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Guilt by Association
By David Knowles
Oct 7th 2008 9:27AM
In philosophical parlance, it is known as the "Bad Company Fallacy." Guilt-by-association posits that if you befriend someone who has questionable beliefs, then, by definition, you too have questionable beliefs.
This "company you keep" critique has been a running theme in this year's race for the White House, and it exploded this week when Sarah Palin and John McCain decided to try refocus Barack Obama's associations with William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright into a central theme of their campaign.
Obama has fired back with McCain's involvement in the Keating 5 scandal, and, in terms of questionable religious affiliations, we watched the rise and fall of one-time spiritual adviser John Hagee.
McCain was forced to denounce Hagee, and Obama was forced to exit Trinity. McCain has called his role in the Savings and Loan scandal his ethical "asterisk," Obama has repudiated the Weathermen. Obama has called his housing deal with Tony Rezko a "bone headed" move. And McCain has been desperately trying to distance himself from President Bush. And so it goes.
On the Veep front, we've seen the video of warding off witches at Sarah Palin's Pentecostal church, and learned of Todd Palin's affiliation with the secessionist Alaska Independence Party. Joe Biden's son, we now know, was a lobbyist.Further on down the list, we have the people who work for the respective campaigns. Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager, runs a lobbying firm that did well by Fannie and Freddie over the past few years. Obama briefly had a guy who was on his VP search committee who was Fannie Mae's chief executive.
As we tread through this thicket of sticky burs, it's hard not to notice that amid all the one-upmanship there's a whole lot of "do as I say, not as I do" going on with these people. The double standards are so prevalent that each campaign seems more intent on screaming "He did it, too!" rather than examining its own motives. They compile lists of the other guy's wrongs, as if whoever has the biggest number of questionable affiliations at the end of the day will automatically be declared the loser.
Well, I would suggest to you that guilt by association is not a good metric for picking a president. Instead, let's try to focus on voting records and policy proposals. I know that's a whole lot less splashy, in a tabloid sense of the word, than concocting a scandal du jour. It may not get the blood boiling like all the imagined conversations between our candidates and their tainted associates. But maybe, just maybe, it's a more sensible way to go.
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