I don’t have any plans to run for public office, but if I ever do, I’d appreciate it if nobody lied on my behalf. I know it’s an unusual request, one that may doom me to defeat. But it just seems to me that if you’re seeking election in a democracy, you ought to respect the voters and the process enough to be honest, and to ask your supporters to do the same. Plus if I did get elected, I’d like it to have been because the voters appreciated my ideas and had confidence in my abilities, not because I’d scared them into believing that my opponent might actually be a sociopath, or a criminal, or a fire-breathing lizard, or undead.
I know how radical this request must seem, almost as strange as if I were asking shadowy organizations with innocent-sounding names not to spend money on my behalf. So to avoid any misunderstanding, I’m going to give some specific examples of what I want you not to do for me:
- Please do not imply that I’m going to fix something that is not within the powers and responsibilities of the office I’m seeking. For example, please don’t promote my campaign by saying “David believes in putting the most qualified teachers where they’ll have the greatest impact on kids,” if I’m running for Sheriff.
- Please don’t attack my opponent for something that is equally true of me. For example, I’m originally from California. So never run an ad against an opponent of mine in which you have an announcer say in a snide voice, “And [my opponent] is not even from Maryland!”
- Don’t distort my opponent’s record by taking one consequence of a past decision and morphing it into something obscenely destructive. For example, if my opponent voted in favor of funding five new police officers, do not turn that fact into an ad claiming “[my opponent] voted to put more people with guns on the streets. [My opponent] even voted to buy them the bullets!”
- Do not say something truthful about my opponent’s positions in a way that becomes a lie because you leave out important information. For example, suppose my opponent supports, or is willing to compromise on, a combination of policies A, B and C (perhaps A is a tax increase, B is a tax cut and C is a spending cut). Don’t run ads saying anything like, “now [my opponent] even wants to stick us with Policy A. [My opponent]: too Policy A-loving for Maryland,” without, you know, mentioning the whole Policy B and C thing.
- Don't claim that my opponent is actually motivated by a desire to inflict suffering on others, as in: "[my opponent] wants to make America weaker, and hopes to run up the national debt so that our grandchildren will be begging in the streets!"
- Please do not run any ad in which you include a photo you’ve chosen, or altered, to make my opponent look like an angry dog or a vampire (unless I’m actually running against an angry dog or a vampire, in which case the photo wouldn’t be a lie).
- Please do not run an ad in which you surround a photo of my opponent with images of storms, locusts, flesh-eating bacteria or the like, or play horror-movie music in the background.
