>>And then the conversation moved to be specifically about evangelicals.<<

I used Bush’s favorability with Fundamentalists and Evangelicals (93% compared to Dukakis’ 3%) to explain why there was more going on then Dukakis’ tin-eared response to the Kitty rape/murder question (7% point drop following the debate).

>>Do you mean that he didn't wear his religion out on his sleeve? Well, Jefferson didn't either and that didn't seem to hurt his presidential aspirations.<<

Nice anidote.

Another excerpt from Wills-

“Yet Michael Dukakis, the first truly modernist candidate in our politics, as trustful of secular values as of technology, was a man isolated from his fellow citizens, while George Bush was accepted by ordinary Americans as their spokesman, despite his elite (verging on effete) background. The secularist prejudice may be useful to those wanting to get ahead in certain fields; but in politics one does better to cultivate, as have all our recent presidents, the religious prejudice. No one did that more than George Bush in 1988.”