A new analysis of U.S. government figures found that about 22,000 of the nation’s large and midsize employers deliberately discriminated against women and minorities between 1990 and 1999.
The study, based on statistics from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, found that about two million workers suffered from intentional, “hard-core” discrimination in 1999 alone.
“It has never been easier to make the case for ethics.”
Last week, I used that line to open two speeches at the World Future Society in Philadelphia and at the Chautauqua Institition summer program in western New York. On both occasions, the audiences broke into applause.
Now, that’s not a particularly dazzling line. So what’s going on?
The answer, I think, is that people are hungry for words that explain their intuitions. And the public intuition, these days, is that old values-neutral explanations are failing. Current events are setting records. Yet neither economics nor politics seems to explain why. There’s a longing for a different way of seeing — a demand for a new lens of ethics through which to view the world. Nowhere is that clearer than in the events of last week.
The week had been set up, of course, with yet another record: a 390-point drop in the Dow on Friday, July 19, pushing markets below even their post-9/11 bottoms. As the week began, WorldCom filed for bankruptcy — which, with $107 billion in assets, outstripped Enron to set the record as the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. And then top executives at Citigroup and J. P. Morgan Chase were sharply questioned by Congress for helping Enron do its dirty deeds. “What Will Halt the Skid on Wall Street?” moaned a New York Times headline on Monday.
But on Wednesday morning, two things happened. At 6 A.M. federal agents in New York made a very public arrest of John J. Rigas, former CEO of the bankrupt Adelphia Commications, and two of his sons for using the company as their personal “piggy bank.” And the House and Senate, after years of dithering and bowing to lobbyists, announced an agreement on tough new regulations for corporate accounting that include longer prison terms for dishonest executives, a new accounting oversight body, faster financial disclosure, and a longer period during which investors can sue for securities fraud.
By the end of Wednesday, the market posted a 488-point rebound, a near record as the second-largest one-day gain in history. Later that night, the House finally drummed out Rep. James B. Traficant on charges of racketeering, bribery, and taking salary kickbacks — another near record, since it was only the second time since the Civil War that a House member has been expelled for unethical conduct. And as the week ended, Congress was closing in on new laws making it harder to escape paying your debts by declaring bankruptcy.
What’s the ethical significance of these events? Start with a hypothesis: Suppose the U.S. public were deeply concerned about integrity in the public and private sectors. As the corporate moral barometer continued its apparent plunge, wouldn’t the public yank its funds from the markets? If so, what would (in the Times’ words) “halt the skid?” Clearly it would have to be a response that was not simply economic or political, but ethical. Only as the public saw movement along the axis of integrity would it finally begin to regain confidence in the markets.
There are, of course, lots of market forces in play during any week. But this past week the public seemed to be sending a message: We’ll invest again when we see the nation finally taking a tough stand on ethical lapses.
And that’s what happened. Fraudulent executives got handcuffed. An unethical politician got expelled. Corporate accounting got lots tougher. A weasel hole for debtors was getting closed.
And the markets? Investors roared their approval. “Whew!” they seemed to be saying, “Standards at last.”
And not a moment too soon. Historians of ethics, commenting on a 30-year era of ethical relativism in Western culture that began in the 1960s, may want to highlight this week in their calendars. I’ve never seen more obvious evidence, all packed into a few days, that the public is fed up with jellyfish morality and longing for the vertebrae of conscience. Sure, there will be more ups and downs. But for all of the tumult, we may be marking the end of an era. All in all, it’s been an encouraging week.
(c)2002 by the Institute for Global Ethics
“Today’s message from Congress to CEOs and corporate boardrooms is clear: If you steal, cheat, or commit some other white-collar crime, you’ll face the same consequences as law-breaking street thugs by spending time behind bars.”
WASHINGTON
After weeks of corporate scandals and sinking stock markets, the U.S. Senate and House last week joined to pass far-reaching corporate reforms meant to curb corruption and restore investor confidence.
The final bill, called the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, is a hybrid of measures proposed by Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D-Maryland) and Rep. Michael Oxley (R-Ohio), reported the New York Times.
The law is modeled primarily after a tough Senate bill drafted by Sarbanes. Although industry lobbyists and House Republicans had pledged to challenge tougher provisions of the bill during negotiations, mounting public pressure spooked politicians from tampering with the bill, which was approved 423-to-3 in the House and 99-to-0 in the Senate.
President Bush, who said he did not support the bill’s stiffer provisions a month ago, last week abandoned his opposition, applauding Congress for getting tough on corporate crime and pledging to sign the bill into law.
The new measure largely eliminates the self-regulation long prized by the accounting industry, stripping it of such independence in favor of more government oversight, according to USA Today.
Provisions of the legislation include longer prison sentences for executives who commit fraud, faster disclosure of significant company news, a more generous statute of limitations for defrauded investors to sue corporations, and firmer firewalls to prevent accounting firms from performing both auditing and consulting work for the same company.
While support for the tough measures was broad, there were dissenters, including Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.), who said the bill was more a product of “rhetoric and media response” than practicality.
“That’s just the very nature of the process when you’ve got a crisis atmosphere,” complained Gramm, whose wife served on the board of Enron while it imploded. “It’s hard to argue logic in a feeding frenzy.”
Although Gramm was the sole dissenter during the negotiating process for the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, even he switched his vote in the final count, reported the Associated Press.
While the accounting industry and other sectors lobbied heavily against the bill, the Business Roundtable, an association of chief executives, last week praised the measure as “the right bill at the right time,” noted the Post.
The new bill’s chief architect, Sen. Paul Sarbanes, last week welcomed news that the measure would soon be law.
“Traditionally, our markets have been the fairest, most efficient, and the most transparent in the world,” Sarbanes said last week. “We intend to see that they once again merit that reputation.”
WASHINGTON
Lawmakers last week blasted two of the nation’s leading banks for allegedly helping Enron funnel funds and hide debts that led to the company’s collapse — charges that the banks’ executives denied.
J. P. Morgan Chase & Co. Inc. and Citigroup Inc. found themselves fending off accusations of knowingly abetting fraud by orchestrating a series of transactions known as “prepays” — bank loans given in return for a promised delivery of commodities to a third party at a later date, reported the Financial Times.
For such prepay deals to be legitimate, the third party must be an independent entity — a condition absent in the deals set up by J. P. Morgan and Citigroup, regulators allege.
Led by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations last week assailed the banks for allegedly creating sham companies that looked like independent firms but which, in truth, were puppets for the banks back home. The companies also operated the schemes for at least 10 other firms.
The Senate committee pointed to memos from both firms allegedly indicating that the banks knew their actions were deceptive, helping Enron hide more than $8 billion in debt, reported the New York Times.
“Enron loves these deals as they are able to hide funded debt from their equity analysts,” a Chase banker emailed in 1998, according to the Times report. The deals allowed Enron to get “money that gives them cash flow but does not show up on books as big-’D’ debt,” a Citigroup employee emailed in 2000.
Both banks disagreed with the committee’s allegations, insisting that the emails were incorrect and the third-party firms independent.
Jeffrey Dellapina, a J. P. Morgan Chase managing director involved in the prepay deals, defended his firm, insisting that the deals were vetted and commonplace. Enron — not the banks — was ultimately responsible for how they recorded the transactions, Dellapina said.
Dellapina’s arguments largely fell on deaf ears, with committee head Sen. Levin blasting the executive for lack of candor, reported the Financial Times.
Even if the banks “didn’t violate the letter of the law, they could still have significantly higher legal, regulatory, political, reputational, and business-model risk,” Michael Mayo, Prudential Financial banking analyst, told the Times.
Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes
WASHINGTON
The Globe & Mail is reporting that investigators for a U.S. Senate committee looking into the Enron debacle are investigating the role that two of Canada’s largest banks, the Royal Bank of Canada and the Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD), played in a consortium that lent more than $1 billion to Enron, which recorded the loans as revenues rather than debts.
Enron allegedly used the loans from the consortium and other huge loans totaling about $8 billion from U.S. banks such as J. P. Morgan and Citigroup to structure deceptive commodity trades financed by such “prepay” loans under which the loaned amounts were recorded as operating cash flow. (See “Banks Blasted on Charges They Helped Enron Hide Debt” above.)
The Canadian banks will not be asked to appear before the Senate committee, according to a spokesperson for the committee, because the probe centers on U.S. banks and 95 percent of the loans being scrutinized were made by Morgan and Citigroup.
A TD bank spokesperson stated that the bank’s financing to Enron was entirely appropriate based on the information provided by that company.
SEOUL
As U.S. regulators cast a widening eye on the accounting methods of corporate America, their counterparts in countries around the world are keeping pace.
Last week, South Korea joined the campaign against accounting ruses, announcing an investigation into the nation’s six leading conglomerates over suspicious bookkeeping methods, reported the BBC.
The firms — Hyundai, Hyundai Heavy Industries, Hyundai Motor, LG, SK, and Samsung — are accused of shuffling funds among subsidiaries in a shell game meant to improve the look of their account books.
Regulators raised red flags after noticing that nearly 38 percent of the total sales at the country’s four leading conglomerates were due to internal deals involving 80 subsidiaries, according to the report.
The firms so far have denied any wrongdoing, characterizing the investigations as a political ploy designed to bolster the reputation of lawmakers as several rounds of elections approach, noted the BBC.
South Korea’s conglomerates have come under heavy scrutiny since the Asian financial meltdown in the late 1990s — a crisis caused, according to many critics, by shoddy bookkeeping and false figures.
NEW YORK
Federal authorities last week arrested five former executives of cable giant Adelphia Communications Corp., including the company’s founder and two of his sons, who are accused of defrauding investors.
John Rigas, who founded Adelphia in 1952 with a $300 check, and the four other executives face both criminal and civil charges of securities, wire, and bank fraud, reported the Reuters news agency.
The charges, filed by both the U.S. Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), were joined last week by a civil suit from Adelphia itself, which is seeking triple the value of funds taken from the company by the executives.
Plaintiffs in the various suits accuse the Rigas and others of using Adelphia “as the Rigas family’s personal piggy bank at the expense of public investors and creditors.”
Charges include hiding $2.3 billion in off-balance-sheet loans, overstating earnings, and deliberately fraudulent accounting. The family is also accused of using Adelphia funds for personal loans, for building a $13 million golf course on family property, and using the company’s planes for an African safari.
Adelphia, the nation’s sixth-largest provider of cable television, declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month.
“This case presents a deeply troubling and all too familiar picture of greed and deception at a large public company,” SEC director of enforcement Stephen Cutler said last week. “It is a case about betrayal — the betrayal of shareholders by executives who put their own interests and their own pocketbooks first.”
While a growing number of high-flying executive have been brought down recently with criminal charges, few have been paraded in handcuffs before television cameras, as were the Adelphia executives. NPR and others note that the high profile of last week’s arrests may have been engineered to give a visual measure of comfort to scandal-rattled investors.
NEW HAVEN, Connecticut
Princeton University last week admitted that an admissions official broke into a protected Web site run by rival Ivy League institution Yale University, learning the academic interests and acceptance status of 11 Yale applicants.
Yale has asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to look into the incident, which may be a federal misdemeanor violating Internet privacy rights, according to a report from the New York Times.
Princeton’s director of admissions, Stephen LeMenager, managed the break-in, using the names and social security numbers of Princeton applicants who also applied to Yale in order to check their admission status on a specially designed Yale Web site, according to the Times report.
Yale learned of the breach in June and launched an internal investigation, tracing 18 improper visits back to computers at Princeton and its admissions office, reported the Times.
LeMenager, who has worked in Princeton’s admissions office since 1983, was put on administrative leave last week. He insists his actions were “really an innocent way for us to check out the security” of the Yale site while deciding whether to set up a similar service for Princeton.
Princeton last week apologized for LeMenager’s “serious lapse of judgment,” announced an independent internal investigation, and pledged to cooperate with any outside inquiry.
Princeton’s actions may have blocked the 11 Yale applicants from learning their status, according to CNN, since only the students’ first log-in would announce their acceptance or declination at Yale.
Analysts say the incident reflects the escalating competition for strong students at the nation’s elite schools. In the current climate, there is a “heightened craziness about admissions decisions,” James Freedman, the former president of Dartmouth, told the Times. “It is competitiveness taken to a dastardly length.”
DALLAS
The annual battle over what Texas children will be taught began last week in Dallas, where special-interest groups lined up to complain about the content of proposed textbooks — a process many say has become a bully pulpit for conservative Christian groups.
Texas, with 4.1 million students, is second only to California in its purchasing clout for textbooks, which are reevaluated on a rotating basis. This year, social studies texts are up for review and replacement.
With $345 million on the line this year alone, few publishers can afford to ignore the complaints of Texas and the special-interest groups, especially Christian conservatives, whose powerful protests can derail a textbook they deem offensive.
In 1995, Texas lawmakers tried to curb such groups’ influence by adopting a law that said the state’s Board of Education could only reject texts based on factual errors, not ideology, reported the Christian Science Monitor.
But the Board of Education is also bound to follow the state’s mandated curriculum, which demands that textbooks promote democracy, patriotism, and the free-enterprise system.
Special interests adapted to the 1995 law by simply re-casting their complaints, citing critical remarks carried by textbooks as “un-American” or socialistic, according to the Monitor.
Recently, two well-respected texts were eliminated from Texas classrooms under such pressure — one for noting the U.S. role in producing greenhouse gases, the other for commenting on the widespread practice of prostitution in the Wild West.
“We’re the 900-pound gorilla in the room,” David Bradley, a conservative member of the Board of Education, told the Monitor. “It’s nice to be king.”
Critics of the process say Texas’s conservative bent may be reshaping the curriculum in the rest of the country. Since publishers cannot afford to tailor textbook content from state to state, many firms are forced to choose between self-censorship and losing their contracts for retaining controversial content.
Massachusetts publisher Jones and Bartlett, whose environmental science textbook has been used in colleges for 20 years, chose the latter course, refusing to make edits demanded by the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation.
Although it agreed to fix factual errors, other changes were ruled out of bounds, staff member Dean DeChambeau told the Monitor. “We steadfastly refused … because they wanted us to replace what they perceived as biased material with their own biased material.”
The company’s book was rejected by the Board of Education.
This year’s textbook hearings are schedule to continue through September, with final selections in November, according to a report from the Associated Press.
LOS ANGELES
California last week fired a warning shot across the hood of the auto industry, demanding tougher vehicle emission standards by 2009 in a bid to cut down on greenhouse gas pollution.
The new law, signed last week by Governor Gray Davis, calls on the state’s Air Resources Board to adopt new standards for how much pollution the California cars can emit.
Earlier this year, Congress bowed to pressure from the auto industry, scrapping plans to mandate improved fuel efficiency nationwide. President Bush has failed to promote such policy, too, backing out of the international Kyoto protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
“The Gray Davis administration is leading the way for the country because Washington, D.C., has failed to lead,” Winston Hickox, secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency, told the Reuters news agency.
Gov. Davis agreed, saying his state could wait no longer.
“This is the first law in America to substantively address the greatest environmental challenge of the 21st century,” Davis said last week. “In time, every state — and hopefully every country — will act to protect future generations from the threat of global warming. For California, that time is now.”
Industry analysts say the move by California, which constitutes 10 percent of the national auto market, could prompt similar action from other states, leading to greater fuel efficiency across the country.
The auto industry reacted to last week’s law with outrage, insisting that federal law bars states from setting individual fuel economy standards, and promising to challenge the new law in court.
WASHINGTON
The Bush administration last week refused to provide $34 million earmarked for UN family planning efforts overseas in a nod to conservatives who allege that the money may be used by China for forced sterilizations and abortions.
Last year, Secretary of State Colin Powell praised the UN Population Fund for its “invaluable work” that “provides critical population assistance to developing countries,” reported the Associated Press.
Last week, the State Department backed away from such statements, saying it had changed its mind and would withhold $34 million appropriated for the UN agency in January. The money instead will go to the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The UN Population Fund, which helps 142 of the poorest nations abroad, has been criticized generally for providing funds that could be used for abortions, and specifically for supporting China, where population regulations supposedly encourage forced sterilizations and abortions.
Earlier this year, fact-finding teams from both the British and U.S. governments investigated those charges, and found no evidence to support them, reported the AP.
Rejecting the reports, the State Department last week said it had considered other factors and concluded “that the UN Population Fund moneys go to Chinese agencies that carry out coercive programs,” according to spokesman Richard Boucher.
The Bush administration’s reversal was widely criticized by pro-choice groups as a move to retain the Republican Party’s conservative core in the run-up to the November elections.
Kenneth Connor, president of the conservative Family Research Council, praised last week’s move, telling the Washington Post that it “continues to give shoe leather to the president’s pro-life commitments. It’s also good politics. It helps the president energize his base.”
Thoraya Obaid, executive director of the UN Population Fund, had a less enthusiastic response to the news. “Women and children will die because of this decision,” she told the AP.
BUENOS AIRES
Former Argentine president Carlos Menem was accused last week of accepting a $10 million bribe in exchange for hiding evidence that Iran engineered the bombing of a Jewish community center in 1994, according to a report from the New York Times.
The Times based its story on a sealed 100-page court record leaked to the paper by Argentine officials unhappy with the lack of progress in prosecuting those responsible for the bombing.
The court papers consist largely of the testimony of Abdolghassem Mesbahi, a high-level defector from Iran’s intelligence agency, who is now under the protection of the German government.
According to the defector, Menem met with Iranian officials four times after the bombing of the Argentine Jewish Mutual Aid Association in July 1984, which killed 85 people in the country’s worst terrorist attack.
In exchange for a $10 million payment from Iran’s then-President Hashemi Rafsanjani and a son of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Menem agreed to stop naming Iran as the perpetrator, reported the Times.
Argentina’s chief prosecutor in the case has acknowledged the existence of a $10 million payment into a Swiss account held by Menem, but said its origin is unknown. Swiss officials have been asked to investigate.
Menem, who is of Syrian descent, received lucrative business contracts from Muslim governments during his rise to power. But instead of aligning Argentina with his benefactors, Menem ceded to U.S. pressures during his administration, making friends with the West, according to the Times.
Last week, Menem accused Iran and its Muslim allies of targeting him with fabricated lies as revenge. He also blamed the allegations in the Times on political rivals back home, denouncing the charges as a “political maneuver” designed to block his campaign to regain the presidency in upcoming elections.
To date, the government’s investigations have resulted in no convictions, and arrests on only peripheral activities related to the bombing. Critics cited in the Times report accuse Menem and the Argentine government of sabotaging the investigation to protect their interests.
Special to Newsline from editor Carl Hausman
As the direct connection between business ethics and investors’ pocketbooks became more apparent in July, nervous lawmakers and regulators tightened the screws on the types of accounting and reporting practices that led to the recent wave of corporate implosions.
Much of the story culminated in this week’s report on congressional passage of a major corporate reform bill, as well as in our reports about the widening international attention paid to the issue — this week in Canada and South Korea. International corporate reform was also featured in our July 22 edition in reports on the European Union’s new requirement that stock options be treated as expenses, and the establishment of a new Canadian accounting oversight authority. The business-ethics dealings of government leaders were the subject of several reports this month, including scrutiny of President Bush’s corporate record (July 15 and 8), as well as Vice President Cheney’s (July 15).
While business ethics dominated the news, various ethical angles on international relations also made headlines. This week’s report focused on controversy over the withholding of U.S. funds from the United Nations Population Fund, and also included a report on allegations that Iran bankrolled a terrorist attack in Argentina. In previous issues, we reported on controversy surrounding a special fast-track U.S. visa program (July 22), alleged corruption in Indonesia (July 15), and a U.S. government report on trading with so-called enemy nations (July 8).
Ethics in education is a recurring topic, and several reports dealt with the issue. In this week’s edition of Ethics Newsline we reported on a Web site break-in that appeared to result from an increasing climate of competitiveness in college admissions, and the controversy over textbook adoptions in Texas. Other items this month concerned a cheating scandal in Vietnam (July 15), a suit by British students who claimed they were bullied (July 8), and court decisions involving the Pledge of Allegiance, school vouchers, and random drug testing in schools (July 1).
From the European Commission:
A new strategy on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), which aims to take forward the contribution of business to sustainable development, was adopted by the European Commission on [July 2]. The policy paper calls for a new social and environmental role for business in a global economy and sets up a European Multi-Stakeholder Forum for all players — social partners, business networks, civil society, consumers, and investors — to exchange best practice, to establish principles for codes of conduct, and to seek consensus on objective evaluation methods and validation tools such as ’social labels’.
The strategy seeks to complement existing initiatives by companies themselves and by public organizations such as the OECD and the UN. CSR is defined as voluntary social and environmental practices of business, linked to their core activities, which go beyond companies’ existing legal obligations.
…The Commission has an important role to play in CSR, bringing together businesses across Europe to share best practice and to establish common principles for evaluation. Finally, the Commission will work towards building CSR principles into all other EU policies, for example by promoting better understanding of CSR in developing countries. The Commission will publish a report on the work of the European Multistakeholder Forum in 2004.
Anna Diamantopoulou, Commissioner for employment and social affairs said, ‘…Many businesses have already recognized that CSR can be profitable and CSR schemes have mushroomed. However, the EU can add value in at least two key ways: by helping stakeholders to make CSR more transparent and more credible, and by showing that CSR is not just for multinationals — it can benefit smaller businesses too. Corporate social responsibility and corporate governance are two sides of the same coin: ‘Greenwashing’ your social and environmental performance is as bad as ‘whitewashing’ your profits. CSR is no longer just a job for marketing departments.’…
The new Commission strategy for CSR is designed to :
…More and more companies are adopting codes of conduct and publishing social and environmental reports, appointing managers specifically responsible for CSR, and joining business networks for the exchange of best practices on CSR. There is an increasing interest in CSR in the investors’ community which can be seen in the proliferation of ethical funds, social indexes, and the social screening and rating of companies by specialized agencies. Pension funds in different EU member states are starting to disclose their ethical and environmental policies….
RE: “Bush’s Tough Talking: Why It Didn’t Stem the Market’s Ebb,” July 15.
Dear Rushworth —
I am troubled by the notion that ethics is only or mainly about obedience to the unenforceable, as opposed to obedience to the law. Of course it is about that. But to differentiate so starkly as in your commentary –”When ethics is legislated, it ceases to be ethics” — is surely not helpful. (And that’s not just because I’m a lawyer.) To suggest that there is a rigid dividing line between ethics and law undermines the essential quality of the law and its purpose.
Yes, CEOs may say, “If it ain’t illegal, it must be ethical.” But what they are being encouraged to say by the notion that law and ethics are separate is, “If it ain’t illegal, I don’t care whether it’s ethical or not.” It’s vital if the rule of law is to be respected that its requirements remain as strongly ethical after being “legislated” as before. My concern is that a too-easy distinction is being drawn, creating the potential for confusion and damage that results by downgrading the role and rule of law.
– Dan Mace
London, England
“Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress what is evil; our great hope lies in developing what is good.”
– Calvin Coolidge (30th U.S. president, 1872-1933)
As November’s U.S. elections heat up, campaigning candidates should steer clear of using patriotic jibes and innuendoes to court voters, according to a new poll from the Institute for Global Ethics.
The poll — an update of the Civic Values Survey — asked likely voters which types of campaign claims would seem fair and which would seem unfair, gauging the campaign terrain in the post-September 11 political arena.
A snapshot of the findings follows:
Every presidential election somehow seems like the last one — at least for four years. Across America, there is a collective sigh as the political infrastructure relaxes, and ordinary citizens feel able to get back to their lives. But in today’s highly professionalized world of political campaigning, there really never is a respite — there is always another election around the corner, and they all feed into the quadrennial presidential contest. The midterm congressional elections coming up in November are no exception, and the campaign for Congress has already begun in earnest in most places across the nation.
But our world is different than it has been in any previous election. There is a new president who attained office after an unprecedented dispute that placed the election results in doubt for an extended period. There has been a major terrorist attack on American soil, resulting in a renewed sense of patriotism and a general upsurge in trust of governmental institutions. And candidates are now wondering, in this new environment, how to campaign for office. When making distinctions between candidates, how far is too far? Will my ethics be questioned if I criticize the policies of my opponent?
A new bipartisan poll commissioned by the Institute for Global Ethics provides some answers. The newly released Civic Values Survey asked likely voters across the nation about their views and attitudes toward political campaigning, with a special emphasis on how campaigns are run and what types of criticisms are seen as fair or unfair. The resulting data gives a blueprint for how candidates can successfully — and ethically — run for office and win.
This year’s results show an electorate that is clearly upset with the way campaigns are run, and who are eager for change. According to the poll, eight-in-ten voters say negative, attack-oriented campaigning is unethical and damaging our democracy. But even more striking is a shift in thinking that has occurred: Across the board, voters see most types of candidate criticism as more unfair than they did in previous surveys. The only two exceptions to this are criticisms based on an opponent’s voting record and criticisms that point out that a candidate talked one way and voted another.
The meaning is clear: Voters want to hear criticism about relevant and important subjects and do not want to know about the trivial issues on which a disappointing number of modern political campaigns are based. In today’s post-9/11 environment, 75 percent say it is more important than ever to get unfair negative attacks out of politics.
Of the 18 types of criticisms we tested, most were seen as unfair, with only six being seen by a majority of voters as “very” or “somewhat” fair. Voters say it is fair to criticize an opponent for:
Unfair criticisms include not being patriotic enough (only 32 percent see this as fair), not having served in the military (only 20 percent), and past personal financial troubles (only 15 percent). Voters say it is unfair to criticize an opponent for:
Against the background of citizen mistrust of politics (53 percent think most elected officials don’t know right from wrong) and the clear demand for a fair fight, what can candidates do to signal that they are interested in answering the public’s call for better campaigns? One answer may be to negotiate with their opponents and sign a code of conduct outlining the rules of engagement. Since 1996, the Institute for Global Ethics has been involved in an ongoing effort to encourage just that — voluntary, negotiated codes of campaign conduct — and successfully tested it in the two pilot states of Ohio and Washington. This year we are taking the Project national and focusing on 40 congressional districts in 19 states across the country.
Do voters think such codes of conduct are a good idea? Overwhelmingly. On a scale of one to ten, they give it an average rating of 7.9. Two-thirds of voters say that a candidate’s willingness to sign a code would be a very important factor in making their voting decision, and a majority of voters (60 percent) say that candidates publicly signing a code and following it throughout the campaign would make them more likely to go out and vote.
As news of scandal after scandal shakes Americans’ faith in major corporate institutions and in the continuing aftermath of last year’s terrorist attacks, the public needs leaders who will take their concerns seriously and guide them into the new century. They do not need unfair attacks as candidates step on one another to climb one more rung of the ladder of power. And now, more than ever, voters seem poised to demand what they have long deserved: campaigns that respect the very people they seek to serve.
Note: The nationwide telephone survey of 800 likely voters was conducted by the Democratic polling firm of Lake Snell Perry and the Republican firm of Deardourff/The Media Company between June 6-11, 2002, and has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.
(c)2002 by the Institute for Global Ethics
“The time is right for corporate America to show leadership and integrity in their financials…. We know we’re in a new environment and we need to take the lead on this issue and perhaps in a small way, try to help restore confidence in corporate America.”
