CT Blue

There is a woman named Katrina Swett, who is running in the New Hampshire Democratic primary for the United States Senate. The short case against her candidacy is made here (stolen from My Left Nutmeg):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5dx1nvagrw[/youtube]

Recently Ms. Swett has attempted to distance herself from Saint Joe:

As we reported recently, Swett suggested a couple weeks ago that she was drifting away from Lieberman. At the time, she said that she found herself “disagreeing with him more and more frequently these days,” adding: “This doesn’t change the fact that we are friends, but it does change my support of him as a politician.” …

There is a lively debate, see comments to the TPM post above, about whether Ms. Swett should be forgiven. We learn here that Matthew reports that Jesus said:

Then Peter came up to him and said, ‘Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? As many as seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you seven times but seventy times seven.”

For those that are counting, that’s 490 times. Presumably, at 491 you can give up on your brother. Luke, on the other hand, according to the same source (which I’m sure is reliable), indicates that we should withhold forgiveness until we see proof of true repentance:

“if there is repentance, you must forgive.” Luke’s gospel emphasizes repentance more than the gospels of Mark and Matthew. We recall Luke uniquely saying, “Unless you repent, you too will all perish.” (Luke 13:3, 5)

I’m not aware that Jesus said we should ever forget the sin. Even Jesus, I suspect, would not expect us to assume that the sinner, once forgiven, will never sin again.

I am reminded of an event I attended at Colby College back in 1970 during the student strike against the war in Vietnam. Students from all of Maine attended, and both Maine Senators, Ed Muskie and Margaret Chase Smith, addressed the crowd. Ed Muskie had, early on, been a supporter of the war, but had long since changed his position. He said, in essence, that he had done so because he had been convinced by students like us that the war was wrong. Even that didn’t sit well with some of the crowd, and I remember feeling a bit puzzled. What were we there for, if not to convince others of the rightness of our position? If we condemned those who we convinced, what chance did we have of success?

I am convinced today, as I was then, that Muskie had truly repented, but I freely acknowledge that it’s a judgment call, made all the more difficult by the fact that hypocrisy is almost a job requirement for modern politicians.

How then, do we deal with politicians like Swett?

In her case, there are substantial reasons to reject her attempts to ingratiate herself with the members of her own party, who she rejected during the 2006 campaign. We need not decide whether she has truly repented (requiring, as any Catholic can tell you, a true act of contrition), we need only decide that she lacks the judgment to be a United States Senator (remembering always that if she gets the nomination, it is time to hold one’s nose and do the least evil). Any candidate who did not know, by 2006, that Iraq was the preeminent issue of our time, any candidate who did not recognize the threat to our constitution that the war and the Bush brand of empire poses, simply lacks the judgment to be a preferred candidate for the United States Senate. By 2006 any person paying attention should have, must have, known these things. Yet here’s what Swett said shortly after Ned beat Joe in the primary:

Swett believes Lieberman lost because of three perceived Democratic “sins”: the sin of supporting the Iraq war and being tough on defense, the sin of being bipartisan and the sin of displaying religious faith. Swett said those traits might make Lieberman undesirable to many Democrats but they could be key for Democrats in winning future national elections.

Here I am, a convinced agnostic, slowly sliding toward confirmed atheism, yet I say unto you: It is, and was, indeed a sin to support the Iraq war. Moreover, I say unto you, with all the certitude a former Catholic can summon, that this sin is and was not merely venial, but mortal ((Theology at the link not necessarily endorsed by CTBlue)). I bemoan the fact that there is no Hell in which to incinerate folks like Lieberman. Like Jesus, we can forgive Swett for condoning the sin, but we should not forget that she did so, and we must unfortunately continue to suspect that, were she not shilling for votes in a state grown ever more weary of war (and ever more blue), she would still be condoning the sin.