Q. What if I care about choosing a president who is a role model to my kids?
That’s a toughie. On the one hand, voting for Trump is implicitly saying that you can live with a president who insults women like Rosie O’Donnell, wants to ban Muslims from America (“temporarily”) and mocked a disabled person. (That last one, Trump vigorously disputes.) But from a conservatives’ perspective, at least, Clinton, like Trump, has been accused of repeated falsehoods. She is said to have attacked women who’ve made allegations of sexual misconduct against her husband. She’s also been linked to a series of financial scandals. In a recent Fox poll, nearly the same percentage of voters said neither Trump nor Clinton had “strong moral values.”
Of course, America has elected many imperfect presidents—vulgarians (LBJ), racists and sexists (Wilson), sexually promiscuous ones (Harding, FDR, Kennedy, Clinton), who used foul language (LBJ, Truman), and those implicated in serious corruption scandals (Harding, Nixon).
Still, if you believe Trump is truly a racist and misogynist and that Hillary Clinton is corrupt, it’s certainly possible that you might want to follow the campaign slogan attached to the scandal-plagued Louisiana pol Edwin Edwards, who once ran for governor against David Duke: “Vote for the crook. It’s important.”
Which means you probably tilt, ever so slightly, then, to being #NeverTrump.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member