Ethical Behavior in Politics - Essay Example

Many political initiatives include national health care, public education reform, the so-called digital information superhighway, affirmative action, disposal of toxic and nuclear wastes, abortion, and immigration. In each instance, the breadth of membership in a particular "we" is at issue. In some of those instances, belonging to a "we" in the first place is at issue (Bernstein, 2002).

The duty and responsibility of a political leader are to change the life of ordinary people and improve social institutions. In each instance, significant changes loom in the lives of those who belong to a "we." In each instance, competing proposals for transforming an institution—such as health care in the United States—are central features of the debate. n each of these contemporary cases, members of a particular "we" seek ways to protect what is important to them, and they frame the prospects for particular kinds of institutional change in such terms. Even if political leaders drop out their promises it should not consider ethical behavior. The opportunity to retain the services in any new national system is a case in point about the politics of inclusion tied up in the politics of institutional change (Nader and Krimsky 2004).

Members of the political media expose and shame politics by singing the praises of political persons who make social contributions of their choosing. The executives who have pioneered such initiatives are people of vision and benevolence, the argument goes. They, too, are antitheses of political dishonesty. Instead, this ethics proceeds straightaway from a basic categorization that excludes certain persons. On this view, politics can become "more ethical" if only people did not misbehave, did not underachieve and compromise the trust placed in them, not make catastrophic mistakes, and did not yield collectively to the temptations of a lesser moral life. At best, this ethics defers, until the work of prevention is done, the progress that person human striving, deferring it indefinitely until things are "cleaned up" in the business world.

Society can do better if "of course, its members want politics and elections to be more ethical" is to be meaningful in the democratic context of inclusion and institutional transformation (Greenberg, 2001).
The duty is media is to provide the audience with an objective interpretation of political events and political programs of candidates. Political correctness is a perspective available to anyone who believes in the distinctiveness of a person's chosen pursuits, in the distinctiveness of that person's reasons for those pursuits, and in the distinctiveness of that person's life history. Distinctiveness is a person's claim to be taken on his or her terms. Citizens begin to take differences seriously when they can listen to others' voices and, over time, develop a more and more sophisticated interpretation of each voice (Greenberg, 2001).

The media need to report different opinions and views during elections but not report personal preferences and biases. In this case, a "differences" perspective eases us into taking inclusion seriously, because distinctiveness is something we can appreciate in those people with whom we are most closely associated. With differences right under our noses, we have a touchstone of understanding from which we can move "outward" to encounter an increasingly diverse array of human beings and include them in our worldview. In this way, an ethical perspective can become a self-perpetuating practice of taking inclusion seriously. If citizens want to advance a politics of inclusion and institutional transformation, they cannot rely solely on the idea of duty. Read More