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Sunday, at another town hall forum, this one in Oelwein, Iowa, Dean declared, "George Bush is not my neighbor. … It is time not to put up any of this 'love thy neighbor.' I tell you, I love my neighbor, but I want that neighbor back in Crawford, Texas, where he belongs The president is always my president but the president is not my neighbor if he takes 500,000 kids off their health care benefits."

File that one away for the next time you're preaching on Luke 10:25-37.

Does Clark support infanticide?
Dean's comments are sad, unformed, and troubling. But again, we're not electing a theologian-in-chief, and we've had any number of presidents whose policies have been unaffected by their religious beliefs (or lack thereof), and who don't demonstrate love for their neighbor. Voters must look carefully at policy, not platitudes.

So it may be that the most troubling comments on the campaign trail this week come not from Dean, but from Wesley Clark.

"Life begins with the mother's decision," he told the Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader. "I don't think you should get the law involved in abortion. It's between a woman, her doctor, her faith and her family and her conscience. You don't put the law in there."

"I don't have litmus tests," Clark said, but later promised not to appoint prolife judges. That's not a contradiction, he said. "You just work through what the judge has done and if you find guys who follow judicial and established precedent, you're not going to find a judge who is prolife," he said.

But wait a second. If life begins with the mother's decision, and the law should stay out of such decisions, then should a mother who abandons her child at birth be subject to criminal prosecution? Is a woman who kills her 8-year-old son a criminal?

That's a messy can of worms. Which is perhaps why, as the Union Leader interview continued, Clark backed off. "I'm not going to get into a discussion of when life begins. I'm in favor of choice, period. Pure and simple." Yeah, except that it's not so simple, Mr. Clark.

More on the 2004 presidential election:

• When piety takes center stage | As journalists and commentators parse the candidates' religious statements, they're doing so in ways that can only remind those running why they used to keep quiet about such matters (Steven Waldman, The Washington Post)
• The Democrats' mutual morality | The new "moral majority" being forged on the campaign trail is built on a yearning for community and a promise of social justice (E. J. Dionne Jr., The Washington Post)
• Dean's faith-based folly | Dean's problem is that he's not coming across as being genuine. (Colbert I. King, The Washington Post)
• Bible Belt wary of Dean 'conversion' | Many South Carolina Democrats believe presidential hopeful Howard Dean's promise to talk about his relationship with Jesus is a calculated ploy to pander to Southerners — in particular blacks — participating in next month's South Carolina primary (The Washington Times)
• Dean, Kucinich visit same church in Iowa | Democratic presidential candidates are covering so much ground in Iowa in the lead-up to the Jan. 19 caucuses that two of them ended up running into each other on Sunday (Associated Press)
• Survey: U.S. Jews back Dem. candidates | U.S. Jews would overwhelmingly support any major Democratic candidate over President Bush if the election were held today, according to the 2004 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion (Associated Press)
• The Church of the Holy Primary | Presidential candidates should stop the religion pandering (Doug Bandow, National Review Online)

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January (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48