by Dr. Larry Moses
Published September 17, 2008
No one asked me but… I have found my candidate for the presidency in the 2008 election: Todd Palin. Mr. Palin will not be on the ballot, but I think I will write him in. Of all the people I have seen on the campaign trail, he is the one I like best.
Todd is the nearest thing to a real cowboy that I have seen. I know he is really a salmon fisherman and a roughneck for an Alaskan oil company but that is probably as close as you can come to a cowboy in Alaska. He hunts, fishes and is a snowmobile race champion. Any man who can ride 2000 miles on a snowmobile in the dead of winter in Alaska has to be tough. One year, he hit a barrel in the snow and was thrown from his snowmobile. He broke his arm but recovered his machine and finished fourth.If that isn’t ‘cowboying up’ I don’t understand the term.
As I look at all the people involved in this upcoming presidential election the second toughest may be his wife.
No one asked me but…Many people say Barack Obama and Sarah Palin have no experience to qualify them for the presidency. How do you get experience for a position that is one of a kind? How do you get experience for a job where you can affect the entire population of the earth?
What about Abe Lincoln? What experience did he have? He was defeated for the legislature, failed in business, suffered a nervous breakdown, was defeated for nomination for Congress, lost re-nomination to Congress, was defeated for the Senate, and was defeated for nomination for vice president. His military career consisted of an involvement in the Black Hawk War where he left home as a captain and came home a private. Abe had less than three years of formal education. He was elected President of the United States as the country was on the verge of splitting in two and he saved the nation. Lincoln is now considered one of the four greatest Presidents.
No one asked me but…Religion has taken on a strange role in this year’s election. I remember the election of 1960 when we elected the first Catholic to the presidency.
Al Smith was the first Catholic to run for the presidency back in 1928 against Herbert Hoover. As things went, Herbert probably wishes Al had won. I am sure there was a large amount of animosity toward Al Smith by the protestant majority of the American population.
As late as the 1960 election, John Kennedy’s religion was a major issue. Today that seems like a crazy issue, but I remember living in the mid-west and there was a great deal of animosity toward Catholics.
Americans are religiously schizophrenic. While we have our Constitution guarantee us freedom of religion, we work hard to make our polities free from religion. Eighty-six percent of the American people say they believe in God, but we continue to pass laws limiting reference to God in our daily lives.
Our attitudes toward the various presidential and vice presidential candidates and their religion are a manifestation of this schizophrenia. Anyone who doesn’t believe Mit Romney’s LDS religion was a factor in not selecting him as the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate is dreaming. Mit may well have been the most qualified executive in contention for a presidential nomination.
John McCain was raised as an Episcopalian but he currently attends a Baptist church, and he identifies himself as a Baptist.
Joe Biden is a Roman Catholic which has passed muster as an acceptable religion for the president for almost fifty years. Biden stated in his latest book, “Religion informs my values. My reason dictates outcomes. My religion taught me about abuse of power. I don’t find anything inconsistent about my deep, religious beliefs and my ability to use reason.”
So the two old guys in the election are deemed to be no religious threat to the eighty-six percent of the Americans who state they believe in God.
The major religious criticism was reserved for Barack Obama who was first rumored to be a Muslim. This would have been a kiss of death to his presidential aspirations. When this rumor was dispelled, Americans became alarmed about his twenty year association with a “black militant” pastor who had a penchant for damning America. This became a major issue and had to be dealt with, diverting Obama’s attention from real issues.
The religious issues had seemed to have died down in the campaign. Then Gov. Sarah Palin was picked as a running mate for John McCain. With the announcement of Sarah Palin the Democrats attempted to strike back searching her religious background for radical beliefs to counter-balance Barack’s. They found that she had at one time attended a Pentecostal Church that believes in “talking in tongues” and healing through prayer.
Most people who believe in God believe in the healing power of prayer; or at least when in a life threatening situation they turn to prayer. There are no atheists in a foxhole.
Those Christians that “talk in tongues” believe that they speak a language that only they and God understand. If that is the case, most politicians have been talking in tongues for years.
Very often when American politicians speak only they and God know what they said. As Dwight D. Eisenhower stated:”Things are more like they are now than they were before.” (Huh!) George Bush said: “Let’s make sure that there is certainty during uncertain times in our economy.” (Really!) Barack got into the act with, “Let me be absolutely clear. Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s. It will be a strong friend of Israel’s under a McCain administration. It will be a strong friend of Israel’s under an Obama administration. So that policy is not going to change.” (I don’t suppose so!).
Sarah Palin believes creationism should be taught along with evolution in the public schools and that abstinence should be taught and practiced rather than abortion. She, like all three of the other major party candidates, states that she opposes abortion, and like the other three, she does not really challenge the fact that the law of the land allows choice.
Maybe it is time to forget about who goes to what church on Sunday and worry more about what they will do about the national debt, the national defense and the energy policies of America during the rest of the week.
Thought of the week… Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is. -Mahatma Gandhi
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