A lot of people are writing and talking as if the latest revelations of oafish coarseness, both about women and about the rule of law, have finished Donald Trump’s run for the Presidency of the United States. I am, alas, not so sure.

I have no special access to the mind of the American masses, but in occasional brushes with Trump supporters I have found them armoured against almost any criticism of the Republican Candidate. If all else fails (and it does) they can point wordlessly at Mrs Clinton, and ask me if I really want her in the White House. Indeed I do not.

But I respond to this false choice by saying that there is no moral duty to vote in such a contest, and that in fact a large-scale refusal to vote would rob both candidates of much of the legitimacy they will need to push their worst policies through Washington.

If either is elected, then we must hope for a weak Presidency and a strong Congress, and a strong Supreme Court. This is not because I am especially keen on the composition of any of the three Houses of the US Parliament (though the highest, and happily unelected House, the Supreme Court, does contain some conservative thought). It is because it is the best hope that we will get through the next four (or, horrors, eight) years of Trump or Clinton without too much damage being done.

Last week a group of conservative thinkers and writers (possibly with the worst timing in modern history) publicly endorsed Mr Trump. I know and like some of them, and am baffled that they could do such a thing. Yet that is precisely the problem. There is a gulf between us that cannot be crossed, as far as I can see, by reason or facts. They (and I) are against the left’s subversion of Christian society. They have decided that Mr Trump is in fact an ally in that struggle, however awful he looks.

Well, it’s their country. But I think the problem of Mr Trump’s personality is just as strong as the problem of Mrs Clinton’s politics.

Yes, I know Mr Trump has sprayed out a number of positions on freed trade, borders, migration and foreign policy which, if taken by someone else, I might find interesting. Some of them may even be his genuine opinion. But because he is an oaf, apparently unrestrained in private by any recognisable code of civility, they do not excuse him. If his understanding of the proper relations between men and women (surely one of the most important tests of a human being) are so utterly wrong, and if he has also no clear grasp of the rule of law, the very basis of liberty, how can he be expected to conduct relations between states, or be chief magistrate, in a proper way?

His counter-criticisms of *Bill*Clinton are indeed powerful. My late brother Christopher looked into the behaviour of the supposed ‘Man from Hope’ (in fact he was the man from Hot Springs, a very different and less folksy location) and found him gravely wanting. At one stage I spent a lot of time chatting on the phone to a lady called Paula Jones, whose hilarious accounts of an informal encounter with the then Arkansas Governor are still fixed in my mind. Mr Clinton did not rise in my estimation. But actually these things are not the point. Bill is not running for President - and those of us who believe in lifelong marriage, forgiveness, forbearance, patience etc cannot really attack Mrs Clinton for enduring her husband’s decades of errant, greedy behaviour. What exactly would we have preferred her to do?

Set beside this Mr Trump’s apparent threat to use Presidential power to influence the judicial process("If I win, I am going to instruct my Attorney General to get a special prosecutor to look into your (missing email) situation,") , and you see two different kinds of danger. I have written here that I fear Mrs Clinton’s warmongering instincts ( So, I think, does Vladimir Putin, which is probably why he hopes to destroy the anti-Assad Islamist militias in eastern Aleppo before she has the chance to take office).

But isn’t a man who doesn’t properly understand the separation of powers even more frightening? States in which prosecutors are directed by politicians are surely not free. Does Mr Trump really not know that this is a breach of the principles that the USA is based on? I suspect not. I suspect, in fact, that he knows very little. Sure, he has various paper qualifications. But this country, likewise, is full of ‘university graduates’ whose grasp of the most basic principles of liberty and law is terrifyingly poor (the public response to the George Bell case, many times mentioned here, and the Church of England’s own total misunderstanding of English law, are examples of this).

So whatever apparent gifts he bears, I must continue to insist that it is quite wrong for conservatives, especially Christians, to be beguiled by them. Isn’t this also the great lesson of Tolkien’s ‘Lord of the Rings’, that earthly power blights and blasts those who hold it, and that pursuing good ends by using bad means will never work?

And yet, I still feel I am shouting into a room where everyone’s back is turned on me. Maybe this is just wise pessimism, but Mr Trump’s supporters have already endured and excused so much, I cannot see even this putting them off. Do not be surprised if he wins on November 8th and is inaugurated before an appalled capital in January. And just because the Washington establishment (whom I do not love) are appalled, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be too.