Why Did Evangelicals Flock to Trump? Existential Fear

“Counterintuitively, the fact that Trump is bellicose, bombastic, insulting, and lives according to a code at odds with evangelicals’ beliefs actually made him more attractive as an ally, not less. ‘Evangelical nice’ is a real thing …That made evangelicals unlikely to see one of their own as capable of defeating an existential threat.” - The Bulwark

Discussion

I read this article today, and it gives an interesting comparison between Trump and Truman. Hanson is a frequent commentator on Television and Radio opinion programs. I heard Hanson interviewed recently on the Dennis Prager and Hugh Hewitt radio programs, and I found him insightful.

“In some sense, Donald Trump was replaying the role of the unpopular tenure of loudmouth Democrat Harry Truman (president, 1945–53). “Give ’em Hell” Harry came into office following the death of Franklin Roosevelt. He miraculously won the 1948 election against all expert opinion and polls. Truman left office in January 1953 widely hated. Indeed, his final approval ratings (32 percent) were the lowest of any departing president, except for those of Richard Nixon.

The outsider Truman had always been immersed in scandal, owing to his deep ties to the corrupt Kansas City political machine, and Truman’s patron, the unsavory boss Tom Pendergast. When the novice Vice President Truman took office after Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, he knew little about the grand strategy of World War II – and nothing about the ongoing atomic bomb project. For the next seven-plus years, Truman shocked – and successfully led – the country.

Over the objections of many in his cabinet, Truman ignored critics and ordered the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan to end the war. Against the advice of most of the State Department, he recognized the new state of Israel. He offended Roosevelt holdovers by breaking with wartime ally the Soviet Union and chartering the foundations of Cold War communist containment. Many in the Pentagon opposed his racial integration of the armed forces. National security advisors counseled against sending troops to save South Korea.

Liberals opposed fellow Democrat Truman’s creation of the Central Intelligence Agency. Truman was widely loathed for firing controversial five-star general and American hero Douglas MacArthur. There were often widespread calls in the press for Truman to resign. Impeachment was often mentioned. Truman, in short, did things other presidents had not dared to do.

Truman occasionally swore. He had nightly drinks. He played poker with cronies. And he shocked aides and the public with his vulgarity and crass attacks on political enemies. Truman cheaply compared 1948 presidential opponent Thomas Dewey to Hitler, and attacked him as a supposed pawn of bigots and war profiteers. Truman hyperbolically claimed a Republican victory in 1948 would threaten America’s very liberty.

In the pre-Twitter age, Truman could never keep his mouth shut: “My choice early in life was either to be a piano-player in a w****house or a politician. And to tell the truth, there’s hardly any difference.” When a reviewer for the Washington Post trashed Truman’s daughter’s concert performance, Truman threatened him with physical violence. “It seems to me that you are a frustrated old man who wishes he could have been successful,” Truman wrote in a letter to critic Paul Hume. “Someday I hope to meet you. When that happens, you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!” Such outbursts were Trumpian to the core.

Truman trashed national icons, in a way that often exceeded Trump’s smears. He deprecated the military leaders who had just won World War II. He was childishly vulgar in his dismissal of MacArthur: “I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a b**** although he was, but that’s not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.” The latter was an astounding charge in an age of Bradley, Eisenhower, LeMay, Patton, and Ridgway, and admirals such as Halsey, King, Nimitz, and Spruance.

It took a half-century for historians to concede that the mercurial and often adolescent Truman had solid accomplishments, especially in foreign affairs – in part because Truman conveyed a sense that he did not much care for staying in Washington, a city in which he was not invested, did not like, and would quickly leave at the end of his tenure. Even Truman’s crassness eventually was appreciated as integral to his image of a “plain speaking” and “the Buck Stops Here” decisive leader.

Had Truman access to Twitter, or had he a Kansas City federal prosecutor to hound him for his checkered past, he could have self-destructed in a flurry of ad hominem electronic outbursts. Yet Truman proved largely successful because of what he did, and in spite of what he said.

It is (perhaps regrettably) not evident that personal sins equate to failed presidencies. Character lapses are certainly not to be encouraged, but in the Machiavellian landscape of global politics they do not preclude wise leadership either.

Values are absolute and transcend time and place. But the notion of public versus personal, and private sin versus public guilt, changes constantly. In the past, pragmatism guided us about sin and politicians: a man’s demons were his own unless they reached a point of impairing his public career or shaming his office in the eyes of the public. Two nightly martinis at home were okay. Four to five at a restaurant would inevitably become a matter of public concern.

“Damn” in public was tolerated within limits, the F-word never was. Visiting a mistress was regrettable. But, then, who knew the possible private incompatibility or unhappiness within anyone’s marriage? In contrast, sexually cavorting in the Oval Office was inexcusable. Private adultery was a matter of guilt to be judged by God. Sex in the workplace was shameful and to be condemned by the living.

One of the great ironies of our age is that we have somehow managed to become far more sanctimonious than previous generations – and yet far more immoral by traditional standards as well. We can obsess over an unartful presidential comment, but snore through the systematic destruction of the manufacturing basis of an entire state or ignore warlike violence on the streets of Chicago.

Trump’s presidency is too brief to yet be judged absolutely. His personal foibles are too embedded within current political and media hatred to be assessed dispassionately. Too many assessments too quickly have been made about Trump, without much historical context and usually with too much passion.

Neither is it yet clear that Trump is a bad man or a good president, or vice versa, or neither or both. But if the past is sometimes a guide to the present, Trump in theory certainly could become a more effective president than would have been his likely more circumspect Republican primary rivals, while perhaps demonstrating that he is far more uncouth. The paradox again raises the question, when any one man can change the lives of 330 million, what exactly is presidential morality after all – private and personal sins, or the transgressions that affect millions of lives for the worse?”

Adapted excerpt from “The Case for Trump” by Victor Davis Hanson. Copyright © 2019. Available from Basic Books, an imprint of Perseus Books, a division of PBG Publishing, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow in military history at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a professor emeritus of classics at California State University, Fresno. He is the author of more than two dozen books, ranging in topics from ancient Greece to modern America, most recently The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won. He lives in Selma, California.

Pastor Mike Harding

I don’t know what the author of that Sovereign Nations article is reading, but some of what we say isn’t really hard to understand. In the second paragraph, he writes:

For almost three years, NeverTrump evangelicals have listed Trump’s moral failures as reasons not to vote or support him. They’ve unfortunately continued to rely on dated and imprecise mantras, such as “Christians should not vote for an immoral man.” We’ve pointed out the folly and absurdity of this claim, and I haven’t seen a substantive response. (I encourage you to read the article to put much of this article in perspective). While no one could reasonably affirm that a candidate’s morality is utterly irrelevant to a principled voting decision, the complexity and various forms of immorality in life and the myriad ways that immorality in leaders interacts with existing political and social institutions demands more than a simple principle or mantra for our voting theory. Our time cries out for a robust Christian theory of voting. NeverTrump evangelicals however have given us little beyond lists of Trump’s moral errors lined up against a set of slogans or mere assertions of disparate principles or propositions.

I agree that we need a robust Christian theory of voting. I’m not sure, however, why the argument for Never Trump is ‘dated’ or ‘imprecise’. The Never Trump position - which I have held for almost 3 years now is this: “From the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45). I don’t care what anyone says, the morality that President Trump holds affects all of his decision making, political or not. I’m not going to argue that Trump has done some good things as President - he has. I am arguing that he doesn’t have the kind of moral character that I would want in someone entrusted with leading the nation, and I’ve been making that argument since the primaries started. This guy can’t respect the sanctity of his marriage and can’t keep his hands off of women when he is married, and I should trust him with more authority and power? I’ll take a hard pass on that any day, and I think that outside of the politicial realm, we’d all agree on it.

I don’t understand why Never Trump is difficult for so many to grasp. If you don’t trust someone to do the right thing, you don’t give them more power, you give them less. If people want to vote Trump because they value political power and SCOTUS justices more than they value the character of the person making that decision, then that’s on them. I can’t do that and I won’t do that. So in 2020 I’ll write in a candidate, or vote for Schultz or whoever, but it won’t be Trump.

"Our task today is to tell people — who no longer know what sin is...no longer see themselves as sinners, and no longer have room for these categories — that Christ died for sins of which they do not think they’re guilty." - David Wells

Is it possible that some are confusing Trump the person with Trump the President? As a person he is despicable but many see his job as President being acceptable.

I asked a friend why he voted for Trump and he said something to the effect “I want someone who will help the economy and hopefully nominate conservative judges. I’m not choosing someone to marry my daughter.”

"Some things are of that nature as to make one's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache." John Bunyan

[Jay]

I don’t understand why Never Trump is difficult for so many to grasp. If you don’t trust someone to do the right thing, you don’t give them more power, you give them less.

It’s not hard to grasp. I just don’t (completely) agree.

What the Never Trump types find difficult to grasp (or don’t agree with) is what many of the rest of us are thinking which is this: If you don’t trust someone to do the right thing, you don’t give them more power, you give them less, UNLESS the only other choices are even worse.

Only one of Trump or Clinton was actually going to be president, so not voting or 3rd party just didn’t work for many of us. Out of the two, I preferred the former. Referring to something I said on another thread, I’d rather have Samson as a leader than the Philistines. Of course, I’d actually prefer Deborah, or Joshua or Moses, but those weren’t the options available to us.

Dave Barnhart

What I hear from so many Trump supporters, grudging or otherwise, is protests about the certain dire consequences which would have occurred had they voted for anyone else. Yet only the omniscient Lord can declare with certainty what would happen in some hypothetical future. I assume evangelical Trump supporters would not impugn God’s sovereignty, but I struggle to understand how some of them can reconcile their statements with that doctrine.

What the Never Trump types find difficult to grasp (or don’t agree with) is what many of the rest of us are thinking which is this: If you don’t trust someone to do the right thing, you don’t give them more power, you give them less, UNLESS the only other choices are even worse.

Well, hey, if we’re going to embrace pragmatism, then by all means do so. I’ll take a hard pass on that philosophy as well.

"Our task today is to tell people — who no longer know what sin is...no longer see themselves as sinners, and no longer have room for these categories — that Christ died for sins of which they do not think they’re guilty." - David Wells

[Jay]

What the Never Trump types find difficult to grasp (or don’t agree with) is what many of the rest of us are thinking which is this: If you don’t trust someone to do the right thing, you don’t give them more power, you give them less, UNLESS the only other choices are even worse.

Well, hey, if we’re going to embrace pragmatism, then by all means do so. I’ll take a hard pass on that philosophy as well.

If you want to claim that people whose principles are different from yours are simply embracing pragmatism, feel free, though if you are honest, you’ll realize that many of us found it much more complex than that. I don’t believe it’s pragmatic to desire less evil over more. We just disagreed on the means to accomplish that in the last election.

Dave Barnhart

Regarding the voting options in 2016, I accept that the choices were difficult and not voting for Trump felt like a vote for Hillary. However, it was not, in my view. A vote is a vote.

No, I’m not one for ignoring outcomes in the voting process, as many idealists are (who wouldn’t vote for McCain, for example). So I accept that as far as outcomes are concerned, my vote for that guy from Utah (who’s name I can’t even remember) indirectly strengthened Hillary’s chances of winning. Here’s the thing, though, as Christians, is our ethical evaluation process solely a matter of “greatest good for the greatest number”? I believe it clearly isn’t, though this is a larger topic than I can fully develop here. So what I’m saying about the voting process (as with other things we do in order to get a good result) is that there are definitely limits on what we may do in order to achieve a good outcome. I was persuaded that even if my vote for a third option helped Hillary win, I could not help Trump win. A vote for somebody is a vote for somebody, even if it is also a vote against somebody. I believed, and still believe, he would be bad for the country in many ways. (Despite being good for it in a few ways.)

And I would add that it was far from obvious, given Trump’s character and history, that even the outcomes (beyond winning the election itself) were certain to be better. I’ve already argued that I have serious doubts about that in the long run.

On VDH’s book: I know Victor is a thoughtful guy, and appreciate his analysis, though I don’t agree with all of it. There has been some hard work at rationalization by some on the right. But at least some realize they have made choices that require some justification. That’s better than the many who don’t seem to see that much.

On Christian theory of voting… Yes, some good points there. It’s a tall order, because there’s a lot of nuance involved. What many seem to miss is that a powerful leader with a public persona is more than policy; he is a messenger. He is very public, and what he does strongly influences public mores in a culture, whether he wants them to or not. So what a president is privately and what he is publicly — the distinction matters. Used to be that a president (or a man aspiring to be president) who was unfaithful to his wife, for example, felt the need to keep that private. Even if he failed to do so, he did not think it wise to openly brag about it. The latter is about six different kinds of stupid and bad for the party, bad for conservatism, bad for the USA. We knew that about Trump and nominated him anyway because we wanted to regain power. But what sort of power did we sacrifice in order to gain that kind of power? (I’m saying “we,” very generally… I certainly had no part in it!)

Anyway, as for Christian voting theory: it does relate to the question of ethics in general, how we process choices in light of outcomes vs. the meaning of the act itself. We don’t affirm, as Christians, that “the end justifies the means,” though I think most of us would recognize that sometimes it does.

Pvawter’s point is certainly important to the voting theory question also: “…only the omniscient Lord can declare with certainty what would happen in some hypothetical future”

Variations of the old train dilemma come to mind: would you push an old man off a bridge to stop a train in order to save a baby lying in the tracks? (Yeah, I know, how would this happen?! But it’s a thought experiment.) Even if pushing the old guy in front the train (which would somehow magically stop the train), would save a hundred children, would it be the right thing to do? Uncertainty about actual outcomes is one of the reasons (but not all of them) most of us feel uncomfortable about saying “yes.”

On pragmatism Well, this is usually a term people use for what they see as “end justifies means” thinking. I do think there was a lot of pragmatism involved in the Trump nomination. Once nominated, voting for him was a purely pragmatic decision for many, but for others, a mitigated pragmatism I suppose. What I mean is that we all believe in being pragmatic under some conditions. It’s just a question of what conditions warrant that, and what don’t.

So the difference between the vote for Trump in ‘16 vs. the vote for McCain in — was that 2012? — is a difference of degree, not kind. I wasn’t enthusiastic about McCain, and even less so about Palin. But to me, the vote against alternatives made that an easy decision. I didn’t think I was being overly pragmatic. But when Trump rolled around… To me, a vote for him felt like a complete sell out for the sake of winning. Couldn’t do it.

I can’t say a vote for Trump was pragmatism but a vote for McCain was not. One vote is certainly far more pragmatic than the other. I couldn’t take my pragmatism that far.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

I find it interesting how little freedom of conscience is extended to others in the matter of voting. Perhaps no act speaks so directly to the freedoms we enjoy as the vote and yet it is often the one in which the choices are painted as “If you don’t vote this way than you are (insult thinly veiled insult here).” I didn’t vote for Trump and I’m really happy about my decision. Someone else may choose to never vote in a general election. That’s their decision. From my perspective, voting the way I did was the most God-honoring stewardship of my tiny slice of the political process. Someone else could have voted differently or voted for Trump or even Hillary.
If I remember Star Wars well enough, I think a mark of the Sith is that they only think in absolutes. That’s pretty much how these discussions go. I think I have said this here before but the “A vote for third party is a vote for Hillary” argument is really silly to me. Voting third party may not add a vote to Trump but it also doesn’t add one to Hillary. I chose to go that route and to suggest my doing so was a vote for Hillary would be akin to my saying that a vote for Trump is a vote for unbridled immorality. We are all just doing the best that we can with the information we have. No one takes the lesser of two evils argument past a certain point (Hitler vs. Stalin anyone?). We all just draw the line differently about where the threshold of unacceptability is reached.

Many forget how large the Supreme Court vacancy in 2016 figured in the decision of some/many evangelicals to hold their noses and vote for Trump. The very fact that Trump, during the general election campaign, kept visiting churches and reaching out to evangelicals shows that he knew he wasn’t resonating with them. It wasn’t until he made his promise to put only conservatives on the high court that many evangelicals decided that was enough to tip the scales to vote for him over leaving the ballot blank. Trump has not only made two solid SCOTUS picks, he has also filled lower courts with far more principled judges than Clinton would have appointed.

My own personal view of voting doesn’t at all go along the lines of ‘I am voting for this person,’ as in I endorse this person, I agree with this person, and I hold this person in high esteem. For me, its a matter of accepting the reality that one of two candidates will hold the office shown on the ballot, and of the two, I would rather have this one over the other. When Trump made the decision to promise conservative judicial appointments, that was enough distinction between himself and Clinton for many evangelicals to say, yes, of the two, I would rather have the conservative judges.

But again, I point out that during the GOP primary, evangelicals were overwhelmingly AGAINST Trump, not for him.

But I can respect anyone who takes the endorse/high-esteem approach to voting, as it is their right to follow one’s conscience. Just for me, if I followed that approach, I would find it hard to ever vote and be consistent in following the endorsement principle. All candidates have warts, and as the culture continues its decline, those warts will grow larger.

In 1976 there were many who opted to vote for a Baptist Sunday School teacher instead of a man who had married a divorcee.

"Some things are of that nature as to make one's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache." John Bunyan

[Ron Bean]

In 1976 there were many who opted to vote for a Baptist Sunday School teacher instead of a man who had married a divorcee.

And while I completely understand why they made that choice, I’m very glad Carter wasn’t re-elected in 1980.

I’ve seen both Never Trumpers as well as some of those who did vote for Trump try to shame the other side for their vote, and I agree with those who are against that. As one post above mentioned, it’s on each of our consciences how we vote. We had both types of voters in our own church. My pastor, who had previously pastored in NJ, near Atlantic City, could not bring himself to vote for Trump. I completely get it. But he did not in any way try to make those who made a different decision feel bad (even those who may have voted for Clinton). In fact, at our church we don’t talk politics at all from the pulpit, other than to briefly mention during announcement time on the Sunday before election day that people should exercise their voting privilege, especially given many Christians down through time have not had that opportunity.

Dave Barnhart

In the Providence of God and the workings of American political history, we seem to have arrived at a place where there are only two viable political parties: alternative parties have extreme difficulty breaking into the system because the established parties have name recognition, a voter base, financial resources, etc.

So many voters (not just Christians) regretted the options presented in the 2016 elections. I was taking a class at Villanova at the time and there were a lot of disappointed Bernie Sanders supporters completely disgusted with the Democratic party. (It was a strange time of commiseration because 2016 prompted me to change my voter registration from Republican to unaffiliated, and my teacher at Villanova likewise said, “Tell the Democrats I’m walking.”)

So I voted for Evan McMullin, and per Wikipedia he didn’t make a huge dent.

But here’s a question: can you think of any way to break out of these dreadful options besides voting in a way that refuses to accept further political farces like 2016? If the major political parties know that in the end, most voters will hold their nose and go either Democrat or Republican, what incentive do they have to change?

It seems that the only way to break out of the practical truth that “A vote for X actually advances Y” is for a critical mass of voters to say, “Hogwash. I’m voting for X.”

Michael Osborne
Philadelphia, PA

Some elections do provide the voters three viable options rather than two. In 1992 the polling showed Ross Perot capturing a large chunk of the electorate. He was actually growing in momentum until his vice-presidential pick fell flat. Consequently in the end he got just shy of 19% of the popular vote resulting in a president, Bill Clinton, who got only 43% of the vote, meaning 57% of voters wanted someone other than who won. This sort of situation is why some races are going to the run-off system, so during the first run, if a candidate fails to get 50% of the vote, it goes to a run-off between the two top finishers in the first round.

Of course we will never have that on the POTUS level due to the electoral college.

Speaking of the electoral college, in reality, if you live in Wisconsin, and you chose to vote for Evan McMullen instead of Trump or Clinton, in the end, all of the electors from your state went to Trump. Similarly, if you voted for Trump out of the state of Virginia, in reality, all the electors from Virginia went to Clinton. So some of the hand-wringing and worrying about one’s personal vote is silly based on the state in which one lived. For instance, if someone had lived in California or West Virginia during the 2016 election, and did not want Clinton to win, but was queasy about Trump, then it would have been very easy to pull the lever for some third party candidate because Trump was going to win WV easily anyway and lose CA badly. But if you were queasy about Trump and voting a tossup state like PA, MI or WI, then it might have been a much tougher call. Votes in those states actually mattered.

I say all this just to point out that some of the above discussion presupposes a popular vote presidential election when in fact the election was based on the electoral college.