Rick Warren's Blessing and Obama's

The furor over the minister selected to deliver the invocation at the Inaugural is a measure of how the traditional separation of church and state for more than two centuries has broken down in American life over the past eight years.

In decades of acting out his informal role as the "President's pastor," Billy Graham affirmed the values of Christianity without applying them to political issues and without suggesting a state-sponsored religion at the expense of those with other beliefs or none. No President would have welcomed him to the White House if he had.

Now we have Obama defending his choice of Rick Warren on the grounds that the best-selling minister is tolerant of the President-Elect's political views:

"I would note that a couple of years ago, I was invited to Rick Warren's church to speak, despite his awareness that I held views that were entirely contrary to his when it came to gay and lesbian rights, when it came to issues like abortion...

"And that dialogue, I think, is part of what my campaign's been all about: That we're not going to agree on every single issue, but what we have to do is to be able to create an atmosphere...where we can disagree without being disagreeable and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans."

Barack Obama did not go to Warren's church to discuss politics, but Warren's invitation to offer a blessing at the Inaugural, by his activism on political issues, inevitably is seen as tolerance for if not approval of that commingling of church and state.

The new president has promised Change from what George W. Bush brought to the White House. This, sad to say, looks like more of the same.

Is Petraeus a Lame Duck, Too?

Behind-the-scenes scuffling over the General's next appearance before Congress reflects a growing Pentagon rift over deployment of troops in the Middle East as well as resistance to being used for political purposes.

According to the Christian Science Monitor: "Days before the top US commander in Iraq gives his official assessment on troop levels there, a high-level move is afoot to keep Gen. David Petraeus out of the political spotlight. Many senior Pentagon officials want to shift public and lawmaker attention away from Iraq to Afghanistan...

"Members of Congress have requested that Petraeus make another appearance on Capitol Hill, sure to draw the kind of attention that a visit from the high-profile general engenders. The Defense Department has refused that request, ostensibly because of scheduling issues. But as the Pentagon struggles to muster more troops for Afghanistan, officials worry that the general's testimony on Iraq will upstage other needs."

The subtext of this maneuvering is growing Pentagon unease over the Bush Administration's unprecedented politicization of the military and the desire of top brass to dial back during the election campaign.

Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen told reporters last week, "We are an apolitical, neutral organization in this country, and we need to stay out of politics, those of us in uniform. And it is very tempting in this time because of where we are, and we just shouldn't do it."

As John McCain and Republican convention yahoos howl this week about victory in Iraq, under the radar there is movement toward Barack Obama's sanity in calling for troop withdrawal from Iraq to combat terrorists where they live, but military leaders seem to be doing their best not to get caught in that crossfire.

Nine-Year-Old Scoop

The Drudge Report works in wondrous ways.

The banner this morning, under a picture of Mike Huckabee wagging his finger, is 'Take This Nation Back for Christ' leading to a news report of his speech at a Southern Baptist Convention. The small type notes it was made in 1998.

Click through, and you get the story from the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, making the then-governor sound as if he wants, not to be President, but Pastor-in-Chief of the nation.

"The reason we have so much government is because we have so much broken humanity," it quotes him as saying. "And the reason we have so much broken humanity is because sin reigns in the hearts and lives of human beings instead of the Savior...

"Government knows it does not have the answer, but it's arrogant and acts as though it does. Church does have the answer but will cowardly deny that it does and wonder when the world will be changed...

"I didn't get into politics because I thought government had a better answer. I got into politics because I knew government didn't have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives."

The provenance of this Drudge scoop is suggested by the fact that the speech was made in Salt Lake City, where reporters were given copies of a book Huckabee had written as well as one titled "Mormonism Unmasked," exposing the beliefs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Cui bono to make Huckabee look like a religious nut? Or, in today's world, would his supporters consider the story a plus?

Too Much News: Deprivation by Surfeit

A book I once wrote argued we were being stuffed with information but starved for understanding. David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker have just spent two days making the point with a ribbon on it.

After all the graphs, statistics, anecdotes and guarded generalizations, they did not, could not answer the only questions that matter: When will this war end, and is it making us any safer from terrorism?

Two of our best and brightest public servants responded with the classic waiter’s shrug, “That’s not my table.”

In the last century, social critic Lewis Mumford pointed out that, although science and technology assume constantly increasing consumption of goods and knowledge is desirable, it can lead to “deprivation by surfeit.”

With concentration on speed and productivity, Mumford wrote, “we have ignored the need for evaluation, correction, selection and social assimilation.”

Today’s journalism and politics validate his theory as clearly as do the clogging of our highways and the overwhelming of air-traffic control. We are in a hurry to get somewhere without being sure of the destination and how to get there without falling over one another.

Sorting it all out used to be called leadership, but that is the only product in short supply.