John McCain leads Barack Obama among women over 40—normally a solidly Democratic voting bloc. To take advantage of this, Dick Morris concludes, McCain should take dead aim at this demographic, perhaps by selecting a female running mate who would appeal to them.
To do that, are there any better options than Alaska's Sarah Palin? I don't think so; and as Adam Brickley points out, people are noticing. Gov. Palin for VP.
I've noted before that Barack Obama's position on Iraq hasn't been as consistent as he likes to make it out to be (he even went so far in 2004 as to tell the Chicago Tribune, “There’s not that much difference between my position and George Bush’s position at this stage”—which doesn't square with his statement earlier this year that “I opposed this war in 2002, 2003, 4, 5, 6, and 7”); but this video (produced, of course, by the McCain campaign), which consists almost entirely of clips of Sen. Obama, makes his back-and-forth record on the situation in Iraq, and I think the fundamental cynicism with which he has approached the whole issue, excruciatingly clear:
I am increasingly suspicious that should Sen. Obama be elected President in November, those who voted for him will find what the liberal netroots are already finding: he is indeed “the black Bill Clinton,” and his promises are secondary to the political needs of the moment.
For all that sites like Daily Ko[ok]s have been crowing over the Walt Monegan brouhaha in Alaska and proclaiming it the death knell for Gov. Palin (and for Lt. Gov. Parnell in his run for the House), it appears the people of Alaska aren't buying it: an independent poll has her favorable rating still at 80%.
As regards Daily Kos' premature dancing on Gov. Palin's grave, I'm irresistibly reminded of C. S. Lewis' dry comment in the preface to The Screwtape Letters that "there is wishful thinking in Hell as well as on Earth." That will probably get me into trouble, and I don't mean it seriously—people with their kind of attitude just annoy me, whether liberal or conservative, which is why I couldn't help recalling it. :)
Barack Obama went abroad to burnish his foreign-policy credentials and trim John McCain's advantage in that area, and at first it seemed to be working; now that he's back, though, the trip pretty clearly looks like a political flop. For the first time since Sen. Obama nailed down the Democratic nomination, we have a poll (USA Today/Gallup) showing Sen. McCain in the lead, by four points; in the Rasmussen tracking poll, perhaps the most accurate one out there, Sen. Obama leads by three points, within the margin of error.
What went wrong for the Chicago senator? One major thing seems to have been his Berlin speech, in which he greeted his German audience as “a fellow citizen of the world,” apologized for America, went out of his way to avoid crediting the US with saving West Berlin via the Berlin Airlift (for that matter, he also snubbed the Brits for their part in it), and referenced the fall of the Berlin Wall without ever mentioning that that came about because America led the West in standing up to Communism.
As a result, his speech doesn't seem to have impressed much of anyone. A letter to the editor in the Chicago Tribune noted dryly, “While America may not be perfect, there is no reason to apologize to the Germans, architects of the Holocaust.” In a commentary in Germany's Stern magazine sardonically titled “Barack Kant Saves the World,” Florian Güssgen called Sen. Obama “almost too slick” and said, “Obama's speech was often vague, sometimes banal and more reminiscent of John Lennon's feel good song 'Imagine' than of a foreign policy agenda.” As for the UK, a columnist for the Guardian snidely dismissed the whole thing with a classically British crack: “Barack Obama has found his people. But, unfortunately for his election prospects, they're German, not American.”
It probably didn't help, further, that he kept the American flag offstage, both for his Berlin speech and during his press conference in Paris with French Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy; that could only underscore the impression that Sen. Obama cared more about the opinions of his European audiences than he did of the opinions of American voters, whom the trip was ostensibly intended to impress. The thing that might end up hurting Sen. Obama the most, though, was the incident at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, where he had been scheduled to meet with wounded soldiers. According to reports, the Pentagon informed him that he would not be allowed to bring the news media or his campaign staff, only his official Senate staff; in response, Sen. Obama canceled the visit. Sen. McCain's response was predictable on every level, as political opportunity combined with a snub he no doubt felt keenly: he attacked.
If Sen. Obama wants to convince skeptics he can handle foreign policy, he's going to have to do better than this.
As I'm sure is no surprise to anyone who's spent much time reading this blog, I have an interest in apologetics, which is the rational defense of the Christian faith; as irritating as I sometimes find the attitudes of the so-called "New Atheists," I appreciate the part they've played in stirring up a similar interest in a lot of my contemporaries in the church who'd never paid any attention to apologetics before. Too many Western Christians for far too long have simply conceded the rational arguments to their critics, assuming that their opponents were right, and tried to defend their faith on other grounds; but I don't believe the atheists have the best of the argument (though I'll certainly concede they have arguments which need to be taken seriously and respectfully), and I think it's a good thing that more and more Christians are realizing that.
That said, I think we need to be careful not to go overboard here. Apologetics has gotten a bad name in the past from people who thought they could use it as a bludgeon to beat people into the Kingdom, and we must be careful not to let enthusiasm drive us into such an attitude. We must always remember that the love of God in us should be the primary thing in us drawing people to Christ—we should know the arguments and be able to offer them appropriately, but they should be secondary.
In this, as in so many things, I continue to be educated and humbled by C. S. Lewis, and particularly by this poem of his:
The Apologist's Evening Prayer
From all my lame defeats and oh! much more
From all the victories that I seemed to score;
From cleverness shot forth on Thy behalf
At which, while angels weep, the audience laugh;
From all my proofs of Thy divinity,
Thou, who wouldst give no sign, deliver me.Thoughts are but coins. Let me not trust, instead
Of Thee, their thin-worn image of Thy head.
From all my thoughts, even from my thoughts of Thee,
O thou fair Silence, fall, and set me free.
Lord of the narrow gate and the needle's eye,
Take from me all my trumpery, lest I die.
I was interested today to find a hit on my blog coming from the blog run by the editors of Canada's National Review of Medicine; it was, of course, to my post on the Canadian healthcare system. I checked out the post in which I was referenced, and came away a little disappointed—it consists, in my view, of little more than a willful misunderstanding of the significance of the article by Dr. David Gratzer to which I linked in my post and a drive-by dismissal of several blog posts (mine included) which dealt with that article, followed by a few moments of patting themselves on the back that a lot of Americans would like to be like Canada. There was no effort to engage with any of the evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, which I and others referenced, or any attempt to make a real case for socialized medicine; honestly, I think I got a more thoughtful response in the comments on my post than these folks offered.
I would suggest, of course, that you read the NRM editor's post for yourself and see what you think, since your opinion might be more positive than mine; for my part, though, I think there's more worth considering in the two comments on that post than in the post itself. I have no objection to the architects and managers of the Canadian system defending it and making the case for themselves—but if they're going to do so, I think they have the obligation to actually make it, which means taking those who disagree with them seriously enough to actually engage their arguments.
In 1949, on the island of Lewis, off the west coast of Scotland, the leaders of the local presbytery of the Free Kirk of Scotland grew so worried about the way things were going that they issued a proclamation to be read in all their congregations lamenting “the low state of vital religion . . . throughout the land,” declaring, “The Most High has a controversy with the nation,” and calling on everyone to pray that God would call the nation to repentance. In one parish on the island, the parish of Barvas, the message took root with a pair of sisters in their eighties. The sisters encouraged their pastor to pray together with the elders and deacons, and promised that they would pray twice a week from ten at night until three in the morning. So the minister and lay leaders prayed twice a week in a barn—no word on whether they stayed up until three AM—and the sisters prayed in their home; they did this faithfully for several months, in which nothing happened.
During this time, a request was sent to an evangelist named Duncan Campbell, asking him to come to Lewis; he declined, because he was scheduled to speak elsewhere. God had other ideas, however, and his commitments were cancelled, freeing him up to go to Lewis. The result was a spiritual explosion, as revival swept the island, transforming it by the power of the Holy Spirit. Where once the jail was full and the churches nearly empty, the situation reversed itself—the churches were full to overflowing, while the jail was shut up for lack of use, because there was no crime. It was a remarkable time, and over the years, many have praised Campbell for it; but as he himself said more than once, it wasn’t his preaching that brought revival. Indeed, many who came to Christ during that time never heard him or anyone preach. No, this was no pre-planned preacher-driven event; rather, the roots of that revival were to be found in the faithful, persistent, believing prayer of those two sisters, and of those who prayed with them; they were certain God would answer them, and refused to stop until he did.
That is stubborn prayer. It’s the approach to prayer which Jesus tried to develop in his disciples, and it’s part of what Paul talks about in his epistles. It’s the spirit we see in Jacob when he wrestled with God at Peniel—he was clearly out of his weight class, but he would not let go until God blessed him. He hung on for dear life, through his exhaustion, through the pain in his dislocated hip, through the screaming ache in his muscles . . . through it all, he hung on until he had nothing left but determination; and as the night was ending, God blessed him. We don’t often think of Jacob as a model for anything, but in this, he is; he’s a model for us in prayer.
That may seem strange to us, because we aren’t taught that way; and some might be wondering, “Isn’t that selfish? If God tells us ‘no,’ are we allowed to just badger him until he gives in and gives us what we want?” Certainly, that could be true, if we’re praying selfishly; but if our prayer is truly focused on God and centered on his kingdom, that's another matter. Such prayer leads us out of selfishness, not into it, in part because it draws us out of our small desires and teaches us to desire the presence of God, that we may live in the awareness of his presence.
To understand the significance of that, stop and think about what it means to be in someone’s presence, and particularly to be in the presence of someone you love. It means that it doesn’t take any effort to talk to them; it means you hear them when they talk to you; it means you’re open to them, available to them, and they’re open and available to you. It means that even when you’re not talking to them or specifically thinking about them, you know they’re with you, and so they’re involved in some way in what you’re doing; their presence connects them to you. Even if you aren’t having a conversation, conversation is always possible, and comes naturally; and even your silence can be its own form of communion.
That’s what our life with God is supposed to look like; that, I believe, is what it means to pray without ceasing, as Paul commands us in 1 Thessalonians 5. That’s what it means to pray at all times in the Spirit, as he says in Ephesians 6. It’s not a matter of talking all the time, by any means; the silence and the listening are as important for us as the times when we talk. The key, rather, is to be in what we might call a spirit of prayer, by the Spirit of God, such that we are aware of and attentive to God when he speaks, and that conversation with God flows naturally out of whatever we’re doing—that whenever we have something to say, whether something that’s bothering us or something that gives us joy or a question that’s puzzling us, it’s perfectly natural for us to turn and say it to God, just as we would to anyone else to whom we’re close.
As you can probably guess from this, I don’t agree with those who say that it’s unspiritual to pray for your own wants and needs. In fact, I’m always kind of surprised to run into that attitude, though I shouldn’t be—it’s common enough. In my last church, I had an elder sit in my office and argue that position, angrily and at great length; he firmly believed that if you could do anything about a problem, you shouldn’t be praying about it, because it was your responsibility to get out there and fix it yourself. He then argued, further, that if you had created the problem, you had no right to ask God to help you fix it, because it was on your shoulders. I bit my tongue and didn’t point him to the numerous psalms in which David and other psalmists do exactly that. When he told me that God helps those who help themselves, though, I did remind him that that isn’t Bible, it’s Ben Franklin. (All I got in return was a blank look.)
There are a lot of people who think this way, but their view isn’t rooted in Scripture; Paul takes us a very different direction. Look at Ephesians 6:18: “Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.” Then in Philippians 4:6, Paul says, “Don’t be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” Notice: when? “on all occasions”; we might also say, “at all times.” About what? “Everything.” These are commands to ask God for things, to tell him what we need and want and ask him to provide for us; they insist to us that God wants us to do that, and indeed that he expects us to do so.
Why isn’t that selfish? Well, in the first place, what’s the foundation for our requests? Our relationship with God. We don’t go to him just as someone who can give us stuff and demand that he do so; this is not just another consumer transaction. Rather, we talk to him as someone who loves us and whom we love in return, and we tell him what’s on our heart, including our needs and our desires, because he cares about us and he wants us to tell him. We don’t just ask in order to get what we want—we also ask in order to deepen our relationship with God. When we approach him in that way, it’s not a demand for services, it’s an expression of our dependence on him, and an act of trust. It’s an act of trust that he can in fact give us what we ask for, and that he does actually want to give us good things. That can be hard, because there are times when trusting him is hard, and times when we don’t want to admit we need him; but in all circumstances, whether good, bad, or whatever, we are called to do so, and asking God to meet our needs is an important discipline in learning to do so.
In the second place, people who ask of God selfishly do so in a spirit of entitlement; they believe they deserve to get what they want, and regard it as nothing more than their due. By contrast, Paul tells us to pray in a spirit of thanksgiving. This doesn’t mean simply to thank God in advance for the things he will do for us, or even to thank him for the things he has already done, though both are important; rather, this is to be our basic attitude in prayer, and in all of life. This too is a recognition that we are completely dependent on God, that everything comes to us as his gift; this is the truth that James captured when he said, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” Because of this, because of God’s goodness and generosity to us—yes, Paul assures us, even in the midst of our suffering—gratitude should be our fundamental response to life.
Whatever our circumstances, in a grateful spirit, we are to bring all our requests—our wants, our needs, our concerns, the deepest desires of our hearts––all the things which lie at the roots of our anxieties and fears, as well as those anxieties and fears themselves and everything to which they give rise—into the presence of God, trusting that he’ll take care of us. We don’t do this because he doesn’t know what we want, or need, or fear; we don’t pray for his sake, we pray for ours. We do this as a formal, deliberate acknowledgement of our dependence on him, and to give us the assurance that he knows what we want, what we need, because we have told him. Perhaps most importantly of all, we lay our requests at God’s feet because doing so draws us closer to him, and focuses our minds and our hearts on him; and so doing, it involves us in and connects us to the work he is doing in and around us.
Third, if our prayer is truly kingdom-centered, then it keeps us aware of the bigger picture, which we see in Ephesians 6 ; we understand that we don’t just pray that God would bless us, or that he would bless others, so that we and they would be happy and fulfilled and healed and free from pain and could go on to enjoy our lives. Rather, we pray for our needs and the needs of others in part because each of us is involved, individually and as part of the church, in the great struggle which is the inbreaking of the kingdom of God into this world. The kingdom is resisted, both openly and subtly, by the forces of the prince of the powers of this present darkness, and so Paul tells us that we need to be armored up and armed to deal with that resistance; and the foundation of that is prayer. We pray for our needs and wants, and for the needs and wants of others, so that we might be strengthened, and so that opportunities for the enemy to undermine us or weaken us would be closed off. And because the enemy is always looking for ways to do that, and the spiritual struggle we face is continuous, so too we must pray continuously. Ultimately, as we do so, we find that it trains us to depend on God, and to use the gifts that he’s given us not on our own initiative, but on his; and it prepares us, as the Rev. Tim Keller put it, “to have our hard hearts melted,” to have the barriers in our lives torn down, “to have the glory of God break through,” so that we may see his glory in our lives.
This isn’t something you can learn how to do by having someone tell you, or by reading a book; the most I can do, or anyone can do, is point you in that direction and invite you to do it. We can only really learn this by doing it—by asking God to teach us to live in the awareness of his presence, so that we learn to be in prayer throughout everything we do, and by setting aside time just to pray, for focused conversation with him. We can only learn to trust him with the things that are on our hearts by trusting him, by praying about them whenever they weigh on us; we can only learn to listen by listening. That’s why stubborn prayer is so important—it’s not about wearing God down, breaking down his resistance; it’s about wearing our egos down, breaking down our resistance. It’s not so much about storming the gates of heaven as it is about opening our own gates and letting heaven storm us.
An open letter is, of course, the thing you write to someone who'd never read an actual letter if you sent them one, and that's certainly the case here; as the son of a decorated Navy pilot, I know people whom Sen. McCain considers good friends, but that doesn't mean he knows me. That said, this is America, so I'm allowed to have opinions anyway, and I have a blog, so I might as well publish them. :) Therefore, here's what I'd tell Sen. McCain to do if he asked my advice:
Name Sarah Palin your running mate. Everyone knew that was coming, of course, since I've been beating that drum for a while; I've stated my reasons elsewhere and I don't see any reason to repeat them here.
Beginning with Gov. Palin, name your whole team early. Specifically, line up the major Cabinet appointments now, with acceptances, and get those people on the campaign trail. Have your future secretaries of state and defense out across America talking about how you'll manage foreign policy, and what their part in that (and their approach to it) will be; have your presumptive treasury secretary on the road talking economic policy and solutions to America's problems, and building trust with voters that the government's role in the economy will be managed well if you win; put up a well-respected candidate for attorney general and let him calm the waters that were roiled under John Ashworth and Alberto Gonzales. Let them campaign for you by campaigning for their own jobs, making their own cases to the nation for how those jobs should be done.
Build a national-unity government. Use the opportunity of picking your senior advisers early to showcase the fact that you, not Barack Obama, are the person in this race who has a history of working effectively across partisan divides. Begin with an intraparty split by choosing Mitt Romney as your intended secretary of the treasury; let him go out there and focus on his economic-policy credentials (thereby shoring up yours) and sell the idea that a McCain presidency will be better for the economy than an Obama presidency.
Having done that, work outward: get Sam Nunn to agree to serve as Secretary of Defense, and Joe Lieberman as Secretary of State. Put moderate Democrats, senior statesmen who are foreign-policy realists, in the two main foreign-policy positions in the Cabinet. They're people you can trust—both their character and their competence—and they'll highlight the fact that you don't intend to be the president of (or for) Republicans only. Sen. Obama talks the uniting talk; you can one-up him by walking the walk, in meaningful fashion.
If you can find other ways to carry that forward, do so. Bob Casey Jr., for instance, is the son of a pro-life legend in Pennsylvania politics; if he's still solidly pro-life, offer him a job on the social-policy side, perhaps as Secretary of Health and Human Services. He's endorsed Obama, so he wouldn't campaign for you, but he might be willing to accept the offer anyway, if you didn't ask him to campaign. Fringe benefit there: if you won, Rick Santorum might get his seat back.
Tie Sen. Obama so tightly to Nancy Pelosi that he can't get loose. Right now, he's trying to win by running to the center, which is what he needs to do; but if he wins, it's highly unlikely that he'll govern from the center. In the first place, his slim voting record to this point suggests no such instincts; in the second, all the political forces around him are going to pull him to the left—hard to the left. A veteran politician with a strong centrist track record and base of support might be able to resist those forces and chart his own course; Sen. Obama has neither the experience to know how to do so nor the power base on which to stand, nor for that matter does he have the centrist instincts. I strongly suspect that Speaker Pelosi and the rest of the party's leaders do not regard Sen. Obama as the leader of their party—he's too new, too unproven, and he doesn't have much of a track record with them, either—but rather as its chief PR man, as the guy they intend to use to sell their program. If he wins, it's more likely to be the Pelosi administration in all but name than a truly independent Obama administration.
The key, then, is to make that case. This is Jonah Goldberg's "pin Obama on the donkey" strategy, but in a more specific form. Make the case to the voters of this country that the person they should be listening to if they want to know what an Obama presidency would look like, in at least its first two years, isn't Sen. Obama, but Speaker Pelosi, because she'll be the one calling the shots. Granted, it's possible he could assert and maintain his independence from the congressional wing of his party—but if he wants to sign any bills, probably not.
Remember, this is the 2008 election, not 1976. If you try to run on your biography, you'll lose. If you try to run on your experience and qualifications, you'll lose. Yes, you're far and away the most qualified candidate in this election, but it doesn't matter. You need to run on vision and foresight, and you need to make that vision clear and compelling. Tie it to your biography, yes—people love stories, if they're told well and connect with their own lives; tie it to your experience, yes—when you can show that your vision has been right before, as with the surge, it makes your visioncasting more compelling; but it's your vision for this country that needs to be out front and center, dominating the view. This, really, is where your opponent's inexperience is relevant: he doesn't have enough experience for a clear vision, and so his is fuzzy, hazy, long on platitudes ("we are the change we have been waiting for") and short on concrete details and plans for implementation; as such, whatever he might see in our future, he lacks the ability to get us there.
Hire a preacher or two for your speechwriting team. That might sound like I'm bidding for a new job, but I'm not—I like where I am just fine, thanks. I am, however, serious about this. It might be idiosyncratic, but I think you would do well to learn the cadences, and to some extent the rhetoric, of the pulpit in your public speaking. A presidential campaign, honestly, is a much better audition for Orator-in-Chief than it is for Commander-in-Chief, and when it comes to prepared speeches, Sen. Obama has a real edge here—and I'm inclined to believe that he owes a lot of that edge to the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, who (regardless of what you think of the content of his message) is a fine, fine preacher. I don't say that Sen. Obama speaks like a black preacher, because he doesn't, but twenty years of the cadences and rhythms of that pulpit have soaked into him. I think you'd do well to find some equivalent experience to draw on. To the extent that America is still, as de Tocqueville called us, "a nation with the soul of a church," we prefer a president with the tongue of a preacher; the presidents we've elected without that, at least in recent decades, have had special circumstances in their favor. You don't.
Remember Nathan Bedford Forrest. Not his racism, but his view of tactics: the winner is the one who gets there firstest with the mostest. Fight clean and keep your blows above the belt, but strike first and strike as hard as you can; seize the initiative by all ethical means, and do everything you can to keep it. You have already been defined, and by and large that's not that bad—except for the "he's old" thing, which can largely be countered by adding a young, charismatic VP (see heading 1, above); Sen. Obama really hasn't been, and most folks in the media would like to keep it that way. You need to find a way to define him as what his meager record shows him to be—a hard-left politician and a creation of the liberal Democratic Chicago machine—and to do so in a way that will stick in people's minds. Tying him to Pelosi is part of that (though it's also for other purposes), but it's not enough. Sen. Obama's great political advantage is that voters can look at him and believe that he will be whatever they want him to be; you need to take that away from him, and make it clear that the emperor does have clothes: standard Democratic Party uniform.
That's just a few thoughts, offered free of charge from someone with no more experience than a couple decades' deeply-interested observation and study of the American political scene. Sen. McCain, I hope they serve, and I wish you success, confident that whatever happens, you will continue to honor the uniform both you and my father once wore, and the country you both served and continue to serve.
Sincerely yours, &etc.
My thanks to Jared Wilson over at The Gospel-Driven Church for reminding me of Tim Keller's piece "The Gospel in All its Forms," which is an excellent discussion (as one would expect of Rev. Keller) of the ways in which the gospel message is one, yet multifaceted, speaking in different ways to different people and different groups of people with the singular message of the good news of Jesus Christ. I was particularly interested, this time around, in the Rev. Keller's consideration (which Jared emphasizes) of the eschatological element of the gospel:
If I had to put this outline in a single statement, I might do it like this: Through the person and work of Jesus Christ, God fully accomplishes salvation for us, rescuing us from judgment for sin into fellowship with him, and then restores the creation in which we can enjoy our new life together with him forever.
One of these elements was at the heart of the older gospel messages, namely, salvation is by grace not works. It was the last element that was usually missing, namely that grace restores nature, as the Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck put it. When the third, "eschatological" element is left out, Christians get the impression that nothing much about this world matters. Theoretically, grasping the full outline should make Christians interested in both evangelistic conversions as well as service to our neighbor and working for peace and justice in the world. . . .
Instead of going into, say, one of the epistles and speaking of the gospel in terms of God, sin, Christ, and faith, I point out the story-arc of the Bible and speak of the gospel in terms of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. We once had the world we all wanted—a world of peace and justice, without death, disease, or conflict. But by turning from God we lost that world. Our sin unleashed forces of evil and destruction so that now "things fall apart" and everything is characterized by physical, social, and personal disintegration. Jesus Christ, however, came into the world, died as a victim of injustice and as our substitute, bearing the penalty of our evil and sin on himself. This will enable him to some day judge the world and destroy all death and evil without destroying us.
I was particularly interested in this, as I said, because I'd just read, a couple days ago, a piece in Perspectives addressing this point of view. The Rev. Jeffrey Sajdak, pastor of First Christian Reformed Church in Pella, Iowa, was responding to a fellow Pella pastor, Second Reformed's Steve Mathonnet-VanderWell, who had taken a shot at neo-Calvinists (he called it "a friendly nudge to see if anyone is awake") in an earlier issue. In the course of that article, the Rev. Mathonnet-VanderWell gave us a parable, what we might call the Parable of the Theater. The Rev. Sajdak responded to that parable this way, titling his article "The Fourth Act":
His concluding story about the great theatre deftly highlights these challenges; yet the story he tells is incomplete. The drama needs another act. . . .
There's another act, an act that is dear to the hearts of many neo-Calvinists, the act of Consummation. I have personally been enriched by and preached some of the insightful commentary of Richard Mouw on Isaiah and Revelation and the New Jerusalem. The vision of this world being transformed, renewed, and restored is a grand and exciting vision. The highest aspirations of culture, stripped of their sinful taints and malicious purposes, enjoyed by all the inhabitants of the New Jerusalem and the New Earth.
The Rev. Mathonnet-VanderWell, in his own response, granted the point but argued that we should be careful not to jump there too quickly (for reasons which I find dubious, and which seem to me to say more about his philosophical and theological preferences than anything else). Personally, however, I think the Rev. Sajdak is right, as is the Rev. Keller: most of us, especially in Reformed circles, are far more prone to forget about that fourth act than we are to overemphasize it and misuse it. (What's more, when it is misused, the best defense against that misuse is a right emphasis on the coming consummation of Jesus' work, the restoration of the proper created order.) That's a problem, because it's the fourth act, the completion of God's plan to redeem the world (not just individual people), that gives us the proper perspective on the first three; without it, our understanding of Jesus and his work will inevitably be skewed.
Making fun of politicians is not only our right as Americans, it's our duty. After all, somebody has to keep those guys (relatively) humble if we're going to preserve democracy. Unfortunately, those who lead us in this important cultural responsibility—our late-night talk-show hosts—have been falling down on the job, unable to find a good way to poke fun at Barack Obama. Part of that is the candidate's own resistance, which is worrisome; do we really want a president who won't let us laugh at him? We've had presidents before who were bad at laughing at themselves (think Nixon), which was bad enough—but not to be able to laugh at the President? It's positively un-American. Part of this too is that audiences are resistant, which is equally concerning; if we've started taking politicians, even one politician, too seriously to be able to laugh at them, something is seriously out of whack with us.
Fortunately, there are a few people riding to the rescue. Andy Borowitz was good enough to pass along a list of five "campaign-approved Barack Obama jokes," and Joel Stein (in the Los Angeles Times) has collected a list of suggestions for the rest of us. We also, thank goodness, have JibJab:
With their help, it is to be hoped that we can go forth and redress the humor balance. We'd certainly better, because Maureen Dowd is right:
if Obama gets elected and there is nothing funny about him, it won’t be the economy that’s depressed. It will be the rest of us.
(As a side note, I have to admit, I feel a little sorry for Sen. Obama. Not so much because of his touchiness, although I think being able to laugh at oneself is one of life's great blessings; it's because of his initials. People keep wanting to refer to him by his initials, and certainly as a Democratic presidental candidate, you want to be able to hang out with FDR and JFK—though maybe not so much LBJ; but he doesn't want to be referred to as BHO, because that reminds people that his middle name's Hussein, and that's bad, or something. And yet, not even Barack Obama can make BO cool. What's the guy to do?)
HT for the Stein column: Bill
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal got some airtime today, courtesy of Kathleen Parker. In the process, though, she pointed out the main reason for picking Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin over Gov. Jindal (in my book, anyway): the GOP really needs Gov. Jindal to stay in Louisiana for a while. Given the nature of the situation down there, his task in reforming Louisiana is a much longer-term one, and much more dependent on him. If Sen. McCain picks him, the Louisiana statehouse reverts to a Democrat who'll abandon everything he's been trying to accomplish; whereas if Gov. Palin is the nominee, her successor will be a Republican, most likely the state attorney general (since the lieutenant governor will probably be moving on himself, to the House of Representatives), who's one of her own appointees. I continue to believe that Sen. McCain should name Gov. Palin his running mate and give Gov. Jindal the "Obama slot" at the national convention, thereby putting both of them on the national stage but leaving Gov. Jindal in place to do the work in Louisiana that badly needs doing.
(Update: apparently Gov. Jindal thinks the same way; what both Kathleen Parker and I missed is that he's taken himself out of the running, announcing he's going to stay in Louisiana. That's good, I think—as long as Gov. Palin can tamp out the fire in Alaska.)
(Further update: here's an excellent article from the Wall Street Journal on Gov. Palin's spiritual journey from Hinduism to Catholicism. My thanks to James Grant for the link.)
. . . at least in Pennsylvania, where a guy who can't even campaign until next month (because he's still on active duty with the Army) appears to be setting himself up to take down Democrat pork king Rep. Jack Murtha. None too soon, if it happens—and so far, it looks like Rep. Murtha's constituents agree. That guy is one of those politicians I'd want out of office no matter what party I supported; as an unabashed conservative, though, I'll be particularly pleased if he's "redeployed" by a guy who defines himself this way:
I am a conservative. I believe in the sovereignty and security of this one nation, under God. I believe the primary role of government is to provide for the common defense and a legal framework to protect families and individual liberty. . . . I believe that no one owes me anything just because I live and breathe.
Here's pulling for William Russell.
I am, as my wife says, prone to fret; this is because, as she also says, I am my mother's son. At least I come by it honestly . . .
In any case, however much of it is a clear assessment of the circumstances and however much is simply me, I've been concerned about the effect the Monegan affair could have on Sarah Palin's VP chances. It's not that I thought she was guilty of any significant improper conduct—like Carlos Echevarria, I believe in her; but the whole thing has been generating more than enough smoke to drive John McCain another direction in looking for his running mate, and in the long run, I don't believe that would be good. Unfortunately, whether or not there's any real fire to the story, there has been a fair bit of sizzle, and that makes it harder to combat; it's not enough to make a dry, rational case that Gov. Palin made a reasonable decision to fire Commissioner Walt Monegan, you have to put out the sizzle.
If Adam Brickley's right, though, she may have managed enough to do that: the latest statement from the governor's office certainly seems to have buried Monegan's allegations in an avalanche of documented facts. I'm sure this won't stop her political opponents from trying to use this whole affair to hurt her—that, alas, is politics in this day and age; I'm hopeful, though, that it will be enough to render this a minor or non-story on the national stage, and thus remove the issue as a reason for Sen. McCain not to pick Gov. Palin. No matter how hard the Romneyites try to flog this thing, if it's a dead moose, it's a dead moose.
The other good news Adam reported is that the Alaska House has passed the governor's pipeline plan, leaving only Senate approval still ahead. This is one of the things for which I greatly admire Gov. Palin, that she put the welfare of the state of Alaska ahead of the welfare of our oil companies—when they wouldn't give the state a square deal, she made sure the job went to someone else who would. This is how you build a position that's for energy exploration without being in the pocket of Big Oil. Bravo, Governor. Bravo.
I guess it's '80s pop week here—more than a little odd for someone who never listened to the stuff at the time. Still, there were a few songs from that era I really liked anyway; "We Didn't Start the Fire" was one of them, and this was another one.
For those who don't know, kyrie eleison means "Lord, have mercy." Many don't; I've seen people write that it means "God go with me," and I'd always assumed that the songwriter thought that's what it meant. In fact, though, John Lang (who wrote the lyrics) grew up singing the Kyrie in an Episcopal church in Phoenix, and knew the meaning of the words. In a lot of ways, that makes the song more interesting, I think; it's still a prayer for God's presence as we go through life, but Lang knew when he wrote it that it's also a prayer for his mercy on that road, which we certainly need, both in the bright days and when our path leads us through "the darkness of the night."
I appreciate Lang's almost mystical sense of life in this song; in the context of an ancient Christian prayer, with the imagery of wind and fire which has been used of the Spirit of God going all the way back to the time of Moses, one can certainly understand it to refer to the work of the Spirit in our hearts, and the song as a prayer for his mercy as we seek to follow where he leads us.
My one quarrel here is the third line of the chorus: "Kyrie eleison—where I'm going will you follow?" I don't think that really fits with the first line ("Kyrie eleison down the road that I must travel"), and taken by itself it gets matters exactly backwards; actually, when we start looking at things that way—"God, I'm going this way; are you coming?"—tends to be when we get into trouble (and thus need his mercy the most, of course). I suspect it was most likely meant to ask, "Are you going with me down this road you're sending me on?" but that misses the fact that God doesn't send us, he leads us. There have been times when I've sung this song, privately, as a prayer, but when I do, I reverse that third line: "where you lead me, I will follow." That's the orientation we need to have if we're seeking to live under the mercy of God; his mercy isn't simply something to which we appeal when we go wrong, but is in fact the light that guides us to go right.
Kyrie
Kyrie eleison
Kyrie eleison
Kyrie . . .The wind blows hard against this mountainside,
Across the sea into my soul;
It reaches into where I cannot hide,
Setting my feet upon the road.My heart is old, it holds my memories;
My body burns, a gemlike flame.
Somewhere between the soul and soft machine
Is where I find myself again.Kyrie eleison down the road that I must travel;
Kyrie eleison through the darkness of the night.
Kyrie eleison—where I'm going will you follow?
Kyrie eleison on a highway in the light.When I was young I thought of growing old—
Of what my life would mean to me;
Would I have followed down my chosen road,
Or only waste what I could be?Chorus
Words: John Lang; music: Richard Page and Steve George
© 1985 Ali-Aja Music/Indolent Sloth Music/Panola Park Music/WB Music Corp.
From the album Welcome to the Real World, by Mr. Mister
Shelby Steele, an analyst for whom I have tremendous respect, has a fascinating column up on the Wall Street Journal website—and I'm not sure what to make of it. It's titled "Why Jesse Jackson Hates Obama," but that's only what the first half (or so) of the piece is about; having laid out why, on his read, Jackson hates Sen. Obama, he then spends the rest of it meditating on the consequences of his conclusion (with a particular note on its consequences for John McCain). I'm still figuring out what I think of it; I recommend you read it and do the same.
HT: Presbyweb
In the latest issue of Perspectives, I was interested to run across a review of a recent book called Jesus Brand Spirituality: He Wants His Religion Back. With a title like that, I would have expected "just another critique of the shallowness of evangelical certitudes or the meanness of some of the Religious Right or yet another call to be open and in conversation as we emerge into new ideas"; according to the glowing review by Byron Borger of Hearts & Minds Books, however, it's nothing of the sort. In fact, the book's author, Ken Wilson, isn't a liberal at all, but rather a Vineyard pastor, and according to Borgan,
Wilson has written a thoughtful, mature, and deeply engaging study of the ways in which we can approach Jesus, how to make sense of life in light of his ways. It talks about how the best of four streams within Christianity can unite to help create a passionate, faithful and yet grace-filled, life-giving spirituality. (Wilson's four dimensions, by the way, are the active, the contemplative, the biblical, and the communal.) . . .
Jesus Brand Spirituality is ideal for mainline Protestants who want to make sure their liberal theology doesn't go off the tracks, who want to stay close to Jesus and the earliest biblical truths, even if they are not quite where more traditionalist conservatives stand. It is equally helpful for anyone committed to historic Christian orthodoxy but who may sense that the recent cultural conflict, dogmatism, moralism, and overlays of the evangelical subculture may have obscured some of the clearest elements of the faith. And—please don't miss this—it is also a fabulous read for anyone who is a skeptic or seeker; at times, it seems like it is written precisely for those who just are willing to get "one step closer to knowing." . . .
No matter where you are on your spiritual journey, or with which denomination or tradition you stand, I am confident this book will challenge, stretch, inspire, and bless you.
That sounds promising. Interestingly, it fits in quite well with the other review in this issue, by David Smith, of Craig Dykstra's Growing in the Life of Faith: Education and Christian Practices. In that review, Smith writes,
"Practices" is, in this context, a pregnant term, used in a way that reaches beyond its everyday meaning. Dykstra's usage draws upon the widely discussed account of social practices found in the writings of Alasdair MacIntyre (particularly in After Virtue). Roughly speaking, for MacIntyre a practice involves a complex and coherent social activity pursued with other people because of goods that inhere in the activity itself—like playing a sport for the satisfaction of a well matched game rather than with the aim of getting one's name in the paper. Such practices have their own standards of excellence to which the practitioner must submit, and they provide a matrix within which our own pursuit—and perception—of excellence can evolve. Such matrices, MacIntyre argues, are where virtue grows: not through having moral rules explained, but through submitting to the discipline of socially established practices. . . .
What if being and growing as a Christian is not well characterized in terms, say, of assent to doctrines but requires a pattern of Christian practices within which Christian beliefs are at home? What if faith development has as much to do with being enfolded in and submitting to such practices as hospitality to the stranger, worship, community, forgiveness, healing, and testimony as with grasping increasingly complex articulations of doctrine?
This, too, I think is a book I want to read, and in part for the same reason: to consider how Christian belief and Christian practice are interwoven, neither making sense without the other—indeed, neither truly existing without the other. Christian belief is belief which is lived out, and Christian practice is an expression of belief—they aren't separable; and at their core, they're all about becoming, living, walking, being, like Jesus, living life in his footsteps.
It appears the McCain campaign thinks so, judging from their new ad. I'll give them credit, it's an effective piece of work, and could be part of an effective strategy to "pin Obama on the donkey," as Jonah Goldberg has urged him to do. We'll see, but at least it's a sign of life from what hasn't been a particularly effective outfit so far.
Courtesy of JibJab, I've had this tune stuck in my head for days now; so I decided to post an annotated version.
Notes: most of the links are Wikipedia, but not all; the video isn't the original (embedding is disabled), but a fan-made video which parallels what I've done; and the video includes a picture of children affected by thalidomide, so be aware of that if you watch it.
We Didn't Start the Fire
Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray,
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio,
Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television,
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe,Rosenbergs, H-bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjeom,
Brando, The King and I, and The Catcher In The Rye,
Eisenhower, vaccine, England's got a new queen,
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye . . .We didn't start the fire—
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire—
No, we didn't light it,
But we tried to fight it.Josef Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser, and Prokofiev,
Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc,
Roy Cohn, Juan Perón, Toscanini, Dacron,
Dien Bien Phu falls, Rock Around the Clock,Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn's got a winning team,
Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland,
Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Khrushchev,
Princess Grace, Peyton Place, trouble in the Suez . . .Chorus
Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac,
Sputnik, Zhou Enlai, Bridge On The River Kwai,
Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball,
Starkweather homicide, children of thalidomide,Buddy Holly, Ben-Hur, space monkey, Mafia,
Hula hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go,
U-2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy,
Chubby Checker, Psycho, Belgians in the Congo . . .Chorus
Hemingway, Eichmann, Stranger in a Strange Land,
Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion,
Lawrence of Arabia, British Beatlemania,
Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson,
Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British politician sex,
J.F.K. blown away, what else do I have to say?!Chorus
Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again,
Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock,
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airline,
Ayatollahs in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan,Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide,
Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz,
Hypodermics on the shore, China's under martial law,
Rock-and-roller cola wars, I can't take it anymore!We didn't start the fire—
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire—
But when we are gone,
It will still go on, and on, and on, and on, and on . . .Words and music: Billy Joel
© 1989 Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
From the album Storm Front, by Billy Joel
Dr. Richard Mouw, the president of Fuller Seminary, put up a post on his blog a few days ago reflecting on another Dutch Presbyterian, the great theologian Cornelius Van Til (who was, among other things, the founder of the presuppositional school of Christian apologetics). In it, he describes a conversation he had with Dr. Van Til, a discussion of Karl Barth, which had a formative influence on his approach to Christians with whom he disagrees:
Van Til’s remark left a lasting impression on me. He was firm in his verdict that Barth was far removed from historic Christian teaching, yet he was still unwilling to offer a similarly critical assessment of the state of Barth’s soul. Ever since, I have tried to exercise a similar caution. It is one thing to evaluate a person’s theology. It is another thing to decide whether that person has a genuine faith in Christ.
There are folks these days who worry about what they see as an overly charitable spirit in people like me. They think it is dangerous to enter into friendly dialogue with thinkers whose theological views are far removed from traditional Christian orthodoxy. They tend to think that if a person is unorthodox they cannot be in a saving relationship with Christ. I take a different view on those matters.
I appreciate this post because I share Dr. Mouw's caution (and Dr. Van Til's)—or perhaps I might better say, humility—in this respect; I think we tend to be far too quick to pronounce wrong doctrines salvation-impairing. I do believe there is a point at which people are so far from the truth that they are in fact worshiping a different God (Hinduism, for instance, is obviously a completely different thing than Christianity), but I suspect that that point isn't exactly where we think it is, and that the line between saving faith and beliefs which do not lead to salvation is perhaps somewhat fuzzier than we assume.
HT: Presbyweb
At this point, it's a virtual certainty that George W. Bush will leave the presidency with a very low public approval rating. Though I'm sure that hurts, I believe he's wise enough not to take that too seriously. The president who would govern well does so not for the opinion polls but for history (which is why the Founders hoped for citizen politicians rather than the professional political class we ended up with), and sometimes that leads to the choice between the popular course and the best course. Say what you will about the President, he's never hesitated to be unpopular if he thinks it's the right thing to do (though he's often hesitated to defend himself effectively for doing so); in that respect, he's a lot like another man who left the office wildly unpopular—Harry S Truman. Like President Truman, though not to the same extent, I believe President G. W. Bush will fare much better in the judgment of history than in the judgment of journalism.
One reason for this is that Iraq is turning out well. As I noted a while ago, it's the only real bright spot in this administration's foreign policy, and even this only comes after several badly-handled years—one of the ironies of the Bush 43 administration is that it owes this victory in large part to John McCain—but when it's all said and done, unless Barack Obama wins and manages to throw it all away, the last several years will have seen Iraq transformed from a nation suffering to enrich a bloody, terrorist-funding tyrant to a stable democracy and a potentially invaluable ally in the Middle East. That's an ally we'll need badly when the inevitable collapse of the Saudi ruling family finally comes. Unless you have an a priori commitment to pacifism—a commitment I respect, when it's truly principled, but do not share—that's clearly a good thing.
I suspect, though, that history's judgment of President G. W. Bush will rest equally heavily on two things not much considered now: the two great domestic political failures of his administration. The first is the attempt to reform Social Security—this, not the Iraq War, was the political disaster that wrecked so much of his second term. Our struggles in Iraq certainly didn't help, but they only carried the force they did because the President had spent so much of his political capital on this issue. Put me down as one who thinks Social Security is doomed, and that this administration's initiative, politically stupid as it was, was nevertheless noble (in a Quixotic sort of way) and very important. Twenty or thirty years from now, I suspect the narrative on this one will be "man of foresight brought down by the forces of reaction."
The second is the failure to pass a comprehensive energy policy. As Investor's Business Daily notes,
When the Democrats took control of Congress in 2007, and oil was $50 a barrel and corn $2 a bushel, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid promised an energy plan. We're still waiting for it. Today, crude oil is $134 and corn is $6.50.
It's pretty clear who's to blame: Congress. In fact, House and Senate Democrats have obstructed any progress in America's fight to regain some semblance of energy independence.
But that's been the pattern. This administration started trying seven years ago to implement the kind of energy plan the Reid-Pelosi leadership said they would deliver; it didn't happen, in large part, because of Rep. Pelosi and Sen. Reid. If it had, we wouldn't be looking at $4-a-gallon gasoline, and our economy would be in much better shape; we'd also have critically important work underway to modernize and revamp our national electrical grid, and programs in place alongside them to shift our electrical production away from fossil fuels and toward other energy sources. The Democrats in Congress killed it, and so we are where we are today. Again, I suspect the future will blame the President much less than does the present.
As a side note on energy: nuclear power plants have worked well for decades in Western Europe without any significant problems, while ongoing improvements in drilling technology mean we can open up massive new oil reserves—in ANWR, the continental shelf, the Green River Basin, and the Bakken Formation—with minimal consequences. I agree that both these things need to be approached with strong concern for environmental preservation—but they can be. I believe we need to set aside the hysteria and the absolutist positions and try to come up with workable compromises.
HT (for the IBD editorial): Carlos Echevarria
Chris Cilizza, in the Washington Post, broke down John McCain's VP options this way:
McCain's choice is whether to throw a "short pass" or a "Hail Mary."
The short pass candidates are people that McCain is personally close to or would fit an obvious need for him. Choosing a "short pass" candidate would be a signal that McCain believes he can win this race without fundamentally altering its current dynamic. Among the "short pass" names are: Govs. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and Charlie Crist of Florida, former governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, former Rep. Rob Portman of Ohio and South Dakota Sen. John Thune.
The "Hail Mary" option would suggest that McCain believes that he has to shake up the race with an entirely unexpected and unorthodox choice that would carry great reward and great risk. It's the opposite of a safe pick. Among that group: Govs. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Sarah Palin of Alaska.
He then proceeded, for the first time, to list Gov. Palin as one of the top five possibilities as Sen. McCain's running mate.
Here's my question: where's the risk? I agree that either Gov. Jindal or Gov. Palin would offer potentially much greater reward than anyone on Cilizza's "short pass" list; honestly, if you want to find someone you can put in that category who would offer Sen. McCain any significant benefit at all, I think you have to go to SEC Chairman and former California Representative Chris Cox. What I don't see is what makes either of these governors (and though I clearly prefer Gov. Palin, I do think Gov. Jindal is one of the party's bright hopes going forward as well) significantly riskier than anyone on that first list, let alone all of them.
For my money, the riskiest choice Sen. McCain could make for VP is Mitt Romney—and I say that as someone who previously hoped to see Gov. Romney win the nomination. I think Gov. Romney has an excellent record of accomplishment in the Massachusetts state house and as a businessman, I think he would add enormous financial and administrative acumen to the ticket—and based on his primary performance, I think the Democratic attack machine would slice him to ribbons and make him a drag on the ticket anyway. Gov. Romney would give them a figure they could attack in ways in which they can't go after Sen. McCain, and those attacks would hurt his campaign badly. Not providing an easy surrogate target should be one of the chief qualifications for McCain's running mate; on that score, I can't think of anyone who fills the bill as well as Gov. Palin who also offers as many plusses as she does (plusses which I've laid out here, and Carlos Echevarria has listed here).
I don't think Gov. Palin's a "Hail Mary" (which is a good thing, since I'm pretty sure she's not Catholic); she's more in the nature of a perfectly-timed draw play, or perhaps a Patriots go route, Tom Brady to Randy Moss. Something good's going to happen if that play gets called, and it could be all the way to paydirt.
I've been mulling over these links for a while, and I haven't really come to a clear sense of what I want to say about them; but somewhere in there, I think, are some important things about what it means to be a young pastor in a time when more and more people in their twenties and early thirties are finding the transition into adulthood long, disorganized and uncertain (such that sociologists are now labeling this stage of life "emerging adulthood"). The pastor of a church is, essentially, the Adult in Chief; that's a hard role to fill if you haven't yet come to see yourself as fully an adult and the peer of all those grizzled, experienced, opinionated, strong-willed folks who most likely make up the lay leadership of the church you serve. That's a problem, because if you don't see yourself as their peer and equal, they won't either . . . and if they don't, you're toast.
We know Sarah Palin is interested in being John McCain's running mate; we know that enthusiasm for that prospect is growing, to the point that even skeptics are taking notice. Gov. Palin's most eager supporters are urging Sen. McCain to name her his running mate soon, for maximum benefit. I can think of at least two reasons why he hasn't, however, even if he is in fact leaning that way (as I hope he is).
The first is no doubt the charges recently raised by Andrew Halcro that Gov. Palin has abused her office in some unusually inappropriate ways. Given that Halcro is one of the politicians Gov. Palin beat two years ago in winning the governorship, the charges have rather the appearance of sour grapes, but until such time as they're refuted (as I would hope and tend to expect they will be), obviously, Sen. McCain won't put her on the ticket. Should she come through these charges unharmed, I would think that would only strengthen her chances.
The second, which is more speculative, comes from my father-in-law, a lifelong Michigander who's been touting Gov. Palin for VP since back when I was still hoping for Condoleeza Rice. He notes that one of the governor's major accomplishments was the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act, and suggests that she probably doesn't want to leave Juneau until the pipeline contract is done. If that is in fact an issue, I'd be interested to see Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin play it this way. Let Sen. McCain name Gov. Palin his running mate, and let the governor announce that she has a few matters to finish up before she can go on the road. Then go back to Juneau and tell the legislature that if they want to help the Republican candidate win the White House, they'd better get the lead out. I suspect that at that point, they'd be very willing to finish up whatever she wanted done.
(Update: now that I've finally had the chance to see Adam Brickley's video responses to Halcro's charges—plus the additional thoughts in the third comment on that thread, from Dave ll—and to read the documents in the case [see the yellow sidebar on KTVA's website], it seems clear to me that Gov. Palin's actions were in no wise inappropriate. There are definite suggestions in other articles KTVA has posted that the governor's office was at least applying some pressure on Walt Monegan, the former Alaska Public Safety Commissioner, to fire State Trooper Mike Wooten, her sister's ex-husband; on the evidence, however, a) that pressure seems entirely justified, and b) Monegan's refusal does not seem to have been the reason for his firing. Instead, this episode seems rather like an attempted political hit on Gov. Palin by a disgruntled political opponent, Andrew Halcro, and the state troopers' union, which was unhappy at her efforts to streamline the budget and cut waste. Taken all in all, if this reading of the situation bears out, this should only make her a more appealing running mate for Sen. McCain, not less.)
The Democratic primaries this year reminded me a little of a football game. In football, for a fast running back, one good way to break a long run (if no one's looking for it) is to outrun everyone to the sideline, then outrun them down the field. That's more or less what Sen. Obama did: he outran the field to the left sideline, then outran everyone clear to the endzone. On this read, I guess John Edwards was the blitzing linebacker who gets taken clean out of the play by the fullback, while Hillary Clinton was the safety in deep coverage who initially misreads the play and can't quite get back into it—she laid a hand on Gayle Sayers Obama (need to keep the Chicago tie; I suppose you could also call him Devin Hester Obama) as he streaked by, but that was about it.
Now, this sort of thing is a great way to produce exciting results, get the crowd stirred up and on their feet; but unlike for the Chicago Bears, for the Chicago senator, it has some negative consequences: namely, it ties him pretty closely to the voting record that earned him the label of the most liberal politician in Congress. In the primaries, this was a good thing, because most of those who vote in Democratic primaries are liberals; what's more, this drove an incredible Internet fundraising machine which raked in unprecedented amounts for Sen. Obama from the liberal Democratic netroots. In the general election, however, this isn't a good thing, because America's a pretty centrist place; even if Sen. Obama's the most exciting politician this country has seen in a long time, and even if the chance to elect a dark-skinned President is extremely alluring (even though he isn't the descendant of slaves), in the end, the most liberal politician in Congress is going to be too far away from most voters to win in November.
So, naturally, having won the primaries by running left as fast as he could, Sen. Obama has now attempted to cut back in toward the middle of the field, rather than just taking the ball down the sideline. The problem is, that isn't always easy to do, and the early returns might suggest that it isn't working all that well. I noted a few days ago the drop in Sen. Obama's poll numbers, offering my own conclusion that the main lesson from them is that we don't know as much as we think we do; for what it's worth, though, Dick Morris and Ed Morissey, a pair of savvy political operators, have drawn the conclusion that Sen. Obama's "series of policy reversals and gaffes" were the primary cause. Morris even went so far as to declare that "Obama has carried flip-flopping to new heights." I think that's hyperbole, but Morris does have an important point: "As a candidate who was nominated to be a different kind of politician, Obama has set the bar pretty high. And, with his flipping and flopping, he is falling short, to the disillusionment of his more naïve supporters." This is particularly important given the thinness of Sen. Obama's record; we really don't know much about him as a leader, and he doesn't have much to point us to beyond what he tells us during the campaign. If his actions tell us that his political convictions are at the service of political expediency—which seems to be what a lot of the netroots folks who've driven his fundraising are concluding—then that could really hurt him in the long run, especially against a candidate like John McCain who's broadly respected for his political integrity (and especially if Sen. McCain chooses a running mate like Sarah Palin who will further point up that contrast).
Sen. Obama is a formidably gifted politician who's shown some remarkable instincts, even as he's also made a lot of high-profile gaffes; he's still the favorite in November, though I still think it will be close and I'm personally still betting on the underdog. If he can't find a way to credibly move to the center without looking like just another politician, though, he could lose that favorite status in a hurry. Archimedes is credited with saying, "Give me a lever and a place to stand, and I will move the world." Sen. Obama has the lever; can he find the place to stand?
Eight years ago, I told any number of people that my main problem with the presidential race is that the wrong people were on top of the tickets—I'd rather have voted for either Joe Lieberman or Dick Cheney than either George W. Bush or Al Gore. I've admired Sen. Lieberman ever since William F. Buckley formed BuckPac to help him beat Republican incumbent Lowell Weicker in Connecticut, and the subsequent years have proven that admiration well-founded. From everything I've seen, Lieberman's an honorable and principled politician, a man of integrity who's kept his integrity basically intact, which is hard to do in D.C.; it's a pity he's not an exciting political figure, because he's the sort of person who would serve us well as president.
Unfortunately, that integrity, combined with his stubborn loyalty, means he's now in hot water with the Democratic Party leadership (though he had to run as an independent two years ago to keep his Senate seat, he's still functionally a Democrat). I can certainly understand where the Democratic leadership is coming from; it's hard to blame them when Sen. Lieberman is openly campaigning for the Republican nominee, and equally openly critical of their own nominee. At the same time, though, I respect Sen. Lieberman for having the courage of his convictions; and at a time when the Republicans have nominated a man who has angered many in his own party for putting his convictions ahead of party loyalty and party discipline, it would be a sad commentary for the Democrats to disfellowship one of their own for doing the same thing.
Even as I hope for some measure of peace and comfort to the bereaved families, I must also hope that we as a nation draw some measure of wisdom from this tragedy. Certain immediate lessons are clear, and we must act upon those lessons decisively. We need to step up security at our airports. We must reexamine the effectiveness of our intelligence networks. And we must be resolute in identifying the perpetrators of these heinous acts and dismantling their organizations of destruction.
We must also engage, however, in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness. The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity. It may find expression in a particular brand of violence, and may be channeled by particular demagogues or fanatics. Most often, though, it grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair.
We will have to make sure, despite our rage, that any U.S. military action takes into account the lives of innocent civilians abroad. We will have to be unwavering in opposing bigotry or discrimination directed against neighbors and friends of Middle Eastern descent. Finally, we will have to devote far more attention to the monumental task of raising the hopes and prospects of embittered children across the globe—children not just in the Middle East, but also in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and within our own shores.
(From the Hyde Park Herald, September 19, 2001; quoted in "Making It: How Chicago Shaped Obama," in The New Yorker.)
I agree that we need to "understand the sources of such madness"—but to do that, we need to understand them on their own terms, not to try to reduce them to contemporary Western touchy-feely-ism. The problem with the 9/11 terrorists wasn't psychological. I certainly agree that they showed "a fundamental absence of empathy," but that was the symptom, not the condition—it was the effect, not the cause. Specifically, the absence of empathy and the plot to destroy the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and (I believe) the U. S. Capitol were both effects of a common cause: the murderous ideology of jihadism, the Islamic heresy propounded by Osama bin Laden. The problem isn't "a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair"; that's certainly a problem for its own sake and something to be addressed as best as we're able, but it's not the root cause here. The 9/11 terrorists, after all, hadn't come from "poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair"—they were middle-class and well-educated. The problem is a worldview that says that blowing people up because they aren't Muslims (and the right kind of Muslims, at that) is a good and noble thing to do. There, Sen. Obama, is the source of the madness—there and nowhere else.
I've been reading Joseph A. Fitzmyer's commentary on Philemon (in the Anchor Bible series), preparing for a future sermon series; in the course of his discussion of slavery, which is an essential part of the introductory work on that book, I was interested to read the following paragraph:
What strikes the modern reader of such Pauline passages [as the Letter to Philemon] is his failure to speak out against the social institution of slavery in general and the injustices that it often involved, not only for the individual so entrapped but also for his wife and children. If I am right in interpreting the "more than I ask" of v 21 as an implicit request made of Philemon to see to the emancipation of Onesimus, that may tell us something about Paul's attitude toward the enslavement of a Christian; but that "more" has been diversely interpreted over the centuries and its sense is not clear. Moreover that is an implicit request about an individual case of a Christian slave who could help Paul in his work of evangelization. Would Paul have written the same thing to the non-Christian owner of a pagan slave? Would he have agreed with Aristotle's view about "friendship" with such a slave [that friendship with a slave considered as a slave was impossible]?
There are two issues in that paragraph. The first, the fact that Paul (and for that matter the rest of the NT writers) didn't condemn slavery and demand immediate, empire-wide emancipation of all slaves, is a vast subject and beyond the scope of a single post. I will note that we should bear in mind that slavery in the ancient world was a significantly different thing, and quite a bit less vile, than slavery in the American historical context; that said, though, the injustice of it (both fundamental and circumstantial) was still very real. The basic argument here, in a nutshell, is that the system of slavery could only be changed gradually, and that it was Christianity which brought that change—a point made quite clearly by M. R. Vincent in a passage Dr. Fitzmyer quotes:
Under Constantine the effects of christian sentiment began to appear in the Church and in legislation concerning slaves. Official freeing of slaves became common as an act of pious gratitude, and burial tablets often represent masters standing before the Good Shepherd, with a band of slaves liberated at death, and pleading for them at judgment. In A.D. 312 a law was passed declaring as homicide the poisoning or branding of slaves . . . The advance of a healthier sentiment may be seen by comparing the law of Augustus, which forbade a master to emancipate more than one-fifth of his slaves, and which fixed one hundred males as a maximum for one time—and the unlimited permission to emancipate conceded by Constantine. Each new ruler enacted some measure which facilitated emancipation. Every obstacle was thrown up by law in the way of separating families. Under Justinian all presumptions were in favor of liberty.
Beyond that is for another post, or series of posts, or maybe a book or three; and while it's an issue that offers a lot to discuss, it's also not a new one. What really struck me in Dr. Fitzmyer's comment quoted above were his closing questions:
Would Paul have written the same thing to the non-Christian owner of a pagan slave? Would he have agreed with Aristotle's view about "friendship" with such a slave?
The reason that struck me is because it seems to me there's an assumption there which needs to be considered: namely, that what Paul thought about such questions matters to us, and thus that if we had the answers to such questions, it would affect our interpretation of Scripture. At one time, I would have thought that was obvious—after all, this is Paul, the guy who wrote half the New Testament; of course we want to know more of what he thought about everything. Anymore, though, I don't agree with that. After all, as much as I believe that God by his Spirit inspired Paul to write the letters which we now have, that only makes the letters authoritative; Paul, as brilliant as he was, was still a sinful, fallible human being. Just because we affirm that the Spirit inspired the thirteen letters of Paul that we have in the New Testament, it doesn't mean that the Spirit inspired everything else, or even anything else, that he said or wrote or thought.
As such, while I don't know the answers to Dr. Fitzmyer's questions, I also don't care about those answers; I have no problem affirming that if Paul in fact agreed with Aristotle, that that's the reason God kept him from saying so in any of the letters we have. The idea that Paul might have believed something means nothing to me if that belief is outside the bounds of the canon of Scripture, because I don't follow Paul as such; I only follow him as he follows Christ. I recognize Paul as a fellow redeemed sinner who had his unrighteous behaviors and his un-Christlike ideas and his limits to his understanding just like me, or anyone else; the key for me is that in affirming the inspiration of Scripture, I affirm that the Spirit kept all those things outside the bounds of the canon. Inside those bounds, within the letters we have, we have Paul at his best, guided and shaped by the Spirit's work; outside, it doesn't matter.
