Praying with Tony Blair and George W. Bush

One of the things that media critics of the Blair/Bush foray into Iraq like to bring up as evidence of the hopelessly blundering nature of its conception is the fact that the two leaders - reputedly - sat down to pray together at Camp David in 2003 before finalising the decision to go ahead with the invasion. The main concern of the critics seems to be that the two of them might have begun to believe that they were under a divine mandate to invade Iraq. But this isn't what prayer is and it isn't what asking God for guidance is about. In a way, you could say, it might even represent a small comfort that praying is what the two of them saw fit to do when making a momentous and difficult decision. For all of his awkwardnesses in conversation, George Bush in a recent interview made this clear. All things considered, he comes out of it rather well, I think.

Change, Barack Obama and Sam Cooke

Since this is a blog about 'History and Spirit', and since I have not written anything here for a while now, it makes sense on the day of Barack Obama's victory in the US presidential election to break my silence. Throughout the election, Obama made full use of the slogan of 'change' - deliberately, I think, evoking the language of one of the most searing songs of the prematurely deceased soul singer Sam Cooke: A Change is Gonna Come. Now that he's won the 'change', perhaps, has come. A 75% electoral turn-out ensured that the US elected its first black president. Mention, of course, should be made of John McCain - an honourable man and war-hero who would have made a far superior president to George W. Bush. But Obama was always going to win if the electorate showed up at the polls in force, and that is precisely what they did. Change, and the chance to elect an inspiring young leader with anti-war and left wing social policy inclinations, was always going to prove an attraction.

For now, the substance of the 'change' Obama has promised remains unseen. But his has been a message many have felt themselves capable of believing and it is to be hoped that he will not leave them feeling underwhelmed by what he manages to deliver. More, in short, needs to be done - both in the US and elsewhere - to spread the benefits of civilisation, medicine and technology to those who currently have no access to them. If Obama can take steps to achieve this - perhaps, for example, by confronting the barons who hold the US pharmaceutical companies in their grip - then the change he has promised will indeed correspond to the change which Sam Cooke predicted decades ago.