Faith and Politics, 'Push Polls,' and The Campaign in General

No matter who says it or how often it is said, church and state have never been separate in this country.

The God-o-Meter and its religious rankings for Democratic and Republican candidates for president is ample evidence of how intertwined religion and politics are in America. And there's plenty of historical evidence of the influence religion has had on political campaigns in the past. Nearly 50 years ago, for example, John F. Kennedy had to defend his right to be Catholic and also a candidate for president.

Kennedy wasn't the first Catholic to be nominated for president, but he was the first Catholic to be a serious contender for the White House -- and, as it turned out, he was the first Catholic (and, so far, the only Catholic) to be elected president.

The latest God-o-Meter says Fred Thompson's rating is inching up, thanks to the fact that he signed Shannon Royce as his campaign's grassroots director. If you're not familiar with the name, Royce has been the chief lobbyist for the Southern Baptist Convention and the executive director of the Arlington Group, a coalition of leading conservative Christian leaders, including Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Gary Bauer of American Values and Rev. Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association.

Wildmon recently announced his endorsement of Mike Huckabee for president.

The God-o-Meter also reports that Mitt Romney's rating has remained virtually unchanged lately, although it did get a slight bump from the endorsement of Paul Weyrich, the co-founder of the Moral Majority. In Friday's Washington Times, Weyrich defended his endorsement of Romney and gave his reasons for believing Romney was the best choice to be president.

Romney's campaign has been complaining recently about "push polls" being conducted in New Hampshire and Iowa by unidentified opponents who want to create the impression of widespread anxiety about electing a Mormon. Read the report in the Manchester Union Leader.

Hillary Clinton's rating remains unchanged, even though she announced last week that she has accepted an invitation from Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, to participate in his Global Summit on AIDS and The Church later this month.

Clinton's been getting some unfavorable press lately -- an unusual position for the New York senator, who has grown accustomed to the fawning adoration of the media as she has raced to the top of the Democratic public opinion polls. The unfavorable publicity, however, doesn't have anything to do with religion.

It has more to do with her gaffe at the debate last month in which she made statements supporting and opposing the policy of issuing driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants in New York.

Maureen Dowd of The New York Times says Clinton is a "control freak" whose insistence in the most recent debate that criticism of her shifts on issues amounts to "mudslinging" and character attacks and sets a "ludicrous standard."

To be sure, Clinton isn't the only presidential candidate, in this election or in previous ones, who has insisted on "ludicrous standards" by which to be assessed. But Dowd herself neatly summarized Clinton's propensity for this kind of thing in a recent column.

She called it Clinton's "Gift for Gall."