Pip: Jim Holbeck writes from Australia about American midterm elections, which is either eccentric or the most honest admission in political commentary — that what happens there lands everywhere else eventually.

Mara: That's exactly the premise. Today we're looking at a post that asks what kind of people should hold power, drawing on a surprisingly old source for the answer. Let's start with the case for ancient hiring criteria in modern elections.

Governing Well: What Leaders Actually Owe the People

Pip: The post opens with a genuinely interesting tension — an Australian writer weighing in on American midterms, not out of nostalgia or partisanship, but because he sees the two countries as linked. What happens in Washington tends to arrive in Canberra a few years later. So the question becomes: what standard do we use to judge candidates at all?

Mara: The post turns to the New Testament for that standard — specifically Titus chapter one, verses five through eight. The setup is that elected representatives, like church elders, hold a duty of care. Here's the direct framing: "It could be said that those elected to the House of Representatives or to the Senate in both the USA and Australia also have a duty of care for those who elected them to their high office."

Pip: So the argument isn't that politicians should be clergy — it's that the underlying job description rhymes. Someone entrusted with authority over others shouldn't be self-serving, and that principle doesn't expire.

Mara: Right, and the Titus passage gets specific. The qualities listed for overseers include being above reproach, self-controlled, upright, and hospitable. The disqualifiers are equally concrete — arrogant, quick-tempered, violent, or greedy for gain. The Greek terms are unpacked in the post: "episkopos," an overseer charged with seeing that things are done rightly, and "oikonomos," a steward or manager acting on behalf of another.

Pip: A steward acting on behalf of another — that's the part that stings a little when you hold it up to most campaign rhetoric.

Mara: The post lands on a broader point: in a world of competing ideologies, the qualities that make someone fit to lead are not ideologically neutral. The closing line is direct — "We hope and pray that those types of people will come to power in every nation, that those nations might know His blessing in the present and for the days ahead."

Pip: Ancient criteria, current ballot. The question of who deserves the job hasn't changed much.

Mara: What stays with me is the duty-of-care framing — that power is stewardship, not ownership.

Pip: A short list of virtues, a longer list of disqualifiers. Probably worth keeping somewhere visible. More from holbeck next time.