I recently plunged into America's political convention season. The defining moment was not Republican Presidential candidate John McCain's nomination of novice Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin. Astute observers should have sensed something unusual was afoot.
(The choice had to reinforce McCain's fragile anti-Bush brand by looking like the capital "C' change that US voters desire to purify their nation, following the perceived stain of the Bush years.)
No. The moment that most shocked me was four words that formed the centrepiece of McCain's acceptance speech. Tortured by the Vietcong as a prisoner of war, left for dead in a Hanoi black hole, McCain had what can only be described as a Damascus road experience: "My country saved me".
McCain's story of personal salvation was really a religious testimony. The hope offered was that we can be transformed if we "believe' in his America again.
But McCain is not alone. The Democrat slogan that calls on voters to trust that Obama will "heal the nation" smacks of similar messianic zeal.
Should we really be placing such hope in any leader, in any nation?
Indeed, it seems counter-intuitive that people would place so much trust in inexperienced outsiders, given the complexity of current world problems. In tough economic times it seems logical that people would want safety and security, leaders who have been tried and tested. But the problem in the US today is that the political establishment is seen as the cause of the failure.
Remember history: a similar longing for messianic solutions to purge a failed establishment led to the growth of fascism during the Great Depression.
Therefore, despite the market meltdown, Obama's slogan " "Change we can believe in" " and McCain's patriotic "maverick' label are not out-of-sync with America's increasingly panicky mood.
It would also be wrong to assume that Australia is immune from these dangers just because our leaders are pedestrian. A similar bizarre dynamic is at work within the NSW Labor Party, with an obviously desperate caucus choosing one of its least experienced members to be premier.
Nathan Rees was elevated after just 18 months in parliament, with no executive experience of any kind. His attraction? A good communicator with a background writing ministerial propaganda.
In what other workplace would being an inexprienced unknown be perceived as a virtue? Experience, by definition, means you've had opportunity to make errors and learn from your mistakes.
Former Sydney Anglican church worker and blogger Byron Smith makes the point that voter preference for inexperienced candidates has arisen "because we no longer trust that our politicians are able to learn from their mistakes. We do not afford them the freedom of repentance". (note the unforgivable sin: the "backflip').
In other words, McCain, Palin and Obama, and to a lesser degree Rees, are symptoms of a spiritual malaise.
The McCain and Obama campaigns work by painting the present in the blackest possible terms so that voters become numb to the risk of change.
In this light, Byron Smith has taken a close look at the appeal behind Obama's rhetoric.
"The problem is that the more the present can be demonised, the more the politician offering something " anything " new is necessary. Change is made attractive in the abstract. The fear of the ongoing disaster overrules our default conservatism until we are ready to say, "better the devil we don't know'."
In contrast, Smith says Christians should be mindful of God's promise of a healed world and resurrected life. "The sure hope for this divinely achieved future frees the present political system from the ultimately destructive burden of having to repair the world itself."
Freed from the impossibility of reaching utopia, Christians should cut politicians some slack, and encourage them to focus on realistic objectives.
PHOTO: NewsHour
