“The practical problem of Christian politics,” C. S. Lewis wrote, “is not that of drawing up schemes for a Christian society, but that of living as innocently as we can with unbelieving fellow-subjects under unbelieving rulers who will never be perfectly wise and good and who will sometimes be very wicked and very foolish.”

“Very wicked” and “very foolish” sum up this year’s Election Day quandary for many.

With that in mind, a good friend whose wisdom, political savvy and Christian worldview I admire wrote in an email, “The horror of a Hillary Clinton presidency is not lost on me. I worked in D.C. throughout the nineties, much of the time on Capitol Hill, and witnessed the manifest moral corrosion with which the Clintons infected almost everything they touched, legislative and political, legal and ethical, national and international.”

Nonetheless, he went on, “Donald Trump is a man of low moral character. His life is a study in lust, greed, and dishonesty. He is immoral, intemperate, and immature in the manner of a spoiled and defiant child.”

That is, we’re choosing between “very wicked” and “very foolish.”

His solution? “Voting for an evil person in the hope he would do less harm than another evil person is an expression of wishful desperation, not prudent judgment. Trump’s words mean little or nothing. Banking on him to do right when it comes to the federal courts, most especially the Supreme Court, is the imagining of a vain thing.”

I’m not sure how he knows it’s “a vain thing,” but in any case, he won’t vote for Clinton or Trump, opting “for a candidate of honor and true patriotism, Evan McMullin.” (His link.)

And while I respect that, the next president will, I believe, be Clinton or Trump and, that being the case, the emphasis on the shortcomings and peccadilloes of these two horribly flawed candidates obscures the key to making a prudent decision.

As my friend, long-time Washington veteran Mariam Bell writes in The Christian Post, “We never elect just an individual to become president. We elect an administration.” (Her emphasis)

Bell goes on, “We vote FOR the 4,000+ political appointees who will run all the agencies, departments and programs. We vote FOR the 3,000+ appointments to boards and commissions the next president will make. We FOR all those 300+ who will be appointed to the judiciary, including the Supreme Court — whose rulings will impact our country for the next fifty years, not just four. The next president will appoint a cabinet and has already selected a vice president.” (Her emphases)

As my email friend noted, a Trump administration is a roll of the dice. He can’t be trusted and we’re not sure what he’ll do or who he’ll appoint. A Hillary Clinton administration, however, is not a roll of the dice. She can be trusted — and that’s the problem.

Eric Metaxas in The Wall Street Journal writes that Clinton will appoint Supreme Court justices such that, “the country’s chance to have a Supreme Court that values the Constitution — and the genuine liberty and self-government for which millions have died — is gone. Not for four years, or eight, but forever” — or at least for a very long time.

She can be trusted, Metaxas goes on, as “someone who champions the abomination of partial-birth abortion, someone who is celebrated by an organization that sells baby parts.”

She can be trusted to trample religious freedom. “We already live in a country where judges force bakers, florists and photographers to violate their consciences and faith,” says Metaxas, “and Mrs. Clinton has zealously ratified this. If we believe this ends with bakers and photographers, we are horribly mistaken.” Too true.

In sum, Mrs. Clinton and her appointees can be trusted to be dedicated enemy of life and the pro-life movement, of those who affirm marriage as the lifelong union of one man and one woman, and of religious freedom for those who disagree with them.

In April 2015, Clinton, speaking at Women of the World Summit declared that laws legalizing abortion, “have to be backed up with resources and political will. And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.”

How will they change? Who will change them?

As president, Mrs. Clinton will appoint justices, judges, cabinet secretaries, undersecretaries, an attorney general, heads of the IRS, EPA, and FBI, ambassadors, special assistants, and thousands of other functionaries to enforce her beliefs and policies. The already sprawling and increasingly empowered federal bureaucracy will force her beliefs and policies into every nook and cranny of American life.

So, yes, we are choosing between “very wicked” and “very foolish.” But as Metaxas writes, “Neither candidate is pure evil. They are human beings. We cannot escape the uncomfortable obligation to soberly choose between them.” Though I’ve come to feel more comfortable soberly choosing between their respective administrations.