Comments by Markkula Center for Applied Ethics Former Executive Director Kirk O. Hanson

Ethics is really about your behavior in everyday life, and it's an applied subject. It’s concerned with three things: First, do you play by the rules? Our behavior should be guided by the rules and by accepted principles like fairness. Second, is the behavior in service of the common good? In an election, are you benefiting the quality of campaigns and the ability of the public to make decisions? And third, are you considering the impact that your behavior has on others? You clearly want to have maximum positive benefit for others in everything that you do; you want to do no unnecessary harm and do what good you can in all of the behavior that you engage in. Applying each of those to a campaign, the first question is, are you playing by the regulations and laws that govern campaigns?

A candidate should play by those rules straight down the middle as opposed to trying to stretch them or trying to find some excuse why the rule doesn't apply in this circumstance. Basic principles fall into this category as well, like truthfulness and concern for accuracy in what you do and say.

The second concern is for the common good.

An ethical campaign is one that serves the public's ability to know what your positions are as candidate and then to make a decision based on their values. The common good is served by a well-informed electorate and good, clean campaigns.

The third concern is that of not doing unnecessary damage to another. There's clearly a lot of give and take in campaigns, and you make statements about the opponent.

But the ethical candidate only makes charges which are somehow relevant to the campaign and to the other’s capacity to serve. He or she considers others and doesn’t drag an opponent’s family or friends into the campaign unnecessarily in a way that does damage to them.

How does a candidate adhere to these principles in the heat of the political battle? Maintaining an ethical stance in the face of pressure is not just a dilemma for political candidates. In every aspect of life, there are pressures that cause you to sometimes act unethically. In business, the pressure of profit, the desire to get the highest salary, may cause you to knife one of your co-workers in the back.

In sports, the temptation to cheat, to be a Lance Armstrong, to have a corked bat is very strong. The challenge is how to manage those pressures. The best way is to know about them in advance and then to prepare yourself to make good ethical choices.

Some fear that being ethical will make them uncompetitive, but that is a short-sighted concern. In the short term, you can put out a very aggressive and untrue accusation about your opponent, and his or her polling numbers will dip for a few days, and yours will likely increase. But the press will eventually find out, the public will eventually find out about your duplicity, and then it will start to damage you. So unethical behavior will come back to haunt you.

In the last five days of a close campaign you might say, “Wait a minute, we are only a few points down and the end of the race is near—all bets are off. We need to do what it takes to win.” In reality, you might get through that campaign, but you're much less likely to get through the next one. Dirt, you know, adheres to you. Once you've shown the public that you don't mind using untruths and engaging in dirty campaigns, that reputation will stick with you in the next election and will hurt your prospects.

In the long term, the individual—particularly the person who seeks a long career in politics—is well served by running an ethical campaign.