For more information, see this week’s Research Report.

by Rushworth M. Kidder

Political conventions, like the ones we’ve seen in recent weeks, aren’t known for gravity and depth. Audiences tune in with two questions: Who are these candidates, and what makes them tick? So the answers often are less about public policy than personal values.

Which is why last week’s Republican convention was so fascinating. Officially, it introduced presidential candidate John McCain and his vice president pick, Sarah Palin, to a wondering public. More casually, it introduced two remarkable metaphors from the animal kingdom: McCain the maverick, and Palin the pit bull. Each metaphor set out a sharply different view of personal values, and each, for better or worse, emerged as the candidate’s defining image.

“I’ve been called a maverick, someone who marches to the beat of his own drum,” McCain said, hammering home a self-definition he’s long used. Then, by wryly noting that “sometimes it’s meant as a compliment and sometimes it’s not,” he suggested that maverick, for him, means someone who would rather be right than popular.

In fact, the word signifies a lot more. When coined in 1872, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it meant “a calf or yearling found without an owner’s brand” — named after Texas land baron Samuel A. Maverick, who either accidentally or deliberately (historians differ on this point) left his cattle unbranded. By 1892 it had taken on a distinctly negative charge, meaning “a masterless person” or “one who is roving and casual.” More recently it has come to mean a dissenter who, independent of cultural dictates, resists groupthink and won’t go with the flow.

For McCain’s generation, however, the term is linked inextricably to the widely popular comedy-western series Maverick, which ran from 1957 to 1962. The primetime TV show launched James Garner’s career as Bret Maverick, the sartorially spiffy gambler who drifted across the Old West as a slightly superhuman anti-hero — unbranded, casual, independent, but scrupulously honest as he either hoodwinked the bad guys or flattened them with a punch.

Not surprisingly, then, the maverick in McCain’s lexicon is also a reformer — tough and wily, but engaging and polite. So McCain the Maverick was fully in character last week when he told his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, that “you have my respect and my admiration.” He was also in character when he added, “We are fellow Americans, and that’s an association that means more to me than any other” — a classic maverick positioning, designed to scandalize any old-school conservative for whom being a partisan trumps every other association.

Palin’s metaphor is even more complex. Offered as a joke in her acceptance speech, it depended, as jokes often do, on a vivid and jarring incongruity. Calling herself a “hockey mom,” she continued, “You know, they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull: Lipstick.” The crowd roared its approval, and within moments the blogosphere was abuzz with an image that forever will characterize her personality.

But what exactly did she mean? For most Americans, the pit bull (a breed of terrier) evokes an image of deadly, uncontrollable canine aggression. Taking its name from the pit for which these dogs were specifically bred, the word arose in Shakespeare’s England to mean an enclosure in which animals (typically dogs or cocks, as in the word cockpit) fought to the death in a bloodlust gambling sport.

Today such fights are illegal — a point driven home by the 2007 conviction of Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick on federal dog-fighting charges. For a long time, even owning a pit bull has been suspect: A report published in 2000 in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association noted that pit bulls caused far more human fatalities than any other breed. Palin’s Alaska staff also could have reminded her that, just two weeks before the convention, the Anchorage Daily News reported that a six-year-old East Anchorage girl died after being mauled by a pit bull.

What makes Palin’s metaphor complex is that she both adopted it and distanced herself from it — disguising it with a feminine touch (the lipstick), and allowing her supporters to wriggle free by saying, “It was only a joke!” Yet the jest is already getting out of hand. At a post-convention Palin rally, a hand-lettered sign appeared saying, “Read my lipstick” — an unfortunate allusion to president George H. W. Bush’s famous line from the 1988 Republican convention (”Read my lips: no new taxes!”) that came back to help destroy his 1992 reelection bid after he agreed to raise taxes.

What, then, are we to make of these candidate’s values? That depends on how you read these metaphors. The maverick offers a tough, independent civility — or a refusal to be chained by any predictable loyalties. The pit bull offers a do-or-die defense of her cause — or a relentless, teeth-baring ferocity. Common to both metaphors is an overtone of the uncontrollable — and a sense that being unrestrained and masterless is, somehow, a good thing. Time will tell whether either candidate means what their metaphors say — or whether they’re just innocent folks whose real values got mauled by a couple of catchy but unexamined phrases.

©2008 Institute for Global Ethics

Questions or comments? Write to newsline@globalethics.org.

A reader adds an interesting sidelight to Newsline’s coverage of ethical issues in the Olympics:

During the Olympics, American tennis player James Blake hit a ball that grazed off his opponent’s racket and went out of bounds. It was during the tiebreaker and may have been material in the outcome of the match. The referee did not see it and awarded the point to the opponent. After the game Blake, at a press conference, commented angrily that tennis is a “gentleman’s game” and that his opponent should have called it on himself….

A couple of days later during the gold medal match of men’s beach volleyball, the Brazilians slammed a shot over the net which, in replay, clearly grazed the arm of an American player before landing out of bounds and the point being awarded to the Americans, who went on to win. The American was silent.

This poses some questions: Is Blake wrong, a sore-losing hothead, or should the opponent have called the shot against himself? Do the same ethics apply to other sports? Is tennis different? Is beach volleyball not a gentleman’s game? Is the Olympics different than other venues, with the standards of sportsmanship expected to be higher in the Olympics than in other places?

– Jim Batterson
Cary, NC

“I’m not the same man who happily and arrogantly engaged in a lifestyle of political and business corruption…. My name is the butt of a joke, the source of a laugh, and the title of a scandal.”

– Former lobbyist and power broker Jack Abramoff, speaking last week at his sentencing for conspiracy, fraud, and corrupting public officials. Last week’s sentence of four years — far lower than the possible maximum of 11 years — still came as a shock to the formerly high-flying insider, currently two years into a prison term for a fraud conviction in Florida. While Abramoff appeared penitent at last week’s sentencing, the Associated Press notes that he has been cooperating with the author of a book slated for release later this month that paints him as a scapegoat for wide-ranging Washington corruption. “I never expected that I would have to go to prison,” Abramoff reportedly says in the book, “until it became clear that the media could not allow this play to close without the hanging of the villain.”

Sources: AP, Sep. 4 — New York Times, Sep. 4.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Aug. 20, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 26, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 1, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 20, 2006.

In addition to corruption, representatives of donor and recipient nations say complex bureaucracies and fragmentation of efforts hinder delivery

ACCRA, Ghana
Officials attending a conference on foreign aid in Accra, Ghana, were told that the misuse of donated money keeps nations mired in poverty.

Anticorruption watchdog Transparency International warned that corruption would continue to hurt antipoverty programs if immediate steps are not taken to increase transparency, accountability, and active participation by citizens in recipient and donor countries, according to a report from the Daily Monitor of Kampala, Uganda.

About $100 billion in aid flows from rich countries to poor ones each year. Critics charge that in addition to much of it being siphoned off by graft, aid is also wasted because efforts are poorly coordinated, fragmented, and hung up in bureaucratic delays, according to reports from the Voice of America and the Economist.

An analysis from Reuters correspondent Kwasi Kpodo, reporting from Accra, notes that concerns about the persistent squandering of funds, especially in the weaker nations in Africa, are at the center of a debate over who should maintain control. Recipient countries typically insist that the aid must follow their own development strategies, according to the report.

Britain’s international development secretary, Douglas Alexander, is proposing a global initiative aimed at preventing the misuse of aid, according to the U.K. Guardian. Alexander wants donor countries as well as recipients to keep better track of cash flow.

Sources: Guardian, Sep. 4 — Economist, Sep. 4 — Voice of America, Sep. 3 — Kampala Daily Monitor, Sep. 3 — Reuters, Sep. 2.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, May 12 — Related Newsline story, Dec.31, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 29, 2003 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 15, 2002 — Related Newsline story, July 17, 2000.

Complying with new ethics restrictions at political conventions leads to some interesting changes; story involving family of vice-presidential candidate stirs debate; Detroit mayor resigns after pleading guilty to criminal charges

VARIOUS DATELINES
A busy week or two in U.S. politics was punctuated by several ethics issues. Among them:

• Kwame Kilpatrick resigned as mayor of Detroit last week after pleading guilty to felony perjury and no-contest to an assault charge. The Detroit Free Press reports that under terms of his plea deal, Kilpatrick will spend four months in jail, surrender his law license, lose his pension, and serve five years of probation. He also has promised to not run for office while on probation. According to a report from the Detroit News, a political action committee that funds GOP campaigns is poised to air a commercial linking Kilpatrick with Barack Obama, showing Obama praising the fellow Democrat at a meeting of the Detroit Economic Club in 2007. Obama’s camp told the News that the remarks were made before any charges were leveled at Kilpatrick, and that Obama recently called on Kilpatrick to resign.
• Both political conventions of the major U.S. political parties aligned their activities with a complex new set of ethics regulations. But according to a report from the Los Angeles Times news service, the changes often were cosmetic. For example, reports the Times’s Cynthia Dizikes, the recently enacted ethics law “prohibits a member from attending a lobbyist’s event that honors the member. But the House ethics committee has interpreted this to mean that lobbyist-hosted parties recognizing a group of members are fine.” Also, Dizikes notes, the liquor flowed freely at both conventions in part because distillers also provided educational presentations promoting responsibility and prevention of underage drinking.
• While claims and counterclaims about ethics were a standard part of the campaign rhetoric during the conventions, one notably uncomfortable dilemma assumed troubling prominence: the pregnancy of the Republican vice-presidential nominee’s unmarried 17-year-old daughter. Some argued that the issue is fair game, as it illustrated sloppy vetting on the part of the McCain camp, the BBC reports. That argument was countered by senior McCain adviser Steve Schmidt, who characterized the “vetting controversy” over Sarah Palin’s daughter as a “faux media scandal designed to destroy the first female Republic nominee for vice present of the United States.” In addition, opines Newark Star-Ledger’s Parental Guidance columnist Carrie Stetler, there is vigorous debate over whether the “vice pregnancy” is an unacceptable intrusion into a family’s privacy, as well as controversy over the fairness of judging someone by the behavior of their children. Loyola University journalism professor Don Wycliff, writing in the Chicago Tribune, argued that the media have a duty to explore “the life and activities and attitudes of a person in Palin’s position and make the results public in a responsible fashion.” But Wycliff contended in his piece that the pregnancy issue should have remained off limits: “I have been appalled and, as a lifelong journalist, embarrassed at some of the explanations that have been offered to legitimate the pregnancy story. Palin’s opposition to robust sex education in public schools and her advocacy of abstinence-only sex ed, for example. Or the fact that Palin presented herself, during the announcement rally in Dayton, Ohio, last week, as a wife and a hockey mom.”

Sources: Detroit Free Press, Sep. 6 — Newark Star-Leger, Sep. 6 — Chicago Tribune, Sep. 5 — BBC, Sep. 3 — Los Angeles Times news service, Aug. 28.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Aug 25 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 4 — Related Newsline story, July 21 — Related Newsline story, July 7 — Related Newsline story, May 5.

Fatalities in crumbling schools have been one of China’s most politically sensitive issues

BEIJING
A Chinese official has acknowledged that “quality problems” may have contributed to the disastrous collapse of school buildings during the May earthquake in Sichuan province.

USA Today reports that Ma Zongjin, head of a national committee investigating the quake, said “it is possible there were problems with those buildings, because there has been a rush of construction of schools recently.”

It was the first time any official has admitted that poor construction may have contributed to the death toll, reports the New York Times. Until last week, the government had stated flatly that the sheer force of the quake was responsible for the deaths.

An estimated 10,000 students died when thousands of classrooms collapsed, according to the Australian Age.

Critics noted that despite the intensity of the quake, many buildings remained standing while nearby schools virtually imploded. Protestors charged that the disasters stemmed from shoddy construction, substandard materials, and payoffs to inspectors by cost-cutting contractors.

The school collapses had become one of the most sensitive ethics issues to emerge in the wake of the quake, according to the Times report, with protests by parents devolving into harsh spectacle as police dragged away crying mothers.

The official Chinese government news agency Xinhua reports that “corruption, embezzlement, or manipulation of bidding for projects” that led to the collapses or scandals that emerged in relief efforts would be “severely punished.”

Sources: Australian Age, Sep. 6 — New York Times, Sep. 4 — USA Today, Sep. 4 — Xinhua, Sep. 4.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, July 21 — Related Newsline story, July 14 — Related Newsline story, June 30 — Related Newsline story, June 23 — Related Newsline story, June 16.

Many college presidents say current laws force alcohol consumption behind closed doors, encouraging binge drinking

NEW YORK
A debate on the legal drinking age in the United States — a dispute largely framed by ethics arguments — has vaulted into the news.

At the center of the controversy is a group of U.S. college presidents who want a national debate on lowering the legal drinking age from 21 to 18.

According to the Associated Press, the issue germinated from a campaign by former Middlebury College president John McCardell, who said the law encourages binge drinking and pushes alcohol into the shadows. He enlisted about 100 college presidents in a campaign calling for the drinking age to be reconsidered.

Supporters of the move frequently have adopted the argument that because it is too difficult to enforce laws against drinking by college-age students, it is better to lower the minimum age to 18, bringing drinking into the open where it can be more effectively controlled rather than having the practice hidden behind closed doors, where binge drinking becomes rampant.

The drinking age in all 50 U.S. states is 21. Before 1984, many states had an 18-year-old limit, but a federal act passed in that year withheld federal highway funds from any state that did not raise its minimum age to 21.

Opponents contend that lowering the drinking age simply would expand the universe of drinkers and maintain that colleges have not exhausted all practical measures to counter alcohol use, a view expressed in an editorial from the Christian Science Monitor, which argues that schools can create a culture that discourages drinking and work with police to counter underage drinking.

At the same time, a controversy in Scotland revolves around a proposal to raise the drinking age from 18 to 21 and ending drink promotions such as “three-for-two” specials. Proponents say the measure would crack down on what has become known as Scotland’s “booze culture,” reports the Edinburgh-based Scotsman.

Drinking ages vary considerably from nation to nation. In some countries, such as the Netherlands, minimum ages are as low as 16 for beer and wine, according to Radio Netherlands.

Sources: Scotsman, Sep. 6 — Los Angeles Times, Sep. 1 — AP, Aug. 22 — Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 22 — Radio Netherlands, Aug. 20.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Nov. 19, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Oct. 15, 2007 — Related Newsline story, July 30, 2007 — Related Newsline story, June 25, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 18, 2006.

Ripples of subprime crisis continue to spread; eBay opens green auction site; Norwegian telecom operator accused of using supplier who exploited child labor

VARIOUS DATELINES
Stories involving the ethics of business grabbed headlines last week. Among the items of interest:

• Over the weekend, the U.S. Treasury Department announced a plan to bail out the quasi-governmental mortgage organizations Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in what MarketWatch describes as one of the biggest government rescues in U.S. history. The share values of both organizations have plummeted in the wake of the subprime lending crisis, and their collapse could endanger nearly half of U.S. mortgages, reports BusinessWeek. According to the Wall Street Journal, the impending bailout comes after months of fierce debate in which opponents argued that the firms should be allowed to fail because they were victims of their own mismanagement and that a government bailout would reinforce the “moral hazard” of encouraging reckless investment.
• Internet auction site eBay, in a bid to win over shoppers who favor environmentally friendly and fair-trade items, has opened a new site called WorldofGood.com. Technology network CNET reports that eBay is partnering with the World of Good company in an effort to capture some of the estimated $200 billion spent annually on so-called ethical products. The site looks much like eBay but offers details on origins of the goods offered for sale.
• Norwegian telecommunication company Telenor is under fire for allegations that it continues to use child labor. The Agence France-Presse reports that the company reviewed and strengthened its ethics guidelines after Norwegian media revealed that children as young as 13 were being used to make antenna towers for one of the firm’s subsidiaries, GrameenPhone. Last week, one of the main holders of the subsidiary, Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, who shared the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in creating a micro-credit system for people too poor to qualify for traditional loans, said that he received a call informing him of another child labor case involving a supplier. A Telenor spokesman told the AFP that the incident involved a “supplier of a supplier.”

Sources: BusinessWeek, Sep. 7 — MarketWatch, Sep. 6 — AFP, Sep. 6 — CNET, Sep. 2 — Wall Street Journal, Aug. 27.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, July 14 — Related Newsline story, July 7 — Related Newsline story, July 7 — Related Newsline story, July 7 — Related Newsline story, June 16.

Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, is an unlikely leader who assumes leadership during a volatile period

ISLAMABAD
Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, was elected president of Pakistan over the weekend. The landslide victory is not without moral controversy, reports the International Herald Tribune, as Zardari is dogged by a variety of corruption allegations.

His wife was assassinated in December 2007 after she returned to Pakistan from exile, under a deal in which she would become prime minister while general Pervez Musharraf would hold the presidency.

After facing harsh criticism and falling popularity over his recent attempts to retain power despite constitutional limits, Musharraf resigned in August.

Reporting from Islamabad, Times of London correspondent Christina Lamb notes that the ascent of Zardari is viewed widely throughout Pakistan as one of the most unlikely political outcomes that could have been imagined a year ago.

Meanwhile, the election adds more uncertainty to an already unpredictable and volatile tableau. Newsweek correspondents Ron Moreau and Zahid Hussain report that Pakistanis are wondering what Zardari will do with his near-dictatorial powers.

“The country is facing a near economic meltdown and a runaway Islamic insurgency,” they write. “Just before the vote a suicide bomber killed 16 Pakistanis in an attack on a police post in the northwestern city of Peshawar. Indeed, some Pakistanis doubt that he is up to the enormous task before him, largely because of his dubious past. Zardari spent more than 11 years in jail on a slew of corruption charges involving tens of millions of dollars and prime real estate deals. As a minister in his wife’s government he had earned the unflattering sobriquet of Mr. Ten Percent from the alleged commissions he demanded on government contracts. But he was never convicted of the allegations that have now been dismissed, and which he says were politically motivated.”

Sources: International Herald Tribune, Sep. 7 — Times of London, Sep. 6 — Daily Telegraph, Sep. 6 — Newsweek, Sep. 5.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, June 30 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 7 — Related Newsline story, Dec. 31, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 13, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 5, 2007.

PETA protests the use of bearskin for the high hats

LONDON
One of the most colorful spectacles in Britain — the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace — soon may feature faux fur.

Animal rights activists mounted a protest against the famous 18-inch-tall bearskin hats, according to a report from the British Press Association, and the Ministry of Defense says it is “actively looking for alternatives” to the composition of the guards’ headgear.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has been campaigning against the hats for years, claiming that the bears used to produce the garments are killed cruelly and unnecessarily, reports CNN.

According to Sky News, the British army has tried synthetic materials in the past but none has fit the bill aesthetically.

Defense officials now say they will hold an event to allow designers to submit synthetic bearskin substitutes, according to UPI.

It’s not the first time the ministry has undertaken a changing of the guard’s uniforms: The leopard-skin aprons worn by the ceremonial drummers already have been replaced with imitation versions, according to the Glasgow Daily Record.

Sources: Press Association, Sep. 6 — UPI, Sep. 3 — Sky News, Sep. 2 — Glasgow Daily Record, Sep. 1.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Aug. 11 — Related Newsline story, July 21 — Related Newsline story, May 12 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 17 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 3.

Nearly half of Republicans say ” religious conservatives have too much influence” over their party: poll

From the Pew Research Center:

“Some Americans are having a change of heart about mixing religion and politics. A new survey finds a narrow majority of the public saying that churches and other houses of worship should keep out of political matters and not express their views on day-to-day social and political matters. For a decade, majorities of Americans had voiced support for religious institutions speaking out on such issues.

“The new national survey by the Pew Research Center reveals that most of the reconsideration of the desirability of religious involvement in politics has occurred among conservatives. Four years ago, just 30% of conservatives believed that churches and other houses of worship should stay out of politics. Today, 50% of conservatives express this view.

“As a result, conservatives’ views on this issue are much more in line with the views of moderates and liberals than was previously the case. Similarly, the sharp divisions between Republicans and Democrats that previously existed on this issue have disappeared.

“There are other signs in the new poll about a potential change in the climate of opinion about mixing religion and politics. First, the survey finds a small but significant increase since 2004 in the percentage of respondents saying that they are uncomfortable when they hear politicians talk about how religious they are — from 40% to 46%. Again, the increase in negative sentiment about religion and politics is much more apparent among Republicans than among Democrats.

“Second, while the Republican Party is most often seen as the party friendly toward religion, the Democratic Party has made gains in this area. Nearly four-in-ten (38%) now say the Democratic Party is generally friendly toward religion, up from just 26% two years ago. Nevertheless, considerably more people (52%) continue to view the GOP as friendly toward religion.

“The poll by Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life finds increasing numbers of Americans believing that religiously defined ideological groups have too much control over the parties themselves. Nearly half (48%) say religious conservatives have too much influence over the Republican Party, up from 43% in August 2007. At the same time, more people say that liberals who are not religious have too much sway over the Democrats than did so last year (43% today vs. 37% then).

“In addition to somewhat greater worries about the way religious and non-religious groups are influencing the parties, the survey suggests that frustration and disillusionment among social conservatives may be a part of the reason why a greater number now think that religious institutions should keep out of politics. However, there is little to suggest that social conservatives want religion to be a less important element in American politics….”

For the full press release from Pew, Aug 21, click here.

“To feel much for others and little for ourselves, to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature.”

– Adam Smith (Scottish moral philosopher and political economist, 1723? – 1790)