Uninformed choices

Charity: Presidential candidates have lackluster records on charitable giving | Rusty Leonard and Warren Cole Smith

The Bible tells us that, when it comes to giving, our right hand should not know what our left hand is doing. The charitable giving of Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain is in almost complete obedience to that principle—though probably not in the way Jesus intended.

First, the raw numbers: In 2007, Obama had an adjusted gross income of $4,139,965. His charitable gifts for that year amounted to $240,370, or about 5.8 percent of his income. McCain's income for the year was less than a tenth of Obama's, at $386,527. Yet he has charitable giving of $105,467, or 27.3 percent of his income.

But, of course, these statistics do not tell the story.

For one thing, 2007 was—financially speaking—a good year for Barack and Michelle Obama. Royalties from his book The Audacity of Hope pumped up his income more quickly than his giving habits could match. In 2006, for example, they earned just under $1 million, and they gave about $60,000 to charity, or 6.1 percent. McCain, by contrast, earned about the same in 2006: $338,809. His charitable giving of $96,758 was 28.6 percent of his income.