I spend a lot of time these days wondering if anyone has ever given more thought to a relatively meaningless vote than I have this year.
I knew long before he became the Republican nominee that I could never vote for Donald Trump. He’s an ignoramus and a boor, an almost comical narcissist and a reflexive bigot. I’m not easily offended, and he has offended me pretty consistently over the course of this campaign, beginning with his announcement speech. The list is as familiar as it is long: His mockery of POWs, his ridicule of the disabled, his reliable misogyny, his open prejudice, his casual and unapologetic dishonesty, his contempt for ideas and people who care about them.
As I think about the future of the country and the lives of my three (soon to be four) children, two challenges stand out: national security and debt. Government shouldn’t do much, but it should keep its citizens safe and it should not burden future generations with debt incurred by politicians making promises to current ones. Trump complains about the $20 trillion in debt and opposes reforming the entitlements most responsible for it. His views on national security range from aspiring authoritarian to naïve neo-isolationist, and his decisionmaking in matters of world affairs appears to be driven by ego and bravado rather than any kind of worldview or national strategy. There is, in my view, no chance a Trump presidency would seriously address the debt and a good chance that it would increase global instability and threats to the U.S. homeland.
Trump doesn’t believe in limited government—at all. To the extent he’s made limited government arguments during the campaign, he’s done so for transparently political reasons. But he’s also repeatedly made clear his comfort with a powerful, intrusive federal government. He’s argued for severe restrictions on the First Amendment, for dramatically higher taxes, for expanded entitlements, for new regulations on businesses, for single-payer health care. To the extent Trump has views about policy that don’t directly affect his own well being, he is a progressive.
So, no—I’m not voting for Donald Trump. (For more of my concerns about Trump, click here and here.)
And despite the fevered speculation of some Trump supporters, I will not vote for Hillary Clinton, either. She has campaigned for president as an extension of the Obama presidency, which has been disastrous, particularly on the urgent issues of debt and national security. If that alone weren’t enough to disqualify her, then her almost contemptuous disregard for the rules and laws that govern other public officials and the rest of the country surely is.
This isn’t new. In 1996, William Safire memorably described Mrs. Clinton as a “congenital liar.” In hindsight, that seems almost generous, as if her behavior was inherited, not chosen. In light of what we’ve seen since, we could add other, more accurate descriptors. She’s a habitual liar, an aggressive liar, an arrogant liar. She’s a comfortable liar, an unrepentant liar, even an eager liar. Go back and review her press conference at the United Nations on March 10, 2015. She offered excuses and justifications and explanations for her private email server—and virtually everything she said about it was misleading or flat-out untrue. (For more of my concerns about Clinton, see here.)
It’s no wonder, then, that so many Americans dislike the two major-party candidates. When Fox News asked voters in late August whether they believe “Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are terrible candidates”, nearly half of the country (44 percent) responded in the affirmative. An NBC poll out this week found that 62 percent of Americans say the election has made them feel “less proud” of America. (In 2012, only 12 percent said the same thing.)
I’m one of them. So, what should I do? Among the best things I read as I considered this question was an article published this summer from Matthew Franck. He writes:
He concludes:
Pretty good advice.
My vote won’t affect the outcome of the race for president. I live in Maryland, a reliably blue state in presidential years. But even if I lived in a swing state, I’d make the same choice.
I wrote in Senator Mike Lee.
Lee is a principled conservative. He is a thoughtful and consistent advocate for limited government. He is a constitutionalist not because it’s popular these days but because he believes in the precepts of founding.
I don’t agree with Senator Lee on everything. I have concerns about his proposals on criminal justice reform, and his views on national security are more non-interventionist than mine. But our differences come in considering how to limit government, not whether to limit it.
Lee has refused to endorse Donald Trump. But he has nonetheless tried in good faith—in public and in private—to encourage Trump to embrace those things he considers important. And he has given serious, substantive reasons for his decision. (See my interview with Lee from the Republican National Convention this summer, here.) Opposing the nominee of your party, even one as deeply flawed as Donald Trump, takes a certain amount of political courage. And with the exception of Ben Sasse, Jeff Flake, Larry Hogan, and Charlie Baker, too few elected Republicans this year have shown it.
So, Mike Lee for President.
Or one vote for Mike Lee, anyway.
