The television coverage of this year’s presidential election features a large number of talking heads who chatter daily about the perceived winners and losers on the political battleground. One night while watching some “strategists” hurl mindless barbs and stale clichés at one another, my eyes glazed over. In that TV-inspired stupor, I imagined that similar “strategists” appeared thousands of years ago on INN (Israelite News Network) as they covered a key moment in biblical history, when the ancient Israelites came before their leader, Samuel the Judge, and begged him to appoint a king to reign over them. But the elderly Samuel vigorously rejected the plea for a royal ruler.

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of the recently published book “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)