I've had a number of talks with "born again Christians" who say that because they are born again, and thus forgiven of all sin, what they do in the future isn't all that important. They will be forgiven again and again, and though they know they will engage in more sin in the future, they aren't too worried because Jesus died for all their sins, even the future ones. Simply accepting Jesus as their Lord and Savior is enough.
This reminds me a lot of how the media and many citizens look at John McCain. I don't know much about McCain's spiritual life, so I don't know if he is spiritually born again, but in a temporal sense he has been born again, and because of that, it seems, McCain is forgiven every gaffe, every sin, every failing, every wrong headed policy, every insensitive statement, every memory lapse, every lie.
McCain was born again in the sense that he survived being a POW. This gives him war hero status, which gives him instant forgiveness for everything he has ever done and will do, and that is the only explanation that makes sense to me for why the media continues to give him a pass no matter what he does.
At the age of 42, he left his wife and children for 24 year old Cindy. Had Obama done that earlier in his life, you can bet McCain and his team would be slamming him with the adultery charge. But no one much cares about McCain's infidelity. He's forgiven.
Earlier in the year on several occasions McCain got Sunnis and Shiites mixed up in his speeches, and confused Iranian Shia troops with Sunni Al Qaeda. The press noted it, but no one made it a big deal. Had Obama been this confused, McCain and his allies would have pointed to this as proof that he was unqualified to be commander in chief. But McCain's memory lapse or confusion is a forgivable sin when you have been a POW.
This week, McCain showed his total ignorance of how Social Security works by saying it was "a disgrace" that younger workers are funding the benefits to today's retirees. Since this is how the program has always worked - it isn't like a 401K where what you put in is what you get out - what McCain is saying is either that he has always believed that the way the system was set up is a disgrace, or that he thought it worked some other way but now that he knows how it works he is appalled. Either way, McCain is showing some real cognitive slippage or simple ignorance here, but he was a war hero and he can be forgiven. Had Obama said something like this, he would have been denounced as too ignorant to become president.
McCain also had to distance himself this week from his chief economic advisor Phil Gramm who said the American people, who are losing jobs, pensions, health care, and homes, are in some kind of delusional "mental recession," and are simply "whiners." McCain, though, also seems unaware of how much this economy is hurting individual Americans, and reflected Gramm's sentiments in the past when he acknowledged that his solutions would only bring a psychological lift to the economy. Had anyone in Obama's camp called Americans "whiners" we would have heard about it for weeks. Oh wait, we did. Obama said something about the American people being "bitter" which is not as bad as calling them "whiners," but he took so much crap for it that he nearly lost the nomination as a result. But McCain was born again when he walked out of that POW camp, and so we can forgive him his insensitivity to the American people.
We can't forgive Wesley Clark, though, for saying he honored and respected John McCain, but didn't think his experiences in Vietnam gave him the experience he needed to be commander in chief. Even though Wesley Clark was wounded in Vietnam, and was a general, that isn't the same as being a POW. That doesn't make you born again. That doesn't allow all of your past and future sins to be forgiven. Therefore, Wesley Clark, you have been condemned by the media for "dissing McCain's service," (which is not what you did) your words are not forgiven, and Barack Obama can be tagged with your sins.
Pretty nifty how that born again forgiveness works - at least for Republicans.
