Valor Words
So here’s Matt Yglesias noting another valor-word issue. This time the word is ‘principle’. I’m good because I have principles. Well that’s nice, but what kind of principles? What principles? Which ones? Be specific. Give details. Include time place and brand.
Indeed, most Lieberman supporters seem to have abandoned making the case for their man on the merits. Instead, the keyword is principle. A DLC press release called Lieberman “a man of utmost integrity who speaks and governs by his values and principles.”
And there’s another one – integrity. Integrity, again, is only as good as it is. Lots of people can have integrity. The integrity of an axe-murderer isn’t all that desirable. The integrity of a selfish conceited bullying windbag isn’t much worth boasting of either. Both of these are much like Bush’s vaunted ‘resolve’ – which is, again, only as good as it is. Blind stupid determination to go on doing what you’ve once decided to do no matter what, without paying attention to dissenting opinions or nonsupporting evidence, is not entirely a virtue, or a particularly good principle. They’re all valor words, they all need careful examination of particulars.
That’s the trouble with principles – they’re only good if you’re principles are the right ones. If Lieberman’s allies want to help him stay in office, they’re going to have to start convincing people that his are – just pointing out that he has some isn’t good enough.
Precisely.
I’ve used “principle” a few times as a valor word myself. It’s a handy thing when pesky salesbeings will not take no for an answer: just look them in the eye and say, with perhaps a slight and becoming sorrow, “No, it is a matter of principle.” This shuts them up but good. As they scrabble to figure out what on earth your principle might be, you can generally make your escape.
There is a principle there: I do firmly believe that I ought not reward people who pester me. It just isn’t a particularly noble principle.
Use “principle” like this a few times, and it’s hard to avoid perceiving how empty it is. If I were trying to make the case for some politician based purely on an abstract and unnamed “principle”, I would probably expire from pure cynicism.
But it’s not really all that unnamed in this case, is it? It looks to me like code for, “As everybody knows, Lieberman is very religious.”
Why did I keep thinking of Tony Blair while I was reading this article???
I suspect two different things are being conflated here.
1) When a politician is described as having integrity it means he is not corrupt – that he cannot be bought. When he is described as having principles it means he tries to behave in accordance with some fundamental ideas which he is publically known to adhere to.
2) That a politician can be praised by describing him as “a man of utmost integrity who speaks and governs by his values and principles” is , given the negative comments here, a sign of the low regard in which politicians are held. Indeed the DLC’s comment could be read as endorsing the public’s view of politicians as being unprincipled weasels who will do anything to get elected.
There are many components of ‘integrity’. Simple financial honesty may be one of them. So, too, may be what a hostile observer would call dogmatism, or an unwillingness to abandon personal beliefs to perform actions beneficial to constituents’ interests [legal ones, for argument’s sake]. OTOH, with someone like Lieberman, it may come down to being a Republican hiding in a Democrat’s body at a time of enormous political polarisation.
Most American politicians, as far as I can tell, are unprincipled weasels. They have been made so by dependence on raising millions of $$ from powerful interest-groups in order to pursue their chosen careers. Only a few, so far as I can tell, maintain anything like a consistent voting-record as would be expected of a politician in a country with a stronger ideological party-line tradition. Squaring that with the polarisation I just mentioned is an interesting exercise, but that’s politics!
Before you can evaluate a politician’s principles that politician has to stand by them with sufficient integrity to allow you to identify those principles.
Now, I agree that is just the beginning, or else “principle” means no more than what it does to the sales rep walking away from Cam’s house.
But it is also true that a politician who is not identified with a set of principles is not taken seriously by a growing number of voters, and that may not be a bad thing. Even if it allowed Bush rather than Kerry to be accused of voter fraud this year.
just look them in the eye and say, with perhaps a slight and becoming sorrow, “No, it is a matter of principle.”
I love that.
When a politician is described as having integrity it means he is not corrupt – that he cannot be bought.
Not always. Not here, I don’t think – it doesn’t apply to Lieberman, as it doesn’t apply to pretty much anyone in US politics. I think it means something much closer to what Cam suspects. It means he’s a pious bastard. Well, he’s pious all right, but that’s not the same as incorruptible and not for sale. It’s what Dave said – the dependence on money is universal (especially for Senators, who have to appeal to a whole state rather than a district).
“But it is also true that a politician who is not identified with a set of principles is not taken seriously by a growing number of voters, and that may not be a bad thing.”
Yeah, it may not, but that’s not saying much. The basic point remains: it depends what the principles are. I don’t care how firmly someone adheres to a set of principles if they’re contemptible principles.
There’s too much of this ‘character’ crap in the US. Never mind character; what are they going to do to us? That’s what we need to know before we punch the chad.
Well, I think the nub of it is that there are an awful lot of people in US politics who seem unwilling or unable to tell us enough about their plan or their program or their principles for us to be able to figure out what they’re going to do.
And it seems like this is because they don’t know themselves — not only do they not know in detail, they don’t know even in principle because they aren’t acting on principle but rather on the basis of what they are going to get in return for what they do. Granted, what they get in return is typically votes or political cooperation and not simple graft but, still, who wants to do business with somebody like that?
A politician who is seen to rely on a set of principles and to follow those principles with some consistency does not present that problem.
With a politician like that you can begin to ask what the principles are.
Ah, sincerity! If you can fake that, you’ve got it made! >:-]
Principles touted in political campaigns usually mean “Rules of thumb that can be expressed in a sound-bite.” The Ten Commandments are very popular right now because all you have to say is, well, “The Ten Commandments.” You don’t even have to know what they are, if you’re someone like Georgia congressman Lynn Westmoreland.
Everyone has principles, even if they’re bad ones. The trick is how you can take a simple principle, even a good one, and enact it in a complex world. But exploring that would sound wishy washy. That wouldn’t play well at all on Fox.