Talk:Discrediting tactic

message: The public portrayal of the character and personality of politicians and political candidates plays an important role in American politics, but the degree to it matters to the voters often differs considerably. Both the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives have ethics committees, for example, and may act against their fellow members if they violate certain codes of conduct, even though those members were elected by the democratic process. In the past, congressmen such as Jim Traficant and Adam Clayton Powell have been expelled from Congress over ethics issues. One US President, Bill Clinton, was impeached over allegations of purjury, but many voters and his supporters disagreed with this action. Thus the criteria over what character traits, whether they be related to corruption or intelligence, are often the subject of heated debate. Thus character traits are used by opponents of politicians to discredit them, either for political gain or merely for satiric effect.
Partisan politics also plays an important role in this question.  To a certain extent, the flip side of the use of discrediting tactics is the case of extreme party loyalty.  Party loyalty may blind a partisan to the faults in the candidates or representatives of their own party.  The partisan may ignore or deny the deficient qualities of the party's candidates, out of fear that to do so would somehow discredit their ideology or damage their party's electoral strength.  An example of this are the Yellow dog Democrats, a colorful term describing voters who are said to vote for a Democrat even if the candidate was a yellow dog.  This also comes into play in the investigation of political scandals.  Members of Congress are extremely reluctant to investigate scandals by a President of their own party.  It is doubtful that the Republicans would have investigated the Watergate scandal, or that Democrats would have investigated Whitewater.  Thus the partisan politics of the opposition party plays a key role as serving as a check against the unbridaled power of the party in office.
Using personal attacks to discredit a viewpoint is not, however, the same thing as using such attacks to question the qualifications of an elected representative.  The latter is one of the important tools that a voting electorate has in order to evaluate the fitness for office of a politician. Thus while a politician may express valid ideas that the voting electorate may agree with, his or her personal qualifications for office are fair game for criticism. However, there is much disagreement among voters as to what personal characteristics may render a politician unfit for office.  The very debate over this question thus represents an important part of the democratic process.
: There was no reason to remove these paragraphs from this article.  I will put the paragraphs back in.  soulpatch
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I'm concerned about these claims:
:It is doubtful that the Republicans would have investigated the Watergate scandal, or that Democrats would have investigated Whitewater.
These statements, whether or not they are true, amount to pure speculation. I don't think there are any hard facts at all that show us that Republicans would not have investigated Watergate. Of course, I would admit, Democrats would not likely have investigated Whitewater, but had Clinton been a Republican, there would not have been any investigation by the Republicans. The issue with Whitewater was that there was nothing to investigate. And that's a statement you might disagree with, but the point is that these statements do not serve as good examples. Simply put, whatever we might say about these statemetns amounts to speculation, not fact. This isn't an article about the merits of the Watergate or Whitewater investigation, so why implicate these issues? Acsenray 20:41, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  The role of politician's personalities in the democratic process 

message: I removed the following text from the article, as it is clearly impertinent to the article subject:
Partisan politics also plays an important role in this question. To a certain extent, the flip side of the use of discrediting tactics is the case of extreme party loyalty. Party loyalty may blind a partisan to the faults in the candidates or representatives of their own party. The partisan may ignore or deny the deficient qualities of the party's candidates, out of fear that to do so would somehow discredit their ideology or damage their party's electoral strength. An example of this are the Yellow dog Democrats, a colorful term describing voters who are said to vote for a Democrat even if the candidate were a yellow dog.
This also comes into play in the investigation of political scandals. Members of Congress are extremely reluctant to investigate scandals by a president of their own party. Thus the partisan politics of the opposition party plays a key role as serving as a check against the unbridled power of the party in office.
besides being digressive it also seems to be personal opinion.
--Calm 22:00, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  some irrelevant content moved here 

message: Added the globalize template to the article, as it is focused mainly on the American electoral system, while discrediting tactics are used everywhere in the world. Crisco 1492 (talk) 06:13, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Global Viewpoint

message: I removed the following for egregious non-NPOV: "Allegations made by Democrats during the 2008 American presidential Election that Republicans were racists, clearly swayed the election, but were later discredited as libel. Dred Scott v: Sanford proved that allegations of racism were party fabrications. Regardless the truth, many persons still hold with this view." -- Kyle Maxwell (talk) 04:09, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  US politics and NPOV 

message: also applies more generally eg in the workplace.--Penbat (talk) 17:03, 16 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too much emphasis on politics