As the broken well under the Gulf of Mexico continues to gush oil with no signs of slowing, some politicians have started to move towards magical solutions – literally. Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin tweeted "Gulf disaster needs divine intervention as man's efforts have been futile. Gulf lawmakers designate today Day of Prayer for solution/miracle". But for those on the other side of the aisle, it was hard to mock. After all, President Obama made prayer the centerpiece of his address on the BP oil spill, even though he didn't overtly ask for divine intervention.

Is prayer a good solution to our biggest problems? I thought I'd look at some political crises of the past and see how they would have turned out if we'd responded with prayer, instead of more reality-based solutions.

The Vietnam war. As the war in Vietnam moved into its second decade, the Nixon administration took drastic measures to end the conflict. It instigated Operation Hearts and Souls, instructing all Americans to drop and pray every night at 7pm that the North Vietnamese would see the light and give up communism. Operation Hearts and Souls didn't change a single mind, but it did provide enough political distraction to allow the administration to pull out all troops without alerting the public. Operation Hearts and Souls petered out in the early 1980s, when American enthusiasm for "The Cosby Show" caused everyone to forget their nightly prayers.

The 1979 Energy crisis. Instead of responding to the energy crisis through international political pressure and conservationist policies, President Jimmy Carter prayed in a national address that Jesus redo that trick with the water into wine, but this time to create oil. While it didn't work in 1979, some suggest that the current transition of the Gulf of Mexico into a big bucket of oil indicates that God finally came around to answering that prayer.

The Aids crisis. Ignoring evidence showing the power of simple latex condoms, the Reagan-appointed Surgeon General C Everett Koop chose to respond to the Aids crisis by mailing out an HIV prevention brochure titled "Pray You Don't Get Aids" to every household in America. The disease continued to spread unabated because of the widespread use of prophylactic prayer, until the crafty health activists invented condoms with Bible verses inscribed on the tip, allowing users to combine prayer with scientifically proven safe-sex techniques.

Clinton's impeachment. Skeptics of political prayer as a method were given momentary pause when Monica Lewinsky showed up and appeared to answer the prayers of those trying to find some scandal to hang on to President Clinton. However, the skeptics continued to point out that this only means prayer works for the enemies of sitting politicians, not for government officials themselves.

The squeaker election of 2000. When the presidential race between Al Gore and George Bush was too close to call in the swing state of Florida, traditional methods of deciding an election through recount were halted by the Supreme Court as being too costly and too contentious. Instead, a group of Southern Baptist minsters was convened to perform exorcisms to cast demons out of the ballot boxes, and then spend 40 days and 40 nights praying over the boxes until God revealed the winner of the election. To no one's great surprise, they determined that the angels in heaven voted for Bush in a landslide.

The sub-prime mortgage crisis. Economic justice activists warned early and often of the dangers of an unsustainable housing bubble, and were met with government officials suggesting they pray that banks don't overextend their credit. After the collapse, the policy of praying that things don't get worse polled better than a bank bailout or a trillion dollar stimulus package, but the miraculous recovery was not to be. Instead, the world economy collapsed, and the US government fell apart. But Americans continue to hold out hope, banking now on their prayers for Jesus to return and bring an end to all this suffering.