Election Time: An open letter to my fellow “Mormons”

He retweets conspiracies, he makes crass remarks to female debate moderators, he’s been involved with porn stars. It was Jesus who said that contention is of the devil, yet this man seems constantly to be contending with others during the most contentious time since the 1860s. So how could a faithful Latter-Day Saint who is dedicated to respect, civility, unity and the Christian virtues of tolerance and love be a supporter of Donald J Trump? That is the predicament many Latter-Day Saints and other people of similar values feel they are in during this election cycle. They simply cannot stomach this crass orange bombastic inarticulate braggart.

If this is how you feel, know you are not alone and these intuitions are not wrong. Character matters and the President of the United States is our representative to the world. Naturally, we want someone whose demeanor reflects the best of our people.

So case closed? — Not exactly.

With Trumps warts fully recognized, I would like to attempt to frame him in a more complete context (without justifying his flaws) so you can make an informed choice and feel fully justified in making it.

Personality and Policy

The first question to ask is why we vote at all? Government makes laws and policies. We vote for leaders that we believe we can trust to implement such laws and policies. We may have various reasons to vote for someone but I think most would agree that politics is not a popularity contest. An astute person will realize it’s very serious business. National Policies affect millions of people and can, in many cases, be matters of life and death, poverty or prosperity.

On the other hand personality does matter. We want to be represented by people who we feel comport themselves in a way that represents our character. It’s a perfectly valid point. However, it’s a little more complicated than that. The personality you want in a Lawyer protecting you in a court may be different than what you would want in your child’s guidance counselor. Furthermore, you may be wise to choose the crass doctor with terrible bedside manners over the friendly incompetent doctor when the stakes are high and your child’s life is on the line. What is the ideal personality for politics? I am not going to make the case that Trumps personality is his strong point. In fact, it’s his biggest weakness, but his hard straight no nonsense New York personality also has some advantages when you realize that politics is primarily a game of strategic negotiation.

As the son of two elected officials I have had my eyes opened to the political world most don’t see. Despite all the decorum this political process is much more cutthroat than most people realize. If you don’t fight you lose and the people you represent get hurt. Most successful politicians have a smooth outward persona, but are knife fighters at the negotiating table. Trump simply dispenses with the smooth persona, he wears his feelings on his sleeve and that can be off putting. I don’t say any of this to excuse Trumps personality foibles but being the nice guy is rarely the character of success political negotiators. Mr Smith goes to Washington is not reality no matter how much we want it to be. It might appear that Trump is the cause of the contention, but he is the one finally making noise about how bad politics has become behind closed doors and the first major political figure to fight against our gradual slide into elitist leftism at the hands of smooth talking politicians.

The Stakes

Also what about the stakes? Perhaps when you have two parties with fairly similar policies and visions for the country you can afford to let personality be a more relevant factor. However, when the stakes of policy are extremely high and you are dealing with radical differences in ideology the policy must be the primary concern.

The stakes of the game are higher than ever. The democrat party of your grandfather is not the democrat party of Kamala Harris and AOC. They explicitly want to “fundamentally transform” this country. Think about what it means to FUNDAMENTALLY transform this country. Our fundamentals are the principles of the constitution and declaration which they see as slaveholders documents designed to preserve white male privilege. Do you think our country is so bad it must be fundamentally changed? Do you see the stakes of the game? These people are not democrats, they are political revolutionaries. I hate political hyperbole but it is not hyperbole to call people revolutionaries who EXPLICITLY want to radically and fundamentally transform our country because they see it as racist, sexist and homophobic in all its systems and institutions (including Churches which they see as homophobic, patriarchal and bigoted). They deeply believe that our nation is bad and can only be redeemed through radical notions on race, wealth redistribution and a reorganization of traditional family structures and values. This is not an exaggeration for the growing radical wing of the democrat party. Spend time reading popular left wing thought leaders like Ibram Kendi, Robin Deangelo or Howard Zinn to see what I mean. Biden is not the moderate democrat of 20 years ago and the fire and zeal of his party is no longer found in union workers but rather in university socialists and they are growing in numbers every year.

So what are some key policy differences? Well…

Is politics primarily a popularity contest? Is The President primarily to be a social symbol of good rhetoric and charm? Or is The President the person you hired to protect the fundamentals of life, liberty and the constitution from those who would transform them?

You don’t have to like your doctor plumber or lawyer to hire them. Again, I don’t write this to make excuses for Trumps personality and rhetorical foibles or to say that winning at any cost is the principle by which we should live. What I am saying is that DOING good should be the objective of your vote. Selecting another career politician, allied with revolutionaries, with a history of supporting policies that resulted in dead babies, wars and economic hardship for millions, simply cannot be the path for a Latter Day Saint who is concerned with using their vote to do good in the world. Policy must take precedence. Do we really want our entire country to begin heading down the political path of places like California? If you don’t like either candidate please choose policy over personality for the sake of your fellow Americans whose lives are far more affected by things like banning the oil industry, or a war in Syria than by Trump making an insensitive or stupid comment on twitter.

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(Note: The above reflects the authors personal opinions, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is politically neutral in terms of candidates and party but does encourage its membership to participate in the political process and discussion)