NeverTrump and the Clinton-Lewinsky Scandal
Evangelical leaders misunderstood the situation twenty years ago, and are now caught in a trap of their own making.
by Rod D. Martin
October 12, 2016
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Al Mohler says that he would owe Bill Clinton an apology if he supported Trump. This is one of those exceedingly rare moments in which a genuinely brilliant man either is being or was in the past being foolish, specifically by falling into the trap the left set for us (and which allowed Clinton to escape impeachment, though not disbarment).
The following is in no way intended disrespectfully toward Al Mohler, nor to suggest he doesn't mean what he says. It just is what it is.
The left said impeachment was "all about sex." It wasn't: it was about perjury, and it should have been about sexual harassment, or better yet, selling state secrets to China for campaign cash (sound familiar?), which would have resulted in Clinton’s badly removal well before the Lewinsky scandal came to light.
But Democrats knew that by pushing the salacious rather than the prosaic, they'd get a whole host of preachers and pundits to bite, be able to demonize them as intolerant hypocrites and "fundies," and obfuscate the whole thing.
Sure enough, a legion of Al Mohlers fell into the trap. They're still in it. And so first one Clinton got off and now another might, because guys like Al feel a need to be "consistent" with an off-topic point which was a mistake to begin with.
In what sense was it a mistake?
In politics, the aim is to be effective in persuading our fellow countrymen that a certain course of action is correct. The left was persuasive. The Christians weren’t, because they focused on the wrong thing.
Don't misunderstand: Clinton's abuse of Monica Lewinsky was abhorrent. In addition to his disbarment he surely should have faced church discipline, and Mohler far more than most should appreciate that the consequences of that are far greater than any impeachment.
But as I’ve said, if the Republicans had been smart they'd have prosecuted Clinton for sexual harassment, which would have left the Dems absolutely nowhere to go (remember “The mere accusation is enough”?). But they didn't. Nor did guys like Al stand up for the 21-year-old Monica, intern of the most powerful man in the world, which forces one to wonder how serious they are about Trump's 11-year-old comments (not actions) now.
The culture did understand sexual harassment (the President using his position to abuse a young intern, however willing she might have been). And though this point — the actual legal point of the actual impeachment — got lost in the salacious, the culture could understand perjury as well (another of the Ten Commandments which somehow seemed a lot less important to the average Christian "leader" than the more titillating “Sex! Sex!”, exactly as our God-hating opponents knew it would).
We were in fact speaking to a culture which didn't share our point of view on that (I think a lot of our people naively assumed it did). Bringing down a President over what Democrats hypocritically but successfully portrayed as consensual sex made no sense to the majority. Most Americans thought that prudish and puritanical, not to mention unwarranted.
So the “consensual sex”, if it was that, was at most secondary, and by making it primary, guys like Mohler handed Clinton his deliverance. They were well-meaning. They were sincere. They were right about the points they were making. But they lost, with grave consequences to their reputations and to the country, because they were amateurish in their understanding of both the law and of how to persuade the culture to which they were speaking. They made themselves the caricatures the left set them up to be.
The left got us to paint Christian leaders as jerks, rather than painting Clinton as a sex abuser and a criminal who engaged in perjury to cover that up. So Clinton got a 60% approval rating and crucially, Christians lost an opportunity to use the sins the public did understand to teach about the sins they didn't, and also to remove a blatant wrongdoer from a position from which he could harm America and persecute the church.
Christian leaders could have had their cake and eaten it too. They could have made their points about character, and yes, even fidelity, while also making the point that there’s more to the Bible than simply moralizing, that it contains higher standards applicable to more (indeed, all) of life. Coming at it this way had the potential not just to remove an odious officeholder but to teach a broader lesson about the value of Christianity and Christian morality for public life.
So here we are, all these years later. Donald Trump certainly said something foolish and shameful. It seems to me that what he actually said was no different in substance than Shakespeare and Scripture testifying to the fallenness of men and women, and their willingness to thoroughly debase themselves in the face of money or power. Trump certainly did not say he had assaulted anyone: that’s simply a lie (and I’ve re-read the transcript twice just to make sure). But what he did say was surely crude, and inappropriate, and not at all something we would prefer from our Presidents.
And yet we find our leaders largely incapable of making those distinctions, because long ago they misapprehended the nature of another case and boxed themselves in. And had they handled things with greater wisdom 18 years ago, we would not now be facing the prospect of Hillary Clinton filling Scalia’s seat, and God only knows how many more.
Let’s be blunt: the idea that these men would act so as to elevate the Clintons to such heights, in the name of “not owing Bill Clinton an apology”, is the exact sort of absurdity that causes unbelievers to look upon Christians and Christianity as unserious. If our leaders feel the need to apologize to Clinton, they should first apologize to Monica Lewinsky, and to their church members for having botched a needed impeachment. But the wounds to their pride from such apologies are not so grave as to justify handing power to the most wicked couple in American politics.
Is this a “lesser of two evils” argument? No: it’s “the better of two choices”. In a world entirely populated by sinners, that’s the only choice you get. The Calvinistic Dr. Mohler should appreciate that more than most.
I don't know what Al would think if he were not carrying this burden from a long-lost battle. But my sad guess is, he doesn't know either. He’s stuck in the trap his opponents sprung decades ago. And despite his brilliance, he has learned nothing from that train wreck.
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Oh, just one other thing. Context matters. Al’s position is no doubt at least partially aimed at backing his NeverTrump protege Russell Moore, because there are a number of matters over which Russ's job was already in danger. The denominational politics of this may well be more important than the national politics. I know that just shocks you.
And incidentally, Eric Metaxas takes a very different view than Al’s, in today’s Wall Street Journal.