The Real Issue

This tweet popped up in my timeline. I have no idea who John Harwood is and I don't follow him on Twitter.

When I read this tweet it brought to mind three thoughts:

1. The President of the United States should not be "the most powerful human being on earth." Having a powerful chief executive was one of the fears our founders had when they created the Constitution. What Alexis De Tocqueville witnessed of the president during the early part of the 1800s was that the president  "has but little power, little wealth, and little glory to share among his friends; and his influence in the state is too small for the success or ruin of a faction to upon his elevation to power." How times have changed. At one time the citizens of the various states would have viewed a powerful executive with suspicion, but now a president who is able to make things happen, both at home and abroad, is expected. Maybe it is time to question whether or not the executive branch should have as much power as it has.
2. Since we accept the president as the most powerful person in the world, isn’t logical to assume that fraud and corruption a good possibility during an election? I am not saying that this election was "stolen" from President Trump, but I am saying, "I don't trust elections in general." There is nothing about what I know about corrupt human nature or a corrupt government that gives me confidence in our elections. There is too much at stake for too many people for them to truly let "the people" decide.
3. Why is it okay to call President Trump obese when you would have an absolute hissy-fit if he said that (and he has and they did) about another person? This is one of the things I dislike about politics in general, the complete double standard people have. They are fine with giving their side a pass on bad things, but will go absolutely crazy when the other side does it. While both sides do this, from my observation, the left is much worse about it.

The real issue at stake isn't why President Trump is continuing to fight for the election, rather, it is why does one office hold so much power? 

Not only for the United States, but for the world. 

N. T. Wright talked about that reality on the Ask N. T. Wright Anything podcast when he took questions about the election. He acknowledged that the U. S. Presidential election has ramifications for the entire world. This should not be the case.

Regardless of whether or not you think Donald Trump was a good president, the thing that we should be the most concerned with is how we can limit the power the president has in this world. 

 

Missing the Forest for the Trees

 I don’t understand this type of thinking at all.

Listen, I am not a supporter of President Trump. As I have said before, policy wise he has been a pretty typical president. He has done some good things and he has done many bad things.

To see President Trump and his supporters as uniquely evil seems bizarre to me. What makes President Trump and the support he has received different?

Rather than being something new, I think what Donald Trump and his presidency revealed is the divided loyalty many American Christians have. The loyalty that we have is often split between Jesus (and his church) and Nation (and political party). 

I believe one of the big questions the American Church, in all of its different flavors, needs to wrestle with coming out of COVID and the 2020 election cycle is: "Where does your loyalty reside?"

“Trumpism” isn’t any more dangerous than all the other ways our loyalty gets divided, and to act like it is means we downplay the more seductive and subtle ways Christians loose their first love.

I know for me, as a libertarian, one of the things I need to be on guard against is the idol of personal liberty and individual rights. It is easy for me twist those ideas with what it looks like to follow Jesus. 

We need to heed the warning of Revelation, to come out of Babylon, and remain loyal to Jesus.

Don’t miss the forest for the trees. 

American Christians have a loyalty problem, and those of us who serve in leadership in various ways in different Christian communities need to continually call people back to their first love as we continue to resist the urge give our loyalty away to lesser causes.

Understanding the Trump Moment

 President Trump represents an interesting moment in American history. Because we are living through it I think we should take some time to understand what is going on.

The “Donald Trump Moment” has little to do with Donald Trump and his presidency. It has everything to do an ever growing divide that is happening in the United States. A failure to understand this only ensures that this divide grows faster and faster.

When it comes to Donald Trump himself many Christians on the right and the left get him wrong.

On the left, people act like Donald Trump is uniquely evil. They love to tell us that Donald Trump is a racist, misogynist, and a divider. Yet, when you look at what he has done, you realize the President Trump is basically an 80s Democrat (he was a Democrat in the 80s - this reminds us that a conservative is just a progressive driving the speed limit). Remember, Donald Trump was a supporter of same sex marriage way before it was cool. The real objection that people have about President Trump is they don’t like his rhetoric. They prefer their presidents to act “presidential” when they bomb other countries. Seeing President Trump as evil keeps them from giving credit to him for the good things he has done.

On the right, Christians act like Donald Trump is God’s chosen instrument to save the United States. They will tell us that President Trump is a modern day King Cyrus. Relying on Isaiah 45 they paint a picture of how Donald Trump fits the model of a nonbeliever who is appointed by God to benefit faithful people. In a sense they see attacks on President Trump as spiritual opposition. Seeing Donald Trump as chosen by God prevents them from seeing the bad things he has done.

Seeing Donald Trump as evil or God’s chosen one keeps many people from seeing the truth about President Trump: he is a typical modern day president. He overreaches with executive power, believing he is the legislator-in-chief as well as commander-in-chief. The greatest thing that sets President Trump off from every other president is his use of Twitter. Should we expect anything less from a celebrity turned president in the age of social media?

What is the “Donald Trump” moment really about?

When it comes to watching Shark Tank, Mark Cuban is the one I always pay attention to because I felt like he had a better understanding of things. But with this tweet Mark Cuban reveals he doesn’t get what is going on.

To simply explain away Donald Trump’s supporters by saying they are misled means you haven’t truly thought about what is happening. This moment really isn’t even about Donald Trump, he just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Replacing Donald Trump with Joe Biden is not going to make things go back to “normal.” 

Why are things not returning to “normal”?

People weren’t misled by Donald Trump. What happened is that people heard what he had to say, and they projected on to him the type of leader they wanted to have.

There is a good portion of people in the United States who are tired of being told that they are racist, that the institutions they cherish are outdated and evil, that if they hold certain conservative views they are on the outside of polite society. They are fed up with being lied to by establishment people like Mitt Romney, John McCain, and George Bush. These people would say one thing and do another, never standing up for the people who voted for them. 

The people who are tired and fed up with the establishment are the same people who formed the Tea Party movement, which then morphed into Trump Supporters. 

These people are not going away.

One thing we learned from the election is that these people are growing. Donald Trump was supposed to be swept away. This seemed plausible because any sitting president with that much going against him: mainstream media (including much of Fox News), Hollywood, Cornavirus, a slumping economy, and the Deep State (which manufactured charges about Russian Collusion) wouldn’t have stood a chance. Even in the face of this adversity Donald Trump still out performed his 2016 showing.

I know many people who voted for Donald Trump and they all knew that he was a flawed person and president, but for them he represented a way to fight back against the establishment that opposes them and the things they love.

I understand where this group is coming from, because I had my own moment in 2008 with Ron Paul. When I was going through my disillusionment with Republicans and the political establishment Ron Paul was the one who said things that resonated with me.

If current trends with the election continue with the way they are heading and we have a President Joe Biden in 2021, things are not going to return to “normal.” The Trump supporters are going to morph into something new as they seek to fight back against the establishment. An establishment, that in so many different ways, seems to be against them at every turn. 

This is what you need to understand if you are going to truly evaluate the Trump presidency.

Presidents and the Constitution

We are a week away from determining the president of the United States.

While there is always a big push to get people out and vote, there seems to be more of an urgency every 4 years when it comes time to elect a new president. 

This is sad. Not because I think more people should be voting, but because of the great emphasis put on this one position. 

The founding generation feared a powerful executive and tried to make it so one person did not have so much influence.

That reality has eroded over time.  

Now the president has so much power that every presidential election becomes about determining which direction the country will move.

Gone are the days when we should really be asking one question when it comes to electing a president: "What is he/she constitutionally allowed to do?"

Historian and author, Brion McClanahan puts it this way in 9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America:

 

Is "constitutionally permitted to do" even a category we think about when it comes to evaluating presidents and electing new ones? Was that challenge even offered during the debates? 

The more power we allow presidents to have the more we move away from the constitutional republic created by the founders and closer we become to being a dictatorship. 

This is why it is crucial for us to know that Constitution of the United States, so we are able to point out when it is not being followed. Apart from that, it doesn't matter who becomes president, we will just mover further down the road to tyranny.