October 13, 2015 (Tuesday)
Presidential politics are going full speed ahead, even though the actual election is 13 months away.
The Republicans have had two debates, including as many as 16 candidates. The Democrats will have their first debate tonight in Las Vegas, with 5, maybe 6, candidates.
It’s quite an experience for the average person to hear the people who want to be president debate each other, trying to rip each other to shreds while pretending to be unified as parties. Never fear, there will finally be only two people who will survive the long campaign–a Republican and and Democrat. Remember these two who staged the first televised debate:
Meanwhile the other would-be candidates will kiss and make up along party lines, swearing to support the person who eventually emerges as the party’s choice to run for president.
I don’t know the ins and outs of gambling on politics, but I’m sure it’s being done. Las Vegas as a site for the debates seems appropriate in that case. People gamble on everything. During the 1950s drought, the city of Lampasas had a day of prayer for rain, and I personally saw and heard two men on a downtown street betting on whether it would rain. So, yes, I feel sure there will be millions in gambling funds to match the horrendous and shameful amounts spent by the candidates.
Cigarette commercials on TV are no longer allowed, but I can remember when a big push was being made to enlist more girls and women to become smokers, and the slogan was, “You’ve come a long way, baby.” Well, whoever you are (I dare not call you “baby”), we as a nation have come a long way from the simple campaigns of long ago.
A little study of the presidency of our country will reveal that even those simple campaigns were marred by bitterness and mud slinging, which have been part of the process since its very beginning. Yet through it all, the nation has survived and the Constitution is still intact. Although some of the presidents are listed as “great” and others not so much, all of them have been human beings just like the rest of us. We can expect the same in the future.
We as Christians have a special obligation to pray for our leaders. Sometimes, in the heat of politics, we forget that.