Character Still Matters–even if you wish it didn’t
CPhillipsMay 16, 2018
It has been many years now since the Evangelical movement first raised the cry of “Character matters!” For many of us today, these cries are a part of our living memory. Two generations of evangelical children (at least) have now been raised on that motto. We heard it from the pulpits, from political leaders, and in scores of books. From our nurseries onward, we cut our moral teeth on this message with Adventures in Odyssey. We watched as Bill Clinton was assailed (justly) from the moral high ground for his lack of character and we listened as pundit-prophets trumpeted his “predictable” failure of judgment. After all, “character matters” and Clinton’s lack of character brought on his fall.
And then, something happened. In 2016 this same movement and these same leaders (or their descendants)* told us we should forget all that, completely reverse moral course, and vote for a man whose “character” was clearly as fake as his tan. Worse, we were told that if you applied the “character matters” mantra to the preferred Republican candidates, we were being “pharisees” and “legalists.” Those of us who had taken (and still take) the idea that “character matters” seriously stood aghast. We had just watched our leaders, the very people who had taught us to stand up for what’s right, compromise their witness and impeach their own character. Sadly, that is only the beginning of the troubles. There is a very strong probability that history will show these very leaders have played an active role in setting the Left up for what is shaping up to be a resounding political victory the likes of which would otherwise have never been possible.
A deeper problem contributing to the fall before us is simple: Americans no longer play chess. Instead, we twiddle away at our little reactionary games where simplistic actions produce immediate and painfully basic consequences. If I throw this bird at those pigs, I break things. The average person no longer develops the ability to think ahead and to anticipate an intelligent opponent’s moves. Instead, we react to what’s in front of us–that status update, that political news story, that tweet, etc. etc. We no longer see patterns and, even if we did, we certainly can’t understand how they show us what’s coming. This failure to project forward is what allows people the luxury of thinking that voting for Trump was a good idea–even as the “lesser” of two evils.
When conservatives (particularly evangelicals) put their faith in Trump, they were placing it in a man of completely untrustworthy character. Trump’s list of proven moral outrages, not to mention the very long list of probable allegations, reads like the rap sheet of a 1980s TV villain. As one of our own Five Pilgrims put it, “He actually seems to have almost no self-discipline at all and no integrity. He is possibly the most dishonest man ever to hold the office of president, and that really is saying something.” It is highly doubtful that, prior to the time he began spinning his web of lies around the evangelical movement, most intelligent Christians would have trusted Trump enough to buy a used car from him, let alone asked him to run the country. This makes sense to anyone familiar with evangelicalism and its beliefs on the face of it–“character matters.” Whether Trump is a Christian or not is beside the point–he has repeatedly proven that he cannot be trusted on any level. Not as a businessman, not as a personal friend, and now not as a politician.
This is important on so many levels, beginning with a very practical one. The modern presidency is a form of warfare carried on by other means. Indeed, this is one reason Trump supporters gave for pushing Trump as their candidate. He would be a “fighter.” But in selling out their long-held pledge that “character matters”, they sent a warrior into the fray with not just one skeleton in his closet but in all likelihood a whole warehouse full of them, all rattling to be loosed from their chains. Worse, the other half of the country is expending millions of dollars and thousands of man hours to uncover just one of those skeletons. (And one is all it takes, if it is the right one.) You can rest assured that someone willuncover probable evidence of criminal wrongdoing on Trump’s part because unless you are willfully blind, you yourself know that it is there. This means that the chances of Trump being impeached for something he actually did are unacceptably high in any practical strategic estimation–even of we leave morals to the side.
Worse, the skeletons seem to be getting closer and closer to being released into the wild with each passing day. Special Prosecutor Robert Muller raided the offices of Trump’s lawyer, resulting in even the Trump mouthpiece Fox News reporting that some analysts think what he’s finding could be “Watergate level stuff.” Apparently, even his public defenders are ready to throw him under the impeachment bus. Rudy Guiliani, brought on to Trump’s defense team, has instead revealed the president as involved in another bald-faced lie to the American people– this one over who paid off Stormy Daniels. Trump sycophants like Sean Hannity, who has himself mortgaged all semblance of journalistic and personal integrity to purchase passage as freight on the Trump Train, are increasingly sounding completely unhinged in their desperation to defend the indefensible. Frankly, I pity them. What can you do but lie or spin asinine conspiracy theories when the man you’re defending is not only probably guilty as charged, but you’re stuck defending him because you should have known better than to link yourself to him from the very beginning?
As a result, Trump’s election will very possibly be viewed in hindsight as a far worse defeat for conservatives than anything Hillary could have hoped to accomplish. The Right is divided and faltering. Far from proving that the Evangelical movement is a powerful, independent force to which the Republicans must bow, men like Falwell, Jr. have shown that, given the right bribes, threats, or incentives, they will back any moral reprobate running for Republican office. Their simpering and groveling is as embarrassing to watch as it is painful.
The fact is that evangelicalism has lost the moral high ground previous generations worked so hard to try and claim. In doing so, it has played into the hands of its critics, who have long maintained Christians as simplistic hypocrites. The Left is energized (though still divided, for now). The moderates have been shamed and blamed for Hillary’s loss, resulting in the democrats adopting a far more radical agenda than before. Both Left and Right expect the congressional midterms to decimate the Republicans in congress. A number of republicans see what’s coming and they are pre-emptively leaving Washington. As Republican Charlie Dent put it, “Big wave coming–get off the beach.” If we add in the very distinct possibility that Trump will be legitimately impeached, we are liable to find that the MAGA “conservative resurgence” is, in fact, a resounding leftist victory, one from which neither the Republican Party nor the traditional evangelical movement may ever recover.
A victory of this scale and magnitude would not have been possible, had Hillary won**, as bad as that would have been. This victory, if it plays out, the Left owes to Donald Trump and his evangelical supporters who willfully ignored their own advice to choose convenient policy over proven principle.
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*Shall we use names? Jerry Falwell, Jr., Dr. James Dobson, Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress, Sean Hannity, Mike Huckabee, Laura Ingram, Anne Coulter, etc. etc.
**If there’s interest, I’ll be glad to develop my thinking on the Hillary “what if” further in a future post.
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