Quodlibet
The Senior Editors & the Presidency
by S. M. Hutchens
I have been asked whether there was a divide between the Touchstone senior editors on the 2016 presidential election—not, of course, on whether any of us would endorse Hillary Clinton (my questioners knew us better than that), but on whether to vote for Donald Trump, given the clear and public criticisms of his fitness for the presidency voiced by our colleagues Robert George and Russell Moore. My answer has been no, I detect no significant division among us.
This is, I believe, because the real divide in view here is not between "church-going conservatives," as we are being called, who voted for Mr. Trump and those who did not, but between those for whom his moral character has been a pressing, critical, limiting issue in their deliberations about supporting him, and those for whom it is not. We never polled each other on this, but that is because I doubt if any of us could conceive of disagreeing with Robby or Russell, even a little, on the gravity of the character issue.
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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