percent of Hispanics, and 17 percent of whites, according to the Inquirer report.

Noting that the loan data was compiled in a way that prevents researchers from blaming the disparate treatment on outright discrimination alone, Fishbein said the figures were still troubling. “Does race matter? Our findings seem to suggest it does,” Fishbein told the Inquirer.

SAN FRANCISCO
The state of California last week released a list of slave policies issued by companies doing business in California in the 1800s — information some say could prove helpful to plaintiffs seeking reparations for slavery.

The list of companies that insured the lives of slaves includes ACE USA, Aetna, AIG, Royal & Sun Alliance, Manhattan Life, and New York Life, the San Jose Mercury News reported.

While none of the firms is based in California, a 2000 state law requires all insurance firms doing business within state lines to publicly release information on policies that insured against the death or escape of slaves.

Several class-action lawsuits across the country are seeking redress for such policies, saying financial penalties should be paid by firms that profited from the practice of slavery or other past misdeeds.

“What the reparations movement is trying to do is concretely link the present and past by showing the lingering economic effects,” Darnell Hunt, director of African American Studies at UCLA, told the Los Angeles Times.

“The Japanese reparations, the payments to victims of the German Holocaust — I think those things made everyone, particularly African-Americans, say, ‘Well, why not us?”’ added Alfreda Robinson, an associate dean at George Washington University Law School, in an interview with the Mercury News.

Anthony Sebok, a professor at Brooklyn Law School in New York, says plaintiffs may have a hard time making their case, since the majority of their “unjust enrichment” claims involve a statute of limitations that typically expires after six years.

“It will be hard to establish what an heir of an heir of an heir should be receiving now,” Sebok told the Mercury News.

UNITED NATIONS
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan last week ceded to pressure from the Israeli government, canceling a probe into alleged human rights abuses by Israeli forces in the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin.

The United Nations had gathered a 20-member team of experts to assess Palestinian claims of a massacre in Jenin following eight days of house-to-house raids, air attacks, and building destruction by the Israeli military.

Israel, which says it did nothing wrong, insists the Jenin attacks were warranted, legitimate efforts to destroy a “terrorist network” of suicide bombers and attackers hiding in Jenin, the Financial Times reported.

Late last month, the UN organized a team of investigators to probe the Jenin destruction, but Israel balked, saying it would not allow the team to fly into the area, reported National Public Radio.

The UN attempted to appease Israel by altering the team’s composition to include more military experts, but Israel then raised more objections, demanding that Israeli soldiers be exempted from prosecution for any of their actions, and insisting that the probe be barred from making any conclusions from its findings.

The Israeli cabinet then voted to deny cooperation to the UN team, essentially sealing the investigation’s fate, according to the Times.

Last week, Annan said Israel’s efforts to block the investigation made it “more and more difficult to establish with any confidence or accuracy” what actually took place in Jenin.

With the mission aborted, “the long shadow cast by recent events in the Jenin refugee camp will remain,” he added.

Several European nations and human rights groups denounced the UN’s capitulation to Israel, saying it cast doubt on Israel’s insistence of innocence, and humiliated and threatened the legitimacy of the UN, the BBC reported.

Last week, a three-member team from Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report concluding that although no massacre took place in Jenin, investigators found evidence of “extremely serious” abuses that “in some cases appear to be war crimes.”

Noting that nearly half of the 52 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Jenin were civilians, HRW reported that “many of the civilians were killed willfully or unlawfully,” according to a report from the Reuters news agency.

Israel also “used Palestinian civilians as human shields and used indiscriminate and excessive force during the operation,” according to the group’s report, which urged criminal investigations into such actions.

Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes

CALGARY
Jim Buckee, the CEO of Talisman Energy Inc., last week confirmed rumors that he is in talks with the state oil company of India to sell the company’s share in its controversial Sudan oil operations.

Many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the United Nations have asserted that the oil production is exacerbating the brutal civil war in Southern Sudan that has claimed over two million lives.

There have also been allegations that the airfield at the oil production facilities has been used by the Sudanese military for bombing raids on refugees from the rebel groups.

However, the Globe & Mail is reporting that Buckee is rejecting the present Indian oil company offer of $650 million as too low, and is also looking at other bidders for the company’s 25 percent share in the oil field production.

The other partners in the project are the Sudanese state oil company, a Chinese oil company, and a Malaysian oil company.

NGOs and church groups protesting against Talisman’s presence in Sudan at the company’s annual general meeting want the firm to get out even if it has to sell at a loss.

Ironically, the company’s shares increase in value every time there is speculation that Talisman will sell its Sudan assets in anticipation of the company ridding the share value of the so called “Sudan overhang.”

Meanwhile, CEO Buckee insists that the company’s presence in Sudan is good for human rights because it acts as a “catalyst” to bring attention to the human rights situation there.

WASHINGTON
The Bush administration last week came under fire for heeding a request from the mining industry to ease restrictions on mountaintop mining, a controversial practice in which coal companies shear off the top of a hill and bulldoze the rubble into stream beds.

The practice of mountaintop mining, begun in the 1970s, has been accelerating in recent years, with 183 permits issued in West Virginia and Kentucky in the last three years alone, reported the New York Times.

Critics say the process is destroying the Appalachian environment, effectively erasing more than 1,000 miles of streams by filling them in with dirt, rock, and rubble.

Mining companies insist that mountaintop removal is the most efficient way to mine coal, make a profit, and produce cheap electricity for U.S. households.

After meeting privately with Bush officials in early April, the industry convinced the government to alter two key provisions of clean-water laws to make mountaintop mining an easier, less-regulated process, according to the Times.

The proposed changes would repeal a law barring the dumping of mining waste into waterways, and exempt mountaintop mining from a rule banning coal mining within 100 feet of waterways, reported the Associated Press.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Christine Whitman denied that the proposed changes are “a giveaway to the mining industry,” insisting that they do “not allow activity that isn’t already under way.”

Environmentalists agree, saying that is exactly the problem: The activity “already under way,” they contend, is illegal under current water protection laws. They say the Bush administration is trying to kill pending lawsuits challenging mountaintop mining by cutting the legal legs out from under their complaints.

“Instead of following the law, the coal industry has persuaded the Bush administration to change the law,” Joe Lovett, a West Virginia lawyer and executive director of the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment, told the Times.

The proposed rule changes are expected to be made final within two months.

WASHINGTON
Oil executives last week said they were not responsible for a recent spate of price hikes that congressional investigators allege are due to decreased industry competition and suspect activities by oil firms.

The Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations held two days of hearings last week into the findings of a new report blaming escalating prices on tacit but legal industry collusion.

According to the 398-page report issued by the subcommittee, oil industry mergers have consolidated power into the hands of too few companies to keep market forces in play and gasoline prices in check, the Reuters news agency reported.

Blaming oil firms for suppressing oil supplies to tighten the market and hike prices, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who chairs the Senate panel, accused companies of playing the market to their benefit and consumers’ detriment.

Caused by industry actions, “sudden increases in gasoline prices are costly to the consumer and disrupt our economy” by making it more expensive to transport U.S. goods and services, Levin said.

Oil executives denied any wrongdoing, insisting that merger consolidation has “created strong competitors,” insisted David Reeves, president of ChevronTexaco’s North America products division. “We see no connection between mergers and fluctuations in gasoline pricing.”

Levin last week challenged Reeves and others industry representatives to explain internal memos advocating various methods — apparently never implemented — to hike prices, including raising prices at the pumps during travel-heavy weekends.

Red Cavaney, president of the American Petroleum Institute, said that even if such activities were artificially imposed for the sake of corporate profits, they could still be legal.

“As long as the company or individuals act on their own, when they decide to put their supply on the market is their decision and it’s legal,” Cavaney told the Associated Press. “It’s part of the free enterprise system.”

NEWARK, New Jersey
An apologetic David Smith, the creator of 1999’s self-spreading Melissa computer virus, was sentenced last week to 20 months in federal prison and a fine of $5,000 — a punishment designed to deter other would-be hackers.

The Melissa virus, named after a Florida stripper, raided computer users’ email programs, automatically sending itself to 50 people listed in each user’s email address book.

The virus, which temporarily slowed Internet and email traffic to a crawl, spread itself to 1.5 million computer users in less than a week, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

Although the virus was not designed to cause any damage, it clogged email systems worldwide and provided a blueprint used later by malicious virus programmers, whose bugs cost billions of dollars in damage.

“It was a huge turning point in terms of viruses and kind of led the way for what we’re seeing now,” April Goostree, a virus research manager for software firm McAfee, told NewsFactor.

Last week, U.S. Judge Joseph Greenaway said Smith may not have meant to cause the problems he did, but said a prison sentence was nevertheless necessary as a deterrent to other virus programmers.

Smith was ordered to serve 20 months in jail, pay a $5,000 fine, perform 100 hours of community service, and stay away from computers and the Internet, NewsFactor reported.

Acknowledging the $80 million in estimated damage done by Melissa, Smith last week apologized. “The only purpose of the virus was to forward itself around and, on random occasions, print a quote from ‘The Simpsons,’” he wrote in a letter to Judge Greenaway. “When the FBI showed up at my brother’s apartment with guns drawn… I suddenly realized how serious it was.”

“I cannot take back what I did no matter how much I want to,” Smith said. “I didn’t intend nor could I have imagined that it would end up this way. It’s been the worst three years of my life.”

LAUSANNE, Switzerland
The International Skating Union (ISU) last week punished a French skating judge and a French official allegedly involved in a vote-swapping deal with Russian judges during the 2002 Winter Olympics.

Judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne and French skating federation chief Didier Dailhaguet were suspended from judging skating events for the next three years, as well as the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy.

Citing evidence that Le Gougne bowed to pressure from Dailhaguet to vote for Russian skaters during the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, the ISU said punishment was necessary to preserve the honor of the sport.

Witnesses said Le Gougne complained that Dailhaguet pressured her to favor the Russians in one event in exchange for Russian judges’ votes in a later event. Le Gougne, who initially admitted swapping votes, later retracted her statement.

“This was not an easy case for us,” ISU president Ottavio Cinquanta said last week after the ruling. “But sport is a very important social activity, and we have to do the utmost to preserve and protect the activity of the International Skating Union.”

Le Gougne and Dailhaguet last week responded with anger, saying they were being scapegoated by the ISU, reported the Washington Post.

“This is not the end. This is the start,” Dailhaguet vowed last week. “Today, this is war.”

“I will explain how things work,” Le Gougne agreed. “It’s a system that is extremely biased, dictatorial, and even corrupt…. They won’t stop me now. I have nothing more to lose. I will fight this to the end.”

The French voting scandal tarnished the images of the 2002 Games, and resulted in a second round of gold medals for pairs figure skating being awarded to Canadian skaters Jamie Salé and David Pelletier.

LONDON
U.K. schools need to do a better job of educating students about sexuality, including providing more information about sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and debunking popular myths spread through the media, the government said last week.

A new report from the U.K. Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) found that “in most schools the teaching about sex and relationships is effective and conscientious,” reported the BBC.

But problem areas exist, including insufficient education about STDs and contraceptives as well as the importance of values in making a relationship work, OFSTED’s chief inspector for secondary education Mike Raleigh told the BBC.

The OFSTED report also criticized the role some popular magazines play in encouraging school-age children to believe that most of their peers are sexually active.

“While many magazines now stress the importance of safe sex, the underlying, but inaccurate, message is sometimes seen to be that all young people are sexually active,” the report said.

“Problems may arise if the messages received from reading this material clash with parental and other local cultural norms, or if unnecessary anxieties arise from reading about practices and risks that the readers are not ready for and are not able to discuss,” according to the report.

From the Gallup News Service:

“The latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll shows the vast majority of Americans would prefer that the United States not take either side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, consistent with earlier trends. The public generally approves of the way President Bush is handling the situation, even though a plurality of Americans believe he is favoring the Israelis in the dispute, and half of Americans believe he does not have a clear and well-thought-out policy in the Middle East.

“The poll … shows that Americans continue to favor a neutral U.S. stance in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Consistent with earlier polls dating back to 1998, two-thirds of Americans say the United States should not take either side in the dispute. This is in spite of frequent Gallup polls that show Americans’ sympathies in the Middle East are more likely to be with the Israelis than with the Palestinians….

“President Bush has been criticized by some for lacking a firm policy in the Middle East — first calling for an immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops from Palestinian territories, but then not imposing any sanctions on Israel when it did not meet these demands…. The latest poll shows that 50 percent of Americans do not believe Bush has a clear and well-thought-out policy on the Middle East….

“Additionally, Americans perceive that President Bush is favoring the Israelis in the dispute (45 percent), rather than remaining neutral (43 percent) or favoring the Palestinians (4 percent). Nevertheless, more than seven in 10 Americans say they approve of the way Bush is handling the situation in the Middle East….

“The United Nations recently decided to abandon its plan to investigate Israeli military action that took place in a Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin. After Israel delayed access to the camp for several days over concern about the makeup of the investigative team, the Israeli Cabinet finally voted to refuse the UN mission. When asked about the dispute, Americans say they agree with the United Nations (62 percent) more than with Israel (28 percent).

“Gallup’s recent polling on the Middle East has shown much stronger support for Israel among conservatives and Republicans than among those of more moderate or liberal political persuasions. This pro-Israel bias is evident in the results of this question. Conservatives favor the United Nations, but only by a slim margin of 48 percent to 44 percent over the Israelis. Liberals and moderates, on the other hand, show rather one-sided support for the United Nations. A similar pattern is evident according to political partisanship.”

“I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to politicians.”

– Charles de Gaulle (French general and president, 1890-1970)