What really are ‘issues-based campaigns’?

As the noise level from the campaigns, the spins and the competition to occupy the moral high ground gets truly cacophonic, some people are getting concerned  about the ‘overheating’ of the polity and calling for campaigns to be ‘issues-based’.But what really are ‘issues-based’ campaigns?  An issue simply means an important topic or problem for debate […]

As the noise level from the campaigns, the spins and the competition to occupy the moral high ground gets truly cacophonic, some people are getting concerned  about the ‘overheating’ of the polity and calling for campaigns to be ‘issues-based’.
But what really are ‘issues-based’ campaigns?  An issue simply means an important topic or problem for debate or discussion. In a plural and polarized country like ours, what one person considers important to him may not exactly be deemed so by another person.  Essentially therefore, all the campaign themes – from name calling to what some consider trivial are issues of concern for some. Even ‘personal attacks’ can sometimes be justified on the grounds that people have legitimate rights to aggressively interrogate a candidate’s credentials for office because of the belief that character is the anchor on which any candidate’s competence can rest. If for instance a candidate is projected as morally upright, under the ‘public right to know’ doctrine, it becomes legitimate for the opposition to aggressively investigate if such claims or ascriptions are true or exaggerated.  For instance a politician who displays a family photograph of himself, his wife and children is subtly using expressive speech to woo voters that he is a good family man.  On this the opposition has a legitimate right to dig into the candidate’s private life – even when he was a young adult t to prove that the claims are either untrue or exaggerated.  Thus while it may not be ‘issues-based’ for some people  if   the politician in question is caricatured as a serial philanderer or adulterer,  for others, a more balanced view of the politician’s subtle claim of being a good family man is being provided by the caricature.  
My suspicion is that when people talk of ‘issues-based campaigns’ they expect politicians and their foot soldiers to focus only on ‘high’ issues like how to fix the economy, provide qualitative education, create jobs and generate electricity and to discuss them as if they were in academic seminars. Unfortunately even academic discourses on these ‘high’ issues could be rancorous – not to talk of when they are thrown open to all comers as happens during elections.  And in no democracy are campaigns ‘issues-based’, as in academic seminars as some will want us to believe.
Elections and campaigns by their nature are noisy enterprises. Thankfully in many climes they come only periodically, which make them endurable. As the American columnist Cal Thomas would say: “One of the reasons people hate politics is that truth is rarely a politician’s objective. Election and power are.”  For George Bernard Shaw, the Irish playwright and co-founder of the London School of Economics:  “An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.” For Otto von Bismarck, the first chancellor of United Germany:  “People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.”
In modern times, the concerns  with elections are mostly  about ‘negative campaigns’ or ‘mudslinging’, often defined as  efforts  to gain political mileage by referring to negative aspects of an opponent or of a policy instead of emphasizing one’s own positive attributes or preferred policies. In real life there is a very thin boundary between aggressive interrogations of a candidate’s claims; including every expressive and subtle manner the candidate is trying to use to woo voters and negative campaigns.
My suspicion is that when people complain of campaigns not being ‘issues-based’, they are merely concerned about the role of spinning and spin doctors. Spin is a form of propaganda in which a campaign interprets an event in a manner that will be favourable to its cause.  A good example was what happened in 2010 in the US during the   election to fill the seat of the late Senator Edward Kennedy in Massachusetts. The Democratic Party sent out mails about the opposition Republican Candidate, Scott Brown claiming that “1,736 women were raped in Massachusetts in 2008. Scott Brown wants hospitals to turn them all away.”  The ad was actually referring to a failed amendment which would have allowed highly religious workers at US hospitals to avoid providing contraception to rape victims and which Senator Brown had voted for. The ad walked that fine line between spin and falsehood. For instance while Senator Brown voted in favour of a bill that would have allowed hospital workers to refuse to provide contraception to rape victims, it is only by extended logic that one could argue that this bill  could have affected “all” of the 1,736 raped women as claimed by the ad. In our political culture, publicity secretaries of political parties tend to be their chief spin doctors.
People who pontificate about  ‘issues-based’ campaign  also worry that  in newly democratizing countries such as Nigeria, unfettered free speech during elections or those which are not based on ‘issues’ can aggravate the structure of conflicts in the country.  This may be true in the short term. But the counter argument – and the reason why political speeches are highly protected in most advanced countries (with the US even protecting hate speech) – is that even ideas that ‘shock and awe’ are seen as enriching the marketplace of political ideas on which democracy itself is built.  This means that unless ideas expressed during elections pose ‘clear and imminent danger’ to the society,   there is really nothing to worry about, irrespective of the decibel of the political noise.   This is why in several mature democracies, fringe groups and even racist organizations such as the KKK in the US or the British National Party in the UK, are never banned. Rather the ideas they espouse are drawn into and outcompeted in the marketplace of political ideas. This ensures that the purveyors of such ideas do not go underground to romanticize such ideas.
In the marketplace of ideas theory of democracy, ideas compete aggressively in the political marketplace – just as goods compete in open markets. There are at least four main reasons why freedom of speech (verbal, written or expressive) is cherished in democracies, especially during elections: One, it is believed to be crucial in the quest to discover the truth. Any claim by one side that can confer political advantage has to be aggressively interrogated.  The ‘marketplace of ideas’ theory of democracy was popularized in the dissenting judgment of Holmes J in Abrams v US [1919] when he declared that the “ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas – that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out”. Essentially it is in the noise that surrounds campaigns that we have a better chance of discovering the truth.
Two, free speech, especially during elections, is regarded as an aspect of self-fulfilment. People have a right to hold onto any idea and to express same.
Three, it is seen as being indispensable for citizens to participate effectively in a democracy. Just holding and expressly political ideas, not matter how illogical or bizarre during elections means increased participation in the political process.
Four, there is a strong suspicion of government – a suspicion that gets heightened any time free speech is muffled by officialdom.
I am not suggesting that negative campaigns or mudsling should be encouraged – just that we seem to be unduly worried with political spins and some mud throwing, which if the truth be told, comes with the territory of elections. Besides we are turning the notion of ‘issues-based’ campaigns into a mantra without really interrogating what we mean by that.
Jonathan-Obasanjo’s hide-and-seek
I was disappointed to read in the papers about yet another peace meeting between President Jonathan and Obasanjo. And once again it was at the instance of the President!  With all due respect, why is it so difficult for President Jonathan to understand that Obasanjo will never endorse his candidacy and that he is virtually ridiculing him with such contrived peace meetings?   My personal opinion is that each time the President sucks up to Obasanjo – and such suck ups are usually leaked – it magnifies Obasanjo’s charges against the President, including the charge of being weak.
In this election cycle, President Jonathan will be contesting not only against a re-invented Buhari – who now looks really electable compared to the old Buhari, who in my opinion was not electable – but also against himself. By this I mean the way he generally handles political issues.
It was the legendary boxer Muhammad Ali who once said that champions are not made in the rings but by the qualities they bring from outside the ring. With a re-invented Buhari giving unexpected momentum to the APC, my personal opinion is that running after a clear rival is no way to give the necessary confidence to one’s supporters to regain the momentum.   Two good boxers can batter and bruise each other in the ring. They can embrace at the end of the contest in the spirit of sportsmanship.  No good boxer however craves to hug his opponent when the bell has already rung for the contest to begin.