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Politics : The Next President 2008 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (1927)	12/11/2007 9:47:18 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 3215

There's little faith in presidents behaving badly By Ellis Henican jewishworldreview.com \| Religious interference? Actually, John Kennedy probably could have used a little more religious interference. If he'd only listened to Pope John XXIII, the famously libidinous married Catholic president might have kept his distance from the likes of Marilyn Monroe. "Happy birthday, Mr. President," Marilyn sang in that breathless voice of hers, adding whole new levels of meaning to the simple words of the song. "Cold shower!" should have been the president's immediate response. And it would have been had Kennedy been half the puppet of Rome that Southern Baptists were making him out to be. But no. He believed his own flowery rhetoric about the separation of church and state. America was a nation "where no Catholic prelate would tell the president, should he be a Catholic, how to act," he told the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on Sept. 12, 1960. What a wasted opportunity that turned out to be! In the absence of political guidance from Rome, Kennedy got all entangled in female trouble. Marilyn. Judith Exner. G-d only knows who else. And he missed the papal guidance that might have saved him from that other dangerous entanglement, the almost never-ending one in Vietnam. This all comes up, of course, because of Mitt Romney and his big speech Thursday, wherein the former Massachusetts governor tried to calm Republican fears of nominating a Mormon for president. "Let me assure you that no authorities of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions," Romney said at the George Bush Presidential Library on the campus of Texas A&M University, barely a 90-minute drive from Kennedy's Houston podium. "Their authority is theirs, within the province of church affairs, and it ends where the affairs of the nation begin." Very Kennedy-esque. "I believe in my Mormon faith and I endeavor to live by it," Romney went on. "My faith is the faith of my fathers. I will be true to them and to my beliefs." But "if I am fortunate to become your president, I will serve no one religion, no one group, no one cause and no one interest. A president must serve only the common cause of the people of the United States." It all sounds sensible enough, laid out in a stump speech. But here's the twist in the story. Lots of recent presidents could have been saved from their worst instincts by their faiths, had they only followed them more religiously. Bill Clinton's Southern Baptist elders surely could have warned him about the dangers of affairs with interns. Quaker Richard Nixon clearly should have given more heed to his faith's strong message of peace. Ronald Reagan talked a lot about his Christianity. What would have happened if he'd regularly attended the Presbyterian church he belonged to? Would that have changed how he handled Central America and the Iran-Contra Affair? And then there's George W. Bush. For several years now, he's gotten steady grief from his United Methodist bishops over the war in Iraq. Imagine how much better his presidency would have gone if he'd stopped and listened to them. You had to feel for Romney on Thursday and feel for the rest of them as they tried to navigate between politics and faith. In America, we demand that our leaders have religious faith. No atheists or agnostics need apply. And we demand they speak publicly about their beliefs. At the same time, we aren't especially insistent that they practice what they preach. Hello, Rudy! It's been 47 years since Kennedy's speech about the Catholics. Who said the issue is resolved in America jewishworldreview.com

To: calgal who wrote (1927)	12/11/2007 9:51:21 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 3215

In Speech on Religion, Obama Explains His Faith in Oprah By Andy Borowitz Calls belief in talk show hostess a ‘personal matter’ jewishworldreview.com \| Under pressure to explain his religious faith to the American people, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama delivered a forty-five minute speech today discussing his belief in Oprah Winfrey. In an election year that has been dominated by discussions of candidates' religious faith, perhaps no candidate's religion has been more controversial than Sen. Obama's Oprahism. Speaking to supporters at the University of Iowa, the Illinois senator devoted his entire speech to his religious faith but mentioned Ms. Winfrey only once by name. "My religion is a personal matter to me," Sen. Obama told his followers. "Having said that, let me make this clear: I have accepted Oprah as my host." Later in the day, Ms. Winfrey toured the state with Mr. Obama and, in a stunning demonstration of her influence, briefly caused a solar eclipse. "Sun and moon, do my bidding!" she roared, raising her hands above her head and delighting the crowd with the celestial display. "Oprah is without question the most powerful force in the election right now," said Carol Foyler, 45, an Obama supporter from Cedar Rapids. "I'd like to see Bill Clinton do that." Davis Logsdon, who studies the interrelation between politicians, religion and talk-show hosts at the University of Minnesota, said that Sen. Obama's worship of Oprah Winfrey puts him in the mainstream of American theological belief. "Over thirty percent of Americans currently define themselves as Oprahists," Mr. Logsdon said. "And that number is higher during sweeps." Elsewhere, the CIA created more controversy today by acknowledging that it accidentally returned several interrogation tapes to Blockbuster. jewishworldreview.com