Go high or low? Vice or virtue? These questions represent the first problem that political parties and their campaign strategists must resolve as the race heats up for the general elections next year.
The decision matters because it determines much, if not all, of who the performers and the platforms, plots, discourses and performances are that make up the political theatre of democratic societies.
In the best scenario of working with this problem, campaign committees will consider the question explicitly and in detail, preparing and debating internal position papers on who the electorate is, the ideological origins of the party, and on the choices that will resonate most with citizens as voters and as media consumers.
In the worst scenario of this work, campaign committees will jump right into planning campaigns that engage with target groups of voters and designing messages that will have citizens vote against an imagined enemy that threatens their future – a strategy that may save time but still implies of campaigning was found, namely a choice for going low, not high.
Political strategists will, however, consider it more useful not to view this problem as a binary one with only two options of going high or low. They would prefer to consider the solution to the problem to be one of locating campaigns and designing them according to a continuum from high to low, from virtue to vice, and based on the demands of political contexts.
The argument is that when an opponent chooses to go low, to only go high will not win votes; sometimes, democracy must be defended in the sewers of vitriol. “Going high and going low” in relation to campaigning does not refer to traditional definitions of high or low politics, which, for instance, refers to geopolitical and domestic concerns of the state, respectively.
In campaigning, high and low refers to political projects dedicated to goals in a shorter time period, as well as the ethical values to which their design and performance respond, or not, either intentionally or per chance.
“Vice or virtue” refers to the patterns of ethical concern that emerge over a longer period of time in the design of political campaigns and how they are performed. It is the life story of a political collective that reveals an organisational identity and ideology of virtue or vice. It is the immediate activity of campaigns which uncovers an organisational methodology of going high or low.
Four traits define political collectives as virtuous, namely collectives of people who want to be known for wisdom, courage, restraint and fairness, with campaigns that go high because they demonstrate the same.
Political vice does not engage questions of history, ideology or collective identity but desires for a quick succession of wins in very public and widely broadcast political battles.
For these reasons, campaigns of toxic rhetoric make up the crux of political vice. Chief among its projects for winning campaigns are “red herrings”, “straw men” and “venomous spit” – the red herring of claims that distract citizens from the real issue, the straw man of responding with answers that avoid the actual questions voters’ ask, and the venomous spit of vicious attacks against leaders to discredit their virtue.
These are the projects of vice, of vitriolic rhetoric. The opportunity of an election is for citizens and their collectives as voters to refuse the sewers and inspire virtue, as it is for politics and its campaigns.
* Dr Rudi Buys is the Executive Dean at the non-profit higher education institution, Cornerstone Institute.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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