The mission of Issues in Perspective is to provide thoughtful, historical and biblically-centered perspectives on current ethical and cultural issues.

The 2024 election is, thankfully, behind us as a nation.  We affirm the truth of Psalm 115:3: “Our God is in the heavens; He does all that He pleases.” [ESV]   The local election results, the various state election results, and, of course, the national results are a demonstration of that mysterious tension found throughout Scripture of human responsibility and divine sovereignty:  At the presidential level, Donald Trump was elected president because the people voted for him; Donald Trump is also president because God chose him to be president.

Donald Trump is not president because of his virtue, his integrity or his personal character.  At all of these levels he is a tragic figure.  As evangelical advocate Peter Wehner observes, “The GOP once championed the central importance of character in political leaders, and especially presidents. It believed that serious personal misconduct was disqualifying, in part because of the example it would send to the young and its corrosive effects on our culture. It lamented that America was slouching towards Gomorrah.  [For example, i]n 1998, when a Democrat, Bill Clinton, was president and embroiled in a sexual scandal, the Southern Baptist Convention—whose membership is overwhelmingly conservative —passed the ‘Resolution on Moral Character of Public Officials,’ which said, ‘Tolerance of serious wrong by leaders sears the conscience of the culture, spawns unrestrained immorality and lawlessness in the society, and surely results in God’s judgment.’ It added, ‘We urge all Americans to embrace and act on the conviction that character does count in public office, and to elect those officials and candidates who, although imperfect, demonstrate consistent honesty, moral purity and the highest character.’

“Yet for a decade now, Republicans, and in particular white evangelicals, have celebrated as their leader a felon and pathological liar; a person whose companies have committed bank, insurance, tax, and charity fraud; a sexual predator who paid hush money to a porn star; a person of uncommon cruelty and crudity who has mocked the war dead, POWs, Gold Star families, and people with disabilities. Under Trump, the party of ‘family values’ has become a moral freak show.”

I believe quite strongly that Donald Trump both reveals and reflects where American culture is in the early decades of the 21st century.  Columnist Carlos Lozada astutely comments that “There have been so many attempts to explain away Trump’s hold on the nation’s politics and cultural imagination, to reinterpret him as aberrant and temporary. ‘Normalizing’ Trump became an affront to good taste, to norms, to the American experiment.  We can now let go of such illusions. Trump is very much part of who we are . . . Trump is no fluke, and Trumpism is no fad. After all, what is more normal than a thing that keeps happening?  In recent years, I’ve often wondered if Trump has changed America or revealed it. I decided that it was both—that he changed the country by revealing it. After Election Day 2024, I’m considering an addendum: Trump has changed us by revealing how normal, how truly American, he is.  Throughout Trump’s life, he has embodied every national fascination: money and greed in the 1980s, sex scandals in the 1990s, reality television in the 2000s, social media in the 2010s. Why wouldn’t we deserve him now?”

Humorously, he writes:  “I remember when Donald Trump was not normal. I remember when Trump was a fever that would break.  I remember when Trump was running as a joke.  I remember when Trump was best  . . . I remember when Trump’s attacks on John McCain were disqualifying.  I remember when Trump’s ‘Access Hollywood’ tape would force him out . . . I remember when the office of the presidency would temper Trump.  I remember when the adults in the room would contain him.  I remember when the Ukraine phone call went too far . . . I remember when Jan. 6 would be the end of Trump’s political career.  I remember when the 2022 midterms meant the country was moving on.  I remember when Trump’s indictments would give voters pause.  I remember when Trump’s felony convictions would give voters pause . . . I remember when Trump was not who we are.”

Permit me a few additional observations about the 2024 election:

1. I believe that the Democratic Party represents a radical cultural agenda that must be analyzed and abandoned if they are to ever win national elections again.  All substantive analyses of this election demonstrate incontrovertibly that the economy and immigration were the primary motivations behind voters choosing Donald Trump as president.  However, there are revealing cultural issues that also motivated people to reject Kamala Harris.  Maureen Dowd argues that “Some Democrats are finally waking up and realizing that woke is broke . . . The party embraced a worldview of hyper-political correctness, condescension and cancellation, and it supported diversity statements for job applicants and faculty lounge terminology like ‘Latinx,’ and ‘BIPOC’ (Black, Indigenous, People of Color).  This alienated half the country, or more. And the chaos and antisemitism at many college campuses certainly didn’t help.”

She continues:  “Democrats learned the hard way in this election that mothers care both about abortion rights and having their daughters compete fairly and safely on the playing field. A revealing chart that ran in The Financial Times showed that white progressives hold views far to the left of the minorities they champion. White progressives think at higher rates than Hispanic and Black Americans that ‘racism is built into our society.’ Many more Black and Hispanic Americans surveyed, compared with white progressives, responded that ‘America is the greatest country in the world.’. . . On CNN, the Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky said that Democrats did not know how to talk to normal Americans.”

Representative Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat, said the party needs rebranding. “Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone,” he said. “I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”

Peggy Noonan perceptively deduces that “The Democratic Party just took it full in the face—rejected and rebuked.  That party needs an intellectual autopsy, an audit of its beliefs; it needs a rising moderate force such as the Democratic Leadership Council of the 1980s and ‘90s, which got the party off McGovernism. . . .”

2. R.R. Reno of First Things correctly concludes that “Trump manifests no deep religious convictions. Explicitly religious themes and figures played no significant role in his campaign. Nor did it play a role in the Harris campaign. The recent electoral battle saw the fewest references to religion in American history, aside from journalistic shills for Harris who trumpeted the dangers of ‘white Christian nationalism.’ . . . They were, however, predictable rhetorical responses to Trump’s role in early twenty-first-century American political culture. Three positions were crucial to his victory: restricting immigration, establishing trade barriers to protect American workers, and opposing transgender ideology. In other words, affirming and strengthening borders—between nations and between the sexes.”
3. Evangelical columnist David French reminds us that “Our nation is not inherently good, and our high ideals are often eclipsed by our baser nature. This has been true since our founding, and it is true now.  We also know that if American ideals depend on a single party for their protection, then that effort is doomed to fail. It’s not that America is one election from extinction. Our nation is not that fragile. But it can regress. It can forsake its ideals. And millions of people can suffer as a result.”

In that same vein, my discussions with numerous evangelical Christians these past several years has caused me to reach an important conclusion:  Many Christians see Trump as a messianic figure.  He is viewed by some as almost as venerable as Jesus:  He will solve all of our problems and usher in a messianic age where things will be settled and made right again.  But as Russell Moore reminds us: “Politics matter.  But when politics start to define us, to control our sense of who we are, to keep us in a state of article exultation or artificial doom, we should recognize what is happening.”

4. Years ago, Chuck Colson offered a needed warning about the Christian and politics. Increasing involvement in politics and government has grave dangers for the Christian. For the maximum impact for righteousness in government, a proper, balanced perspective is needed.  This necessitates ridding ourselves of what Chuck Colson called a “starry-eyed view of political power.”  Some Christians think that by marshaling a Christian voting bloc we can establish Christ’s kingdom on earth.  We dare not confuse the external and limited good that political power can achieve with the internal and infinite good that God’s grace produces.  Further, we cannot buy what Colson calls the “political illusion,” the notion that all human problems can be solved by political institutions.  It is idolatrous to believe that, for the Bible declares that the root problem of society is spiritual.  What the Christian seeks through government is justice, not power.  Our goal is, therefore, to move the culture towards the righteousness of God’s revelation.  But the task of spiritual transformation is the role of the church, not the state.

See Peter Wehner, “How to Prevent the Worst From Happening” in The Atlantic (29 October 2024); Carlos Lozada in the New York Times (10 November 2024); Maureen Dowd in the New York Times (10 November 2024); R. R. Reno “Trump’s Victory Is Good News for Religious Believers” in First Things (7 November 2024); Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal (9-10 November 2024); David French in the New York Times (6 November 2024); Russell Moore in “Moore to the Point” (30 October 2024); and Chuck Colson, “The Political Illusion,” Moody Monthly (October 1984).