Qualifyers For Legitimate Leadership

There are two components of legitimate leadership: intelligence and moral character.  I do not mean shallow intelligence of the kind that almost any random person can muster up when circumstances force them to, and I do not mean selective moral character, or an outer appearance of character that conceals immoral or amoral intents.  I am referring to consistent, deep, genuine intelligence and goodness.

One can certainly be a leader without these characteristics, as all it takes to be a leader is the management of other people.  But no one can deserve to be a leader without wielding intelligence and righteousness.  The issue at hand is not what makes a person a leader, but what makes them a worthy, legitimate leader.  Leaders could stumble into competent decisions without consulting reason or having a sound worldview, but they would not have an intellect fit for leadership.  Likewise, they could produce very effective results in certain areas, but if those results come with the violation of moral obligations, their "successes" are illegitimate.

Ironically, American Christians can be very selective about admitting these truths.  Many evangelicals defended the election of Donald Trump by resorting to arguments that literally denied that a leader must be a good person with righteous intentions and methods to be deserving of a political position.  As a great deal of observational and conversational evidence can establish, evangelicals will tend to do or say anything at all that they think will protect their oft-unbiblical and contra-rational beliefs, even if it means diving into open hypocrisy and logical errors.

After all, when it comes to a select handful of significant moral issues--like abortion--they fiercely acknowledge that utilitarian politics and popular consensus cannot change moral facts and can be quite willing to call out asinine fallacies.  But when it comes to almost anything other than abortion or homosexuality, the average evangelical is content to generally overlook key matters or accept heinously illogical positions on them, even with enormous issues like criminal justice and torture (all while opposing a host of activities that the Bible declares to be innocent).  The fact that few Christians even talk of such things highlights how little they seem to consider or care about them.

Denial and neglect change nothing about the fact that no one is fit to be a leader without significant intelligence and thorough moral character.  The demands of reason and morality will not vanish because someone holds a position of terrestrial authority, no matter how sincerely followers approve of a leader.  Since a person's worldview is always with them, leadership and politics are inherently philosophical matters which are governed by numerous epistemological, moral, and metaphysical facts that many people, leaders included, are often thoroughly ignorant of.  If a person is ignorant of those matters, they cannot deserve to wield political power.