Modern political campaigns are most often evaluated on how candidates treat each other, whether a candidate has an unfair advantage and other metrics such as campaign spending, Thompson said in his speech, "Campaign Ethics: The Vices of Misinformation and Manipulation." This standard of fairness, however, does not address the more important issue of whether voters are being manipulated, he said.
"I'm not against fair competition, and it may indirectly help serve ethical purposes," He said. "But as a foundation, as the orientating guide or idea, I think it points us in the wrong direction. It points us to thinking about what's fair to the candidates, rather than what's good for the voters."
To bring the focus back to the needs of voters, Thompson said that a campaign's core value should be free choice, or ensuring that voters are not told incorrect or misleading information. The purpose of a campaign should not be to change voters' opinions, but instead to educate the electorate about which candidates or political parties most closely align with their beliefs, he said.
"Campaigns should provide voters, us, with the information to enable us to make informed and reasoned decisions about which candidates and parties match our pre-determined or pre-existing beliefs and attitudes about these fundamentals," he said.
Guaranteeing that voters are properly informed about candidates' stances on important issues does not mean that campaigns must be without conflict, Thompson said.
"Campaigns by their nature are strategic interactions, not deliberative exchanges," he said. "They don't function well if opponents are cooperating, compromising rather than competing."
Using political advertisements as an example, Thompson explained that "attack ads" are not necessarily unethical. He presented some evidence that negative ads are generally more informative than positive ones and can lead to increased voter turnout in elections.
"Not all negative ads are bad," he said. "And those that are bad, are bad not because they're negative."
The issue lies in whether voters are receiving enough information to make rational decisions, he explained. For the upcoming elections, Thompson said that only 35 percent of campaign advertisements have disclosed their source of funding as a result of new Federal Election Commission rulings this year. Last year, 98 percent of advertisements disclosed their source of funding, according to Thompson.
Even if the information provided in advertisements is plausible, it is unethical if it misleads voters, according to Thompson. He cited Lyndon Johnson's 1964 "Daisy" ad, which was used against his opponent Barry Goldwater to imply that Goldwater's plans for Vietnam would lead to nuclear war. Thompson said this ad was unethical because Johnson had himself determined to escalate the war as well.
Thompson's talk, which took place in the Rockefeller Center, was part of the William H. Timbers '37 lecture series established in 1995.
