Candidates have problems with pastors

LITTLE ROCK — This eventful 2008 contest for the White House is constantly rewriting the campaign rule books, and by now there must be a chapter on associations with firebrand pastors whose preachings can't survive national scrutiny.

Democrat Barack Obama has already been through hell because of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Obama at first distanced himself from statements by Wright, who was his pastor for 20 years, before disowning him and his continued controversial words about the U.S. government spreading AIDS in the black community and terrorism abroad.

Then it was Republican John Mc-Cain's turn to deal with the Rev. John Hagee, the head of an 18,000-member church in San Antonio. McCain sought his endorsement and got it-along with the uproar over Hagee's harsh views of Catholicism. But McCain didn't do much to distance himself from the firebrand until William Donohue, the over-the-top crusader for the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, hammered Hagee for weeks, creating the risk that McCain could lose Catholic voters.

That's really what inspired Hagee's newfound religion of conciliation on Tuesday.

Hagee issued a weak clarification-in the "if I offended anyone" category. He admits that he "might have contributed to the mistaken impression that the anti-Jewish violence of the Crusades and the Inquisition defines the Catholic Church." He also said he now understands that calling the church "the great whore" is insulting. Really? After preaching that trash all these years, he suddenly came to this enlightened view.

Amazing, isn't it, how elections can open everyone's eyes? The new rule for presidential candidates should be a simple one: Some benedictions aren't worth the trouble.