LNP is a community newspaper — your community newspaper. Those of us who work for LNP are not the faceless, monolithic “media"; we’re your neighbors.

Our news reporters are required to be objective. But in Opinion, we consider subjects through the prism of these questions: What is important to Lancaster County? What is in Lancaster County’s best interests? What will honor Lancaster County’s traditions yet make us a model of prosperity for all?

We determine the opinions we take by issue, not by party politics. This has allowed us, for instance, to advocate strongly for both increased public education funding and for public pension reform.

Our editorials are formulated by the LNP Editorial Board, which includes two community members. We have robust discussions at our weekly meetings, and never more so than when we discussed this endorsement.

We’ve championed voter engagement, so when it came to this contentious presidential election we knew we couldn’t sit it out — though that would have been, by far, the easier route to take.

To borrow from a phrase attributed to Albert Einstein, we seek to be “a voice, not an echo.”

Alternatives

Because the two major-party nominees are flawed, we considered the third-party alternatives.

But Libertarian Gary Johnson has shown himself to have shockingly little knowledge about world affairs. Had his running mate, William Weld, been atop the ticket, perhaps he would garner more serious consideration.

And the Green Party’s Jill Stein has equivocated on vaccine safety and echoed unfounded fears about Wi-Fi’s effects on children’s brains. As a physician, she should know better.

So it was back to the two major-party nominees.

Trump’s record

Donald J. Trump has campaigned on his record as a real estate developer and businessman, yet he has not made the customary disclosure of his personal tax returns, hiding behind the excuse that he’s under audit — despite the Internal Revenue Service’s assurance that any individual is free to disclose his or her returns.

At the last debate, he acknowledged not paying federal personal income taxes for years, but remained stubbornly opaque about the details. Voters deserve more transparency.

Trump has undoubtedly made a lot of money for himself and for his fine family. But his sharp business practices have hurt other business owners.

In a March op-ed for LNP, Dr. John Garofola, of Lancaster County, wrote about his father-in-law, who owned a New Jersey roofing and sheet metal business. He took a job helping to build Trump’s lavish Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City. When the job was near completion, Trump’s corporation declared bankruptcy. Garofola’s father-in-law and “the other local contractors had to settle for pennies on the dollar.” As they paid their own employees and suppliers, Garofola wrote, some “teetered on bankruptcy themselves because of Trump’s decision” — while Trump paraded pop star Michael Jackson at the Taj Mahal’s grand opening.

There are numerous such stories of small business people being saddled with debt because of Trump’s repeated legal but morally questionable use of bankruptcy.

Clinton’s failings

As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton stupidly used private servers rather than having all of her personal and professional emails channeled through a State Department email system. Her poor judgment and clear violation of State Department protocols potentially put our nation’s security at risk.

And she was rightfully castigated as “extremely careless” by FBI Director James Comey.

Nevertheless, the FBI’s investigation of Clinton’s email practices led Comey to conclude that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring” a criminal case against her. Comey isn’t an Obama administration hack; he was appointed deputy attorney general by President George W. Bush.

Then there were the fateful events of Sept. 11, 2012, in Benghazi, Libya, which left four Americans dead. The Benghazi fiasco is cited by Clinton’s critics as evidence of her incompetence. They say she failed to keep Americans safe and lied about the reasons for the Benghazi attack.

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These matters have been thoroughly investigated by Republican-led congressional committees. Clinton said the investigations concluded that “nobody did anything wrong, but there were changes we could make.” PolitiFact called her assertion “rosy,” but “largely accurate,” and rated it “mostly true.”

Hacked Clinton campaign emails are being released by WikiLeaks in an apparent effort to influence the election outcome. So far, the revelations have been embarrassing but not game-changing, though we would like Clinton to be asked at the debate Wednesday night what she meant when she told Brazilian bankers in 2013 that she dreams of “a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders.”

Trump’s temperament

Trump encouraged violence at his primary rallies. (“I’d like to punch him in the face,” Trump said of a protester at one February rally.)

He’s using incendiary language to assert that if he loses it will be because the election was “rigged.” He’s dangerously ginning up anger among his supporters.

The litany of those he’s insulted is familiar by now: Gold Star parents, Muslims, Mexicans, journalists, a federal judge of Mexican descent, Sen. John McCain, House Speaker Paul Ryan, women. So many women.

Indeed, he’s not just spoken of women in the most offensive terms, but he’s boasted of kissing them and grabbing their genitals without consent. When faced with the recorded evidence of this reprehensible behavior, he shifted the focus to the extramarital misconduct of former President Bill Clinton, who is not on the Nov. 8 ballot.

Trump’s language and conduct made the last presidential debate an appalling, mature-audiences-only embarrassment. Executive Editor Barbara Hough Roda writes today about the experience of watching it with her teenage daughter.

Add to all of this Trump’s shallow grasp of international affairs, his professed and inexplicable admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin, his inability to resist lashing out at critics, and we get a man who is temperamentally unfit for the presidency.

Don’t just take our word. Take the word of the Republican leaders who say they cannot vote for Trump: Mitt Romney, John McCain, John Kasich, Condoleezza Rice, Tom Ridge ... the list goes on.

Finally, but importantly, Donald Trump is not a conservative in the model of Lancaster County’s small-government conservatives. There’s nothing temperate about his business practices or his way of life.

Giving him the power of the presidency would put our country at risk.

One flawed choice

Both Trump and Clinton are polarizing figures. But Clinton at least has some record of working with people from across the aisle. While a U.S. senator from New York, she pushed to ensure that 9/11 responders and ground zero workers got the medical care they needed.

As secretary of state, she helped to persuade Russia and China to agree to impose tough sanctions on Iran.

As first lady, she championed CHIP, the Children’s Health Insurance Program created by Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy and Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch. CHIP continues to serve low-income children here in Lancaster County and across the country.

Unlike Trump, Clinton appears to be capable of listening to voices other than her own. She is a hard worker; even Trump had to acknowledge this at the last debate.

If she demonstrates these qualities in the Oval Office, we believe she has the best chance of any of the presidential candidates to defuse the extreme partisanship and deadlock in Washington.

In our view, she is better suited to deal with the issues — poverty, education, the environment, the safety of our water — that directly affect the people of Lancaster County, our children and our grandchildren.

She isn’t likely to make a quip or send a tweet that will spark an international crisis. She understands the threat of terrorism; she backed the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden. In this uncertain world, she represents a safe pair of hands.

Both she and Trump are not only flawed, but unpopular. So the first inclination of our editorial board was to endorse “none of the above.”

But someone is going to be inaugurated Jan. 20. In our view, the best and only choice for president Nov. 8 is Hillary Clinton.