Personally, I don't care about a candidate's religious views--with one important exception, which I will describe shortly. I'm far more interested in how he or she is going to get us out of Iraq, end rampant deficit spending, expand children's health care and otherwise remedy the terrible deficiencies of the benighted Bush years.

I also want a candidate with humility enough to recognize a.) that the presidency is a public trust (emphasis on the adjective), not a personal tool to be wielded according to the partisan whims of the moment, and b.) that the United States is a remarkably, perhaps uniquely, pluralistic society religiously and ethnically--a status that demands respect and, again, humility of its public servants.

O.K., here's that exception: No aggressive fundamentalists of either the religious or secular stripe. (And thank you, Randall Balmer, for making the latter distinction in your previous post.) In other words, I don't want anyone becoming president for whom religion or irreligion is the only thing that matters, the only subject to which a conversation can be worked around. People who spit their dentures and get their neck veins bulging over religion are perfectly free to get up on their soapboxes and let fly. Problem is, they know deep down in their guts that they are absolutely right and right all the time, too. And for that terribly dangerous reason, I don't want their fingers anywhere near the button--or on any other trigger, for that matter.

Allow me to quote from a relative of mine, who put these concerns quite succinctly, in a book he wrote in 1932: "The fanaticism which in the individual may appear in the guise of a harmless or pathetic vagary, when expressed in a political policy, shuts the gates of mercy on mankind."