Published Articles
By Dr. William R. Morrow

“Negative Campaigning Touches the Home Front”

If what you see happening in the current political campaign reminds you of domestic squabbles, you are not alone. Candidates from both sides get into the act of negative blasting in an effort to win the race. Worse is their effort to look righteous, moral, and leader-like at the same time that they are using underhanded tactics and a psychopath's ethics to win at any price. Here's their formula: First, malign your opponent, and then distance yourself from the dirt to keep a clean image. Of course psychopaths do not have consciences, but I would like to think that the candidate I am going to vote for is a person of conscience. (Hard to do!) Instead of promoting high standards, their political advisors and kingmakers, the masters of deception, are orchestrating a political race that plays on the public's need to divide the world artificially into good guys and bad guys. Demonizing means you see and describe the worst in your opponent, while exonerating yourself.

When the elections are all over, the embattled politicians will probably kiss and make up, and then realign themselves as loyal Americans pulling together. “It's just politics”, they say, and imply they really didn't mean all that nasty stuff they said about their opponents. Like it was just theater or stand-up comedy.

But meanwhile real people in real family conflicts suffer from the destructive demonizing that our so-called leaders and would-be leaders of our country are teaching. This is not family values by any stretch. Demonizing brings out the worst in all of us. And the effects in families don't go away easily. Some people, once wounded by unbridled mud-slinging, remain resentful for the rest of their lives. The psychologist in me knows only too well how divorce, custody battles, and conflicts with in-laws turn perfectly decent people into hateful human beings. Once the first negative card has been played, (and who knows how to identify who started it?), the downward spiral begins. Because it's human nature to want to defend yourself. Action and reaction. Attack and counter-attack. This is not cleverness in the service of justice. It is the darkest part of human nature that steams up from the depths like Mt St Helen and then erupts into living rooms of otherwise loving families. I hate to see it happen.

When family conflicts, which are stirred up with these base human instincts, come hurting to my office, I struggle to keep a clinical perspective. If I only attune myself to the trading of negative “campaign slogans”, I can get overwhelmed and pessimistic. But I sense that I am up against one of the evils that plague happy families: demonizing the opponent. Carrying on marital therapy at this time of year, though, I am emboldened more by Tolkein's Frodo Baggins than the self-styled champions of family values, who are currently denigrating themselves in the political race. While I can't pretend to save the whole human race or reach the land of Modor , I can help one family at a time to see the possibilities that can rise up from the depths of human nature. Just knowing the complexities of relationships, I hold out for someplace in Middle Earth where love is stronger than hate. While it won't work in politics to uphold love and forgiveness, when it comes to marital conflict, I draw on my life's study of what lies the deepest in us. It is that people can learn to face their inner demons and their gremlins of accusation if they are willing to expose themselves to their own complexities, mixed emotions, and hidden self-dislike.

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