THE CLARITY OF A FLORIDA ELECTION RECOUNT

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (5/31/08)

Senator McCain’s thinking is as clear as a Florida election recount. He claims that Senator Obama has no right to question his military and foreign policies because Obama never served in the military. Well, neither did George W. Bush nor Richard Cheney, and he thinks their war is just great. In one fell swoop, he has undercut his own judgment and policies.

I know how he feels. He’s old, as am I, and he often resents the young, as do I, especially when the young are right and I’ve been wrong. It’s hard to give up answers to questions no one is asking. The hymn says in best, “New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth.”

Fresh thinking and fresh ideas always make the old uncomfortable. When I was a young graduate student at the University of Chicago, I mistakenly took a seminar with the great theologian Paul Tillich who was at the end of his career instead of a seminar with an up and coming young theologian. I discovered Tillich was answering questions no one was asking anymore. So it is with McCain.

His mind was shaped by the failures of Vietnam. Military men tend to fight previous wars, not present ones. His economy policies reflect the Reagan era. In brief, he’s out-of-date.

The best military presidents we’ve had are Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, neither of whom served in the military. Georges Clemenceau said, “War is too serious a matter to be left to military men.”