There was a time when an oath meant something. Not just the words. Not just the ceremony. The weight of it.
You stood, you raised your right hand, and you spoke words that bound you—not only to the people in front of you, but to something higher. Whether you were a man of deep faith or simply a person of conscience, you understood that you had crossed a line. You were no longer just a private citizen. You had made a commitment. And that commitment came with expectations.
I remember taking that oath. More than once.
Different terms. Different seasons of life. But the same words. The same promise: to faithfully execute the duties of the office, to support and defend the Constitution, and yes—for many of us—to do so “so help me God.”
That last phrase mattered to me. It wasn’t filler. It wasn’t tradition for tradition’s sake. It was a reminder that my word was not just given—it was witnessed.
And that changes a person. Or at least, it used to.
Today, I find myself asking a simple question: what exactly does an oath mean anymore? Because in our public life, we have become very good at requiring the oath… and not nearly as good at expecting anything from it.
In the biblical sense, an oath was never casual. It was a covenant. You did not invoke God’s name lightly, because to do so falsely was to place yourself under judgment. Your word was your bond, and your bond was tied to your standing before God. That kind of thinking produces a certain kind of person—careful, deliberate, aware that promises are not tools but commitments.
Our Bible Study Fellowship group is studying the book of Nehemiah chapter 10 this week. I was struck by the seriousness of the Jews as they swore an oath to God accompanied by a penalty for failing to honor the oath.
In Nehemiah 10 verse “29 all these now join their fellow Israelites the nobles, and bind themselves with a curse and an oath to follow the Law of God given through Moses the servant of God and to obey carefully all the commands, regulations and decrees of the Lord our Lord.”
It was that penalty part that got my attention. We do solemnly swear, under penalty of perjury as it says when you sit as a witness in a legal proceeding. Under penalty of criminal indictment.
What happened to that penalty part with our elected officials?
Over time, that part faded right off the paper.
In our constitutional system, the oath became less about a covenant with God and more about a commitment to a framework—the rule of law, the Constitution, the structure of government itself. That was not a step down. It was, in many ways, a step toward unity in a diverse nation. You didn’t have to share the same theology, but you did have to agree on the same foundation.
Fair enough. But something subtle happened along the way. We kept the words, but we lost the weight.
Today, an oath of office is required before an official can assume power. Refuse to take it, and you don’t get the job. The system is very clear about that. No oath, no authority. The line is sharp, and it is enforced.
But once the oath is taken? That’s where things get… flexible.
If you are testifying in a trial, lying will get you in jail. If you are a politician, lying will get you re-elected.
There is no law that says, “You have violated your oath, therefore you are guilty.” Instead, we rely on a patchwork of enforcement—criminal law if a statute is broken, impeachment if political will exists, elections if voters are paying attention. The oath itself becomes more of a reference point than a standard of judgment.
And so we arrive at a strange place.
An elected official can stand before the public, swear to uphold the Constitution, and then—through action or inaction—ignore, reinterpret, or selectively apply it in ways that would have once been unthinkable. As long as those actions fall within the gray areas of law or politics, the oath itself offers no direct consequence.
The promise is made. The accountability is optional.
Now, to be fair, we live in a complex society. Not every disagreement is a violation. Not every policy choice is a betrayal. Reasonable people can—and should—debate how best to uphold the Constitution and the laws of this country.
But that’s not what troubles me. What troubles me is something deeper.
It’s the growing sense that the oath has become a formality rather than a boundary. That it is something we say to gain office, not something we carry once we have it. That the words are recited, but not necessarily believed.
And that brings us back to the heart of the matter.
An oath is only as strong as the person taking it.
If a man believes he is accountable—to God, to the law, to his own conscience—then the oath has force. It shapes his decisions. It restrains him when it should. It guides him when the path is unclear.
But if he believes he is accountable only to circumstance, or power, or convenience… then the oath becomes little more than a step in the process. A box to check. A sentence to recite.
We have built a system that insists upon the taking of the oath. But have we built a culture that insists upon keeping it? That’s a harder question.
Because laws can only do so much. Courts can only reach so far. Elections, as important as they are, come long after the decisions have been made. In the end, the strength of an oath rests not in the enforcement mechanism, but in the character of the one who speaks it.
That may not be a satisfying answer in an age that looks for systems to solve every problem. But it is an honest one.
We cannot legislate integrity. We can only expect it. And that expectation begins with us.
If we, as citizens, treat the oath as ceremonial, we should not be surprised when those we elect do the same. If we reward results over principles, power over fidelity, outcomes over process, then the oath will continue to fade into the background.
But if we begin to ask different questions—if we begin to look not just at what our elected officials promise, but how they govern once in office—then perhaps the oath can recover some of its meaning.
Not because it is enforced more harshly. But because it is taken more seriously.
So here is the question we ought to be asking ourselves: “When an elected official raises their hand and swears to support and defend the Constitution… do we expect them to live that oath?”
Or have we become comfortable with simply hearing them say it?
Because the answer to that question may tell us less about our leaders… and more about us.
No Loss for Words 
Maybe We Should Interview Presidents Differently
by Steve DanaEvery four years America conducts the most expensive job interview in the world.
The 2028 presidential election may sound like it’s still a long way off. It isn’t. Once we get through the midterm elections this fall, the next presidential campaign will begin taking shape almost immediately. Candidates will start testing messages, courting donors, building organizations and introducing themselves to the American people. Before they spend the next two years telling us why they deserve the job, maybe this is a good time for us—the people doing the hiring—to decide what qualifications we’re looking for.
And I’m beginning to wonder whether we ask the right questions.
We ask presidential candidates where they stand on abortion, taxes, immigration, guns, climate change, foreign policy, Social Security and a hundred other issues. Republicans want to know whether the candidate is conservative enough. Democrats want to know whether theirs is progressive enough. Interest groups have scorecards. Donors have priorities. Activists have litmus tests.
But the person we elect will become the chief executive of the United States.
Maybe somewhere along the way we ought to ask:
What have you actually run?
That question seems almost embarrassingly simple.
Yet we have spent most of my lifetime electing professional politicians to an executive position unlike any other on earth.
Why This Matters
The President of the United States is responsible for an executive branch that spends trillions of dollars, employs millions of people directly and indirectly, negotiates with allies and adversaries, oversees the military, responds to disasters, enforces federal law and makes decisions that can affect American lives for generations.
This isn’t an honorary position.
It isn’t a reward for giving the best speech.
And it shouldn’t be the final promotion in a political career.
We ought to care whether the person asking for the job has demonstrated some ability to do the job.
Donald Trump, for all his faults, forced me to think differently about that.
I don’t believe America needs another Donald Trump.
I do believe America should learn something from having elected him.
The Professional Political Résumé
For most of modern history, we have treated government experience as one of the principal qualifications for the presidency.
A candidate served in the House.
Then the Senate.
Maybe became governor.
Perhaps served as vice president.
He accumulated twenty or thirty years in public life and eventually we were told that all that experience made him ready for the Oval Office.
Maybe.
But experience doing what?
Political professionals become very good at politics. They learn how to raise money, assemble coalitions, make speeches, win elections, work committees, negotiate legislation and satisfy constituencies.
Those are useful skills.
But they aren’t the same skills required to run the largest, most consequential organizations in the world.
A senator doesn’t have to make payroll.
Congress can spend more money than it collects year after year and call the result a budget.
A business owner who tries that long enough gets introduced to his banker under less pleasant circumstances.
Political professionals spend enormous amounts of money, but almost none of it belongs to them. They make decisions affecting businesses they have never operated and employees they have never hired.
And when a government program fails?
Nobody goes broke.
Nobody loses the house.
Nobody tells the family that the business is gone because Dad made the wrong decision.
They hold a hearing.
Then they appropriate some more money.
That is a very different education from the education received by someone whose mistakes have consequences.
Failure Is Experience Too
One criticism of Donald Trump has always been that some of his business ventures failed.
That’s true.
But I’m not sure failure is always the disqualification we pretend it is.
I’ve been in business. Failure teaches things success never gets around to mentioning.
You hire the wrong person.
You misjudge the market.
You borrow too much.
You trust somebody you shouldn’t have trusted.
You make a deal that looked wonderful on paper and discover reality forgot to read the proposal.
Then you live with it.
Trump has had spectacular successes and spectacular failures. Whatever else we think of him, he has operated in an environment where decisions have consequences.
That matters.
I’d like presidential candidates to be able to answer a question we rarely ask:
Tell me about something you really screwed up. What did it cost you, and what did you learn?
I’d learn more from that answer than from another rehearsed speech about their vision for America.
The Pragmatist
Years ago I came across a piece falsely attributed to Charles Krauthammer arguing that Trump was neither really liberal nor conservative, but a pragmatist.
Krauthammer didn’t write it. The attribution was bogus.
But the thought stuck with me.
A pragmatist sees a problem and asks how to solve it.
Not: What is the Republican solution?
Not: What is the Democratic solution?
What works?
The bogus essay argued that immigration isn’t fundamentally a Republican or Democratic problem. Neither are trade, debt or economic decline. They are American problems requiring workable solutions.
That idea is bigger than Donald Trump.
In fact, I hope it eventually outlives him.
One of the frustrations of modern politics is that ideology too often dictates the permitted solution before anybody finishes defining the problem.
Democrats and Republicans have constituents they must satisfy.
And frequently those constituents are not the voters.
The political class develops priorities that frequently aren’t the priorities of the people paying the bills.
Then everybody retreats to their corner and calls the stalemate principle.
Maybe we could use more pragmatists.
The Art of the Deal
As painful as it may be for some people to admit, Trump’s The Art of the Deal contains another qualification we should think about when selecting presidents.
Negotiation.
Trump sees negotiations differently from most politicians.
He understands leverage.
He understands opening positions.
He understands that the first proposal doesn’t necessarily have to be the final proposal.
He understands that sometimes you begin by asking for something outrageous because doing so changes the boundaries of the conversation.
Some of Trump’s proposals sound preposterous.
Sometimes they probably are preposterous.
Trump is fully capable of saying something ridiculous without having formulated a master strategy beforehand.
But it is equally foolish to assume that every outrageous opening is proof that he hasn’t thought about what comes next.
An extreme opening position can establish an anchor.
It can force the opponent to react to your proposal instead of allowing you to react to his.
It can reveal what the other side really values.
And it can create room for an eventual agreement that would have looked impossible before the negotiation began.
Trump also understands something politicians frequently forget:
Sometimes no deal is better than a bad deal.
Government officials often enter negotiations under tremendous pressure to produce an agreement. If everyone knows you must return home waving a signed document, your opponent already possesses leverage.
A businessman learns that occasionally the most powerful word in a negotiation is no.
I don’t need the next president to have Trump’s personality.
But I’d like him to understand leverage.
The Trouble With Trump
None of this requires pretending Donald Trump doesn’t come with enough baggage to fill an airport carousel.
He can be crass.
He is vain.
His ego enters the room several minutes before the rest of him.
He turns disagreements into personal battles that never needed to happen.
He can insult somebody who might have helped him ten minutes later.
His discipline leaves something to be desired.
And sometimes his mouth obscures a perfectly legitimate argument.
Trump’s supporters occasionally make the mistake of believing that because his enemies exaggerate his faults, we have to pretend those faults don’t exist.
We don’t.
Trump can behave like a buffoon.
But he’s no dummy.
And confusing those two things can be a serious mistake.
The characteristics that make Trump difficult can sometimes make him effective.
His unpredictability creates chaos, but it can also prevent opponents from knowing exactly what he will do.
His ego creates unnecessary conflict, but it also makes him difficult to intimidate.
His willingness to violate political conventions can be embarrassing, but it also allows him to question assumptions that professional politicians stopped questioning years ago.
His stubbornness can prevent compromise.
It can also prevent surrender.
The trick for the future isn’t finding another Trump.
It is identifying which characteristics were valuable and finding them in somebody with better self-control.
The Candidate After Trump
The next round of interviews is about to begin. Suppose this time we interviewed presidential candidates differently.
What have you built?
What have you run?
How many people have depended upon your decisions for their livelihood?
Have you ever been responsible for a real budget you couldn’t simply increase?
Have you negotiated when your own money or reputation was at risk?
Have you ever hired somebody smarter than you?
Have you fired somebody you personally liked because they couldn’t do the job?
When did you abandon a plan because the facts showed it wasn’t working?
Tell us about your biggest failure.
Tell us what it cost you.
Tell us what you learned.
And perhaps most importantly:
Can you listen to experts without becoming captive to them?
A President needs experts.
Nobody understands everything from nuclear weapons to epidemiology to monetary policy to artificial intelligence.
But experts advise.
Presidents decide.
The adviser can write another paper explaining why his theory should have worked.
The President has to live with what actually happened.
I’d like a President capable of listening carefully to the smartest people in the room and then asking:
That’s a fine theory. Does the damned thing work?
What We Should Keep
Our MAGA discussions have repeatedly led me to the same conclusion.
Trump and the ideas associated with him don’t have to remain permanently attached to one another.
Some of the ideas are bigger than the man.
So are some of the lessons about leadership.
Maybe presidential experience should include more than government service.
Maybe building something matters.
Maybe meeting payroll matters.
Maybe negotiating matters.
Maybe failure matters.
Maybe accountability matters.
Maybe having operated in the real world, where arithmetic eventually wins every argument, matters too.
And then let’s add the qualities we wish Trump possessed in greater quantity.
Humility.
Discipline.
Temperament.
The ability to hear criticism without treating it as betrayal.
The ability to admit error without believing the admission makes him weak.
Confidence without constant self-celebration.
Strength without needless cruelty.
Pragmatism without chaos.
Imagine a candidate with substantial executive experience, negotiating ability, an understanding of risk and accountability, the willingness to challenge stale assumptions—and enough humility and discipline not to make every issue about himself.
That sounds like somebody worth interviewing.
Every four years Americans are told we are choosing the most powerful leader in the world.
Maybe it’s time we stopped conducting the interview as though we’re selecting the chairman of a political club.
The presidency is an executive job.
We ought to start hiring accordingly.
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