Hopefuls put their faith in campaigns

In an attempt to compete with President Bush’s unabashed discussion of religion while in office, Democratic presidential candidates are making similar stabs at God-talk.

So far, there’s little debate as to who is winning on the faith front. While Mr. Bush discusses his faith this morning at the National Prayer Breakfast, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean is still recovering from his Jan. 2 misidentification of Job as a book in the New Testament.

Since that gaffe, other candidates have shied away from much discussion on the topic. But the issue is sure to rise again with more books due out this spring on Mr. Bush’s transparent Christian faith.

Religion is not necessarily the trump card in a political race. The most religious Democratic candidate, Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, an Orthodox Jew, dropped out of the race Tuesday night.

Nevertheless, Americans prefer at least a whiff of religion in their politicians, according to a Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life poll conducted in July. Sixty-two percent of the 2,002 adults polled said the president mentions his faith in just the right amounts, compared with 14 percent who said he mentions it too much and 11 percent who said he didn’t mention it enough.

Twenty-one percent said they would like to see religion play more of a role in the president’s policy-making. His opponents must then decide how much of their own convictions are safe to reveal.

And so, in a departure from previous American political campaigns, some candidates played up their Jewish roots. Voters now know that Mr. Dean’s wife and children are Jewish, the paternal grandparents of Sen. John Kerry, of Massachusetts, were Jewish and Wesley Clark’s father was Jewish.

“Apparently, while being Jewish used to be associated with greed, disloyalty and pushiness, it now is associated with good SATs, strong families, sober facial expressions,” said a satirical essay by Steven Waldman on the religious Web site Beliefnet.com.

But the switch from skepticism to Scripture could be a tough transition for Democrats who are known as the secular party, the party of separation of church and state.

“The Democrats can’t be more pious than Bush, but they can compete for the more moderate or liberal religious people,” said John Green, a political science professor at the University of Akron in Ohio.

Mr. Bush’s Democratic foes must strike a balance between being preachy and pandering. After Mr. Dean’s Dec. 25 revelation in the Boston Globe that he follows a Christ “who sought out people who were disenfranchised; people who were left behind,” some wondered why the candidate had not mentioned the Almighty before.

“He prays every day, is a committed believer in Jesus Christ and plans to include his relationship with his Savior in his hitherto godless campaign speeches,” wrote New York Daily News columnist Zev Chafets on Dec. 28. “This will probably come as a surprise to Jesus. It will not, however, shock Southerners long accustomed to the Northern belief that they will swallow anything.”

“When [Mr. Dean] first talked about his faith, he talked about it in strategic terms,” Mr. Green said. “When he said he was going to talk about Jesus, he said it was because of Southern votes. It sounded insincere.”

Four years ago, Texas Gov. George W. Bush also brandished the name of Christ, with better results.

“He was stumbling a bit,” Mr. Green said. “He said Jesus was his favorite political philosopher. People were amazed, but it worked for him. It helped him out-compete [fellow candidates] Gary Bauer and Steve Forbes.”

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