But here's the big thing: We don't care.

Of course, some of the news coverage looks particularly at what percent of the women voters support Hillary Clinton and what percent of the African-American voters support Barack Obama. But that really has been pretty minor.

Reporting on the demographics among the Iowa caucusoids has focused more on the way the young voters and the independents have been drawn to Obama than it has on his racial similarities to the Mod Squad's Linc Hayes.

The Mod Squad was cool -- or at least supposed to be -- because it had the black, white and blond cops mixed together and depending upon each other while they hung out with the common people. But the Democratic mod squad is not attracting much of a look just because of its mix or its novelty.

It's noteworthy that it is just not that noteworthy.

* * *

The second thing that really deserves some comment is the hypothesized holy war between Mitt the Mormon and Mike the Minister, Baptist minister, on the Republican side.

Supposedly, the Protestant evangelicals of Iowa backed away from Mitt Romney because of his membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and embraced Mike Huckabee because of his experience as a Baptist minister and continuing embrace of Christian beliefs of the Baptist sort.

Well, maybe they did, and maybe they did not. But certainly religious belief has been an issue in the campaigning, even if it is not the whole explanation for the voting patterns.

Many have decried the interjection of religious belief and religious concern into the political process altogether. Hendrik Hertzberg, for example, says, "What freedom, including religious freedom, requires is, precisely, secularism." He goes on to express the hope that "if God interests Himself in the minutiae of earthly politics, He'll arrange a double knockout." Since his article only is about their political sparring with a religious basis, Hertzberg seems to be hoping these two candidates will be knocked out just because of their public avowal of their religious beliefs.

Now, certainly there can be problems with religion in the public square. If we ask, whether a political campaign is the best forum for discussing interpretations of scripture or, for that matter, just which works should count as scripture in the first place, we would have to answer, "Probably not."

After all, matters of great importance require careful thought and thought full of care, care for each other and care for the truth. Those conditions are hard to create in a political campaign.

And certainly we have seen plenty of candidates who have tried to baptize the flag, who have tried, that is, to take our national interests and make us believe serving them is God's will. And we have seen plenty who might be using their religious devotion not to honor, praise and worship God, but to attract, lure and wrangle gold.

Yet we have to elect people to hold office and not just select policies to hold sway. We have such little knowledge of just what conditions and problems will arise tomorrow that we cannot depend upon our ability to set up the appropriate plans beforehand. We have to put people in charge to make decisions.

And if we elect people to make judgments and decisions, we have to look at who they are in their core, in that part of them that will remain unchanged through the changes in conditions.

For many people -- though certainly not for all -- that deepest core lies in their religious belief. Thus, it seems to me, it entirely is appropriate to try to understand the religious commitment of a candidate.

Of course, if we understand "secularism" to mean the state is neutral in matters of religion, that there is, for example, no religious test for holding office or electing people to office established by law, then we probably all favor secularism.

I think Huckabee and Romney do, too.

But if by "secularism" we mean something like the need to keep belief in God and all other religious beliefs out of public debates, then I cannot agree we should be secularist.

We need to know who the people are when we vote.

* * *

Kansas Democrats will caucus Feb. 5 and Republicans on Feb. 9. It won't be in the news like Iowa and New Hampshire have been. But I hope you join me in the process.