Ballot Boxing: Democrats grapple with time and truth

Welcome to Ballot Boxing, WORLD’s weekly political roundup of presidential news and views.

This week we learned that Vice President Joe Biden’s time as a possible presidential contender was over. Biden took to the White House Rose Garden, flanked by his wife Jill and President Barack Obama, to announce he won’t run for the Democratic nomination.

It was a dramatic moment that seemed like a farewell of sorts to a long political career. Although he seemed conflicted over the decision in recent weeks, Biden appeared sure when he told reporters he believed he was out of time to mount a winning campaign.

Biden has lost two previous battles for the Democratic nomination, but far deeper losses have marked his life: He began his national political career at age 29, weeks after his young wife and baby daughter died in a tragic car accident in December 1972.

He took his oath of office for the U.S. Senate at the hospital bedside of his surviving toddler sons. Some 40 years later, Biden sat again at the bedside of one of those sons, Beau Biden, as the 46-year-old died of brain cancer in June, leaving a widow and children of his own.

Biden recently told talk show host Stephen Colbert he still experiences uncontrollable bouts of grief over the loss of his son. And though he said this week his grief didn’t hold him back from running for the Democratic nomination, it likely lent perspective on how he’d like to spend his remaining years.

For all of the many places where Biden dramatically parted ways with conservatives over the years, from all appearances he remained a consummate family man.

With his recent loss, and his own aging, Biden surely senses what hymn writer Isaac Watts wrote in a paraphrase of Psalm 90: “Time, like an ever rolling stream, bears all its sons away; / They fly, forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day.”

But here’s hoping for a faith in Christ that allows time-bound men to sing the opening stanza of that hymn as well: “Our God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come; / Our shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home.”

As Biden closed the door on a presidential campaign, the gates opened wider for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as she dodged running against a leading figure in her own party. (With former Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia and former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee dropping out this week, only Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley remain as Clinton’s Democratic challengers.) Clinton’s known loss too, including a Democratic bid of her own in 2008.

But Republican congressmen had other losses on their minds as they questioned Clinton yesterday about her response as secretary of state to the attack on the U.S Consulate in Benghazi in 2012. The attack killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.

Clinton held up under 11 hours of testimony on Thursday before the House Select Committee on Benghazi spearheaded by Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C. She avoided the kind of angry outbursts that marked an earlier round of questioning on her response to the attacks.

But she didn’t put all questions to rest.

Among many other things, the committee asked Clinton about emails she wrote a day after the attack saying she believed it was a “planned attack, not a protest.” That contradicts a statement the State Department released under Clinton’s name, pinning the attack on a spontaneous outburst to an offensive video posted online. Other Obama officials made similar comments in the days after the attack.

This matters.

These aren’t inconsequential queries over emails and who-said-what-when. They go to the heart of whether Clinton could be trusted to tell the truth if elected to the highest office in the land.

Our motto here at WORLD is “Real Matters.” But that’s more than a tagline. We ask questions, and we imperfectly grapple with truth ourselves, because telling the truth goes to the core of the character God commends: “Behold, you delight in truth in the innermost being …” (Psalm 51).

Another national leader, King David, penned those words as he confessed his own sins, and as he recognized one of the marks of true greatness—whether in kings, politicians, or journalists—is true humility: “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.”

Look for the Republican presidential candidates to bring up the question of character—including among themselves—at the third GOP debate next Wednesday in Boulder, Colo. And look for Ballot Boxing to bring perspective on that context later next week as well.