Clinton and Trump - Standing on the shoulders of giants?

Over the past few months, I have developed a horrified fascination with the unprecedented venom and spin of the US Elections. As I watch the candidates defame each other in the final days, I can’t help but wonder at their sheer lack of idealism and how poorly the two potentials for the Presidency compare to the political giants of the past.

A couple of years ago now, on a cold day in January, I found myself I Washington DC, with half a day spare between meetings and decided to go and have a look at the city.

I hadn’t anticipated a particularly profound experience – really just some light relief from business discussions – but I was indescribably moved as I stood before the Jefferson memorial gazing up at the immortal words written by the third American President: ''We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'

At the Lincoln memorial I reflected on the second inaugural address of the 16th American president in which he touches on the question of divine providence, and wrestles with the question of what God’s will might have been in allowing the devastating civil war – turning to scripture to make sense of the suffering: ''It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.''

I looked out from the position where Martin Luther King spoke the historic and unforgettable words, ‘I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

And at King’s memorial, I gazed in awe on his words carved into the granite walls: 'I have the audacity to believe that people everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.'

And his call to all in power to, 'make a career of humanity, commit yourself to the noble struggle for equal rights, (and] you will make a greater person of yourself, a greater nation of your country and a finer world to live in.'

On that cold winter’s day, I was surrounded by giants of political thought. But as I ponder on those now vying for power, they seem like mere minnows by comparison: why is it that over the centuries our leaders seem to have diminished in stature, nobility and ambition for humanity?

Perhaps our politicians - by the nature of their responsibilities - live too deeply embedded in the material. In focusing on the human condition, their thinking is limited by the parameters of our knowledge, and rationalism triumphs over what God sees as humanity’s potential.

What united those giants of Washington was their willingness to reach beyond what they knew to be possible - to articulate a dream that is not limited by the scale of human knowledge but strives beyond certainty putting trust in and so honouring God.

The poet Robert Browning once wrote a poem about the lesser Renaissance painter Andrea Del Sarto; a monologue in which he compares himself the great Masters, Raphael, Michelangelo. A master of technique, Sarto recognises that while Raphael and Michelangelo often err in their representations – that in their attempts to convey their experience of the divine, their work reaches for the sublime and exclaims, , ‘Ah, but a man’s reach must exceed his grasp or what’s a heaven for.’

The current candidates would do well to remember that they stand on the shoulders of giants, to emulate their dependency upon God, and to cast a far bigger vision for the potential for all God's people.