Formerly taboo subjects now all the rage

Today’s politicians boastful of their beliefs

There used be a saying that went something like, “In polite company you should never discuss religion, politics, sex or money.” These days, those four subjects seem to be the only things anyone wants to talk about. And if you can combine two or more of them into the same story, well then you’ve hit the conversational jackpot.

When New York’s governor Eliot Spitzer resigned a few months ago after it was discovered that he had spent tens of thousands of dollars on young prostitutes, the story managed to contain three out of the four subjects. If he could’ve just insisted on his prostitutes dressing up as nuns, it would have gone a solid four-for-four. “Quadrangular!” as they say south of the border.

These days, politicians think nothing of wearing their religion on their sleeves, even if that tends to be off-putting to some of their constituents (like me).

According to a news story in The Guardian, President Bush told members of a Palestinian delegation during the 2003 Israeli-Palestinian summit in Egypt, “I am driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, ‘George, go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan.’ And I did. And then God would tell me, ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq.’ And I did.”

Apart from the curious way that God seems to be on a casual, first-name basis with the president, I’m a little bit shocked that we have come to the point where the leader of the most powerful nation on earth can come out and say that he directed his country into war because “God told him to” and nobody raises an eyebrow.

If a homeless man attacked you on the street and his defense in court was that God told him to beat you up, I’m not so sure that a judge would buy the story as willingly as our entire nation seems to be buying Old George’s.

In a day and age when politicians wear their religion on their sleeves, they always act shocked when it comes back to bite them in the butt. I know that Reverend Jeremiah Wright doesn’t speak for Barack Obama any more than John McCain’s favorite televangelist John Hagee speaks for him. But if they weren’t so predisposed to glad-hand and pose with such figures in the first place, they wouldn’t have to spend so much time apologizing for the loony things coming out of these overly religious characters’ mouths.

Nowadays politicians are required to tell the public who their pastor is, who their savior is, and who their God is. And they are not allowed to demonstrate any wavering, doubt or lack of sincerity. Just once, I would like to hear a candidate say, “Well, you know, I don’t have the answers when it comes to the big questions like which religion is God’s favorite or what happens when you die.”

That would be a breath of fresh air, but in this day and age it would probably also be political suicide.

It used to be unthinkable for anyone to ask you which candidate you voted for. That would be considered the height of rudeness, and rightly so. Going around running your mouth about what you did in the voting booth is just asking for trouble, as John McCain found out last week.

Political blogger Arianna Huffington recently wrote on her website that McCain and his wife Cindy told Huffington that they didn’t vote for George W. Bush during a dinner party in Los Angeles not long after the 2000 election. Two others who attended the party, actors Bradley Whitford and Richard Schiff, told The New York Times that McCain indicated that he didn’t vote for Bush also.

If true, the McCains’ statement indicates that they either voted for democrat Al Gore, or didn’t cast a vote at all in the presidential race that November. I’m not sure which would be a more grievous offense to their fellow republicans.

Recently, McCain has found himself out of the news cycle while Obama and Hillary Clinton fight their way down the home stretch of the democratic presidential nomination. It will be interesting to see how he and his eventual opponent react to the public’s lust for sordid details about politics, religion, sex and money.