At 7:30 central time last night, my mom called me to ask what I thought of the Obama infomercial. I said I didn't have a chance to watch it. As a full-time college student and a part-time aspiring media mogul (as well as an actor in the final play on the University of Kansas's fall schedule), I've missed a lot of opportunities to see or do things this year.
Then she said something that blew my mind. You see, my mom is a fundamentalist Christian. Obama will be the first Democrat she's voted for in the Presidential race since 1976.
"My Christian friends tell me that if Obama is elected that God's going to put America on notice," she said.
"On notice for what?" I said. "What could God possibly do to us that he hasn't done yet?"
A long pause.
A word on mom's Christian friends: they're completely insane. One of them ran successfully for the state legislature in our home district on a platform of banning abortion, cutting taxes, and reducing spending. He used to pastor a home church that my mom forced me to attend when I was in high school, and I found him in general to be a really creepy guy.
"They say that Obama isn't a Christian and that God will lift his shield of protection over this country if he's elected."
It was my turn to pause. I'd grown up surrounded by this level of batshit lunacy, but since being on my own and realizing the hard way how the world really works, I've been blissfully separated from it. Plus, where the hell was this shield of protection on 9/11 and during Katrina? Where was it for Greensburg or during the floods that battered Kansas and Oklahoma in 2007? Where was it during the slightly less bad floods that hit Iowa this year?
"Your friends are idiots, mom," I finally said.
"Well, they're really worried."
"They're worried because they're idiots." That was all I had to say at the time. I had, after all, much work to do. Today, I began to fashion my response. It is, in full, as follows:
After our conversation last night, I thought to myself how to approach the ignorance of these friends of yours who are worried that electing Barack Obama would somehow anger God. My first response, if they were my friends and not yours, would be to cut all ties with them; I have no room and no patience for people like that in my life.
Since you are for some reason unwilling to do that, the proper response is this:
There are two major party candidates running for President. One of them is a devout Christian, a faithful husband, and a good father. He has lived his life with honor and integrity, and his biggest accomplishments as a legislator have been very serious ethics reform bills. Everything he's gotten in his life has been through his own hard work.
The other is a foul-mouthed, bad-tempered, underachieving twit, who left his first wife and their children because the wife wasn't pretty anymore. Before that, he was unfaithful to her (even trying to get an assignment in Rio because he thought it would be easy to "get laid" there). His biggest accomplishment in over two decades in Washington was a campaign finance reform law that did very little to reform campaign finance, and which he himself broke this election season. His reputation as a "straight talker" came out of a savings and loan scandal which bears no small resemblance to the current crisis we are in; he was the guiltiest of the so-called "Keating 5," but escaped unharmed due to jurisdictional problems; his illegal conduct took place while he was in the House of Representatives but was not found out until he was a Senator.
These are just the personal issues, of course. If your number one concern in this election is for a strong Christian leader, Barack Obama is your man. I have seen no evidence that if John McCain has a particular faith. If you want a leader of character and conviction, Barack Obama is your man. There are no ethical problems in Obama's professional past. There are no mentions of infidelity in his personal past. Neither of these things could be said for John McCain.
If you want a leader who has advisers you can trust on policy, Obama is your man, and John McCain certainly is not. While Obama gets his economic advice from giants in the field like former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, and world's richest man Warren Buffett, the John McCain economic plan was written by Phil Gramm.
Now, your friends are not likely to know who Phil Gramm is. Here's how you explain that to them: "Remember Enron? Remember $4 gas? Remember the subprime mortgage collapse that led to this current crisis? He's the guy that wrote the laws that caused all of those things."
I'd hit Sarah Palin here, but your friends seem to be the kind of crazy that can understand the things she says and even agree with them for some reason. But let me just say that the McCain/Palin ticket is the first in American history to have people found guilty of ethical lapses as both the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidate.
Love you, and see you on Tuesday,
Matt
I have this dream of turning Kansas blue by appealing to the religious aspect of what is currently the religious right. As they are more and more marginalized by the Republican Party, I think the values of charity and faith over gross material gain will turn many to a more progressive nature.