A story appeared today on Voice of America that shows how the issue of integrity has become so crucial today that U.S. presidential candidates are now using commercial marketing tactics in their campaigns to deliberately position themselves as being the candidate with the most integrity. Consider the following excerpt (I added the bold for emphasis):

In the most recent segment of a series called "How America Elects," Voice of America's Jeffrey Young looks at how campaigns mold and package their candidates for their White House bid. U.S. presidential candidates market to the public their personal integrity and their policy positions, much the same as selling a consumer product such as pizza or a car. It's political marketing.

What Young is pointing out is that big-time marketing tactics are now being used to 'package' a candidate's integrity in order to appeal to the public. The fact that presidential candidates are now going to these lengths shows without a doubt that the issue of integrity has dramatically risen in importance. Integrity has become one of the top voting considerations in this year's elections.

This means that voters need to know more about how to evaluate candidate integrity than ever before. This is the best way for the American public to avoid being duped by efforts to package or manufacture a candidate as the one with the most integrity.

The New IQ: How Integrity Intelligence Serves You, Your Relationships and Our World, offers clear and complete information about what integrity actually is -- and what it isn't. It provides everyone from everyday people to international leaders a complete road map for upgrading not only political integrity but personal, relationship, societal and leadership integrity as well. The New IQ is a practical book not a philosophical one, illuminating the cutting edge in common sense regarding the topic of integrity and character development.

Unless voters take bold steps to become far more savvy about what integrity actually is, they will find it increasingly difficult to separate political marketing spin about integrity as the presidential campaign continues to unfold between now and the November elections. The New IQ can help voters do this in ways that no other book about integrity has ever done, as evidenced by the acclaim this book has received from leaders across many fields from business to international relations to education to psychology. (To read what people are saying about The New IQ, click HERE.)

A particularly revealing way to discover how much you don't know about a candidate's integrity is the Politician Integrity Rating Tool (PIRT). The automatic scoring version of this tool was just launched on www.TheNewIQ.com. To rate the ten key dimensions of politician integrity regarding the major presidential candidates, click HERE.

To read the Voice of America article in full, click HERE.