IF only because it gives me thrill, suspense and excitement, I closely track the current US presidential campaign. In a way, it’s like watching a game of basketball or soccer.
I enjoy the punditry that’s daily milled out of the press, giving us fresh insights and confirming or debunking theories and suspicions. The exercise challenges our power to discern and distinguish between spin and reality, between hype and substance.
Tracing possible motives and reasons for a candidate’s actuations and words, hunting and fishing for possible hidden ulterior motives, sniffing potential dangers of any kind in a candidate’s move—these are the usual elements that can give one high feelings.
Since the players are under extreme pressure to win, they can be very vulnerable to tempting and even immoral means. The Machiavellian tactics tend to worsen with each election.
The art of deception and hypocrisy is improved and refined, as players try their best to appear spotless even when caught red-handed in a mistake. Thus, a blatant lie, for example, is now just called a misstatement. An elitist statement is simply dismissed as misspoken words.
I actually don’t have much time for this. But when I can, I connect myself with the many relevant linkages now handily made available in the Internet. I see to it that this does not become an obsession. Rather, it should be a good material for prayer and for knowing where the world is heading.
The increasingly vicious slugfest between the first would-be black president and the first would-be woman president is truly interesting. To me, it exposes a lot of what’s going on in the soul of America .
This is actually my underlying motive for observing this American event. I really don’t care much about the candidates’ positions on Iraq , the economy, health care, global warming, etc. To me, these are matters of consensus.
I focus more on what they think about abortion and other basic moral issues now dogging American and world life—issues that have direct and significant effect on personal integrity, marriage and family, education, etc.
To me, the moral issues are the most important things to consider. They are not a matter of consensus, but rather of what is in accord with our very own nature, with our very own dignity as persons and children of God.
The moral issues therefore concern all of us, not just a part of us, not even the majority of us. They are beyond personal preferences, opinions, statistics and popularity voting. They spring from our common humanity and are meant to build it up.
They become issues precisely because a growing number of people would like to have a differing view about what human nature and dignity is, and therefore about what is moral. They want these things to be a matter of opinion, subject to a continuing process of defining and redefining.
Sad to say, it seems that we are entering into a kind of politics where moral issues, not just political and social issues, are becoming the prominent issues to tackle and decide on.
Obviously, not everybody has this understanding of the moral issues. To many people nowadays, these moral issues are just like any other political or social issue, a situation that clearly needs to be corrected.
That’s why elections are very important, since among other things, they give us a chance to express our position with respect to the moral issues. They give us a chance to choose our political leaders.
I must say that our political leaders should be chosen primarily on the basis of how they stand on the moral issues. It is in the moral issues where their true integrity and the ultimate source of their leadership qualities can be found.
When he flipflops in these issues, when he does not know how to defend them in the face of popular dissent, then we have reason to suspect his capacity to lead.
Sad to say, we are seeing a lot of this phenomenon these days. Many of our politicians, in the US and here, seem to be dancing under the choreography of such capital sins as greed and lust for power, at the expense of morality.
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