Photo of early voter courtesy of AP

I woke up this morning, got my kids off to school, and then did the single most important thing I would do all day.

I went to church and led Morning Prayer with a small handful of other parishioners.

After that, I voted.

Our little group that gathers for Morning Prayer every Tuesday had discussed canceling the service today because it fell on Election Day morning. We’re all politically aware enough so that we were planning to vote, and many of us have other daily obligations. We’d heard all the stories predicting unusually long lines and waits. In the end, we chose to hold the service, and not to worry about how many people might turn up.

Interestingly, my precinct’s polling place is in a church auditorium. Someone had placed a sign near the line of waiting voters that read (I’m quoting from memory so this might not…

Photo courtesy of the Daily Yonder

When I was growing up I thought that all Irish Americans were Catholic and that all Irish Catholics were, as my father liked to call us, “good solid Democrats.”  Then, around the time I was in middle school, something strange happened.  My grandparents, who absolutely idolized JFK, RFK, and all things Kennedy, voted for Ronald Reagan.

It turns out that they were part of a trend, and that (as everyone knows) in the years since the Reagan Revolution the Catholic vote has turned steadily Republican, as churchgoing Catholics have become allied with Evangelicals and other more conservative Protestants to become a bloc known as “Values Voters.”  There has been much talk this election cycle about whether Values Voters are going to remain a cohesive group, or split into factions, or even swing Democrat.  The polling has been, at best, equivocal and unconvincing.  We hear about “emerging”…

Photo courtesy NBC News, Augusta, GA

In today’s New York Times, William Kristol suggests that John McCain fire his entire campaign team because of the recent firestorm regarding McCain’s rallies and his shifting positions. Kristol writes,

“McCain should stop unveiling gimmicky proposals every couple of days that pretend to deal with the financial crisis. He should tell the truth — we’re in uncharted waters, no one is certain what to do, and no one knows what the situation will be on Jan. 20, 2009. But what we do know is that we could use someone as president who’s shown in his career the kind of sound judgment and strong leadership we’ll need to make it through the crisis.”

However, there is a deeper problem regarding the trajectory of both campaigns: they have become religious. Americans are expecting too much from both of Obama and McCain. As a result, both candidates have a profound…