"Distorting a candidate's religious views is not a new hobby. In 1800, supporters of John Adams campaigned against Thomas Jefferson on the grounds that he was an atheist. He wasn't. He was a deist, a believer in a God not involved in current human events, but his views were easily caricatured. In his 2003 book, 'The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America,' historian Frank Lambert documents the smears, including one campaign diatribe that ran: 'God -- and a religious president . . . or Jefferson and no God.' "