Watch the Republican and Democrat National Conventions and you’d believe the candidates are Washington and Lincoln resurrected.  In my opinion, however, they are sadly (or spectacularly) unqualified.  Are they the best this country can offer?

I would never vote for Hillary, if for no other reason than her abortion position (see http://www.nationalreview.com/article/438315/hillary-clinton-abortion-democratic-party-far-left-abortion?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Trending%20Email%20Reoccurring-%20Monday
%20to%20Thursday%202016-07-26&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives.)  

Well, what about Trump?  David French warns . . .

” . . . as I watched men and women chanting for Donald Trump, I thought of the second part of that John Adams quote, in which he diagnoses what happens when democracies start to fail, when the people start to reject the world they made. They turn to a savior: They soon cry, “This will not do; we have gone too far! We are all in the wrong! We are none of us safe! We must unite in some clever fellow, who can protect us all, — Caesar, Bonaparte, who you will! Though we distrust, hate, and abhor them all; yet we must submit to one or another of them, stand by him, cry him up to the skies, and swear that he is the greatest, best, and finest man that ever lived!” In other words, when the guardrails crumble, the call for the strong man echoes the loudest. Make America Safe Again. Make America Work Again. Make America Great Again. Get on the Trump Train, citizens. Daddy’s home.”  (Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/438115/democracy-mob-rule-leaders-defy-crowd-sometimes?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Trending%20Email%20

Jonah Goldberg, in his online “The Goldberg File”, definitively says, “There are no saviors in politics.”  So I’ve seen over the election cycles:  what the candidate promised in his campaigns, what sounded so hopeful, so good for the country, he didn’t deliver.  Think of the “hope and change’ with Obama.  How’d that work out?  Remember how low George W. Bush’s favorability ratings sunk toward the close of his presidency?  “There are no saviors in politics.”  So even if Trump is being transparently honest in what he intends, he’ll be unable to fully deliver.  And he could turn out worse than some fear.

But, neither can I pull a George Will and refuse to vote for Trump because he’s neither truly a Republican or a Conservative.  So I vacillate between not voting for president at all or voting for Trump holding my nose.  However, here’s what keeps me tossing back and forth:  the Supreme Court.

“In the next few years, the Supreme Court may face as many as four vacancies as some of the justices age or enter retirement. That means the outcome of November’s elections could be critical in determining the court’s future composition” (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-next-president-could-reshape-the-supreme-court/).

With Justice Antonin Scalia’s sudden death, the Court meets with only eight members.  Scalia’s chair will likely be filled by a justice nominated by the next president.  Three others could retire over the next four (or eight) years:  Ruth Bader Ginsburg (about to turn 83), Anthony Kennedy (80 this November) and Stephen Breyer (78 this fall).   Of course, just one could shift the Court’s balance for decades.

I paid little attention to the Supreme Court until the last few years.  I guess I naively assumed each justice did his/her best to impartially interpret the Constitution as the framers intended.  Maybe they historically did.  But lately at least the Court seems to have become as politicized as the two other government branches.  And if we have more Justices who see the Constitution as a “living document” to be interpreted according to the times and not according to what the framers intended, we stand at the mercy of imperfect, politicized humans who will drag America further from the truth and justice our Creator wants.  This is no small issue.  In fact, in my mind, it is the issue.

Hillary Clinton would nominate Left Wing justices who will effectively legislate from the bench.  Donald Trump provided a list of judges he claimed were “representative of the kind of constitutional principles I value” and said he would use the list as a guide for nominating a justice.  The last part of that statement obviously gives him “wiggle room”; but the names he provided are said to be stalwart constitutionalists.  At least it seem our chances are better with him.

A bit of good news:  “But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20, NIV).  Thank God our ultimate well-being isn’t determined by who sits in the Oval Office!  We belong to another—a better—kingdom.  Our better country forever.  Here we are “aliens and strangers” (1 Peter 2:11).  In the world, but not of the world.

Here’s what makes me uncomfortable about that:  though we’re not of the world (in terms of belief-systems, values, future, etc.) we are in the world (which means if the economy depresses, our finances suffer too;  if America suffers some form of God’s wrath because of baby-slaughter, we too must endure an under-wrath nation; if new laws further discriminate against Christians, we’ll be objects of persecution).

None of this settles my vote.  Just reminds me that much more is at stake for much longer than first appears.

God, give us wisdom from above!