Moving to America when I was fifteen, I started to encounter something I’d never seen in England.

Pledges.

There is something so American about pledges. The Pledge of Allegiance in class every morning that my teacher and I got into a fight about. Chastity pledges that kids would make in high school. The pledges one makes to join the fraternity or sorority that they’ve decided will be their social guide through university. But until recently, they seemed to be something that happened in our youth. How many people take the Pledge of Allegiance on a regular basis? How many people pledge anything once they leave university, and hope that the pictures of them doing a keg stand with a Portuguese pot-bellied pig never surface?

Until, apparently, you become a politician.

Now, pledging is all the rage. There’s a pledge against new taxes. There’s a Marriage Vow pledging to fight gay marriage, “quickie divorce” and “all forms of pornography.” I’m curious to see if any more pledges come out before the end of this election, and I hope they get even crazier than the porn one. We might as well have our elected officials pledging not to drink whisky while driving backwards through the Mall of America—that’s something I could really get behind.

As far as I can tell, there’s only one pledge our elected officials should be taking. They should be pledging to represent the American people, the people who elected them. And yet by pledging not to raise taxes, they’re actually going counter to the wishes of a majority of the electorate. By pledging to oppose gay marriage, they’re going against a steadily increasing majority of the electorate. By making a pledge against porn, they’re going against approximately 100% of the electorate.

When we elect someone to Congress, we’re choosing that person to be our spokesperson. We’re giving them the privilege of speaking for us, our beliefs. That’s why women fought for suffrage at the beginning of this century. That’s why African-Americans fought for civil rights more recently.  They wanted representation, a fair say, to be a part of this country. What did they fight for, and will we all have to start fighting, when our Congress members start ignoring the oaths they took when they entered office and start signing pledges that are in no way representative of the people they serve?

There’s only one pledge I’m interested in any of them taking:

“I pledge, during my time in office, and beyond, to fully represent the desires and will of the people who have granted me the privilege of representing them in the United States Government.”

Rich is the executive producer and co-founder of the British National Theatre of America. You can follow him on his blog and on Twitter.

There’s a saying that people use to explain things they can’t. ‘God moves in mysterious ways.’ Now, my religious practicing went the same way as my piano practice when I was twelve, but I’ve always understood this phrase to mean that we can’t always explain why God causes things to happen. Because it’s God. That’s part of the whole divinity thing.

So when you have political candidates such as Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle, and Christine O’Donnell, all claiming that God called them to run or it was a part of His “plan,” what does it mean when they keep losing? There’s a couple of ways this can go.

To begin with, maybe it’s a personal thing where He wants them to grow, to learn from their experiences on the campaign trail. Maybe He wants them to learn a little humility in defeat. After all, the meek are going to inherit the Earth.

Or how about this. . .He’s preparing them for the next time they run for office, teaching them the lessons they need to win their next election. With the lessons they can take with them, they’ll be in a better position to assume the mantle of leadership they have been told to pursue.

There is, of course, a third possibility. All three candidates were surprise choices. No one knew who Sarah Palin was before she was picked as John McCain’s running mate. His campaign enjoyed a jump in popularity immediately after she joined, but that quickly disappeared. I’d argue that the election might have been much closer had McCain picked someone else as his running mate- one of his primary opponents, for instance. Did she cause McCain to lose the election? I think people will be able to argue about that for years to come.

Both Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell had surprise wins in their respective primaries over much more experienced, known politicians. I’m not as familiar with Delaware, but I live and work in Nevada, and I know quite a few Republicans who could not bring themselves to vote for Angle. They didn’t necessarily vote for Harry Reid, but those were votes that the Republican candidate could traditionally have counted on that Angle didn’t get. They were votes that Sue Lowden, who lost the Republican primary to Angle, would have received had she been running. And it wasn’t really a close thing here, either. Harry Reid won by forty thousand votes, about five percent, which is much greater than his margin of victory in 1998. He won by 428 votes that year.

So the third possibility: Perhaps, yes, God did tell all three candidates to run. He wanted them in the race. Maybe He wanted them in the race because He knew they would throw the election in favor of the Democrats. Maybe God is a Democrat, and He told these candidates to run to aid the Democratic party.

After all, God moves in mysterious ways.

Rich is a writer who lives in Las Vegas. You can follow him on his blog and on Twitter.