When did moral character stop becoming vital to leadership in our democracy

I am a traditional political conservative whose ideas about the role of government were shaped by the writings of William F. Buckley and the speeches and leadership of Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp. Back in the day an indispensable element of political conservatism was the insistence that the character of political leaders of whatever party was every bit as important to the common good — if not more so — as were the policies they championed. That was one of the reasons we conservatives could never vote for Bill Clinton even though he pursued many of the policies that we embraced.
President Clinton cared deeply about religious freedom and actively supported the passage and then signed into law the most important protection for religious liberty in the history of the nation: the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. President Clinton ran on a platform of fiscal responsibility, and he balanced the federal budget. He was a critic of the welfare policies that had decimated families, and, over the opposition of many in the Democratic Party, he applied conservative principles to “end welfare as we know it.” He supported free trade policies that had long been urged by conservatives but opposed by labor unions. He was tough on crime and rebuked those in the Democratic Party who weren’t.
And yet we political conservatives would not vote for him because, despite his support of so many of the the policies we favored, he lacked the moral character we argued was vital to leadership in our democracy. For us, his personal conduct, in particular his sexual promiscuity revealed most prominently in his relationship with a White House intern, was disqualifying regardless of his policy successes. I remember a July 4th parade that my family attended in a small town in northern Virginia during the time when Clinton’s sordid relationship with the intern was the leading news story. A float sponsored by a local Girls Scout troop featured a young girl, who could only have been 10 or 11- years old, wearing a beret that mimicked the White House intern and making a visible reference for all to see of the nature of the sexual relationship between Clinton and the intern. Clinton’s tawdry conduct had become part of the cultural landscape and was something to be laughed at in a public celebration of the birth of our nation. And this wasn’t the stuff of late night television. It was put on display by a child. Bill Clinton may have given the nation some policies conservatives liked, but his personal behavior became more prominent in the public eye than his policies and had a corrosive effect on our culture. Conservatives rightly found that intolerable in a leader.
No leader is perfect, of course, and all of us are flawed, but I yearn for the day when traditional conservatives argued that character counts in our political leaders, and that the example leaders set — by the language they use, the way they speak about others and the way they act in public and in private — is even more important than the policies they pursue.
To James Madison, the success of the Constitution depended upon “we, the people” electing leaders with character. As he wrote in Federalist 57: “The aim of every political Constitution is or ought to be first to obtain for rulers, men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue the common good of the society.”
Madison’s view on the importance of character among our political leaders was once a rallying cry among conservatives. What happened? When did conservatives decide that the success of our economy — or anything, really — was more important than the character of our leaders?
I’m reminded of the words of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, delivered in 1968. Although the policies I favor today would no doubt differ from Senator Kennedy’s, he gave voice to a perspective that political conservatives once valued highly, warning against the temptation to evaluate our success as a nation solely by economic measurements, which cannot fully account for “the strength of our marriages . . . , neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, [They measure] everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And [they] can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.”
Of course the strength of our economy is important, and we should never cease striving to create an opportunity society in which all can pursue the American Dream, especially those on the lower rungs of life’s ladder. But the hard work to make that dream a reality needn’t and shouldn’t involve neglecting the values in our leaders that have made America what Ronald Reagan called, invoking Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, “a shining city on a hill.” — Thomas B. Griffith, a fellow at the Wheatley Institute at BYU, served as a U.S. circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 2005 to 2020.