From what I’m reading, Alaska is in a political scandal blizzard. You’ve got the much-buzzed-about Troopergate, where Gov. Sarah Palin is suspected of firing of a commissioner because he wouldn’t fire a state trooper who divorced her sister. Then there’s Republican congressman Don Young, the only representative from the state, who is also under corruption investigation.

Then today tapes of conversations from two years ago came out in Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens’ corruption trial. Stevens is still running for reelection and might even win depending on how the trial goes. He is being charged for concealing gifts from an oil company, which he denies.

In the tapes, laced with profanities, he told his oil executive friend:

“The worst that can happen to us is we run up a bunch of legal fees, and might lose and we might have to pay a fine, might have to serve a little time in jail.”

But, he adds:

“We didn’t do anything wrong.”

Stevens’ oil buddy was cooperating with a federal corruption investigation, and allowed his conversations to be recorded. Pretty slick!

I’ve been thinking about how Sarah Palin would fare in the eyes of my Christian Republican friends if her name were Hillary Clinton. There is the disastrous interview with Katie Couric, which by comparison makes Dan Quayle appear an eloquent master of policy detail. There is the fact that she is vigorously campaigning for a job that will largely remove her from her young children for the next four years. There is the fact that her teenage daughter is unmarried and pregnant.

On that last alone, it takes little imagination to conjure the sort of remarks that would have been directed Clinton’s way had her own daughter proven as careless. Because Palin is a Christian and a Republican, however, my friends view this positively, as proof of her family’s pro-life credentials. They are willing to forgive, for who among us has not made mistakes?

These are admirable inclinations, and I agree with them entirely. But I suspect that many Christian Republicans wouldn’t be as forgiving were this Hillary Clinton.

Clinton certainly squandered any benefit of the doubt she may have once received. From her earliest days in the White House, where she distinguished herself by ruthlessly removing anyone she suspected of being even remotely loyal to the departing Bush family, we have seen repeated glimpses into her character. Many of us have found what we see distasteful.

But the challenge is that what we see is often colored by tribal loyalties. Thus is Rudy Giuliani not laughed off the stage when he castigates Christian Republicans for questioning whether a mother of young children ought to be seeking such an office. Being lectured for uncharitable hypocrisy by Giuliani is, after all, a bit like being chastised for sexual indiscretion by Paris Hilton. “How dare they?” demanded Giuliani, that poster boy for marriage and parenting, implying that there is a double-standard in operation here, that those who question Palin would not question a father in similar circumstances. So firmly has this talking point penetrated the party rank and file that I heard it delivered all the way out here in Wichita, Kan., from a staunchly conservative Christian mother who turned down job opportunities while her own children were young.

We ought to dispense with Giuliani’s diversionary attempt by replying that a man with small children likewise has no business abandoning them for four years. Good mothers and fathers decide every day to forego wonderful opportunities for the sake of their young children, and we should think less of those who don’t, provided they have a choice in the matter—as a single working mother holding two jobs, say, does not.

My immediate point, however, is that I doubt Clinton would have received the same pass. Likewise, Palin’s distressing lack of policy knowledge becomes admirable proof of some kind of small-town innocence. Not having eaten of the tree of Washington Knowledge, she has retained her purity. As for Clinton’s encyclopedic knowledge of policy, well, the Devil is clever, too, isn’t he?

I fully understand the necessity of sometimes embracing the lesser of two evils, or marginal competence over colossal wrongheadedness, or whatever set of comparisons my friends along the rational segment of the political spectrum use to choke their way through the voting process in modern America. I just wish we could be a little more evenhanded in our criticism.

WMB posted last week on how Horace Engdahl of the Nobel Prize jury has summarily judged all of American literature to be, not to mince words, insular and ignorant and unworthy of their attention.  As you might imagine, the Americans have rebutted with their own criticisms.  The general feeling among literary U.S. patriots can be described as two-pronged:

1. The Swedes, in this instance, are idiots. 
2. The Swedes are ignoring the obvious, that European culture is mostly dead.

 Here’s what one critic had to say: 

As long as America could still be regarded as Europe’s backwater—as long as a poet like T.S. Eliot had to leave America for England in order to become famous enough to win the Nobel—it was easy to give American literature the occasional pat on the head. But now that the situation is reversed, and it is Europe that looks culturally, economically, and politically dependent on the United States, European pride can be assuaged only by pretending that American literature doesn’t exist. When Engdahl declares, “You can’t get away from the fact that Europe still is the center of the literary world,” there is a poignant echo of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard insisting that she is still big, it’s the pictures that got smaller.

 I say: Invade Sweden.  At least it won’t be a preemptive strike.

In July, I read an article about the Wisteria Candy Cottage, a famous candy store in Boulevard, a town in the desert outside San Diego. The owner had passed away, and her daughter was unable to buy her mother’s share from the family trust. Also, business was down: rising gas prices had scared away interstate customers who used to stop in for Wisteria’s handcrafted chocolate and unique treats on their way in from Arizona. And so, on July 30, the store closed its doors after 87 years.

This morning, I read in the San Diego Union-Tribune about another mom-and-pop shop on the verge of going under: “Dominic’s Barber Shop…a three-chair affair where hair tonic ads from the 1960s hang on the wall and a working stiff can still get a lively conversation and a trim for $12.” According to the article, lots of small businesses are in trouble: Business is slow, and owners are locked into leases negotiated in better economic times. For owners looking to sell, buyers are scarce, especially now that credit is harder to get.

I’ve always tried to patronize mom-and-pops when I could. During the Pokemon craze, I’d take my kids to the local comic book store instead of Target, paying the extra fifty cents for a packet of the silly cards just so I could teach the kids the value of entrepreneurship. I’m not opposed to big corporations: Even Wal-Mart started out as a mom-and-pop (Walton’s Five and Dime.) Still, it saddens me to see so many mom-and-pops struggling.

Are you losing any cherished businesses in your town?

“The heels are on, the gloves are off,” Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin declared over the weekend as she launched pointed attacks against Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. Palin, whose debate performance last week reinvigorated Republicans, seemed to embrace her new role as John McCain’s walking point as she levied criticism of Obama’s connections with Bill Ayers, one of the founders of the domestic terror group, Weather Underground:

“Our opponent is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country,” Palin told a rally of about 10,000 gathered at a tennis stadium in Carson, a suburb of Los Angeles.

That echoed comments she made earlier in the day to donors at a private airport in Englewood, Colo.: “Our opponent … is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”

But according to the Christian Science Monitor, this new campaign strategy is leaving some conservatives uneasy, including New York Times columnist David Brooks, who doesn’t believe a negative campaign can be successful:

“They don’t understand how the same political tactics that they’ve used before, going after liberal, liberal, liberal, that’s not going to work now because something has overshadowed it,” Brooks [said on Face the Nation Sunday]. “And that overshadowing, that economic anxiety is just going to dominate the next five weeks. There’s no way around that. And if they’re not touching that, then they’re not touching the core issue. And John McCain has not done it. And he hasn’t done it over the weekend, where they’ve been attacking Obama for being too liberal or not loving America enough.”

What’s your take?

Even though he has a 100 percent pro-choice Senate voting record, a new website is alleging that Barack Obama is the most pro-life candidate in the race for president. The Pro-Life, Pro-Obama site, started by a group of Christians with the pro-Obama Matthew 25 network, argues that Obama’s proposed programs will do more to reduce abortions in America than the policies of John McCain. 

“After 35 years, a new approach is needed,” writes Douglas W. Kmiec, the site’s spokesman. “Too many unborn lives are being lost as we wait for judges to get it right.

“Barack Obama’s strengthening of support for prenatal care, health care, maternity leave, and adoption will make the difference,” maintains the former professor and dean of the law school at The Catholic University of America.

But it’s an assertion that has greatly angered pro-life leaders: “The Matthew 25 webpage is a desperate attempt to attract pro-life Christian voters to Obama by misrepresenting and redefining the pro-life cause,” charged Carrie Gordon Earll, senior bioethics analyst at Focus on the Family Action. “It’s an insult and affront to every true pro-lifer in the country.”

This should not be a big deal, but when my adult son asked if I would commit to baby-sitting my grandson on Wednesdays, I made my decision by reasoning it through the way I thought father Abraham might have reasoned it—that is, by factoring miracle into my assessment.

I normally would have made a straightforward application of the familiar Bible principles of responsible time stewardship. I would have considered the list of my present responsibilities, and then number of hours in a day, and would have arrived, quasi-mathematically, at the conclusion that the proposal is “impossible.” Sorry, Jae.

This is inadequate reasoning for a Christian. Christian reasoning is always reasoning with a Person, not principles. And reasoning with a person is a thing richer and creative and surprising. It leaps beyond the empirical data. And when the Person with whom one has to do is the Almighty God, right reasoning makes room for miracle.

Abraham received a tougher request than mine. “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, … and … sacrifice him…as a burnt offering” (Genesis 22:2). A strict, as-the-crow-flies application of all the principles he could muster would have availed Abraham little.

To my great edification, Abraham took his starting point with a Person, not a principle. And starting with what he knew of that Person’s character yielded a revolutionary kind of reasoning: Hmm, Abraham reasoned, I guess this means God is going to raise my son from the dead (Hebrews 11:19).

As insanely as Abraham, I thought to myself when Jae asked me for my Wednesdays: Hmm, I’m really busy, but if God wants me to give my Wednesdays to my grandson, I guess that means He plans to make me more productive on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays.

Good morning!

Today’s quote is from a first century Roman author: “Cruelty is fed, not weakened, by tears.”