Does Politics Matter?

Leading up to the last two presidential elections, I was invited to join in with massive prayer efforts for "the most important election of our lifetimes"...which, at least the second time, provoked a smidgen of skepticism from me.  How had they so quickly devalued the last most-important-election-of-our-lifetime? 

I didn't argue with the call to prayer.  Whoever God wants to be president, I'm all for.  What seems more challenging is our confidence that we know who that is.  (The folks calling me to prayer clearly felt God wanted one of the two candidates to win.  In hindsight, they seem, if I may say, like anti-prophets.)

My presidential voting history now seems mostly embarrassing.  You're reading words from a man who voted for Ross Perot, his first go-round.  I've voted for the second term of a president I opposed in his first term.  The first term turned out not half bad; the second was a super-colossal meltdown. 

So perhaps I'm a good anti-prophet myself--figure out who I'm for, go the other way, and all will be well. 

If only in defensive detachment, I'm tempted towards two linchpins of a political philosophy.  (1) We overvalue politics.  The best politicians are competent managers, rather than visionaries (who tend to do active harm).  (2) We undervalue our own callings to be, as Jesus put it, workers in God's harvest, which is something that will certainly make a difference.

But then, after taking a breath, at least the first of those points seems modestly overstated.  Much as I despair of my own--or perhaps anyone's--ability to know the impact of their vote, it seems clear to me that politics does in fact matter--at least some--if only in the occasional wise and visionary choice that does even more good than intended (our current president seems to have done an astounding amount of good in Africa--while, like a parody of a master magician, he was directing our attention to another part of the world where things, perhaps, weren't going nearly so well).

So there you have it.  Does politics matter?  Some.  But I remain a bit skeptical of our certainty before the fact.  Which tells me that perhaps my lobbying friends in the previous two elections were more right than they knew.