Why Virtue Trumps Policy

This post's title is the subtitle to a Christianity Today article by Daniel Taylor & Mark McCloskey titled How to Pick a President. Here is the way it begins:
The President has taken this country to war and the war has not gone well. He has misjudged the spiritual strength of a militarily inconsequential but profoundly committed enemy. War was not even a distant issue when he first became President, and he is increasingly frustrated that this unsuccessful war is defining his presidency. Testy exchanges with journalists have caused him to almost abandon news conferences, he is openly mocked on television and on the street, and his popularity ratings have plummeted. Never one to seek wide counsel, he increasingly surrounds himself only with advisers who give him good news, who tell him what he wants to hear.

No, his name is not George Bush. His name is Lyndon Johnson.
The article goes on to say why we voters should look past issues and focus more on character traits like courage, temperance, faith, hope and love. I thought the article was okay but it kind of left me confused about what they were really saying about virtues and the candidates.

If you read it please let me know what you think.

3 comments:

  1. Hi Bob,

    A couple of quick thoughts regarding the subject at hand...It's difficult, imo, to accurately know a politician's character because we only see them in such a limited context...and...I don't think policy and character are mutually exclusive as the premise of this article seems to imply. I think they overlap to some degree and thus, we need to pay attention to their policies. It's not an either/or proposition, in other words...

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  2. I agree with your great thoughts Bill. It seems that when we focus on one to the exclusion of the other we betray our bias and ignore the bigger picture.

    Of course, transparently speaking, I have become a single issue voter these days.. that issue being the war.. not the other issue :)

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  3. Great post, Kansas, great!
    Happy weekend

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