The Virtuous Candidate Doesn’t Put a Gap Between His ‘Personal’ and ‘Political’ Views

Tim Kaine has an authenticity gap between his personal pro-life convictions, and his professional pro-choice policies.

By John Yoest Published on August 26, 2016

I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot.

I wish you were either one or the other! (Revelation 3:15)

The cartoon shows the local Bishop asking, “Do you reject Satan and all His works?” Candidate Tim Kaine replies, “Personally or politically…?”

With his humor, cartoonist Pat Cross illustrates the disconnect between private belief and public action. As a politician, Tim Kaine is “personally opposed” to abortion … and slavery as well, I’m sure. But he would not impose his understanding of Truth on others.

Tim Kaine is an elected state official who professes a pro-life position — personally — while he stakes out a “pro-choice” position publically. He wants to enjoy the benefits of both anti-abortion reality and political expediency. He does not have the courage of his convictions.

The political candidate is a job candidate. The voting public is making a decision that every hiring manager often faces. This is a typical business problem: should a decision maker hire a Tim Kaine? Would a boss hire a candidate with public, painful contradictions?

The biggest mistake a manager (or The Republic) can commit is to make a bad hire. Avoiding that mistake can be as simple as focusing on how happy the candidate is.

Determining the “happiness” of the job candidate is an important measure for gauging company compatibility. If he’s not happy where he is, he won’t be happy where he’s going.

Brad Smart, Ph.D., advised Jack Welch on human resource management, and suggested asking job candidates: “What were your career plans in high school?”

Consider these candidate contentment questions:

  • Tell me about your high school days.
  • What did you want to be then?
  • What was your dream?

Yes. High School. All of life is high school. This is why Happy Days, the TV hit series of the 1970s, was so popular. “High school,” said Kurt Vonnegut, “is closer to the core of the American experience than anything else I can think of.”

Even so, why ask a job candidate about his high school dreams? Because the closer the current career position of the candidate is to his High School Dream, the more content he will be. And you should only hire contentment.

The greater the gap between what the candidate aspired to and what he does now, the greater his internal conflict. This can make for an unhappy, inauthentic job seeker.

The hiring manager should look for internal conflicts and inconsistency. The Dream Gap is similar to spiritual discordance.

Scripture tells us that most of us live with conflict between our fallen humanity and the Holy Spirit:

Because we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold into slavery to sin.

Because I never understand what I am always doing. For I do not do what I want to do, but what I hate is what I do.

But since I do not wish to do that which I am doing, I am in agreement with the law that is good. (Romans 7: 14-16) 

This is a problem of the fallen human condition … and every pool of candidates. We live disconnected from our dreams, and our principles. Living in that gap is part of our lives both professionally and spiritually.

G.K. Chesterton hints at that gap between our aspirations and reality when he said, “Jesus promised the disciples three things — that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy, and in constant trouble.” The constant trouble probably sounds familiar to the beleaguered hiring manager. So how do we get to that “absurdly happy” part? How do we find well-motivated employees who are at peace with themselves?

By looking for those who have the least amount of disconnect between their ideals and their choices.

Aquinas tells us we are looking for virtue. Because virtue, he says, results from good habits. Which is exactly what the hiring manager needs to find. Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J. writes in the Meaning of Virtue in Thomas Aquinas:

St. Thomas defines virtue as “a good habit bearing on activity,” or a good faculty-habit, habitus operativus bonus. Generic to the concept of virtue, then, is the element of habit, which stands in a special relation to the soul, whether in the natural order or elevated to the divine life by grace.

A man is virtuous because his actions correspond to an objective norm, which for Aristotle was knowable by reason and for Aquinas by reason and faith.

Virtue is a practice practiced every day. A habit we do not have to think about.

Even the person of no faith benefits from the good works produced by virtue. Because this makes a person happy. The effective manager doesn’t hire an unhappy, inconsistent individual.

The genuine, true applicant does not have to compartmentalize his personal and public values. The individual should be one person of one mind, facing one direction; his happiness grounded in an integration of aspiration and actuality.

Tim Kaine may yet be hired for the enterprise called the United States. But he would be a better job candidate if he did not have an authenticity gap between his personal pro-life convictions, and his professional pro-choice policies.

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