David French: Character Counts For Less

July 18, 2026

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5 min read

Character Counts For Less

In 1998, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution declaring that "the fish rots from the head" and demanding moral character in politicians. By 2024, roughly half of American voters elected a convicted felon to the presidency. David French, New York Times columnist and longtime conservative, has watched this transformation from inside the movement that once made character its central political value. In conversation with Sarah Longwell, he argues that the collapse of character standards is not just a political problem—it is a spiritual and cultural one, and the consequences are becoming unmistakable.

The Conservative Character Project and Its Collapse

For a generation of conservatives coming of age after Watergate, character was the organizing principle of the movement. French and Longwell both came up in this world. They remember when Peggy Noonan wrote that "character was king." The Reagan and George H.W. Bush presidencies gave conservatives twelve years of leaders who, whatever one thought of their policies, were not plausibly described as corrupt or indecent. Then came Bill Clinton, and the character framework became a weapon of negative polarization. Conservatives could say: our politicians are better than theirs.

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What you'll learn

1 (00:30) **The Puzzle of Character in Politics** - Sarah Longwell introduces the episode's central question: do voters still care about character, and why do they appear willing to overlook serious flaws?
2 (02:46) **The Conservative Movement's Character Obsession** - David French and Sarah trace how "character counts" became the animating principle of the conservative movement after the Clinton years.
3 (10:35) **The Test of Virtue: When Values Conflict** - French introduces C.S. Lewis's idea that courage is the form of every virtue at its testing point, setting up the core tension of the episode.
4 (16:43) **Swing Voters on Character** - Sarah plays a clip of Biden-to-Trump swing voters discussing how they weigh personal flaws in candidates.
5 (21:20) **The Humble Case for Grace vs. The Leadership Case for Standards** - Sarah and French wrestle with the tension between understanding human frailty and demanding higher standards from leaders.
6 (27:03) **The Graham Platner Case: A Moral Conundrum** - Sarah and French dissect the Graham Platner candidacy, where two firmly held beliefs—character matters, and Trump must be stopped—came into conflict.
7 (34:34) **The "Stop Trump" Imperative vs. Character Consistency** - Sarah lays out her personal tension: if Trump is an existential threat, she would vote for a "tin can" over a Republican, but Platner was not a neutral tin can—he was a tin can with a Nazi tattoo and sexual assault allegations.

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Show Notes

American politics and politicians are decidedly lower-character than they used to be. So, how did we get here? And why have voters seemingly lowered their expectations?

The New York Times’ David French joins the show to discuss Americans’ relationship with low-character politicians like Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump, and how our major political parties have handled candidates like Ken Paxton and Graham Platner in 2026.

Show notes:
David French: The Platner Trap