Authors: Alan Huffman
Commercial companies are bound by restrictions that prevent them from making false claims about their products or those of their competitors. When they make such claims anyway, they do so at their peril, because they can be penalized by the Federal Trade Commission. Political candidates are not held to the same standard because their statements fall under the free speech protection of the First Amendment.
Time
magazine noted that certain states have attempted to establish their own standards for truth in political advertising, but without much success. Washington State passed a law in 1984 that made it illegal to sponsor campaign commercials that knowingly “make a false statement of material fact.” Fines of up to $10,000 were possible for each instance, and violations could result in election outcomes being voided. “After fourteen years, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled the law unconstitutional, prompting one of the dissenting justices to complain that it was the first court in the history of the Republic to declare First Amendment protection for calculated lies,”
Time
wrote. Even the normally staid magazine observed that the lesson to be learned from the effectiveness of baseless political ads is, in this case, that the truth is for losers.
Given all of that, it's probably just as well that Alan and I don't often see the results of our work, or that of other opposition researchers. As sticklers for the facts, and believers in the usefulness of the truth in determining who is most able to lead, we'd probably just end up crying in our beer.
M
aybe it's a consequence of looking for the bad in everyone that now and then Michael and I start to wonder about ourselves. It's not a question of whether we have skeletons in our closets. Though I've never researched Michael, he certainly seems above board, and for what it's worth I once passed an FBI background check. The question is more fundamental about our workâwhether we, as opposition researchers, are a positive force or just a pair of negative electrons bouncing around the political universe. Are we like the laughable Team Negative, the mindless political attackers on
The Daily Show
?
We're unequivocal about the importance of what we do. We've helped derail the political aspirations of unsavory or otherwise unattractive characters, and we believe the public has a right, even a responsibility, to know the truth about whomever they choose to lead them. But we do sometimes feel like troublemakers, questioning everything, expecting the worst. What does that say about us, and, by extension, about politics? And what might its cumulative psychological and karmic effects be? If we hone these sorts of skills, where might they take us over time? If we all focus relentlessly on the negative traits of our leaders, who'll be left to lead?
One of the more memorable cases for me was when we researched an elected official who also happened to be a friend of mine. We'd been hired to research a slate of candidates in a primary election, and when I found out he was among them I informed our campaign, with the assurance that our friendship wouldn't pose a conflictâthat we'd research his strengths and weaknesses as diligently as we would anyone else's, including our own candidate's. It was just business. Yet as I began deconstructing my friend I felt nagging doubts, not about my ability to deliver, but about the ease with which I could turn the harsh light of judgment on a friend. Michael and I like to think of our work as illuminating, but there's no denying that we're attracted to the dark.
The same doubts followed a recreational encounter during a research trip in Missouri. It was a sunny Saturday in the small city of Liberty, and Michael and I were looking for diversion after a week spent probing the depths of an opponent's record. We eventually settled on the Historic Liberty Jail, which stands a few blocks away from the first bank that Jesse James and his gang robbed. The moment we entered the building that houses the reconstructed jail I felt that something was amiss. The anteroom seemed oddly formal, its decor more appropriate for a funeral home than the entry to a reconstructed historical site. Across from us stood four dour elderly men in suits beside a pair of closed double doors. I didn't like the vibe, and felt an impulse to get out while the getting was good, but when I turned back toward the entrance another elderly man stepped in front of me and very purposefully locked the door.
We'd seen the Historic Liberty Jail advertised all over town, and had thought it odd that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints owned it, but because we had a weekend to kill and were more or less following the Jesse James trail as a sideline, decided to stop by. There was no connection to James, but the jail was turning out to be memorable in that it took “tourist trap” to new heights.
Perhaps a dozen fellow captives milled about in the anteroom, dressed in de rigueur American vacation apparelâcargo shorts and t-shirts or colorful track suits with matching fanny packs, most of them clutching cameras, guidebooks and bottles of water as they warily eyed their surroundings like cows in a catch pen. Unlike corralled cows, however, their response was not to trot around, bawling, but to stare at the floor. Only Michael and I were overt in our dismay.
Before I could suggest to Michael that we insist that they let us out, one of the elderly men stepped forward from his station beside the double doors, welcomed us to the Historic Liberty Jail and launched into a spiel about Mormon pioneer Joseph Smith, whom he described as a prophet who'd been held in the original jail for five months, during which time he had received three revelations that were recorded in the Doctrine and Covenants, etc. I can't say why Smith was incarcerated because I tend to be averse to doctrines and, to a lesser extent, covenants, and after I heard the word “prophet” I stopped listening.
I have a visceral reaction to unsolicited proselytizing, which I attribute to having been subjected, throughout my youth, to the relentless intermediation of a Southern Baptist church. I once encountered a street preacher in the New Orleans French Quarter who demanded to know how I'd feel if Jesus returned to find me in that den of sin, to which I responded that I thought Jesus, of all people, would feel right at home in such a place, where life, with all its attendant searches, was in full view. My personal theory is that many stalwart Christians would be chagrined if Jesus showed up at their church on a Sunday morning with his retinue of radicals and at least one suspected prostitute, wearing a sweat-stained robe and long, infrequently washed hair, and proceeded to stride to the pulpit as if he owned the place. Someone would dial 911. Jesus would look nothing like a telegenic congressional candidate, which, despite the stylized paintings illustrating this, would come as a huge and unwelcome surprise to many in the congregation. As I explained this, the street preacher stared at me blankly, then waved his sign at someone else passing by. Maybe the self-righteousness inherent in the Southern Baptist church had not gone away, but had simply taken a different form.
I actually do believe in prophets, and that Jesus was one, but I don't appreciate someone else attempting to commandeer the vetting process. Perhaps if Michael and I had been researching the Mormon church and its authoritarian theology we might have felt differently that day in Missouri, but we were not up for it. So as the old man droned about Zion, I interrupted to state my desire to leave. Turning to the man by the door, I added, “Unlock the door.” I should have said please, but he had stepped in front of me to lock the door, which, in my view, suspended the rules of decorum. Plus, I was a little pissed by the bait and switch.
The speaker stopped, midspiel, and stared at me. A few heads turned. Michael, who'd been brooding conspicuously but silently beside me, stood up a little straighter. Finally the old man at the front said, simply, “No.” His tone was calm and assured, carrying the authority of an evangelical church that owned the building in which we were standing, the exits from which were locked. “This is part of the tour,” he added.
“Let us out,” I repeated, and, as an incentive, moved toward the old man blocking the door. “Unlock the door,” I reiterated, and Michael nodded in agreement. Glancing behind me, I noted that the crowd appeared conflicted. Certainly, by now, they wanted out, too, but they were uncomfortable, as a group, with this breach of protocol. The men were old, after all. They wore suits. Michael and I were comparatively more threatening. No one moved to join in our mutiny. This, I've observed, is often how it works. Faced with an opportunity to think for themselves, which requires the gathering of one's own intel, and then taking appropriate action, most people's default setting is to go with the flow.
I once traveled with my friend Fe from Turkey to Bulgaria on a train called the Balkan Expressâa euphemism for disaster, if ever there was one. At one point, for some unknown reason, we were forced to disembark in the middle of nowhere. I don't even know what country we were in. One minute we were sitting in our sleeper car wondering why the train had been stopped for so long, and the next we were dragging our wheeled baggage down the railroad tracks, strangers in a strange land. We were part of a group of similarly ejected travelers, suddenly and inexplicably on our own. We were disoriented, and could only hope that we were headed in the right direction, toward some manageable social framework.
A few miles later we came upon a town, and Fe and I decided to look for a bus station, but we couldn't read the signs and found no one who spoke a language we knew. As we crossed a busy intersection the light changed and we were forced to run the rest of the way through a flood of cars and trucks, dragging our infernal bags. After we reached the curb on the opposite side I heard continuous car honking in our wake, and looked back to see that the entire group of perhaps thirty ejected travelers had run out into traffic after us. Pandemonium ensued as cars swerved around them, and when the group reached us on the other side an Australian backpacker asked me, rather indignantly, “Where are we going?”
I said I had no idea, to which she responded, “Then why are we following you?”
I told her I was wondering the same thing.
In hindsight, the answer was obvious: They were following me because I was ahead of them, which is no way to choose a leader. Following someone simply because they're out in front is never a good idea, but it happens all the time.
In all honesty, after I'd been haphazardly selected I actually enjoyed leading our little group through whatever town it was, toward who knew what end. It felt good to be in charge. That's how politics works. Whether by design or through serendipity, an opportunity presents itself and someone picks up the ball and runs with it. I like to think I'd have relinquished my role to someone better equipped for the mission, but it would likely have depended on who it was and, well . . . it would have depended on a lot of factors.
These little episodes are the stuff of which big episodes are made. It's how someone who leads a group discussion in a college poli-sci class ends up being a forty-year veteran of Congress, growing rich in the process, and perhaps comes to see himself as immune to certain rules. We expect our leaders to obey the rules, not to lead us blindly into dangerous zones or into worlds that are otherwise not of our choosing. Yet we aren't always discerning in our selections. Sometimes we're just following them because they're there.
The leading old man at the Liberty Jail seemed to recognize that I posed a threat to the order of things but had not yet upset it. The crowd consensus was still to go with the program, rather than with the rude guy, so he grudgingly nodded to his counterpart by the door, indicating that I was to be released. I watched as a very clean, wrinkled hand reached down and unlocked the door, though it stopped short of actually turning the knob; I had to do the last part myself. And so the standoff ended. Michael and I stepped forth into the bright sunshine of Liberty.
“That was bullshit,” Michael said, laughing, as we walked back to our rental car. Though I agreed, and was glad to be free, I felt a bit chastened by the exchange. I felt more like a troublemaker than a seeker of the truth.
Yet whatever our work says about us, and however ephemeral our knowledge of individual candidates may be, the documents we compile are informative outcroppings of history. It's not that history will necessarily care how a certain failed congressional candidate once contradicted himself. It's about how the political process is influenced, and how it evolves. Michael and I are focused on the forensics, on the irrefutable evidence of what is known to have actually happenedâon the details of “current events,” in the vernacular of a seventh-grade civics class. We never know whether our findings will have a long-term impact, but they often matter in the short run, and political history is, if nothing else, a string of overlapping short runs. Because our work is fact based we like to think it's more authentic than much of the political discourse, that only the act of voting is more simple and straightforward. We traffic in the raw materials of politics, before it gets spun and cropped and tested and put on the airwaves and on YouTube and, finally, debated during the run-up to the election.
After years of intensive, highly specific study of everything that can go wrong in the political realm, it's easy for us to understand why some people are attracted to good-looking, smooth-talking candidates who pose with their families against comforting backdrops, such as a neatly groomed suburban flower garden. So much about the world is dirty, unpredictable and harsh. Politics can be ugly. The danger is in allowing yourself to be sucked through the shimmering portal, to disregard the uncomfortable truths that hover close at hand.
None of this means that a candidate who does something wrong cannot be forgiven. Even when it seems unseemly to publicly disclose someone else's wrongdoing, negative politics can be a positive force for change. It all comes down to the gravity of the offense and how the offender responds to public disclosure. Once, while researching a congressional candidate, I was waiting in line at a local sheriff's office to see if the candidate had a criminal record (they rarely do, but we have to check anyway). Before me in line was a young man wearing frayed jeans and a t-shirt with
CAMP FALLUJAH
printed across the back. Notably, he also wore a hospital bracelet and had bandages across both wrists. When he approached the window he greeted the clerk cordially, and said, very calmly and quietly, “Afternoon, ma'am. I'm here to pay my fine.”
The clerk, sitting behind a bulletproof window, glanced at the bracelet and the bandages and said, “Did you just get out of the hospital?” When he nodded, she added, “Should you even be up and walking around?” Again he nodded, but said nothing more.
Clearly, he was having some hard times, and I felt a little ashamed when I was called to the next window and had to announce, within earshot, that I was checking on someone else's criminal record. I felt strangely as if I were the guilty one, preying on the foibles of others.
As it turned out, the candidate had no criminal record, though in another office I would find that he had failed to pay state income taxâwhich, again, gave me pause. The same thing had once happened to me as a result of a clerical mistake made by the state tax commission. But as I followed the Camp Fallujah guy out the door, it occurred to me how easy it is to make a mistake, and to get caught, and how hard things can become afterward. If the Camp Fallujah guy were to someday run for elected office, and Michael and I were assigned to research him, whatever infraction he was guilty of would be highlighted in our report, no matter what other good he had done or how he later redeemed himself. I like to think he'd be the first to admit his mistake, and that the voters would properly weigh it in the balance, but the only way to ensure that the voters knew what they needed to know would be to document the facts.