Choose Wisely (Part One)

This blog is a place where opinions are freely shared.  Some discussions are political, some are personal.  Some discussions are whimsical, some sociological, and some philosophical.  Some defy categorization.  Overall, though, I actively try to prevent this blog from becoming just another political site.  There are too many of those already. 

Given the stark choices involving questions of character that are a part of upcoming elections, though, it seems to be time for an exception.  I feel strongly about a certain candidate, and am compelled to share some facts and observations about that candidate of which you may or may not be aware. 

I will not name the candidate who is the focus of these comments, because I have no desire to vilify anyone personally.  There is too much of that in the current political environment, and engendering antagonism is not the purpose here.  The purpose is to educate, motivate, and improve the electoral result.  The person who is the subject of these comments will be obvious to those who are politically informed.  To those who stay out of such things, I encourage you to read on to gain a sense of the moral miasma that is brewing…
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We Have to Talk about Him: The Pretender to Morality

There is a man who is the embodiment of the partisan divide that threatens the stability of our nation.  He is adored by a few, scorned by many, and noticed by nearly everyone.  In this era of media hype and no-bad-publicity, he stands alone as the most polarizing figure on the political scene today, save only perhaps the current incumbent.  This partisan is running for president and, for reasons I leave to historians and psychologists, is currently doing quite well in the polls.   His election would be a political catastrophe the magnitude of which this nation has not seen since the 19^th century.
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Is moral character important in a candidate for public office?  How important? 

I think most of us would agree that the positions of a candidate on the crucial issues of the day should be more the focus of the voters than his (or her) personal behavior.  Unless the personal behavior crosses a certain threshold of indiscretion, that is.  I suspect that none of us would endorse a murderer or a rapist for high office, regardless of political position.  So there is a baseline of character that must be present in any particular candidate for that candidate to be acceptable to the public and viable. 

Where do you draw the line?  Could you vote now for Bill Clinton, knowing that he lied to the American people and officials of a court?  Could you vote now for Richard Nixon, knowing that he covered up a massive scandal involving his reelection campaign?  How much can a candidate do – or get away with – and still be a legitimate candidate?
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Would you support a candidate who has stated repeatedly that he was not to blame for a divorce, that the divorce was undertaken only because his wife asked for it, even though the court documents show clearly that he was the one to file and his wife plainly requested that the judge not grant the divorce?

How would you feel about that candidate if you knew that former friends had broken ties with him over the way he treated his wife and children?  How would you feel about that candidate if you knew he was not well thought of in his home county because of his poor treatment of family?

Would you support a candidate who, according to a former friend and coworker, said of his first wife, “She's not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of a president”?  How about if he said that right before he divorced her?  Would your opinion be affected if you knew the wife had been an important part of helping her husband get elected to office in the first place?

Would you support that candidate if he had indeed subsequently divorced his wife, and married a younger woman less than a year later?  Would you continue to support that candidate if had you knew that at the time he had filed for divorce, he was already seeing the new woman?

How would your opinion be affected if you knew he had repeated the same series of events nearly two decades later, disposing of wife number two in favor of a younger aide who became wife number three?

Would you support a candidate who had refused to provide material support to his family, including dependent children, during a period of separation, until legally ordered to do so by a court?  Would it matter to you that their local church had to conduct a food drive for his dependents?

Does it matter whether the candidate’s espoused beliefs and behavior are not aligned?  More specifically, would it matter to you that this candidate was a church member and has courted the votes of evangelical Christians?

Would it matter to you that while in office, the candidate was reprimanded for ethical violations?
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Personally, I would have a problem supporting a person like that for office.  I don’t think he is the kind of person I want making decisions that affect others, much less millions of others.  In my opinion, a person’s moral makeup and integrity really do matter.

To be clear, divorce is not a barrier to high public office, nor should it be.  In some cases divorce is a reasonable thing to do.  There have been several good men and women who have served their fellow citizens after enduring the trauma of divorce.  But when the separation has been preceded by dating outside the marriage, when the candidate has made cruel remarks about his spouse based not on her behavior but on her appearance, when the candidate’s friends have broken with him over the way he treated his family, then we might want to think twice about supporting that candidate.

As a Christian, I do believe that redemption is possible.  Even given all this, if the candidate has made amends in his behavior, made peace to the best of his ability with all concerned, and moved forward over a period of time with compassion and integrity, then he might have learned moral character and courage, and might still be a decent choice for high political office.  People do change, and honest change can be not only an enabler of forgiveness, but a profound resource, a reason for moral courage and fortitude, and a key to magnificent new accomplishments.

But when the story the candidate tells does not match the legal record, when the experiences he has lived through seem to have failed to create any sense of empathy for others whom he comfortably criticizes, when his coworkers find it necessary to publicly censure him for unethical practices after the passage of many years, when the whole series of events surrounding the ugly divorce is repeated after a period of two decades, then it seems nothing has really changed.

This candidate’s political party has viable options as we approach the 2012 campaign for the White House.  The long-term frontrunner is a man of impeccable character and ability who, for some reason, seems to be unacceptable to the rank-and-file.  The only criticism they seem to be able to level at him (and they do so repeatedly) is that he changed his position on government involvement in health care.  I cannot understand how changing one’s mind about a public policy issue is on a par with all the meanness, two-faced hypocrisy, and deception exhibited by this rival who is on the verge of displacing him as the face of the party in the coming election.

Inexplicably, everyone talks about how intelligent this person is, this candidate of questionable morality.  I’m tired of that comment.  If he is so intelligent, he should get his own life in order before attempting to remake a nation.

If this man’s political party can find no one better to carry their standard forward than this a man of questionable ethics, lacking in personal loyalty, prone to rewrite the past to fit his current objectives…

If they can find no one better than a man who values career objectives more than people, who appears to have sacrificed the one he should have loved above all others to get ahead in his career, who did all that without the inconvenience of too much remorse…

If this man is their candidate, then that party is demonstrably morally bankrupt. 

But there are other options, and the story may yet find a happy ending.  That depends mostly on us.  Check back for Part Two.

[To be continued…]

Gryphem