Dear Ms. Sullivan...

...if you really meant this...

"When it comes to talking about faith in politics, I think John Kerry is right and George W. Bush is absolutely wrong."

...then why would you say this?

"Kerry hit all of the right notes in a speech that managed to not sound like Kerry..."

And why would you believe this?

"Five minutes before Kerry delivered his speech, I got a call with the news that religion language had made it into the text at the last moment."

I mean, I get that you're a big time insider and the final authority on all matters Democratically religious, Amy, but in fact Kerry said little about religion in his acceptance speech that hasn't been part of his stump speeches for quite awhile, from the the fact that he doesn't wear his religion "on on my sleeve," to the Abraham Lincoln quotation he borrowed from John Edwards back in the ancient days of Democratic primary debates. You think they really had to slip in this stuff he's been saying for weeks at the last minute?

Maybe it's because you think this is true...

"Kerry made the first explicit step any Democratic presidential candidate ever has to open the door of the party to people of faith."

..but can you really believe that the Party that thrice nominated one of American history's most prominent fundamentalists, Williams Jenning Bryan, has never before been open to people of faith?

Oh, I get it. It's because of...

"...decades of either staying silent or actively backing away from the topic of religion..."

Let's see, those must be the decades since we elected Jimmy Carter, a devout Southern Baptist who famously observed that "You can't divorce religious belief and public service ... I've never detected any conflict between God's will and my political duty. If you violate one, you violate the other."

Or the decades since the election of his more recent co-religionist, Bill Clinton. Of course, Bill was a bit less explicit about his religious fervor than Jimmy, as was Al, but has there been a more faith-based candidate in Democratic Party history than Joe Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew? A man who cancelled campaign events for Shabbat observations?

Was that really so many decades ago?

And while we're at it, who are these people you keep talking about?

"I know there are those who believe that religion should never ever be acknowledged or discussed in politics."

I mean, there's no doubt that there are people who hold such a view, but can you name even one who holds a responsible position of influence in the Democratic Party? Even one? Didn't think so. After all, you just spent the best part of a week reveling in the wide range of overt and coded religious language from virtually everyone who mounted the podium at the Democratic National Convention. In fact, it's possible that the least conventionally religious speaker of the week was Ron Reagan, who's not a Democrat at all.

C'mon Amy, you got it right once.

"When it comes to talking about faith in politics, I think John Kerry is right and George W. Bush is absolutely wrong."

Can't you just leave well enough alone?