While watching a recent Republican Presidential debate, I was puzzled by the reaction to Rick Perry’s signing an order that required mandatory vaccination against human papillomavirus for sixth grade girls in Texas—an uncharacteristic move for a staunch social conservative like Perry.
Days later, Michelle Bachmann made false statements about the vaccine’s safety, which have since been publicly rebuked by experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who claim that the vaccine is among the safest. This is not only concerning because a national political candidate is not held accountable for deeply misleading statements, but also because it may have branded the HPV vaccine as dangerous in the minds of many who might benefit from it.
Is it legal for a politician to lie publicly about something as important as a life-saving vaccine? Conventional wisdom would dictate that the stringent truth-in-advertising laws that apply to consumer products would also apply to political candidates, but that isn’t actually the case. According to the Federal Communications Act, Title 47, Section 315 (Candidates for Public Office), “If any licensee shall permit any person who is a legally qualified candidate for any public office to use a broadcasting station … such licensee shall have no power of censorship over the material broadcast.” In other words, yes: there are no federal laws against false political statements.
This article is taken so seriously that in the 1972 U.S. Senate race in Georgia, the FCC forced broadcast stations in Atlanta to accept a paid political advertisement from a self-proclaimed “white racist” candidate. The advertisement used racial epithets and made a number of other derogatory statements toward African Americans. The candidate, J.B. Stoner, received 40,000 votes in the Democratic Senate primary, finishing fifth. While Stoner’s remarks are easily dismissed as ignorant racism, other campaign trail falsehoods, especially personal attacks, can have a far greater impact on our political process.
In 2004, a group called the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ran a series of television advertisements in hotly contested states in the months leading up to that year’s presidential election claiming that that Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry was unfit to serve as president because of his alleged “willful distortion of the conduct” of American servicemen during the Vietnam War. The former servicemen who appeared in the advertisements stated that they had served with Kerry or had direct contact with him, and they told viewers that Kerry was dishonest, unreliable, and unfit to lead. It turned out that only one of the men in the ads had served with Kerry.
A later advertisement featured dubious testimony from a veteran who claimed he “spent more time on Kerry’s boat than any other crew member” and that Kerry’s statements about time spent in Cambodia on a secret mission in 1968 were categorical lies. Investigations by the Los Angeles Times and New York Times revealed that the veteran speaking in the advertisement had not served with Kerry, and that his claims about Kerry’s comments on the Cambodia mission were untrue.
In 2006, the group was fined $299,500 by the Federal Election Commission, not for false advertising, but for failing to register and disclose reports as a federal political committee. It didn’t matter at that point, though—the damage had been done. It’s impossible to know if the Swift Boat ads cost Kerry the election, but they certainly didn’t help.
The current speech protection law is based on the concept of a free market of ideas: if a candidate lies, fact checkers expose the lie, giving voters the correct information on which to base their decision. Ultimately, however, political groups know that most voters will never learn of the corrections, giving them little incentive not to propagate lies.
A new law making candidates and politicians liable for their false statements would elevate the political process in our country, both in election years and years in between. Standard and Poor’s downgraded the United States’ credit rating largely because Congress is now seen as unable to reach the agreements necessary to pay our bills. Additionally, the current nasty and divided political environment deters otherwise promising leaders from running for office. The Republicans’ lack of a viable, electable candidate is a testament to this idea.
Until there is a change in truth-in-advertising laws regarding politics, candidates and their affiliated groups will continue to distort our political process, leaving voters on the losing end every time.
