Charles Dickens in his 1850s novel Bleak House describes a Mrs. Jellyby who practices “telescopic philanthropy.” She exudes concern about helping people thousands of miles away but lacks compassion for her own family. For hours she utters “beautiful sentiments” but ignores her own child who falls down the stairs. She also overlooks her own husband: “During the whole evening, Mr. Jellyby sat in a corner with his head against the wall.”
That how I feel when hearing some politicians attempt to redefine character. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on CBS last week shoved aside a question about senatorial candidate Graham Platner, who won Maine’s Democratic primary on Tuesday. Asked whether adultery plus sexual messages to numerous women means Platner doesn’t “pass the character test,” Murphy replied, “Character also involves standing up to people who are bankrupting and corrupting this country.”
Mrs. Jellyby wasn’t wrong to care about others far away. Sen. Murphy wasn’t wrong to say that political courage counts. But “charity begins at home,” as Thomas Browne put it in 1642, and character also begins at home. When “character” becomes telescopic—and honesty with those near us supposedly matters little if we’re militant about a cause—we downshift the meaning of character.
How has trusting the personally unfaithful but politically faithful worked out? Let’s look at the three stages of reaction to Bill Clinton’s adultery with Monica Lewinsky that became public in 1998: First, dismayed mutters. Second, no matter. Third, it matters.
Early in 1998, political commentator Chris Matthews said disillusioned Democrats “bought this box of cereal called ‘Bill Clinton.’ Inside, some of us expected to find, perhaps, one of those little plastic toys slipped between the box and the waxed paper. Instead, we opened the box one winter day to find not a harmless novelty item but a spider. An eight-legged, hairy bug crawling in what we expected to be a hearty January breakfast.”
Later that year, as Republicans overreached in response to Clinton’s scandal, a second response arrived: Private activities don’t matter. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote that a president “conventionally immoral in his personal life” can still be a great “person in his public life.” Being “conventionally immoral” was like being mostly dead: Democrats came back to life and won seats in the November election.
In the 21st century, though, both Democrats and Republicans have reevaluated the affair’s aftermath. Democrats lost momentum and lost the next two presidential elections: Clinton chief of staff Erskine Bowles said, “Monica changed everything.” GOP leader Henry Hyde said, “Clinton could have been one of our great presidents. … He had the brains and the energy and the ambition, but he lacked … the character. And that’s the sad part. What might have been.”
That’s also what came to be: Snideness about “conventionally immoral” behavior became common. Many Americans knew of Donald Trump’s character, especially after the Access Hollywood “grab ’em by the pussy” tapes hit the headlines one month before the 2016 elections. Senator John McCain and House Speaker Paul Ryan said they would no longer support Trump. It was too late to make a change. Polls suggested the GOP would lose the election.
Instead Trump won, and a second phase began as it had with Bill Clinton: Many Republicans breathed sighs of relief and concluded personal character doesn’t matter. Nathaniel Hawthorne had written in The Scarlet Letter, “No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.” But Trump did not have that problem: The impetuousness revealed in tweets and then blurted on Truth Social did not seem to matter.
Until it did, as twists and turns regarding Iran and much beside have shown. The character of leaders has made a huge difference for 250 years. Had George Washington not gained great respect, the American experiment probably would have failed. I’ve traced over the years the effect of other leaders as well. It would be unrealistic to expect another Washington in the city named after him, but even a George W. Bush or a Barack Obama made big mistakes slowly, after listening to counsel (counsel that was sometimes wrong).
The leadoff song in Robert Altman’s 1975 movie Nashville said, “We must be doing something right / To last 200 years.” That year, novelist Larry McMurtry wrote, “One seldom, nowadays, hears anyone described as ‘a person of character.’ The concept goes with an ideal of maturity, discipline and integration.” One thing we did right: Most presidents had discipline. They did not regularly proceed, as does Trump in his personal and official life, on feelings, impulses, and surface appearance.
In recent decades, some Christian groups and others have distributed voting scorecards recommending candidates merely on their policy decisions and votes. That’s a mistake. At least as important is a character test with two questions: How does a candidate act privately? How does a candidate act publicly, in terms of acting courageously even when opposed by powerful forces?
As I discovered while writing Moral Vision, an American history book, answers to those two questions are usually but not always related. Although faithfulness to a wife is no guarantee of faithfulness to the country (look at Richard Nixon), faithlessness is generally a leading indicator of trouble.
That’s because small betrayals in marriage are often early warning signals regarding larger betrayals. Leaders who break a large vow to one person find it easier to break relatively small vows to millions. And when prominent people get away with betrayals, the precedents they set make it easier for their successors to do the same.
Marvin Olasky is editor in chief of Christianity Today.
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