Eeny, Meny, Miney,Moe--Red Vote, Blue Vote

The election season is nearly over. Character assassination will soon be put back on hold. Outright lies will be forgotten—and we may never know which they were. Sarah Palin and Barrack Hussein Obama have been the two major lightning rods.
She, as every good Democrat knows by now, is a total incompetent. She has cheerleader looks and (to coin a stereotype) cheerleader brains. The Republicans spent way too much on her clothes, and she’s a drag on the ticket anyway.
Hussein—Hussein, why does that name sound familiar? Must be some kind of Muslim radical. The Christian right insists that if Obama is elected most of us won’t have the right to own guns, and we’ll live in a totally homosexualized America with the institution of marriage forever destroyed.
Some of these statements might be true (as former Soviet Premier Gorbachev put it: “I have a thousand economic advisors. One of them has a good idea. I don’t know which one.”). Some are indubitably false. I love the way they accuse Obama on the one hand of being Muslim, on the other of belonging to a Christian Church that puts down America.
Even if he wanted to destroy the institution of marriage, I’m not sure his wife and the mother of his two girls would let him. I have no doubt he favors “choice” in the matter of abortion. But both Bushes and Reagan ran against abortion and changed absolutely nothing. What will Obama change?
Sarah Palin has decided (CNN report printed on AOL news) that the McCain staff did a lousy job of introducing her to the American people. She seems to feel that by micromanaging every twitch of her hairdo and every syllable of her comments, they have made a fool of her.
She’s starting to speak out on her own. She’s disagreeing publicly with McCain on tactics like pulling out of Michigan. “She takes no advice from anyone,” gasps a McCain advisor. Well, considering the press she got while listening to them, why should she listen now?
The advisors complain that she’s gone “rogue” and is thinking only of her own future. However true this may be it certainly suggests something more than an empty-headed cheerleader. She must have had some skills to get elected governor of America’s largest and climatologically most diverse state.
Maybe they should have remembered what some of Reagan’s closest friends tried to tell his handlers—“let Reagan be Reagan”. Let Palin be Palin. Let Obama be Obama. We often lose that in the fury of a campaign. Desperate attempts seem to be made to keep voters from ever seeing the actual person.
My pastor this morning had some words of advice for believing Christians – Republican or Democrat. (He reminded the congregation that there are believers in both camps.) “Whoever wins,” he said, “God remains in control.
“It is up to Christians to pray.” That –rather than in political organizational rallies or by labeling this or that candidate as God’s chosen, or by warning us that all the tenets of our faith are forfeit if this or that candidate does not win.
“Pastors,” he said, “belong in the pulpit, leading their people in prayer.” He suggested that they do actual harm by leaving them for political activism. God is in control and, if He is in control, He can manage just as well without politicized clergy. Politicians and Pastors, while both may be fervent believers, have different callings.
In any case, he kept saying, the future of America belongs in God’s hands not just in the hands of those who hold office. It was a good reminder for me.
I’m aware that I really don’t know any of the four candidates this year. I haven’t been allowed to know them – just as I have no idea what is actually in a hot dog under the casing. So let’s just vote – Christians pray and vote; non-believers cross your fingers and vote. As Wellington put it, “The battle is joined; the event is in the hands of God.”