What is the greatest social malady in the leadership of this American generation?

Is it political sleaze? Surely that is a real problem. I’m personally dumbfounded as to the lack of shame on the part of men like Anthony Weiner. Even after what should have been a truly humiliating public display of his personal affairs, he remains in the public political forum.

Examples like this are many, and they make a mockery of our public morals to the rest of the world. We should be ashamed by our lack of shame. But even that isn’t the worst plague on our social landscape.

Perhaps it is the pestilence of political incompetency. Here is one of the more laughable quotes from Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann. “If we took away the minimum wage — if conceivably it was gone — we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely, because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.”

What does that even mean?

We are desperate for leadership. So desperate, in fact, that apparently one of the qualifications is not the ability to think critically and communicate clearly.

But even the lack of competency among our public officials is not the biggest social malady in leadership in our country. Worse yet is the lack of clear, consistent, moral and godly leadership.

We are a people plagued by moral ambiguity among our leaders. Where can one turn to find a clear voice of leadership that is moral, stable and godly?

I was a child in the 1980s and took very much for granted what I have learned was a strongly moral president in Ronald Reagan.

It occurs to me that when Reagan told Gorbachev to “Tear down that wall,” there was no ambiguity whatsoever about where he stood on moral issues related to the Berlin Wall.

Today’s politicians are so slippery that many would likely have said something like, “Well, I have heard there is a wall. If it’s true, that’s a problem. The United States takes a position on the wall that if the wall provokes us or our allies we will act unilaterally. If the wall poses a threat we will give it a stern talking to. On the other hand, we like some walls.”

I’m praying for ethical, competent and consistently moral men and women to rise to positions of authority and leadership in this land. I feel the words of Proverbs 28:28 are even more relevant today than when they were written: “When the wicked rise, men hide themselves: but when they perish, the righteous increase.” (KJV)

I’m praying for wicked, immoral, ambiguous, slippery slugs presently in leadership to fade away into obscurity as godly and moral men and women replace them in the offices of this land.

Politics can be a sleazy enterprise and as a result most honorable men and women stay away. Oh, how we need even a few more to risk contamination and bring righteousness to bear in the public office.