Redstate

By No King but God Posted in Elections — Comments (3) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

I've been reading various comments that suggest that if a candidate lacks integrity, then we can't trust anything the candidate says or does. The latest comment I've seen is one saying that since Huckabee lacks integrity we can't trust him to support gun rights even though he's consistently been a big gun rights guy all his life.

Don't get me wrong, Huckabee is nearly my least favorite candidate. But this kind of reasoning is pretty confused.

Let's start by making some distinctions between having integrity and being principled and having good judgment:
--integrity is how honest and fair and genuinely respectful of others a politician is. Its about the *means* a politician is willing to use to achieve his objectives;
--being principled is about the degree to which the politician has objectives other than his own personal power, wealth, status, access to sex, revenge on enemies, etc., and its the degree to which he cares about those objectives. Being principled can be bad or good, depending on what the principles are--Hitler was a lot more principled than Stalin, but they were both satanic. Hillary is more principled than Bill, but her principles would be worse for America than Bill's lack of principles.
--judgment is the degree to which a politician clearly understands his principles and clearly understands how his means can accomplish those principles. This is a pretty big category.

All right, we've got that out of the way. Lets talk Huckabee and gun rights. Now I agree that Huckabee doesn't have a lot of integrity in some ways: he's twisty, slimy, underhanded, cavalier about ethics, and so on.

But I disagree that Huckabee is unprincipled. All the evidence is that Huckabee really does care about cultural issues like gun rights and religion and abortion and gay marriage. Huckabee will twist and spin and slime, yeah, but he'll do it for cultural conservative stuff just like he would for personal gain or power or revenge.

However, I don't think Huckabee's flips and bloopers on national security and economic and immigration stuff are solely dishonest ways of accomplishing his other goals, though they look like that some times. I don't even think he's totally unprincipled in these areas. I just think Huckabee obviously lacks judgment in these areas. From what I can see he really doesn't know much more about any of these than Joe Schmoe down the street. So he advocates using the Golden Rule to guide our relations with Iran because kindergarten was the first halfbaked thing his first impulse brought up. He attacks capitalists because that's what ignorant people do. He supports the Fair Tax because someone gave him the Fair Tax book. He goes from being an open borders nut to being a closed borders nut because Jesus likes loving people so, uh, open the borders, but then he read an article ro two by Krikorian, so, uh, close the borders. He comes across as a populist because he's a representative sample of uninformed public opinion. This is bad, but its not Machiavellian.

Politicians aren't any more simple than people in general are. Ignoring the role of judgment, and saying that if someone demonstrably lacks integrity, they also lack principles, is just shortsighted.

I think I've reached my twenty-five words by now, but I might as well go on.

Huckabee:
In addition to what I've said above, I think Huckabee has a lot of integrity in his personal relationships; appears to have really good judgment about retail politics; and appears to have mediocre judgment about how cultural conservative objectives can be accomplished.

Giuliani:
Seems to be high in business or political integrity (though he can be disrespectful), but in personal relationships the man has zero integrity; pretty principled on economic issues, national security issues and, unfortunately, on being pro-choice, while fairly unprincipled on other cultural type issues (immigration, guns); his political judgment is mediocre to poor, in my opinion, his judgment in his choice of associates is poor, his judgment when it comes to understanding his principles his mediocre, but his managerial judgment is top flight.

Romney:
His business integrity is high, his integrity in personal relationships is topflight, but his political integrity is iffy--he hasn't broken promises but he's shaded the truth and trimmed his sails when convenient. I'd put him above Huckabee but below the others. His principles are good, he's pretty principled on economic issues and national security type issues, but while I believe he's principled on some cultural conservative stuff, its not a big objective with him, so his lower political integrity has allowed him to spin and trim on it when necessary; I don't think he has any principles when it comes to gun rights at all; I think his immigration positions are partly a result of him having only recently come to any principles in the area and partly a result of him not having immigration-type stuff as a priority principle. His political judgment is mediocre, his judgment for political theatre is also mediocre, his judgment when it comes to understanding his principles and how to accomplish them is also mediocre, but his managerial judgment is top flight.

Thompson:
Appears to have fair amounts of integrity, though he's been slippery and misleading about his changes on abortion, immigration, and McCain-Feingolf--his personal life has been adequate though not above reproach--I'd still put him above the field except for McCain; he's pretty principled and his principles are pretty good--though I have my doubts about his immigration stance (I'd say the same thing about Thompson on immigration as I would say about Romney)--Thompson's the candidate with the least amount of unprincipled personal ambition (which isn't entirely a good thing, imho); his political judgment is mediocre to poor, this judgment for political theater is outstanding, he has good judgment when it comes to understanding his principles, appears to have mediocre to good judgment about how to accomplish those principles, and his managerial judgment appears to be mediocre to poor.

McCain:
Lots of political integrity--I know this is the hype but it appears to be born out--the only thing he's 'flipped' on is border security and then pretty grudgingly, and he doesn't seem to be doing dirty pool like some of the other candidates, so I'd put him with Thompson (like Thompson, I have some minor questions about his personal life, though if those lobbyist rumors are true, I'd downgrade McCain quite a bit here); he's pretty principled but some of his principles stink and an unprincipled desire for revenge appears to be a motive for him more than for any other candidate other than, perhaps, Huckabee; his political judgment and judgment for theater is mediocre, his judgment for understanding his principles and how to accomplish them is poor (I think poor judgment is a main reason McCain is so into global warming taxes, campaign finance, and so so), and his managerial judgment appears to be mediocre to poor.

Full disclosure: my order of preference is Thompson/Romney, McCain, Huckabee, Giuliani.