An afternoon of unusually blunt talk by one of the nation’s most well-established conservative political commentators about the upcoming presidential election served as the centerpiece of the Anti-Defamation League’s Torch of Liberty Award Luncheon at the Ritz-Carlton in Clayton last Wednesday. 

“My conservative credentials are in good order and I must say I have never voted other than Republican,” said Washington Post syndicated columnist George Will, “and I will not vote Republican this year.”

The ADL event honored Republican ex-Senator John “Jack” Danforth, an ordained Episcopal priest who represented Missouri in Washington D.C. from 1977 to 1995. He then  went on to write two books on the role of religion in politics. 

However, it was Will who did much of the talking at the lunch, answering questions posed by Danforth during a dialogue between the two. The 75-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and pundit, ranging from witty to sharp-tongued, discussed a range of issues but focused on the campaign and his own rejection of controversial GOP nominee Donald Trump. The billionaire’s combative style of populism has brought his party nearly to the point of chaos during this primary season.

Slamming the GOP leadership who have endorsed Trump as “Vichy Republicans” — a reference to the collaborationist French government during World War II — Will called the real estate magnate both the most unpleasant and the most unprepared of the candidates to receive the party’s nod. 

“By unprepared, I don’t mean that he doesn’t know this or that,” he said. “There’s lots he doesn’t know and that’s true of all of us. It is that he doesn’t know what it is to know things. He doesn’t know what it is to have evidence and have a falsifiable proposition that can actually be debated and discussed.”

Will also lamented Trump’s tendency to insult his opponents in ways some have criticized as crude or unpresidential. He said he believes Trump has contributed to the coarsening of the national discourse.

“Indeed, Mr. Trump’s platform, to the extent that he has one, is ‘I promise to never adhere to standards of public decorum,’ ” noted Will, whose work has appeared in periodicals from Newsweek to National Review. “This is called — in our current confusion — ‘telling it like it is.’ For the life of me, I do not know what the antecedent to the pronoun ‘it’ is in that formulation.”

He called the lowering of standards for such behavior “simply unimaginable” and said that it may “take us a long time to recover from this.”

Will said he couldn’t cast a ballot for Trump — even if it meant the probable Democratic nominee would take the election.

“For conservatives, the question is, ‘Do you want to live with one term of Hillary Clinton or do you want to lose — perhaps forever — the Republican Party as a vehicle for conservatism,” he said. “To me, the choice is simple and easy.”

He speculated that — if elected — Clinton would only serve a single term and would likely be energetically opposed by Republicans in Congress leading to a stalemate. However, the GOP caucus might be less willing or able to stand up to its own nominee.

“If Donald Trump is the president, the Republican Party would be supine, boneless, invertebrate and worthless,” he said.

“Well, it is dawning on me that you don’t care for Trump,” Danforth deadpanned dryly as the crowd chuckled. 

Clinton didn’t escape criticism either, with Will opining that both candidates were widely considered untrustworthy by the general public and cracking jokes about the “FBI primary” — a swipe at the Democratic frontrunner’s being investigated over her use of a private email server during her years as Secretary of State.

Danforth did not give his own opinions on the race since he is a member of the Commission on Presidential Debates. However, he did discuss a number of other issues including the death of State Auditor and GOP gubernatorial hopeful Tom Schweich who committed suicide in February, 2015, apparently distraught over comments about what he believed to be a “whisper campaign” attempting to damage his reputation by alleging he was Jewish. The incident provoked a hefty debate about the nastiness of modern politics. 

Danforth delivered remarks at Schweich’s funeral condemning both anti-Semitism and the vicious tone of political discourse.

“The point of my homily wasn’t just to hear the sound of my own voice,” said Danforth at the ADL event. “The point of the homily was to try to evoke a public response. The reason that ugliness and bullying is used in politics is that it works. The antidote to it is to make it not work.”

But the ex-legislator said not much had changed.

“Unfortunately, while a lot of people sent me messages, emails, notes and so on with ‘Good job, Jack, it had to be said’ there was very little in the way of an outcry,” he noted.

Will said that anti-Semitism was still prominent in many political circles from the increasing right-wing extremism in Europe to left-wing campus activism in the United States.

“It has given itself a patina of respectability by saying, ‘We’re not anti-Semites. We simply criticize the policies of the State of Israel,’” Will said.

Will said Nazi atrocities during World War II refuted the idea that bigotry would lose its power to rationality in the modern age.

“The Holocaust is the dark sun into which people must be taught to stare to understand the basic lesson of the 20^th Century,” he said. “This is why it is the hinge of human history. It is the definitive lesson that nothing is unthinkable — unspeakable perhaps — but not unthinkable.”

Afterward, reaction to the discussion from both sides of the aisle seemed positive.

Former Democratic Congressman Russ Carnahan praised award recipient Danforth and said he felt the pair presented a model for civil discourse.

“It is good to hear people from both sides talking about that,” he said. “I think there is going to be a groundswell of people that want to see government actually work and try to get away from some of this extreme division.”

Former Sen. Jim Talent, a Republican, said he had also enjoyed the discussion.

“I was sharing with George before the conversation that I’ve never known a[n election] cycle where my political instincts seemed to be less right about anything,” he said with a chuckle.

He also noted his admiration toward Danforth.

“Even when you don’t agree with Jack…and I don’t suspect there is anyone in this room that has agreed with him about everything…you know he is doing what he thinks is right,” Talent said. “When a political leader gets to that point where people think that about him, he has a special opportunity to lead.”

About 260 people attended the ADL luncheon, which also featured remarks from a wide variety of speakers including regional director Karen Aroesty and regional advisory board chair Robbye Frank as well as representatives of the Islamic Foundation of St. Louis, the Danforth Israel Scholars Program, the Creve Coeur Police, Missouri SCOPE, the Missouri History Museum and the ADL’s Grosfeld National Youth Leadership Mission, all of whom highlighted the organization’s accomplishments and initiatives. 

The program was co-chaired by Ann and Harvey Tettlebaum and Ed Dowd.

The event can be seen on HEC-TV at http://www.hectv.org/watch/hec-tv-presents/the-anti-defamation-leagues-torch-of-liberty-award/23778/.