ON VOTING FOR GIULANI: A LESSON IN ETHICAL DECISION-MAKING
Posted by Brian Trapp under Abortion, Ethics, 2008 Presidential Candidates, Politics at 12:18 pm.James Dobson has recently said that he would never vote for Rudy Giulani in the 2008 election due to Giuliani’s staunch support for abortion on demand:
Speaking as a private citizen and not on behalf of any organization or party, I cannot, and will not, vote for Rudy Giuliani in 2008. It is an irrevocable decision. If given a Hobson’s – Dobson’s? – choice between him and Sens. Hillary Clinton or Barrack Obama, I will either cast my ballot for an also-ran – or if worse comes to worst – not vote in a presidential election for the first time in my adult life. My conscience and my moral convictions will allow me to do nothing else.
Jeremy Pierce, a blogger whose opinion I greatly respect, says this attitude of Dobson’s constitutes a “betrayal” of pro-life principles:
Even if abortion is the only issue under consideration, Hillary Clinton is far worse from a pro-life perspective than Rudy Giuliani is. When he was mayor of a very liberal city, he did virtually nothing to increase women’s rights to have abortions, and the abortion rate went down. Some of that may have been just part of a national trend going on at the same time, but it doesn’t seem as if he cared enough about the issue to promote abortion rights, never mind to expand them. Rather, he seems to have been expressing a pro-choice view mainly because he’s not too motivated by pro-life concerns and not because he holds Hillary Clinton’s view that the right to abortion is so inviolable that we should never restrict it under any circumstances …
So in the end, I just cannot see how someone could in good conscience believe that the pro-life view is all-important and then not vote for Giuliani if the choice is between him and Hillary Clinton. It seems completely at odds with the pro-life goal to recognize that you have some ability to influence which one of these two would be president and then not to influence things so to prevent the worse of the two. So even given the false assumption that abortion is all-important, the idea of staying home or voting for a third-party candidate strikes me as simply undermining the pro-life movement. Those who do that are working at cross-purposes with pro-life goals and are thus betraying the one thing they think is all-important.
Now, let’s clarify the arguments here a bit.
Pierce’s argument is one that places a high value on the utility or consequences of the decision being made. We might formulate an analogy: two boats are going over Niagara Falls. One has three people in it, and the other has twenty. You’re a rescue helicopter pilot, and you can only save the occupants of one boat. Which do you choose? You can only choose one, and if you refrain from choosing you let all twenty-three people die. The decision to make (if this analogy is correct) is the utilitarian one: you save the boat with twenty people in it, even though by your decision you are letting three people die.
Dobson, on the other hand, or at least Dobson as Pierce understands him, places the ultimate value on the duties or the principles involved in the decision to be made. Dobson’s argument seems to be something like, “Consequences be damned, I’m going on principle.” This sort of view is captured in the old maxim, “Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.” The idea here is to never make a decision that has any directly evil or wrong content, even if the indirect consequences of that decision do. The principle-bound decision maker might not like our analogy above. The situation with Giuliani, he might say, is very different, and he might want to offer a different analogy. He might say the situation is like the following: the Nazi guard orders you to make a choice between killing one Jewish prisoner or killing ten. You, being the conscientious Nazi grunt that you are, don’t want to kill any innocent person, so you refuse. Even though you know all the prisoners will be killed by someone else anyway, you yourself have no blood on your hands, because you haven’t directly committed murder.
In the case of abortion, the utilitarian will say that refraining from picking the less pro-life candidate is wrong, while the duty-bound ethicist will say that pulling the trigger on either pro-choice candidate is wrong.
Now that we have that clear, our question is: what is the concerned Christian citizen to do? Which path should he take? Dobson’s or Pierce’s? Christians will disagree on this issue, but I have to go with Pierce on this one, albeit reluctantly. As of now (and I may change my mind on this in the future), I would pull the lever for Giuliani over Hillary, even if I felt a bit icky about it. As far as I can tell, Dobson thinks that - when it comes to abortion - there is no difference between Giuliani and the democratic candidates. That is, that even from a utilitarian perspective things are going to end up the same either way. I think this is clearly wrong. For example, Hillary or Obama would almost certainly put a litmus test in place for the appointment of federal judges: if you’re not strongly pro-choice, you don’t get appointed. Period. I think it’s safe to say that Giuliani would put no such litmus test in place. It’s true that he would appoint some pro-choice judges, but in other circumstances he might simply pick the best person for the job, whether they were pro-choice or pro-life. For hardcore Democrats (and Republicans), abortion is a platform issue, an issue where no debate is allowed. Presidents on both sides would put a fairly strong abortion litmus test in place for judges. Moderates like Rudy would probably have no such litmus test, and would therefore install pro-life judges in some circumstances. If this is right, then Pierce is right: it’s still better to vote for the lesser of two pro-choice evils, if only because refraining from doing so might let the greater pro-choice evil win.
May 28th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
If Rudy is willing to admit that he differs from the party line on social issues instead of magically transforming like Romney, I think Rudy’s promise that he will appoint strict constructionists is trustworthy.
I think Giuliani is far more likely to appoint proper USSCt judges than would flip-flop Mitt or maverick McCain.
May 29th, 2007 at 6:00 am
An extremely interesting analysis. Given that Giuliani and Clinton are the frontrunners for the parties’ respective nominations, the matters you raise here are definitely worth considering.
Mark Daniels
May 30th, 2007 at 7:31 am
Abortions may have gone down in New York City while Giuliani was mayor - but didn’t they go down steeply for the nation as a whole for the entire time that Clinton was president? Does that count for nothing?
And since Bush did nothing to decrease abortion himself and abortions haven’t dropped as steeply during his presidency than they did during Clinton’s…why do we need someone like that in office?
May 30th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
I agree with Dobsons view. Rudi is a fiscal conservative only. I don’t think he can be trusted in religeous issues. Yes, I believe he would be tough on terror, but there are others out there with social conservative values who would also be diligent and tough. Rudi is also soft on boarder issues. I really don’t like that about him. Newt, if he will run will be my choice. Herm
June 1st, 2007 at 7:49 pm
Rudy isn’t just a fiscal conservative (although he may be more fiscally conservative than any of the other Republicans in the race besides Ron Paul, who is a complete nut). Rudy is a judicial conservative. He couldn’t have lasted long in the Reagan Justice Dept. without being one. He’s obviously conflicted on that with respect to his views on abortion, which has led to some real incoherence in his statements dealing with Roe v. Wade. However, I think that in general he prefers judicial conservatives and will likely appoint people similar to the ones George W. Bush has appointed. I have to say that, despite whatever conservatives might have to say about the current president, he has done an absolutely stellar job with judicial appointees, and he’s gotten most of them confirmed. I don’t think even Reagan did quite as well on that.
On the main issue of the post, I don’t think I would capture Dobson’s position as deontological and mine as utilitarian. Not even close. I think utilitarianism (and consequentialism in general) is a stage in children’s development of learning morality that we all need to move on from. But consequences are surely important, and even if there are some moral absolutes (i.e. things that are always wrong) surely voting for someone you don’t agree with 100% is not one of them.
I think it comes down to what voting is. If you think it’s agreeing with the person over a certain percentage of the time, then Dobson’s argument can arise. But that’s not what it is. Voting is indicating which of a set of candidates is the one you want your vote to count toward. It is thus inherently a pragmatic venture. If it were a matter of indicating whose moral views are closest to yours, it would be absolutely immoral to vote for any of the Republican candidates. You should instead write in your own name. But that view is crazy.
June 2nd, 2007 at 4:09 am
Single-issue voting always paints the voter into a corner.
(Compare the boss who says to a subordinate, “If you do that again, I’m gonna fire you.” Such a statement puts the firing decision into the hands of the subordinate, whereas something like “If you do that again I’m gonna think about firing you” does not. If the first boss fails to follow through, his credibility is stained. The second boss leaves his options open.)
Those of us who find abortion morally reprehensible want all future mothers to choose against abortion. Hence the term “pro-choice” in the minds of many unfortunately equals “pro-abortion.” Discussions about abortion are important, but we are discussing a presidential candidate for four years, not an inlaw for a lifetime. Politics is not about what is moral. It’s about what is possible.
Cutting to the chase, should abortion be criminalized, at what point, and what should the penalties be? For the physician? For other medical professionals in attendance? For the consenting parents (both mom and dad)? Fines? Jail time? Loss of license?
Seems to me the Christian approach is to recognize that choosing legal compliance is not the same as making a moral choice. Oops, there’s that word again…choice.
June 13th, 2007 at 8:54 am
I will make a quick observation: The dilemma the Republicans have in nominating Rudy Giuliani to be their presidential candidate is that they may begin to go down a “slippery slope” on the moral issues so near and dear to the base. In other words, the Republican platform has always been pro-life. By nominating Giuliani, that would open the flood gates wide open for moderate to liberal “Republicans” to infiltrate our ranks. I think this is dangerous and could lead to an identity crisis among Republicans. Our best bet is to continue to nominate solid conservative candidates who fall in line with the party’s core values. Choosing between Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton should not even be up for a debate.
June 24th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
Lance, the issue at stake here is not to do with whether the GOP should nominate Giuliani. I don’t support him in the primary. There are several candidates in the primary race that I would prefer to him. The issue here is what a conservative pro-lifer should do if Giuliani does get the nomination. My argument was that a conservative pro-lifer should wholeheartedly support him over Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, not that the GOP should nominate him.
June 28th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
Jeremy,
I didn’t mean to imply that you were a utilitarian or that Dobson was a deontologist, only that the two sides in this debate are good examples of someone who held to those views might make. My point was just that this debate is a good illustration of the two ethical models. More importantly, I wanted to show that when the political rubber hits the ethical road for Christians on issues like this, we will have to do some hard ethical thinking in order to make good decisions.
Brian
June 29th, 2007 at 5:20 am
Right. I got that. I just wanted to make the more complex possibilities clear. I’m going to do a series on that, actually, starting today.