THE RACE

After reading the Times account of the “debate” at Orange County’s Saddleback Church, I thought Senators Obama and McCain seemed less like American presidential candidates pondering the life and death issues of our time, and more like student body presidential candidates, pandering for the votes of their classmates. Write on the blackboard ten times: “Life begins at conception.”

In a country in which church and state are legally divorced, why is a televised “debate” being held in a church at all? If true believers wish to assert political influence, which is certainly their right, let them give up their religious tax exemption and change the sign on the door from House of God, to PAC.

As for the candidates, I have been disappointed in McCain for a long time; I am newly disappointed in Obama.