In recent election cycles, phrases such as “gaslighting,” “subverting an election,” “diversionary tactics,” and “election integrity” have become staples of American political discourse. They surface not merely as partisan accusations or procedural concerns but as symptoms of a deeper erosion: the scarcity of integrity, a moral compass, and honesty among many who seek public office. These three virtues retain monumental value when applied with precision. Integrity is the consistent alignment of actions with principle, even when unobserved. A moral compass orients decisions toward justice and the common good rather than private advantage. Honesty refuses to distort truth for tactical gain. Candidates who embody them radiate credibility. Their records and character speak more powerfully than any advertisement. They need neither smear campaigns nor elaborate maneuvers designed to confuse or manipulate voters.
Alaskans have witnessed the opposite pattern repeatedly over the past two decades. Competitive races have too often featured candidates or their surrogates willing to employ whatever tactics appear necessary to prevail, even at the cost of their own moral standing. This election season has proven no exception. Close observation reveals that many major candidates have engaged in some form of mudslinging directed at opponents. In several cases, that same mud has landed at the front door of those who initiated or tolerated it. When candidates run notably clean campaigns focused on policy and record, the opposition frequently responds not with counterarguments but with manufactured accusations. The result is a climate in which voters must expend energy distinguishing substance from fabrication.
What is it about politics that so readily draws out the worst in some people? Power, visibility, and the high stakes of governing amplify ordinary human temptations. Ambition that begins as a desire to serve can curdle into a determination to win at any cost. Public servants—by definition those charged with serving the people rather than ruling over them—nevertheless sometimes accept underhanded methods. Even when the candidate does not personally devise the stratagem, paid staff and volunteers operate under the candidate’s banner and authority. Silence or acquiescence functions as endorsement. The voter is entitled to ask whether a person who tolerates cunning or corrupt decisions within his or her own campaign can be trusted with the far larger responsibilities of office.
Classical Christian thinkers addressed these temptations with clarity. St. Augustine, writing in The City of God, observed that justice is the indispensable foundation of legitimate political order. “Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms?” (Augustine, ca. 426/1950, Book IV, Chapter 4). Without justice, political power becomes organized predation distinguished from ordinary crime mainly by scale and impunity. Augustine further noted that true rulers govern from a sense of duty owed to those they serve, not from a love of power itself (ca. 426/1950, Book XIX, Chapter 14). In the household of the just man, even those who appear to command in fact serve. The same standard applies to public life: authority exists to protect and advance the good of the community, not to aggrandize the officeholder.
St. Thomas Aquinas developed this insight with systematic precision. In On Kingship, he taught that a government that diverts the common good to the private advantage of the ruler (or of a faction) is unjust; when exercised by one person, it is tyranny. “The idea of king implies that he be one man who is chief and that he be a shepherd, seeking the common good of the multitude and not his own” (Aquinas, ca. 1265/1949, Book I, Chapter 2, paras. 11–13). Aquinas defined law itself as “an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community, and promulgated” (1265–1274/1947, I-II, q. 90, a. 4). Actions that deliberately mislead voters, invent false accusations, or engineer confusion for partisan advantage cannot meet this standard; they substitute private calculation for reason. The virtue Aquinas called legal justice directs all of a person’s actions toward that common good (1265–1274/1947, II-II, q. 58, aa. 5–6); its absence leaves politics as little more than coordinated self-interest.
These principles remain applicable in contemporary Alaska. Voters have seen candidates who conduct disciplined, issue-focused campaigns and who decline to answer falsehood with equal falsehood. Such restraint is frequently interpreted by opponents not as strength but as vulnerability, prompting the invention of charges that must later be walked back or ignored once they have served their temporary purpose. The pattern is not confined to one party or one cycle; it is a recurring temptation whenever the margin of victory appears narrow and the rewards of office large. The damage extends beyond the immediate race. Each successful deployment of deception erodes public confidence in the process itself, making genuine election integrity harder to maintain and inviting reciprocal escalation.
Public servants who accept or tolerate these methods forfeit the moral claim that their office is a trust. The temporary advantage gained by confusing a portion of the electorate or by staining an opponent’s name is purchased at the price of the candidate’s own credibility and, more gravely, at the price of the community’s capacity for reasoned self-government. Augustine and Aquinas both held that political society exists for the common good: Augustine stressed peace and justice, while Aquinas stressed the conditions under which citizens can pursue virtue (Augustine, ca. 426/1950, Book XIX, Chapter 17; Aquinas, ca. 1265/1949, Book I, Chapter 14, para. 106). Campaigns that systematically subordinate that good to the acquisition of office work against the very purpose of the office they seek.
Alaskans, like citizens elsewhere, retain the capacity to reward the alternative. Candidates whose actions and character require no elaborate defense, who refuse both to initiate and to answer mudslinging in kind, and who treat the electorate as capable of discerning truth, embody the integrity the terms “election integrity” and “public service” actually demand. Their example does not eliminate political competition; it elevates it. When enough voters consistently prefer such candidates, the incentive structure shifts. The worst that politics can draw out is constrained, and the monumental value of integrity, a moral compass, and honesty is once again visible in practice rather than merely invoked in rhetoric.
Primary Sources
Aquinas, T. (1947). Summa theologica (Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Trans.). Benziger Bros. (Original work published 1265–1274)
Aquinas, T. (1949). On kingship: To the King of Cyprus (G. B. Phelan, Trans.; I. T. Eschmann, Rev.). Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. (Original work published ca. 1265)
Augustine. (1950). The city of God (M. Dods, Trans.). Modern Library. (Original work published ca. 426)
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