CNN commentator Van Jones could barely keep it together as he expressed his feelings on air about Joe Biden becoming President-elect. “It’s easier to be a dad this morning. It’s easier to tell your kids, ‘Character matters, being a good person matters,” he said.

If there is any lesson that our nation has learned the hard way over the last four years it has to be this one: that character matters.

Americans are sometimes seen as puritans for their long-held belief that the President is a moral exemplar as well as the leader of a government. That belief in a leader that is to quote the Boy Scouts handbook “morally straight” had started to slacken in the 1990s. When Bill Clinton was caught lying to a jury about an extramarital affair, there were some who shrugged. This is so common among European leaders, some said. It just meant that America was growing up and shedding the moralistic beliefs of the past.

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