The behavior of those who would lead

We have experienced a scandal-plagued political primary season. First, we watched the story unfold regarding Graham Platner, a Democrat seeking to defeat Susan Collins for one of Maine’s U.S. Senate seats. He dropped out after a series of accusations regarding his treatment of women rocked the campaign. These accusations include abusive behavior and sexual assault. Even before those accusations, there were plenty of problems associated with the candidate.

Second, we have seen the tale of Max Miller, a Republican congressman representing Ohio’s Seventh District. At least two women, including his ex-wife, have accused Miller of abusing them during the course of their relationships. Unlike Platner, Miller remained in the race to retain his seat. Some established Republicans have called for him to withdraw, but Miller has refused.

Our political world seems one built upon the example of former President Bill Clinton. Clinton retained popularity despite being exposed as a serial adulterer, as enough of the American people evidently drew a line between public performance and private misconduct. The public gave Clinton a pass in large part due to the booming economy in the second half of the 1990s. Today, scandal can prove less than fatal if the public figure is considered loyal enough and important enough to the partisan base of a coalition.

We cannot expect perfection from our politicians. Human beings sin. God can and does work through flawed persons by the fact that He works through any persons. Yet have we come to expect too little regarding the personal behavior of our politicians?

John Edwards would say yes. No, I do not refer to the Jonathan Edwards of New England, most famous for the sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Instead, I refer to John Edwards of Cambridge (1637-1716). This John Edwards was a conforming English clergyman and theological writer who defended reformed doctrine and Trinitarian Christianity from opponents during his day.

In a published sermon, Edwards took on the issue of standards for behavior among political rulers. He argued that a political community should hold its political leaders to a much higher standard. He put forward the thesis, “That a Ruler must be a Man of an exemplary Life and Conversation; he being placed above others, must Excel them in the Eminency of his Deportment and Actions.” In fact, the higher the position to which one rose, the higher the necessary expectation for moral behavior.

Edwards believed this view arose from Scripture, taking as his text Exodus 18:25, where Moses appointed “able men out of all of Israel” to serve as judges under him. This ability included more than having the intelligence for the office. It went beyond merely public behavior directly related to the political work. Those in public life should be held to a higher moral standard even in their personal matters.

Why did Edwards believe this standard to be needed? For one, immoral behavior could derail the good a ruler might do, as persons will look for faults in politicians to discredit their work in office. (We have seen scandal undermine valid and just efforts in the public square in our own time.) For another, persons also will look up to certain politicians to seek to imitate them. Here the case of Rep. Miller takes on peculiar interest. At one point, he argued that he should stay in the race by appealing to President Trump’s overcoming of accusations during the 2016 campaign to win the White House. Rep. Miller apparently construes the lesson to be for him to double-down and deny the accusations. Cases of vice have, by example, been recast as moral virtue. The public nature of such actions, Edwards would argue, leads to permission for and even persuasion toward vice and sin in the general public.

Edwards also pointed out that a ruler “cannot with any confidence govern others, unless he have a Government over himself.” Here, Edwards assumed the purpose of law was focused on inculcating virtue and helping to root out vice. If a ruler cannot exercise self-government, then how can he effectively enforce good toward others? Would the people not eventually reject such enforcement as hypocrisy? Drawing out Edwards’s argument, the hypocrisy threatens to undue the pursuit, forcing politics to retreat into ever narrower, more exclusively materialistic understandings of the public and the private good.

While we should not expect perfection from our political leaders, we should expect more than the American people currently demand. In a number of cases, we should expect much more. In a representative government, rulers reflect the people in both policy and behavior. If we seek renewal in this country, it will have to start with us. Edwards rightly demanded that leaders “must not be spotted with the common Defilements of the World” but instead “ought to be a Pattern to the rest of Mankind.” That ought carries a lot of moral weight.