On Election Day, voters can send the message that character matters | Editorial

High early voting turnouts may suggest Americans are finally heeding descriptions of this election as one of the most consequential in our nation’s history. President Joe Biden tried to tell voters that during his aborted reelection campaign, but people were so attuned to questions about his mental acuity that the warning didn’t seem to register.

As voters prepare to head to the polls Tuesday, it is a warning worth repeating.

Our country is in a perilous position where integrity no longer seems to matter as much as it should. Politics in this country have been debased by so many deceitful and corrupt officeholders that too many voters are willing to excuse bad behavior if a candidate agrees with them on the issues they deem most important, including abortion, gender identification, the economy, overseas wars, and immigration.

It’s not surprising that America’s moral acuity has been dulled after decades of exploitation by corrupt politicians ranging from William “Boss” Tweed, who as an alderman and congressman plundered as much as $200 million from New York City in the years after the Civil War, to former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, who recently was convicted of accepting cash, gold bars, and a Mercedes-Benz as bribes.

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The nation has seen hundreds if not thousands of politicians begin their careers by bending slightly from their principles to reel in a potential campaign donation. Eventually, too many find themselves so beholden to shady financial benefactors — who fund their reelection campaigns while spoiling them with lavish gifts and favors — that those once unquestioned principles become completely optional.

Of course, some politicians never had principles in the first place and technology has made it harder for voters to figure out who they are. Social media and dubious news websites are filled with so much disinformation and outright lies that depict bad guys as good and good guys as bad that voters don’t know what to believe. Many have decided to believe whoever says what they want to believe, even when it’s not the truth.

Americans have a right to believe lies if they want to. Just as liars have a right to tell lies in most cases, if they don’t violate libel, slander, or other laws. In fact, the Supreme Court said in its 1964 New York Times v. Sullivan ruling that prohibiting “false” speech would wrongly “chill” more valuable speech by causing people to self-censor themselves out of fear of violating the law.

With so many lies concerning American political candidates emanating from foreign sources, the Supreme Court’s opinion hardly seems to matter these days. But many of the most outrageous lies originate right here in the good, old USA in the form of attack ads paid for by political action committees.

Federal law says PACs can spend whatever they want so long as the money doesn’t go directly to a candidate. The law also allows the creation of “super PACs” that unlike PACs can solicit and accept unlimited contributions. Using that loophole, billionaire Elon Musk created a super PAC that has spent $100 million of his money on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Having one person wield that kind of influence should be enough incentive for Congress to bridge its decades-long partisan divide and end that type of ruse.

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Congress alone, however, cannot restore integrity to American politics.

Let’s be clear. The character of those candidates elected to public office reflects the character of the people who elected them. Sometimes muddled facts and outright lies can cloud that reflection, but never so much as now.

For decades after this country’s birth, schoolchildren in America were taught that George Washington as a youth admitted to his father that he had chopped down a sprouting cherry tree. That tale wasn’t true but at least the intent of its author, Washington biographer Mason Locke “Parson” Weems, was laudable — to encourage honesty as a necessary trait for political leadership. There’s nothing laudable about the lies being told by too many of today’s politicians and their supportive PACs and super PACs to gain advantage in an election.

Those lies won’t stop until voters tell the liars that lying comes too easily for them to ever be trusted. Until Americans go to the polls and make clear that the truth — even when it doesn’t conform to their point of view — will not be ignored.

Honesty is on the ballot in this election.

The outcome may determine whether America will ever turn away from candidates and their surrogates who would rather spread lies than make a compelling case for their own election. If the liars prevail, Americans can only expect more lying, more division, more distrust, more people seeing that this country, like other nations we once despised, has put its faith in leaders who don’t even pretend to let truth be their guide.

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