Lying in politics

Consider this reductio ad absurdum argument:

1. It is permissible to lie to achieve what one reasonably thinks to be practically necessary to save multiple innocent lives. (Assumption for reductio)

2. In typical elections to the highest political offices in a country, at least one candidate reasonably thinks that their winning the election is practically necessary to save multiple innocent lives.

3. In typical elections to the highest political offices in a country, at least one candidate is such that it would be permissible for them to lie to win the election.

4. But it would not be permissible for candidates for the highest political offices in a country to lie to win the election, except perhaps in atypical cases.

5. Contradiction!

6. So, it is false that it is permissible to lie to achieve what one reasonably takes to save innocent lives.

The thought behind (2) is that serious candidates tend to reasonably think that their policies would make a significant positive difference to the well-being of people. Given the tens of millions of people in a typical country, a fairly intelligent candidate will realize that this positive difference saves lives, by such factors as improving medical care, and decreasing stress, suicide and drug-abuse rates. And typical serious candidates are at least fairly intelligent. Additionally, in many countries abortion is relevant at election time, and these countries will often have candidates who reasonably think that abortion kills innocent people.

The “except perhaps in atypical cases” qualifier in (4) is to take care of the intuition that some people will have that lying is permitted to defeat someone with literally genocidal policies (which is fortunately an atypical case).

The above argument gives one reason to be dubious of the idea that it is permissible to lie to save lives. But I can also see an interesting answer. The most relevant kinds of lies of politicians would be lies to the public. But you might have this view: While it is permissible to lie once to save a life, it is not permissible to lie once in order to have a 0.1% chance of saving a life, nor to lie a thousand times to have a certainty of saving one life. For a lie is pretty bad, and too much lying outweighs the value of saving a life. Now, when you lie to a large group of people, you count as lying once to each member of the group. Thus, it would be wrong to lie to all the members of a population in order to save 0.1% of them or less. And in typical electoral cases, one would be unlikely to save more than 0.1% of the population!

I am not sure about this line of response. I am not sure the wickedness of a lie linearly multiplies with the number of people lied to. Imagine this. You are on the phone trying to dissuade a friend who has a large YouTube following from lying to their million followers. You see that you have a consideration they will think decisive, and are about to offer the consideration, but then you see a child drowning. If you jump in the water to save the child, you’ve lost your moment of influence and your friend will lie to a million. You should, typically, go and save the child. (Unless your friend’s lie would influence someone to commit murder.) So the disvalue of lying does not increase linearly with the size of the victim audience.

Elections as hiring decisions

People tend to think of elections for high office as sui generis rather than as what they are: hiring decisions, for a particularly onerous but important job.

Once we see elections for high office as hiring decisions, some things become a bit puzzling.

1. It is often seen as important that a candidate for high office have a strong and sincere personal commitment to a platform. But why? Suppose I hire a lawyer to represent my interests. It might be nice if the lawyer had a strong and sincere personal commitment to the things I want the lawyer to represent me in respect of, but it is not at all necessary. What is needed is that the lawyer further my interests, and do so along rough lines that I may sketch, in a professional and effective way. The lawyer does not need to think that it would be better for the world if I get what I want—she may simply think that it is good to have in place a legal system where almost everyone gets able legal representation for the furtherance of their interests, and that what I want isn’t so bad as to make it immoral for her to represent me. One can even imagine a lawyer who specializes in representing a particular kind of interest without actually sharing that interest, but holding that nonetheless it is important that an interest of that sort should be represented.

2. There is an interest in the personal life of candidates that would be seen as creepy and likely illegal in most other hiring decisions.

Of course, these kinds of things might be appropriate in light of the specific features of high political office. But they shouldn’t be taken for granted.

Optimism

I've been gradually realizing just how important it is to presume our ideological and political opponents to be motivated by pursuit of the good and true. Of course, in some cases the presumption is false, but likewise sometimes our co-partisans--and we ourselves--are motivated badly.

Here's a psychological advantage of making this presumption. If we lose out to our opponents (say, in the polis, in a department meeting, etc.), it's much less depressing when we see it as nonetheless a kind of victory for the true and the good--for we presume that the desire for the true and the good is what energized our opponents in their victory, what made them persevere, what made them win support.

It may seem not in keeping with a Christian view of this world as fallen to make this presumption. But at the same time, while this world is fallen, Christ's grace is widespread. And wherever people are moved by the true and the good, there is a likelihood that grace is at work. In fact, it is precisely the fact that the world is fallen that makes it likely that grace is at work where the pursuit of the true and the good energizes people.

None of this minimizes the importance of energetic disagreement when needed. If Fred and Sid disagree on which of two ropes to throw the drowning man, and Sid with great energy carries the day and throws the rotten rope to the drowning man, although Fred can see it as a kind of victory for the good in that Sid was being driven by the good, nonetheless the drowning man is likely to drown. So the presumption that our opponents are motivated rightly is fully compatible with resisting them respectfully to the best of our ability. Indeed, the very fact that Sid is pursuing the good is a reason for Fred resist Sid's mistaken choice of rope, so as to save Sid from an action that does not in fact achieve what Sid wants it to achieve.

Suppose it's granted that the presumption is helpful. But what justifies the presumption? Is it justified merely pragmatically? I don't think so. I think there is a general presumption that things are working rightly, a presumption that we should minimize the attribution of malfunction. (This general presumption may be what keeps us from scepticism, what makes it appropriate to trust in our senses and our fellows' testimony.) And it is a lesser defect to be wrong about the means than about the ends.

Abortion and politics

Let us assume, as is in fact the case, that fetuses are persons, and abortion is immoral and should be illegal. Let us imagine two politicians, Smith and Kowalska, running for high state or federal office. Kowalski believes:

1. fetuses are persons, and hence abortion is immoral, but
2. abortion should be legal.

Smith, on the other hand, believes:

3. fetuses are not persons, and abortion is permissible, and
4. abortion should be legal.

Insofar as these beliefs go, Kowalska is closer to the truth: she is right about (1) but wrong about (2), while Smith is wrong about (3) and wrong about (4). But observe that Kowalska is committed to a further claim which follows from (1) and (2) (and the uncontroversial additional assumption that is almost universally granted that if fetuses are persons, they are innocent persons who are killed with abortion):

5. There are some innocent persons killing whom should be legal.

Thus, even though Smith's views on abortion are more false, she is not thereby committed to the abhorrent view (5). But Kowalska's truer, but more conflicted, views lead to (5). Therefore, pro-lifers have reason to vote for Smith over Kowalska. Indeed, Kowalska either believes (5) or she is not smart enough to draw the inference to (5) from (1) and (2). The belief in (5) is arguably sufficient to disqualify one from high public office, while the inability to see that (5) follows from (1) and (2) (together with uncontroversial assumptions) suggests that one lacks the intellectual skills needed for high public office. Of course it is possible that Smith is also disqualified, and so are all the other candidates. If so, then one has a hard choice.

Political gain

One not infrequently hears the claim that a politician did something "for political gain", and the claim is said in a context that suggests that it follows that there was something sordid, ignoble or even wrong about it. But why accept such an inference? Suppose that politicians promote their political capital in order to enact policies that they think are good for the country. If so, then the claim that a politician did something for political gain need not be a criticism: one might as well say that the politician did it for what he or she thought was the good of the country.

It may, of course, be that people who use that phrase are cynical: they do not believe that politicians are trying to promote the good of the country. But I doubt that such a cynical thought can be very often justified. Even if a politician is misguided, stupid, greedy or power-hungry (and most of us exhibit these traits at times), it can still be the case that the politician is nonetheless trying to promote the good of the country. Such a hypothesis is both charitable and consistent with what we know about human nature.