Winning the Office but Losing Our Soul
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If the tongue is a small spark, some presidents are closet pyromaniacs.
President Lincoln penned “hot letters.” With a cabinet likened to a team of rivals, he was provided ample opportunities to become frustrated. However, he would compose all of his anger in a note, “put it aside until his emotions cooled down,” and then write: “Never sent, never signed.”
President Truman, greatly worried about another Great Depression after WWII, wanted low-interest rates for the American consumer despite the lack of support from his team. After a contentious meeting, Truman wanted to express his frustration toward the U.S. Treasurer. In an unsent letter, he noted, “I don’t think that the financial advisor of God Himself would be able to understand what the financial position of the Government of the United States is, by reading your statement.”
But President Trump is different; according to his own understanding, he’s “modern-day presidential.” He’s come out of the pyro closet playing with matches when he calls people names, pours gasoline on the fire when he denigrates others on the basis of their looks, and haphazardly ignites fireworks when he openly speculates about conspiracies.
Smokey the Bear told us that only “you can prevent forest fires,” and it appears President Trump views that less as a warning and more as an invitation.
No topic is off-limits. During the 2016 presidential campaign, he speculated that Megyn Kelly was supposedly bleeding from “you know where” at a Republican debate. He engaged in “locker room talk” that was less of a pep-talk and more like bad advice from a perverted friend. And recently (at least for now), he accused Joe Scarborough of committing murder and a Catholic peace activist of being an Antifa provocateur.
Timothy Klausutis, the husband of the late Lori Klausutis, a former congressional aide to Joe Scarborough, asked Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to take down Trump's tweets baselessly accusing the MSNBC host of murdering her. “Please delete these tweets,” Klausutis wrote. “I’m asking you to intervene in this instance because the president of the United States has taken something that does not belong to him — the memory of my dead wife — and perverted it for perceived political gain.”
Then there was Martin Gugino. The 75-year-old Catholic peace activist was shoved to the ground by Buffalo, New York police during a protest outside City Hall. Video captured the moment, including Gugino bleeding from his ear while unconscious. In a tweet, President Trump speculated he fell harder than he was pushed and that it could be a set up.
President Trump’s language epitomizes “defining deviancy down,” a term popularized by the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. This entails behavior that once was deviant (whether by law or social more) and has been redefined as acceptable when our correcting mechanisms are overloaded.
And we are overloaded – to say the least.
We used to rarely hear from presidents. President Coolidge once sat beside Dorothy Parker at a dinner party where she shared with Silent Cal that she had bet a friend that she could make him say more than three words. He replied: “You lose.”
George Will, in his book The Conservative Sensibility, highlights how many times George Washington addressed the larger public; he averaged just three popular speeches a year, John Adams averaged one, and Thomas Jefferson averaged five. Prior to Theodore Roosevelt, the 24 presidents gave approximately 1,000 speeches, with more than half by three presidents (Hayes, Harrison, and McKinley). As of this writing, President Trump has averaged more than 10 tweets a day since he took office.
Our modern-day president burns down the norms, and unfortunately, too many either rationalize his misbehavior, view criticism as support for the other party, or overlook his crass language because it’s “baked into the cake.”
Regarding the rationalization of his behavior, Lord Acton famously noted that absolute power corrupts absolutely. However, the corrupting force of power was not upon the power-holder but upon those in close proximity to him. Desiring to be in the good graces of the king, they refuse to tell him he has no clothes. Instead of calling the leader out, they forsake their conscience to either build him up or overlook his indiscretions. With President Trump, these individuals hold their tongue to the detriment of their public witness.
Negative partisanship largely explains how criticism of your party is now seen as support for the other party. Over the past 20 years, scientists have pointed to negative partisanship as a driving force in the political arena. Research has shown that Americans are increasingly voting against the opposing party more than they are voting for their own party. In today’s political arena, dislike for the opposing party trumps affinity for your own: when you voice criticism of the leader of your party, you have turned into a Diet Benedict Arnold. Essentially, the kisses from the enemy are more desired than the arrows from a friend, contrary to the Scriptures (Pro. 27:6).
This has given way to a similar idea that supporting a third-party candidate is wasting your vote. But a Christian vote is never a wasted vote. In the Scriptures, it is impossible to please God without faith, and acts done in faith are never done in vain (1 Cor. 15:58, Heb. 11:6). As Christians, the biblical narrative trumps the political narrative. We are not players in a political narrative but servants to the Jesus of the biblical narrative. As Martin Luther King noted, we are not servants of the state but the conscience of the state.
And then there is the “baked into the cake” argument. We knew what we were getting—a man who has never asked for forgiveness—so there is no need to continue to call out behavior we previously rebuked. This point is often accompanied by the line that we weren’t electing a pastor-in-chief, but a commander-in-chief. However, as Christians, we know that character counts (Pro. 14:34).
The ends don’t always justify the means—regardless of how many judges are appointed. How you articulate the truth is just as important as communicating the truth. This short-sighted bet discounts the sovereignty of God and his mysterious ways. He is still on His throne—regardless of who is in the Oval Office. He will still accomplish His plans—whether our preferred candidate is in power or not. What does it profit a man for his preferred party to gain the presidency but lose their soul?
James Davison Hunter notes that character is a conviction of truth with an abiding, authoritative presence in one’s life, reinforced by habits. For Hunter, character is not the absence of fault but the identification of fault in an effort to improve on it. Character does not require someone to be perfect, but it does require that person to be in a community whereby imperfection is identified and correction is attempted.
Character may not be a requisite for office, but it should be considered when voting for someone vying for the office. President Adams once declared: “If you can’t control your tongue, you should sit at the children’s table.”
The biblical narrative is replete with stories about how a perfect God uses imperfect people to accomplish his purposes—regardless of which table they are sitting at. God is not bound to the character of people, nor limited by their morality. But the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the earth to give strong support (2 Chronicles 16:9).
Some need to support President Trump by praying for him (1. Tim. 2:1-2). This is not advice to be considered but a command to be heeded. Others need to support him by expressing their disapproval of his antics. President Trump lacks self-control, which ironically enough is likened to a city without walls in the Scriptures (Pro. 25:28). His hot takes may win him favor among his base, but they also have the potential to burn up any chances he has of winning reelection.
