My, oh my, what a presidential race we’re enduring. A long, contentious season of bloviating and backstabbing that makes me want to move to New Zealand.
All the election-related TV commercials, news interviews and debate rants bring these old Dan Fogelberg song lyrics to mind: “Promises made, promises broken, measures of our demise …”
I always vote, but I’ve never gotten passionately involved in a campaign since being devastated, at the tender age of seven, when my guy, Barry Goldwater, lost to Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 presidential election.
I didn’t know beans about Goldwater, mind you, but I’d deduced from the adults in my universe that I must be a Republican.
What really inspired me to get behind Goldwater, however, were the white, plastic “Goldwater for President” cowboy hats I saw his supporters wearing. I was one of the lucky kids in our neighborhood who snagged one of those hats, and if wearing it meant I was a Goldwater fan, that was fine with me.
On election day, a school holiday, I put on my hat and walked with my friends over to the polling place in our neighborhood. I remember the sidewalks around that building feeling like a carnival, with folks handing out all kinds of buttons, stickers and other stuff.
This was before helicopter parenting was invented, so we were actually allowed to go outside and roam around our neighborhood. Or, in this case, to go to the polling place and campaign for Barry Goldwater.
We wore our hats, held up our signs and became the most passionate, obnoxious and clueless little political activists you’ve ever seen.
I should’ve kept that Goldwater hat. I could probably sell it on eBay now for a nice chunk of change. But I didn’t keep it because after the election it became a bitter reminder of my fruitless zeal.
What I did keep was a cynical belief that the more I want candidates to win, the less likely they are to win. And on top of that cynicism, I’ve piled a lot of skepticism about candidates actually delivering on the promises they make.
And they do make some promises, don’t they?
“And if I’m your president, blah, blah, blah …”
What a different world it would be if every elected official kept every promise made on the campaign trail.
Why don’t they? Because it’s oh, so much easier to promise than it is to deliver.
That’s why elections always remind me not to completely trust anyone but God. He’s the only one who’s ever delivered on every single promise He’s made.
I’ve recently been involved in an in-depth Bible study on the book of Daniel and have been blown away by all the specific prophecies recorded in that book that have been fulfilled, sometimes hundreds of years after the book was written.
These fulfilled prophecies about the rise and fall of kings and kingdoms have left me without even a shred of doubt that the God of the Bible is real and is orchestrating world events toward the end He has ordained.
Another book of the Bible, Ezekiel, contains prophecies about nations that will align against Israel in the last days. Among those nations are modern-day Russia and Iran—two countries surely on the “least likely to become allies” list until just recently.
Having already delivered on so many promises, I know God will faithfully keep those yet to be fulfilled. He does what He says He’ll do.
I’ll vote in the presidential election, but not because I think any candidate will keep every promise he or she is making. There’s only one Savior and His name isn’t Trump, Clinton, Cruz, Carson, Rubio, or Sanders. It’s Jesus.
That’s why I don’t wear a white, plastic cowboy hat anymore; I wear a cross.