Election Day thoughts:

The thing we should be most willing to compromise on is policy. I’ve never voted for a person I agreed with on everything, even when I wrote in my wife.

The thing we should be least willing to compromise on is character. Basic decency, kindness, integrity, thoughtfulness, hospitality, humility, all the things that would make us good neighbors.

I’m convinced many of us have gotten this backwards. Our pursuit of power has led us to discard character as long as we get the policies they want. People ignore moral rot and excuse the inexcusable as long as they benefit or get to be the ones to make the rules.

Policies, while impactful and important, come and go. In our system, they are designed to change. Character is the much harder thing to change. It takes root and reproduces fruit.

And of course the bad fruit of neglected character will show up in bad policies. If a person cannot be trusted to be honest or faithful or decent in their personal or public life, how can we expect them to be when it comes to the rule of law?

Bad character contaminates policy. It also hardens hearts and spreads like a contagion in the culture; infecting our living rooms and faith communities and school hallways and neighborhoods.

Policies matter. They impact many lives and some have life and death consequences.

And still character matters more.

We cannot continue to neglect our collective character in the pursuit of preferred tax plans and at the expense of our humanity. We cannot pretend to be values-based voters when our values are for sale to whoever knows how to play the game. We cannot champion moral rot or rationalize it away and not expose our soul to highly infectious and deadly disease.

We must be better. For ourselves, for our neighbors, for our future. There are no shortcuts to a better world.