Let's say you run for your party's presidential nomination and sign a pro forma statement that you will support the presidential nominee of your party, which you fully expect to be.
Then let's say the eventual nominee--a weird-haired blowhard of a guy--says during the course of defeating you that your wife is ugly and that your daddy may have helped kill John F. Kennedy.
Less offensive to you--but not at all appreciated--is that your vanquisher consistently calls you "Lyin' Ted," mainly because some of your people told Iowa caucuses-goers that Ben Carson had dropped out of the race when he hadn't.
Stuff happens. Politics ain't beanbag.
But politics shouldn't be so personal as to ridicule family members. That's a fairly standard line not to be crossed.
The fact is that you love your wife and are anguished by public ridicule of her.
The further fact is that you adore your daddy and know good and well that he never helped anybody kill anybody.
Thus the question: May you be forgiven if you decline to honor your signature to affirmatively endorse that nominee, even as you say there's no way you'll ever support the other party's candidate and that your beliefs and ideals ensconce you as a true-believer in the party whose oath you signed?
I think that, yes, you may be forgiven. I believe you may be permitted to deem the pledge abrogated by subsequent circumstance.
In support I cite the words of Michael Pence, the chosen running mate of the aforementioned weird-haired blowhard, Donald Trump.
Pence began his convention address Wednesday night by saying he wanted to make something clear: "I'm a Christian, a conservative and a Republican--in that order."
Republican delegates cheered Pence when he said that, moments after they'd booed Cruz for living it.
All Cruz was saying was the same--that being a Republican was third; that being a true conservative transcended party, and that being a Christian vastly superseded all else and prevented him from rewarding the abhorrently un-Christian tactics directed at him.
One way to start to undo the dysfunction caused by polarization resulting from our hyperpartisan obsession would be to do away with blood oaths. It would be to let people simply use their consciences as their guides.
That brings me to Asa Hutchinson, our governor.
He said in February that Trump was frightening and had to be stopped lest he throw away conservative values. But then he said Tuesday night in a brief convention speech that Trump was the "right leader for our time."
When I took Hutchinson to task in Thursday's column, sizing him up against John Kasich and finding him lacking, our governor's political strategist--Jon Gilmore--engaged me in a social-media debate.
Gilmore scoffed that I would extol Kasich's principle over Asa's. He pointed out that Asa had kept his word to support the nominee while Kasich, like Cruz, had reneged on a written pledge.
Four things: One is that Kasich could yet support Trump.
Two is that Kasich may be reneging on a loyalty oath, but not on his own principles.
Three is that Gilmore essentially admits that Asa backs Trump by way of a signature and not his heart.
Four is that Asa committed only to support the nominee of his party. He did not commit to give a speech at the convention and utter an assertion I thoroughly doubt was sincere, which was that Trump "is the right leader for our time."
Asa first endorsed Mike Huckabee. Then he endorsed Marco Rubio. What are the chances that he would genuinely believe in July that the right leader for our time was someone he'd ranked neither first nor second six months before?
I know the conventional political position: It's a binary choice, Trump or Hillary Clinton, and it must be made in that context.
Even so, Asa signed no pledge to make a speech and engage in shameful hyperbole.
I've signed no pledge. So I can and will express myself sincerely.
I favor Hillary in the binary choice, but there is no way I think she's the right leader for our time.
If we wanted the right leader for our time, we'd renege on the 22nd Amendment and give Barack Obama a third term.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 07/24/2016