Means and ends

"people keep telling me that my penchant for intellectual honesty is too naive and idealistic to be worth adhering to in the real world of politics. We've gotta play dirty if we want to win. My worry is, when we look at where playing dirty might get us, it doesn't look to me much like victory at all." (Richard Chappell, here)

I've previously found that Richard and I differ on this matter. I certainly don't take some extreme view that politics is always about playing dirty or playing to win. No - I find most modern politics deeply disturbing for this tendency to pander to irrationality.

But what sets us apart is that I think one can also go too far in the other direction. Politics, and popular opinion, are riddled with irrationalities. If you refused to ever pander to these, I doubt you could ever secure your ends to any degree. Candid discussion can result in a horrible sensationalist discussion of the issue, with deep polarisation and a general lack of sense. People often lack sense (All people that is, before someone accuses me of elitism).

Now, Richard is quite correct that playing dirty can change your destination. For example, a liberal party that uses not-so-liberal means to gain power isn't really going to be a force for liberalism. Accepting campaign money from corporations, for instance, might be a necessary condition of gaining power, but one that warps the ends you must pursue once you're there.

This is all very true. But as always, one must look for the least-bad option, not simply avoid the option that has bad consequences attached. And failing to adopt dirty means can (sometimes, not always) result in worse policy being introduced through dirty means anyway. Again, taking our example, a liberal party gaining power through money received in return for corporate advantages is bad. Yet it's not so bad as a bigoted party gaining power through money received in return for corporate advantages. That's the relevant comparison.

(Note that the pursuit of liberalism via money from corporations is only an example. It would be sensible to divorce this discussion from discussion of which means and ends are actually bad)

In short, Richard is almost certainly correct that playing dirty is terrible. But one cannot ignore the fact that it may be the least bad option, terrible though it is. Perhaps parties are currently playing unecessarily dirtily (that's the kind of factual question that I don't think philosophers are equipped to answer). But there is also a limit to how cleanly they ought to fight.