How Americans cause ourselves costly failure, misery and despair.

We Americans have needlessly caused enormous problems for ourselves.  Over the past forty years, we have made some dreadful choices in government leaders and paid a high price for our foolishness.  Every four years, we are fed implications, misinformation and outright lies about one presidential candidate or another.  We are told by friends, family members, pundits and media hacks how we should make the decision for whom to vote, usually in a way that leads unambiguously to a particular party or candidate. 

It’s disturbing and often horrifying to listen to some of our fellow citizens describe how they are planning to make their voting decisions.  Presidential elections in America have become little more than popularity contests--a situation that Democrat operatives in network television news departments are all too eager to exploit for their party’s benefit.  In many cases, people spend less time and effort choosing a presidential candidate than they do selecting which pair of socks to wear on a given day. 

The 2016 presidential race is shaping up as one in which very few voters will be satisfied.  Republicans who supported Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush in the primary race, are not happy with Donald Trump.  Many of these continue to oppose the Republican nominee despite the fact that Trump’s campaign is in agreement with a majority of policies proposed by them. 

Democrats who enthusiastically supported socialist Bernie Sanders are not pleased with Hillary Clinton, but most will vote for her anyway, even though evidence now suggests that the DNC stole the nomination from Sanders and gave it to Clinton.  Herein lies an interesting distinction between conservatives and liberals that runs far deeper than the policies advocated by the candidates.  There is no Never Clinton movement, despite Hillary Clinton’s public and lengthy criminal history.

Republicans who oppose Donald Trump claim that their standing is based upon principle.  But when the policies of their preferred candidate are largely identical to those of Donald Trump, that claim becomes questionable.  At this point, all that is left to justify their opposition is subjective impressions based upon personality. 

In contrast, Democrat supporters of Bernie Sanders do not actively oppose Hillary Clinton.  Generally, they make no claims of principled opposition to Clinton despite the many justifiable reasons for doing so.  As a result, they too, are left only with personality traits upon which to base their voting decision. 

By far, the worst candidates Americans have chosen for presidents have been those in which personality was excessively emphasized.  While personality is certainly not the only foolish reason upon which to base one’s voting preference, it may be the one that is easiest to manipulate public perception with.  

In this election season, where the Democrat candidate is known to have committed federal felonies, caused the deaths of American citizens in Libya, and put classified national security at risk, character should be of primary importance. 

The late Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his I Have a Dream speech, that he dreamed that one day his children “would be judged, not by the color of their skin, but the content of their character.”  This is certainly a better formula for choosing any candidate for public office than the many trivial ones in use today.  Tragically, Dr. King, himself, did not follow his own prescription.  Despite King’s public opposition to the Viet Nam War, he chose to join with Democrat and then-president, Lyndon B. Johnson, a politician of notoriously bad character and a devout racist who was thoroughly committed to the very conflict that King opposed.

As a U.S. senator, LBJ surreptitiously injected into the defense spending bill, a provision that authorized the I.R.S. to deny tax-exemption to any church or ministry that participates in advocacy for or antagonism against a political candidate.  The rule, which is arguably an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment, is still in effect today.  Trump has promised to repeal the menacing regulation. 

To one degree or another, both political parties have used emotionalism to inspire and motivate their supporters as well as to incite anger, hatred and fear of the opposition.  But emotionalism, like a flash of lightening, causes temporary blindness to other important facts.  Honest people must admit that we rarely make the best decisions in the grip of emotionalism.

The best approach is always to put principle before personality and to adhere to Dr. King’s admonition to judge candidates by the content of their character.  The way to measure anyone’s character, is to examine her/his past behavior.  A man’s actions are the irrefutable witness to his character. 

In this presidential election season, we have one candidate who has a long history of corruption, criminal neglect and who is a national security risk.  Her anti-America policies have caused universal disaster at every turn. 

The other candidate has built successful businesses, knows how to reverse America’s decline and is being maligned and condemned for telling the truth.  He is exactly the type of wise and knowledgeable citizen that America’s founders expected would become servant leaders of our government.

Polling data proves that many of our fellow citizens are not putting America’s founding principles before the personalities of the candidates and they are not rightly measuring the character of the candidates.  If they were, the polls would not be close.