Who is fit to be president?

By Richard L. Hall   |    Guest Columnist

I left Iowa 40 years ago to get a doctorate in political science, and I’ve been studying American politics for a living ever since. Along the way, I’ve studied just about every presidential election in the last 100 years. But this year it has been harder than ever to make sense of the campaign. It has been rancorous to say the least. Both sides are provoking strong emotions, spinning and twisting facts, framing the election around the worst character traits and behavior of the other. And most mainstream media outlets have taken sides.

How do we sort it all out? It is fairly easy to learn the positions of each candidate on the issues. But how do we sort out the conflicting information about something so intangible but important as each candidate’s character and fitness to be president? How do we know what information to trust when there is so much mudslinging and so few objective sources?

Researchers in my field have studied the most reliable methods to make well-informed decisions in such situations. One way is to actually use biased sources to get closer to the truth. It rests on well-established principles in social science (“signaling models” in economics, mainly) but it is grounded in common sense. If a source tells you something but has an incentive to tell you the opposite, then it’s a pretty credible source.

For example, earlier this year I started to worry that I needed a new furnace, so I called up a heating contractor to give me an estimate. He inspected it and told me that he would be happy to sell me a new furnace, but I didn’t need it. This one would do fine for another four or five years. That was credible information.

So too in politics. When a Democrat or a liberal news channel says something negative about Donald Trump it should be taken with a grain of salt. It serves their interests to say that. Just as clearly, anything a Republican or conservative news channel says that is negative toward Hillary Clinton is suspect. But we can learn a great deal when they do not do that – that is, when they, like my furnace contractor, make statements against their own interests.

Following this principle can make both candidates look bad. For instance, the New York Times is a liberal newspaper, but it has been highly critical of Clinton regarding her State Department emails and revelations from the WikiLeaks documents. Regardless of which way you are leaning, this criticism should be taken very seriously.

For Trump, the situation is worse. There are dozens of prominent Republicans, anti-government conservatives, and non-mainstream media operations who know more about Trump than most of us, who have strong incentives to support him, but who nonetheless do not. Regardless of which way you are leaning, these sources should be taken seriously.

For instance, every Republican congressman would be much better off if a Republican were in the White House. But over 30 of them have publicly stated they will not endorse Trump. That includes some of the most conservative members of the Senate, including Republicans Jeff Flake of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Ben Sasse of Nebraska. They do that despite the political risk — Trump is highly popular among their constituents.

One might consider these senators part of the party “establishment,” so perhaps they are biased against Trump. But that doesn’t explain Mike Lee, a Republican senator from Utah. He is one of only five Tea Party members in the Senate and he recently challenged Mitch McConnell’s leadership. He had not endorsed Trump before the release of the “Access Hollywood” video, and after it, he called on Trump to drop out of the race.

Of course, Trump is a Washington outsider so we might want to ignore all Washington politicians. That doesn’t change things very much. Eight Republican governors, including Hebert of Utah, Bentley of Alabama, and Daugard of South Dakota do not support Trump. Again these are highly conservative states with some of the highest levels of Trump support in the country.

Signals about the two candidates we get from the mainstream media are not very informative. MSNBC is biased toward Clinton, Fox News is biased toward Trump – no surprises there. But many in the conservative, anti-establishment media think Trump unfit to be president. Radio talk-show host Hugh Hewitt and TheResurgent blogger Erick Erickson are longtime critics of liberal media bias and the Washington establishment. Both oppose Trump. The National Review has been the leading conservative, anti-Washington magazine since I was a boy, and it has denounced Trump repeatedly. Conservative commentators George Will, Bill Kristol, and Glenn Beck have been attacking the mainstream media, the Washington establishment, and Bill and Hillary Clinton for the last 25 years, but none support Trump. The conservative Detroit News, the Dallas Morning News, and the Arizona Republic refused to endorse the Republican nominee for the first time in over 50 years. Cincinnati’s daily newspaper had not supported a Democrat for president in 100 years. This year it endorsed Clinton, stating: “Our reservations about Clinton pale in comparison to our fears about Trump.”

Almost all prominent Democrats and liberal media organizations support Clinton. That fact doesn’t tell us much about her fitness to be president either way. But an extraordinary number of Republicans, conservatives, and Washington outsiders refuse to support Trump on character grounds. They do this even though they dislike and distrust Clinton and will pay a big price if she wins. That tells us a great deal about Trump.

Richard L. Hall is a professor at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. He is a 1972 graduate of Spencer High School and a 1977 graduate of the University of Iowa.