Promises to bring troops home by Christmas fail because the lack of character impedes practical accomplishments.
My earliest political memories are about then-President Bill Clinton and the behavior that led to his impeachment. I was too young to understand what, exactly, he was accused of doing. But those specifics weren’t necessary for me to grasp the larger critique from my family and others in our mostly conservative and evangelical community: Character counts, and Clinton is a man of bad character.
“We are aware that certain moral qualities are central to the survival of our political system,” said a representative 1998 statement endorsed by theologians Stanley Hauerwas, John Piper, and many others affiliated with evangelical universities and seminaries. “We reject the premise that violations of these ethical standards should be excused,” the statement continued, “so long as a leader remains loyal to a particular political agenda and the nation is blessed by a strong economy.”
Of course, political loyalties aren’t guaranteed. The character critique reasoned that if a president can’t stay faithful to his wife, how will he be faithful to his voters? The thing about bad character is that its effects aren’t isolated to one arena of life (1 Cor. 5:6–8; Mark 7:17–23). However good a candidate’s policy pledges may sound, we should be wary of her ability to stay true to those words if she does not stay true to the ethics by which she professes to live.
I’ve revisited some of that 1990s thinking on the importance of character in politics repeatedly over the past few years, and I’m reminded of it again as President Trump’s term comes to a close while one of his most important and oft-repeated promises—to end “endless wars,” chiefly ...
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