Recognizing that two early Christian apostles, Paul and Peter, both made statements about the relationship between God's authority on earth and civil government, I am putting this statement forward as an expression of my right as an American to free speech and free expression. I believe that to exercise free speech includes the ability to have an opinion about the fitness of politicians for office which does not violate the guidance provided by either of those apostles and which is showing the respect for authority in accord with their position. See Romans 13:1-7, I Peter 2:13-17
Back in 1998, Dr. Adrian Rogers, the well-known pastor of the Bellevue Baptist Church of Memphis and a two-term president of the Southern Baptist Convention preached a sermon entitled, "Does Character Count?" He was addressing the issue of whether or not Christians should evaluate the moral and ethical character of candidates for any political office and make their decision to support them based on the evidence of that character, or lack thereof. His message wasn't specific with regard to a particular politician, but what was happening politically in America in 1998 gave many Southern Baptists and other Evangelical Christians a framework by which to publicly criticize then President Bill Clinton and justify their own criticism of him. And they did.
Anyone among the religious right back then who would have attempted to defend Clinton with the statement "We're electing a commander in chief, not a pastor in chief" would have been jeered, shunned and declared to be reprobate. With my own ears, on more than one occasion, I heard pastors and Christian leaders I once respected stated unequivocally that you could not be a Christian and vote for Bill Clinton, citing Dr. Rogers' message, which was printed in at least one of the Southern Baptist Convention's monthly publications, as evidence. I don't think Dr. Rogers actually went so far as to question the spiritual integrity of someone who voted for a particular candidate, but plenty of others did.
Times have changed, quickly. Dr. Rogers' message has disappeared from the archives of SBC Life, the magazine in which it was originally published. The support that the current President receives from the same quarter that was, at times, vicious and caustic in criticizing Bill Clinton would indicate that the kind of personal morality and ethical behavior which are indications of the kind of character about which Dr. Rogers wrote are relative, not absolute, based on the political affiliation of the individual candidate, not on acceptance of any Biblical standard. I would not speculate on whether Dr. Rogers would have walked his sermon back now, since he passed away before the current occupant of the White House came along but it is clear that many Evangelical Christians have either long since forgotten his words, or are deliberately ignoring and rejecting them since it no longer fits their political interests to demand that candidates for public office demonstrate a higher level of moral character than society deems acceptable.
Citing Dr. Rogers words, perhaps along with a few Bible verses, in judging and condemning President Clinton and any Christian who supported him, but now claiming to be voting for a commander-in-chief, not a pastor-in-chief to give Trump a pass would be sheer hypocrisy, wouldn't it? I accept Dr. Rogers' perspective on the matter and I agree that character counts. And that's the main reason why I cannot support the sitting President's bid for re-election.
Yes, Character Does Count: Making the Case Without Condemnation or Judgement
Donald Trump was a businessman, a celebrity, a television personality and a well-known "man of the world" (his own description) long before he decided to run for President. There's no hiding who he was or what he did, mainly because he celebrated his behavior and built his personal fame by reporting his escapades and ensuring that the entertainment and gossip media in particular were always aware of what he was up to. He bragged about his multiple affairs across three marriages, celebrated sexual deviancy and perversion and promoted it by packaging it into sexually oriented business enterprises, tabloid television and media and gaming operations most Evangelical Christians would call sinful vices. Clinton tried to hide his immorality, Trump promotes his to turn a profit.
And that's not making a judgement, that's simply an observation. Trump lives as he chooses and celebrates it, setting his own standards for morality and making his own determination of what is ethical. Those are choices he has made and as far as his faith and eternal destiny are concerned, that's between him and God. But as an American citizen, I have higher moral and ethical expectations of those whom I vote for to serve in political office. Personally, I don't consider what he does either entertaining or amusing and to engage in it and then sell it to the public for a profit is an indication of moral and ethical weakness. It creates a lack of respect that disables the kind of leadership capability necessary to serve in public office, particularly the Presidency. And Trump has proven his lack of character to be a major obstacle to his ability to exercise any kind of effective leadership.
Dr. Rogers made a case widely accepted by Christians back in 1998 that character in the person of the President of the United States matters. If I was critical of Bill Clinton's character in office, and I certainly was, then I can't support Trump for exactly the same reason.
The Most Corrupt Administration in American History
The United States, in spite of the lofty idealism that created it, has had to endure political corruption just like everywhere else in the world, to a greater or lesser degree depending on the perspective used to look at it. But no presidential administration has had the kind of hard evidence of corruption brought against it like the Trump Administration. And while his supporters blithely dismiss virtually all of it as politically motivated, the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of evidence that has been turned up in investigations has come not from Democrats and his political enemies, but from his friends, associates, appointees and former supporters!
Pay attention. Do some reading and some research. There's a volume of evidence, over 400 written pages of it, which outline corruption among Trump and his first presidential campaign that will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up in horror. It's called The Mueller Report. Don't even think about engaging in a discussion of Trump's corruption without having read through that volume. For over two years, an investigation did impeccable research mostly into Russian interference in the election on Trump's behalf and established that it did indeed occur, beyond any shadow of doubt. It also established, through the testimony of people who were mostly Trump's business and political associates, that he tried to cover it up and attempted to criminally derail the investigation.
The investigation succeeded in gathering enough evidence to gain multiple felony convictions or confessions and plea deals from eight of Trump's closes associates. Testimony came from a litany of well-known and well-respected Republicans and American military leaders.
The same can be said for the investigation into the Ukrainian connection. The information that came out of the investigations did not come from Democrats and political enemies of Trump, it came from people who were working inside his administration, many of them who were given direct orders by the President to do things that were illegal and which they were forced to do because they were following orders and had their livelihood threatened if they didn't.
The list of Republicans who have provided massive amounts of information about mind-boggling corruption in the White House under Trump reads like a who's who of loyal Republican party liners. General John Kelly, former White House Chief of Staff under Trump. General James "Mad Dog" Mattis, former Secretary of Defense. John Bolton, Trump's national security advisor. Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the former senator from Alabama. Reince Priebus, another former White House chief of staff. Anthony Scaramucci, a Trump insider and business associate who served the shortest term as White House communications advisor in history. That doesn't count those who had to have the information dragged out of them by threats of indictment.
The mother lode of evidence of Trump corruption came from his own attorney, his "fixer," Michael Cohen. If you're concerned about corruption in politics, why haven't you asked the question as to why a President needs a "fixer" anyway? What Republican would tolerate a Democratic President having an attorney who publicly acted on his behalf as a "fixer"? Donald Trump was already a con artist and a crook with quite a reputation for using his money to get out of debt and problems long before he became President. You've deceived yourself if you thought he'd be different in office.
I have multiple references to cite here supporting my contentions as facts, noting that the scope, breadth and depth of corruption in the Trump administration is massive, documented and largely ignored by his supporters. The impeachment got it right. Who knows him better than his former friends, business associates and political appointees? They're the ones who have uncovered and documented his corruption.
Can wicked rulers be allied with you, those who contrive mischief by statute? Psalm 94:20
Incompetence in Office
There is nothing that illustrates Trump's lack of fitness and ability to lead this country more than his handling of the Coronavirus pandemic. He is incapable of listening to advice or responding to crisis. His reaction, when he is wrong, is to lash out, blame everyone else but his own inept incompetence for the mistakes, fire people and then make false claims to try to prove to everyone that he was always right and claim that political opposition is engaged in a conspiracy against him.
The dereliction of duty and the gross negligence and incompetence demonstrated by Trump's failure to handle this pandemic is his most egregious failure in office, and that's saying something in an administration that has been profoundly" Hoover-esque" in its indifference and lack of accomplishment. From his initial declaration that it was a "hoax" perpetrated against him to his publicly stating that he takes "no responsibility" for the failures of his administration to do anything but whine about his own CDC officials to his attempts to get political gain out of his criticism of the governors of states that did step up and show leadership his handling of this crisis has been inexcusably incompetent. If it had indeed been a war against a foreign adversary, as he suggested it was, by now we would have been defeated and occupied by the enemy.
And what if we did become involved in a war, which is a heightened possibility with the kind of unstable, impulsive reactions exhibited by this President? That possibility alone is enough to make sure he doesn't get a second term in office.
The states that have managed their peak and are returning to normal are those same ones that Trump criticized when their governors and legislatures decided to take leadership and do something about it when he wouldn't. All but a few of the others have seen how it works and are following the lead of governors like Andrew Cuomo, Gretchen Whitmer and J. D. Pritzger, among others, whose states are seeing businesses open, jobs return and the virus managed and controlled, diminishing in spread. Even in hard hit California, it's not as bad as it has been in places like Arizona, Florida and Texas, and the people there know it.
Aside from the viral pandemic, a stream of largely worthless and unenforceable executive orders is the sum total of this administration's achievements. That, along with the exodus of more than a hundred of its own appointees to positions in cabinet agencies and the isolation of the United States from its most loyal military and economic allies is its only legacy.
Policy Decisions
From my perspective, I've already made my case for not voting for Trump. To keep it brief, I'll just touch on a few of the things Trump has bragged about doing but has failed to achieve.
1. It's been four years, two with a Republican majority Congress, but we've seen no proposal, not even the broadest outline for the health care plan that Trump claimed would be the best thing we've ever seen. Nothing. Nada. All he's done is attempt to sabotage and starve the existing Affordable Care Act plans which has had the effect of insurance premiums doubling, mostly on the working class people who supported his election in 2016.
2. His tax cuts turned out to be exactly what his critics said it would be, money in his own pocket and those of his billionaire buddies, but it amounted to less than a token for some of the middle class, an average of less than $7.00 a year for most, and turned out to be an actual increase for hourly wage earners and small businesses. Taking away the exemption, even with standard deduction doubled, actually increased taxes for 60% of Americans who work for a living.
3. No real progress has been made in the direction of a "pro-life" perspective on abortion. It won't be, either, as long as Christians allow politicians to use it as a political football like Trump does instead of actually caring about it and holding genuine convictions about it. Trump's priority in judicial appointments has been to ensure that those he places on the bench believe that a sitting president is immune from prosecution and that's resulted in the appointment of two Supreme Court justices who declared in front of the US Senate that they believe Roe v. Wade is the "settled law of the land."
Abortion won't be reduced or ended in this country legislatively, and a candidate's position on the matter won't change that. The church has lost a lot of ground spending its time and resources and aligning itself with politicians who don't produce when it could have been influencing, educating, assisting with alternatives and basically preventing abortion by bringing people to Christ which is its mission and purpose. It has made virtually no progress on this issue for its political alignment and involvement and monetary investment going all the way back to the Reagan administration.
Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who cannot save. When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing. Psalm 146:3-4
In Conclusion
Whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech. I Peter 3:10
Trump appears to have a measure of contempt for the intelligence of his own base. Recently, a Trump television ad appeared, showing pictures of burning buildings, of riots that have edged in front of some protests and made note of the increase in social unrest and violence that has occurred in the past weeks since the George Floyd murder in Minneapolis. The ad claims that if Biden is elected, protests, riots, looting, arson and social unrest will be the result. But the fact of the matter is that we already have violence, social unrest, rioting and looting and it is occurring under Trump's presidency, not Biden's. In fact, all of those scenes that are playing in those ads are visual pictures of the America that has resulted from four years of the Trump presidency. The social unrest is a response to his failed leadership, not Joe Biden's. It's not a vision of what the future will look like, it is photographic evidence of what is happening now.
I don't think I could cast a ballot for anyone running for public office who demonstrates that kind of contempt for my intelligence.
Somewhere in the blend of Evangelical Christian doctrine and theology is an explanation for why so many conservative Christians seem willing to follow a politician whose character and behavior is so much at odds with what they claim to believe, simply because he's willing to pick up an issue like abortion and use it as a political football. Most Evangelical Christian churches and denominations see themselves as a restoration of a "true church of Christ" which was lost somewhere in human history between the first century and the founding of America.
Growing up in an Evangelical church connected to an Evangelical denomination, I heard many, many sermons from many, many pulpits claiming doctrinal superiority to traditional Christian expressions like the Catholics and Orthodox, and even over many of the mainline Protestants. Blend that kind of belief in your own superiority and in the righteousness of your own faith with futurist eschatology and partisan politics and it at least explains the inconsistency of placing a higher value on the President's lip service to a single issue than on any consideration of his character based on moral and ethical standards found in the Bible. It does not, however, justify the demonization of the opposition.
He must turn from evil and do good; he must seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. I Peter 3:11-12
I can't ignore Trump's character. And if I acknowledge that character is, as these words of scripture indicate, important in determining how I as a Christian cast my ballot, then I cannot vote for Trump, nor can I support any politician who has helped enable him.