Over four hundred years ago in France, where Catholics and Protestants had waged wars for a generation, the ruling (and Catholic) Valois line of kings came to an end when the third of three brothers died childless.

The claimant with the purest line of royal descent was, ironically, the protestant King Henry of Navarre, who was once married to Margot, sister of the three kings (and star of one of the best films ever made). It was made clear to him that he could only have the throne of France if he converted.

‘Paris is worth a mass,’ he so famously responded. Henri not only became the greatest king of France, he was able in 1598 to issue the Edict of Nantes, granting religious freedom to the Protestant Calvinists and pave the way to a secular state. I once even poured those words into a 13-year-old child of mine, when she had to make a tactical retreat on principle at boarding school to keep from being sent home.

Now, since the most interesting American campaign is riveting the world, we will apply the ‘PWM’ metre to any suspect pronouncement of a candidate, not a ‘truth-o-metre’ as to truthfulness, but as to whether the candidate really believes what he is saying. Or if he is pandering in order to get elected.

bill hilarry clinton campaign 061007 obama The most obvious first score on the PWM metre goes to Barack Obama - for insisting that Jerusalem must remain a unified Jewish capital. Now that is a position that resonates well not just in Israel - but, more pertinently, among the powerful Jewish vote in America.

Obama is suspect among those voters. It’s not just that his middle name is Hussein, it’s that there is a long heritage of liberal African-Americans shall we say not waxing in enthusiasm for all the positions of the Jewish lobby. An ‘united Jerusalem’ is just about their most extreme politically unsellable position. But those Floridians love it!

Troops in Iraq

Why do I think this is pandering? It’s just a hunch. It’s just not consistent with the main thrust of his foreign policy prescriptions. It’s not fair to the other religions that claim Jerusalem as a holy site (Islam in particular), it honours right-by-conquest against the manifest will of a majority of a particular people.

Politicians are tested in America on this issue. Early in the Clinton’s White House years Hillary embraced the Palestinian leader - and when she was warned that this would kill her political future, she threw the sails abruptly in the opposite direction, and became more papal than the pope on Israeli positions. I think her instincts also were with her initial position.

It’s fair enough to support ‘the existence’ of Israel. We all do and believe in it in America. But an undivided Jerusalem goes out on a limb - to send the signal, and to make an unretractable promise, of ‘holier than thou’ positions on Jewish issues. I firmly believe Obama would like to be a real peacemaker in the Middle East, which isn’t in the cards if he trumps Palestinian hopes. He’s now committed on Jerusalem. Because Paris is Worth a Mass.

On the other hand, he can’t do anything on the Middle East if he isn’t elected. But he’s made a victory a little less valuable in the meantime.

Then there’s that question of troops in Iraq. John McCain famously said he’d keep our troops there for100 years, now he’s backtracking, saying it would be related to casualties on the ground. We can be sure, from his background, that McCain meant it when he made the first commitment off the cuff; it was consistent with his overall stance. But PWM! He can’t prevent Obama from ‘selling out’ American security if he’s not elected. So there we go again.

On this one, I’d say Obama gets higher points - which is to say, as in golf, worse ones, and I’m sad about it. But Paris is worth a mass, and Henri IV in selling out his religion made the religion of his heart far more secure for his Protestant subjects.

There are other PWM scores. Obama really can’t intend to cancel the North American Free Trade Agreement, just because it currently hurts some voters in the Mid-West who’ve lost their jobs. His whole position is consistent with the knowledge of what free trade brings: we go higher up the food chain to more valuable jobs, even though many workers lose their jobs. Tut-tut Barack! Let’s see how he squirms out of this one when he’s elected president.

‘A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines,’ Emerson the 19th century essayist wrote. We shouldn’t penalise leaders for changing their minds when better data replaces worse. But we should penalise them for too much pandering to voters - changing - their real positions for reasons of political advantage. Still, Paris was worth a mass!