Jon Ralston on Machiavellian politics in Nevada

Friday, Sept. 15, 2006 | 7:32 a.m.

Even during his princely musings, Niccolo Machiavelli could not have conceived of the 21st century means being used to justify political ends.

Whatever line ever existed between right and wrong, good and evil - and I have written before about how tactics were much worse in previous centuries - has disappeared. It's not that nothing is sacred but that everything is fair game.

In a world where bloggers can push rumors into the pliable MSM (mainstream media), where partisans can induce news organizations to publish their pap, and where the personal is the political, it's more Cole Porter then Machiavelli. Indeed, anything goes.

As a student of this stuff for two decades, I appreciate a good, clean hit - even a slightly dirty one - as much as anyone. Moral outrage I reserve for important stuff such as ethnic cleansing or child abuse.

I admire qualities Machiavelli also fancied - the relentless pursuit of power, spiced with a dash of ruthlessness. But when people brandish Machiavelli's most famous misquote - he never said, "The ends justify the means" - they tend to forget that he also argued 500 years ago that character matters, although he argued that the appearance of character in the face of wrongdoing was paramount.

These thoughts come to mind as I survey the latest stratagems playing out in Campaign '06 here in the little principality known as Nevada. In a couple of races, one for Congress and another for Clark County Commission, Machiavellian tactics are on display. Each party is deserving of blame or, depending on your perspective, credit.

Let's take the case of County Commissioner Lynette Boggs McDonald's residency, now the subject of a lawsuit filed by the concerned citizens of the Culinary and police unions.

In one sense, I nod approvingly at this maneuver, especially because some of the evidence seems to be compelling.

The unions see Boggs McDonald as an enemy worth dispatching, so they aim to do just that by using the courts to try to get her thrown off the ballot. And some might see this as karmic justice for a campaigner such as Boggs McDonald whose default position is labeled "scorched earth" and who apparently felt no compunction in bringing ex-Assemblyman David Goldwater to his end by any means available, including airing an old and arguably irrelevant mug shot.

On the other hand, hiring a private eye to spy on someone to see where they are living - and the surveillance is ongoing - may strike some as too invasive. Boggs McDonald has young children, and how might they be affected by seeing a man with a camera stalking their mother?

Does the end - ousting someone the cops and the Culinary see as an enemy - justify the means - employing methods that if turned on some of their allies in the elected elite would depose them? And, yet, if Boggs McDonald has violated residency laws, how else do you prove it?

In the congressional race, the Republicans have filed a complaint about Democrat Tessa Hafen's residency, questioning whether she legally voted in Nevada while she was an aide to Sen. Harry Reid.

This is so ludicrous on its face - so many staffers and members of the Gang of 535 keep their home-state voting privileges while working on the Hill - that it's tempting to simply dismiss it. But the hypocrisy here is redolent and impossible to ignore - how many GOP staffers in Sen. John Ensign's office or those of Hafen's opponent, Rep. Jon Porter, or the elected officials themselves could withstand similar scrutiny?

And the implication is insidious - she's not a real Nevadan, she's one of those D.C. insiders. As opposed to Porter, I suppose.

The Democrats, though, would do well to contain their outrage at this tactic because it was Hafen's ex-boss, Sen. Harry Reid, who already crossed the line by raising questions about what he called Porter's less-than-impeccable personal life. This is a smear and hardly relevant.

The bad news is that it is only September and almost eight weeks remain in the campaign season. The end is nowhere in sight, so the means surely will only get worse.