The idea that political candidates should be selected according to their perceived moral character is a major problem in western democracies. David Boaz of the Cato Institute highlights the idiocy of the religious right:
I’d like to see a pollster ask conservative Christians two questions:
1. Would you support a presidential candidate who is divorced, has estranged relations with his children, never sees his grandchildren, rarely attends church, strongly opposes a law to ban gays from teaching school, and as governor signed the nation’s most liberal abortion law?
2. Would you support him if you knew his name was Ronald Reagan?
UPDATE: It would be reasonable also to ask these questions of Democrat voters.
4 comments:
I think that political candidates should be selected, in part, according to their moral character, but I don't think that you can assess their moral character in the simple-minded way implied by those questions. Being neither English nor American, I do not use "moral character" as a code to refer to their sex lives. There again, that usage would have worked quite well for Slick Willie, wouldn't it?
"I think that political candidates should be selected, in part, according to their moral character"
Why?
Why would I employ politicians on grounds very different from the grounds on which I would hire anyone else?
I often wonder the same about the upcoming religious right in this country substituting Reagan for Thatcher or even Enoch Powell (both signed divorce laws, abortion laws and respectred boundaries of religion and politics)
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