Sometimes the country wants a man of faith. This happened when Jimmy Carter, a former Sunday-school teacher, was elected following Watergate, and when the born-again George W. Bush’s slim victory looked like a repudiation of Bill Clinton’s sex-scandal-marred presidency. To speak in the register of faith—not a particular sect or even God, but a grounding belief in a higher order—is to reach beyond partisanship, to try to return to basic moral precepts. In calmer times, a leader expounding from