[Dialogue] {Spam?} Spong the Poliical Wonk

[KroegerD at aol.com]

July 4 2007 
Examining Politics in America  on our 231st Birthday  

As our nation pauses to celebrate its birthday many things vie for our  
people's attention. There is the drain of human life and treasure in the  
ill-begotten, mismanaged war in Iraq; the emotional and divisive debate over  reforming 
immigration; the growing gap between the rich and the poor with the  top ten 
per cent of our population controlling the largest share of our nation's  
wealth in our history; the growing awareness of our environmental crisis after  
decades of either denial or game-playing empty gestures; the erosion of privacy  
with unauthorized wiretaps on American citizens, and the embarrassment to our 
 national character seen in the prison camps at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and 
the  secret foreign detention places. People once saw this nation as a shining 
city  on a hill. That has been replaced by resentment at our insensitivity, 
making us  more unpopular than at any previous time in our history.  
Our 231st birthday also finds us in a presidential race that will not be  
decided for sixteen months. Since federal elections serve to define a nation, in  
today's column I will look briefly at the major candidates to whom our 
citizens  look to address the list of debilitating problems outlined above.  
The first thing of note about the Republican candidates is that none of them  
is seeking President Bush's endorsement. These Republican aspirants know 
better  than anyone else how unpopular this administration is with the American 
people  and how little credibility it has left.  
Limiting our discussion to the top candidates according to the latest polls,  
we begin with the present Republican leader, Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor 
of  New York City. For an urban, liberal candidate to be on top of the polls 
for  this party's nomination is a major surprise. Giuliani is pro-abortion, 
pro-gay  and pro-gun control. He is a Roman Catholic, but not an overtly pious 
man. He  has had three wives and has endured a seamy public airing of his 
marital  problems. He has connections with organized crime, as his recommendation of 
 Bernie Kerik for appointment as President Bush's Director of Homeland 
Security  revealed. Yet he was a good mayor. His competence is recognized even by 
his  enemies. He lowered the city's crime rate significantly. He provided strong 
 leadership in the traumatic times of the 9/11 crisis. He is a powerful 
orator,  possesses a winning smile and charms audiences. If nominated most 
Democrats  believe him to be the GOP's strongest vote-getter and would win over many  
Democratic voters. He would, however, not appeal to his party's base, making a 
 third party on the right, a real possibility.  
Second in the polls is former Senator Fred Thompson from Tennessee, now a  
star in "Law and Order" on NBC Television. He has some health issues, but is  
seen as an intelligent, consistent conservative with strength of character.  
While generally respected, he is not yet known among the voters. The religious  
right would probably be satisfied with him, but no evidence suggests that he  
elicits their enthusiasm. His appears rather to be an acceptable alternative to 
 a generally unacceptable Republican field. That is not a strong political  
position.  
Senator John McCain of Arizona is third. One year ago he was the presumptive  
nominee. Today he is struggling to save his candidacy. A conservative voting  
record combined with a maverick, independent personality, John McCain has 
never  been a George Bush fan since the two competed for the 2000 nomination. He 
is,  however, the only major political voice supporting Bush in Iraq. That is 
not a  winning ticket. I think this man has been an important senator, taking  
courageous stands against torture and in favor of campaign finance laws. I 
have  the feeling, however, that both his age and his issues are better suited 
for a  run in 2000 than they are in 2008. My experience teaches me that once a  
candidate begins to fade in the polls like Senator McCain has in the last 
year,  he never recovers. His candidacy appears to me to be mortally wounded. The 
money  is drying up. An early withdrawal would not be a surprise.  
Governor Mitt Romney is fourth in the current polls, which means, given the  
money he has spent, that he has not yet ignited any surge of support. That  
surprises me, since this man is a person of unquestioned ability. He rescued the 
 Olympics from financial disaster. He was a highly competent Governor of  
Massachusetts. He lives by high moral standards. His Mormon religion is  
frequently mentioned as a detriment in his White House bid, but in no way was it  a 
problem during his years as Massachusetts' governor. His ability to abandon  the 
positions he took on abortion and gay rights when running for Governor of  
Massachusetts to aid his run for the presidency will be a greater problem.  
People want to know which Romney is soliciting their votes. Basic inconsistency  
on emotional issues is normally the pathway to political death.  
The final poll-ranked Republican candidate is Newt Gingrich who has not yet  
announced, but surely he is positioning himself to run. Gingrich, a radical  
conservative reformer, is probably the brightest Republican in the field. James 
 Dobson has conveyed his blessing to a Gingrich candidacy, but that may not 
be  enough to win him the nomination. He carries lots of baggage from his years 
as  Majority Leader of the House, particularly when in a showdown with 
President  Clinton he twice closed down the Federal Government. His public voice and 
his  private life have also never been in sync. When he enters this race the 
quality  of the debate will rise because Gingrich is a big idea candidate. 
While he is a  deeply unpopular and polarizing figure in Democratic circles that 
might even  help him in a polarized electorate. Don't count him out!  
Turning now to the major Democratic candidates and again in order of their  
poll numbers, I will consider only four. Senator Clinton from New York tops the 
 poll charts with a double digit lead over her closest opponent. She has  
surprised even her critics with the competent way she has represented New York  
in the Senate. Her 69 percent reelection to a second term was an incredible 
vote  of confidence. She even carried Republican districts in upstate New York. 
She  has impressed her critics with her strong showing in the debates. 
Positioning  herself as a centrist in the party, she has endured the criticism of the  
Democratic left. Her health care failure in the first Clinton administration  
still draws fire, but the fact is that when one places each individual 
proposal  of that health care plan before the public, it receives majority approval. 
It is  only when these proposals are packaged together that people have 
problems. That  probably means that she was right, but too early. The fact that she 
is a woman  cuts both ways with her candidacy, but most of that is not 
rational and is hard  to quantify. Her great contribution thus far is that because 
of her, America can  now visualize a female president. That is a new state of 
consciousness. If  Hillary does not make it to the White House, she will have 
made it much easier  for the next woman to do so. It will not be a long wait.  
Senator Barack Obama of Illinois is the shooting star of this presidential  
race. Coming out of nowhere with only two years in the Senate, he has already  
done better than anyone would have predicted a year ago. Articulate, bright 
and  charismatic, one has the sense that Obama is destined to be President, if 
not in  2008 then soon. I was in the hall in Boston in 2004 when he key-noted 
the  Democratic National Convention. There is no doubt about his ability to 
rouse a  crowd. Positioning himself slightly to the left of Senator Clinton, he 
will be a  tough adversary. He, like Hillary, has raised the consciousness of 
the nation  for he has made people everywhere imagine for the first time that 
an African  American can be President. The candidacies of Shirley Chisholm, 
Doug Wilder,  Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton did not do that. His future is 
unlimited. Whether  that future begins in 2008 is still much in doubt.  
Former Senator and Vice Presidential nominee John Edwards of North Carolina  
is a deeply appealing candidate. He has a flare for the dramatic. He champions 
 the poor when it is not popular to do so. He launched his campaign in New  
Orleans, the classic example of this nation's forgotten poor. His political  
instincts are incredible. His marriage and family life are admirable and the way 
 he and his wife have handled her now incurable, but hopefully controllable,  
cancer is commendable. Edwards provocatively positions himself as a new 
Franklin  D. Roosevelt. Whether he can compete in the battle for campaign money or 
make  what is now essentially a two person Democratic race into a three person 
race is  still in doubt. He deserves to be watched. It is of interest to note 
that  Republican leaders rank him their most formidable opponent with a broad 
populist  appeal that would cut into their Southern religious voters.  
The final candidate scoring in the high single digits in the polls is the  
Governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson. A bi-lingual leader with a Mexican  
mother, he is the first legitimate Hispanic candidate for the presidency. This  
man probably has the best resume and is arguably the most qualified person in  
this crowded field. He has been a seven term congressman, a cabinet Secretary 
of  Energy, Ambassador to the United Nations and an effective governor of a 
Western  State. In each of these positions he has demonstrated great ability. 
His foreign  policy credentials are outstanding. Foreign leaders trust him. With 
all this  going for him, he should be a major force in the campaign. He is 
not, however,  at least not yet, and probably has a better chance to wind up as 
a vice  presidential candidate than he does to win the prize himself. He needs 
big  breaks in both money and endorsements soon and I do not see them coming. 
 
My hopes are that the current political process will do what a campaign is  
supposed to do, namely debate the real issues, not spin them, and present the  
country with a clear sense of how to deal with the future. This nation  
desperately needs that, since we seem to have no real sense of direction at this  
moment. July 4th, 2007, thus has much hope attached to it.  
John Shelby Spong  
_Note  from the Editor: Bishop Spong's new book is available now at 
bookstores  everywhere and by clicking here!_ 
(http://astore.amazon.com/bishopspong-20/detail/0060762071/104-6221748-5882304)   
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Robert Dunlap of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, writes:  
I have sung in church choirs all my life and still enjoy it. However, in some 
 of the music, especially Scandinavian music and often at Christmas time, the 
 lyrics frequently include this comment, "Christ is coming soon." Can you 
tell me  where this idea has arisen? It seems to be a rather peculiar tenet.  
Dear Robert,  
The season of Advent that the Church observes as a time of preparation for  
the birth of Jesus has always had two themes: first, to celebrate his birth and 
 to welcome the Christ Child anew into our world and into our lives; and 
second,  to prepare for what has been called his "second coming" at the end of 
time to  establish the Kingdom of God on earth. The chant "Christ is coming soon" 
is  related to that second theme.  
In the earliest moments of Christian history, Jesus' followers identified him 
 as the messianic figure who had been sent by God, according to Jewish  
expectations, to establish the Kingdom of God on earth. The sub-theme was that  he 
would also re-establish the Jews as the "chosen of God" and re-establish the  
rule of the House of David. In fact, however, the Kingdom did not come with 
the  life of Jesus and now more than 2000 years later the Kingdom of God still 
has  not arrived. The second coming, however, still is discussed in evangelical 
 circles. The early Christians described Jesus as "the first fruits of the  
Kingdom of God," which encouraged them to postulate his second coming at the 
end  of history. Many parts of the New Testament reflect this mentality, such as 
I  Thessalonians and I Corinthians 15 in the Pauline corpus and the 
apocalyptic  chapters in Mark (13), Matthew (24) and Luke (21) in the gospels. In the 
book of  Acts at the time of the ascension (chapter 1) two angels announce to 
the  assembled disciples that "as you have seen him depart, so you will see him 
come  again." The idea of the second coming is thus writ large in the early  
expectations of the first Christians. Among the earliest prayers of Christian  
people were the words, "Come, Lord Jesus." In some sense the entire Lord's  
Prayer is a prayer for the Kingdom to come and with it the arrival of a world 
in  which God's name would be hallowed and God's will would be done on earth as 
it  was in heaven. It was only for that brief interval between the first and 
the  second coming of the Christ figure that Christians prayed for daily 
bread, for  forgiveness and for being capable of enduring every temptation. I 
suspect that  most people interpreted this to be a time bound symbol and a specific 
event that  would take place in history. That is how such ideas as the "end 
of the world"  and the "rapture" came to be literalized in fundamentalist and 
evangelical  circles.  
When Jesus did not come the emphasis shifted to the task of the church to  
convert the world or to be the embodiment in the world of a sign of that  
kingdom. The institutional church, however, was more eager to build its worldly  
power than it was to be the sign of the world's transformation and so that idea  
also faded, leaving unfulfilled hopes for a perfection that was never 
achieved.  
What these things meant, I believe, was an expression of the human view of  
ourselves and our reality. Christians have been endowed with a vision of what  
human life was created to be and what a perfect world would be like. We 
compare  that with what we see that human life is and what our world has come to be. 
We  see the plight of the world's poor and the raging forces of war, 
persecution,  violence and injustice. Those realities cause us to dream, work, pray and
 hope  anew for the reign of God to come on earth and soon. If we could 
change these  references from being time oriented to seeing them as our constant 
prayer that  we might become all that we were meant to be, living fully, loving 
wastefully  and having the courage to be our deepest, most real selves, then I 
think we  would understand what the prayer for Christ to come soon was 
originally meant to  communicate.  
So often the language of our inner life is literalized into becoming the  
language of our outer lives. That is when it loses its meaning and becomes a  
burden to our souls.  
John Shelby Spong 



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