Let’s say it right up front: Negative, nasty campaigning may be effective — after all, the headline got you to read this far, didn’t it? But it’s unethical in nature, divisive in practice, and fatal to the integrity of those who practice it. Here’s why.

There’s a conundrum baked into America’s political life, which is that the qualities you need in order to get elected are stunningly at odds with the qualities you need to govern after you win. That point is never more evident than in a presidential election year, when three crucial distinctions stand out:

• To campaign, you need breadth and agility — a superficial grasp of scores of topics and a fleet-footed peripheral vision that lets you bob and weave among the daily brickbats. To govern, you need depth and stability — a mastery of the few core issues that you’ve decided should define your presidency and the ability to concentrate on them and delegate the rest.

• Campaigns are intensely personal. The focus is on “the opponent” — three or four during the primaries and one in the general election. You’ll talk policy, of course, but almost always in the service of defeating a single person. Governing focuses on ideas and policies. Of course you take into account the politics of personalities. But unless you use politics in the service of ideas, the public rightly comes to believe that your presidency is more about your own ego than the nation’s welfare.

• Campaigns are about right versus wrong, while governing is about right versus right. Sound bites and bumper stickers are nifty missiles for personal attacks of the I’m-right-you’re-wrong variety, but they aren’t vehicles for deep ethical analysis. If your campaign can gin up slick-witted ways to blast the bad and glorify the good, you’ll be successful — right up until the day after the election. After that, no issue that you face — from immigration to health, energy to education, jobs to defense — is about right versus wrong. Everything is about tough choices between opposing moral views, each with sound ethical underpinnings.

Why should that be? Because in a democracy the really big issues aren’t about right versus wrong. Legislatures don’t debate good-versus-evil questions. If the choice is between deporting illegals or poisoning them, we don’t spend five seconds on it. What’s tough is whether to spend funds on health services for the illegals already here or on border patrols to keep others out. On that, very good people can differ, and each can be morally right.

The fact that there’s good on both sides is what permits presidents to reach compromises. In governing, compromise is vital, allowing you to make progress. In campaigning, however, compromise is a dirty word, meaning you’ve abandoned your principles. Pity, then, the poor candidates who can’t make the transition out of campaign mode. They come into office hypnotized by superficiality, seeing only a black-and-white universe and convinced that those who disagree with them are moral idiots. No wonder they have no defense against blistering vituperation. No wonder the nation grows more polarized. No wonder there’s no progress.

What’s all that got to do with negative campaigning? Simply this: The core ethical values shared (as far as we can tell) across all cohorts of voters in the nation are honesty, responsibility, respect, fairness, and compassion. Candidates who call each other liars, accuse them of irresponsibility, use disrespectful language against each other, unfairly twist others’ words and disregard their meanings — and do it all without a shred of compassion for the next generation’s attitudes toward politics — are patently unethical. They’re sowing the seeds of divisiveness rather than inclusivity, malice rather than kindness, brutality rather than refinement. The more they do so, the more fatally they degrade their own integrity, until they finally hit the wall where they actually believe that the ends justify the means. With that, public trust evaporates. What power is left to rally a nation in times of distress, make promises anyone will believe, or reach across the aisle to work together in emergencies? What power is left to govern?

“But, but, but!” shout the pragmatists of polarization. “Negative campaigning works!” Look, lots of things “work” in the short term. Stealing a car, garroting your competitor, and blackmailing your boss all “work” — for the moment.

And that, finally, suggests a fourth way that campaigning differs from governing. Campaigning is all about the here and now — about unkeepable promises, instant applause meters, and surveys with a half-life of 24 hours. Governing is all about horizons, patience, and vision. If voters care about governance, they’ll telegraph to the candidates, in the plainest of terms, their commitment to integrity and their disgust with negativity. There may be no other way to save a democracy on the verge of paralysis.

©2012 Institute for Global Ethics