good, better, best

Ruth Gledhill has a naughty article with a little web poll...Who is the better Christian? McCain, Obama, Palin or Biden
I have mused before (here) about the inadequacy of phone in and online polls since they are uncontrolled exercises and there is no way of stopping interested parties from trying to skew the results, and when we neutralise them by making them into percentages they all look the same (50% of 2500 is 1250, but 50% of 12 is 6...there is a lot of difference between over 1000 people who bother to ring in and a handful... you know lies, lies and damn statistics)
So the issue might not be...are the results meaningful? But is the question meaningful?
I indeed rankled, because there is much in Christian teaching that goes against this sort of religious self-promotion (you know the first shall be last), and some of Ruth's commentators rightly asked what does better mean. The usual suspects immediately jump on to the pro-life issues, but I want to hear what they say about caring for the poor and the broken, about the sick and the enslaved...it seems to me that there is more of Jesus' teaching about this than about anything else.
Of course it is an amusing bit of fluff!

Does it really matter?

The big question about Sarah Palin is does it really matter who is the Vice President of the USA. Of course it does, as the memory of Lyndon Johnson will remind us, because when if the President dies then the VP becomes the President. And, however well you think she might or might not perform she would also be the Commander in Chief, and the one who would push any nuclear weapon button.
One of the great strengths about the American system is that it allows for a 'character' to be in the fairly innocuous post of VP, without too much of a worry that it will actually effect good government. Which is fine as long the VP doesn't become the Prez
What I think is interesting is that despite the fact that she was no doubt brought in to add a sense of the modern to the McCain campaign, to be seen as both young, energetic and (of course) a woman; she also exposes the one thing about McCain that the electorate is nervous about, and that is that he is an old man.
The talk about Palin is not... why shouldn't we have such a different VP?.... but what happen if the old man dies. Polling has it that up to one third of the electorate is troubled by this.
Now, I think that old people should not be discounted just because they are old ( I am fast becoming onesuch myself) but my work every day informs me that after 70 two things can happen.
One is that mature people can function really well, and can bring a tempered stability, wisdom and insight which is often lacking in the 30 and 40 year olds. But I also know that it is a mistake to assume that age brings wisdom automatically, I can think of at least two cases where 'elders' in our own community just became more and more idiotic.
The Second factor is, that despite our desire to the contrary, there is nevertheless an inevitability that the chance of people undergoing rapid decline in, say, any given six month period is obviously much greater. That is, we can be fine one month and by Christmas be out of it. We can go on for years and then suddenly undergo a decline whioch may at first be denied, or take a litttle while to pin down...may the world be protected from a declining leader who has the authority to crash the world economy, invade countries or blow the whole show up.

getting out of the war

One headline today reads "Obama: Discussing the war he never agreed to!"
It is, necessarily, part of the dilemma that he faces. In order to be seen as credible by the wider electorate he now has to get up to speed on how you deal competently with a war....even though he didn't think America should have been in that war in the first place.
The President, of course, is also the Commander-in-Chief, [a scary thought when you think of George Bush] but Obama does appear to be taking it seriously. And is being taken seriously by those who will have to cooperate with him. (See the steep learning curve here)
It will always be an issue for incoming politicians. The electorate will have to decide whether the fresh approach outweighs lack of experience. McCain seems to me tired and not up to the task. Obama at least has the capacity to grow and learn.

Absolutely Super

Well, the only thing better/worse than 10 months of Australian electoral campaigning is 10 months of US campaigning. We look with interest at what today might mean for the pruning of the field.
Some commentary on the Clinton/Obama rivalry has been very perceptive. I note particularly:

• the US, despite its liberal nature. has the lowest real participation of women in elected Government of any Western democracy. There are less women in the State and Federal legislatures than anywhere else in the world claiming to be democratic
• it is a pity that the Obama/Clinton divide has polarised the debate so that Clinton is about women and Obama about blacks.
• This has the unfortunate side effectthat it seems that the women's issue is about white women, and the black issue about black men
• I think this observation is fairly true, and the net effect is to disempower black women. This bears some thinking about

We look forward with interest!!