Matthew Yglesias argues for rejecting the politics of “character,” “leadership,” and all the other unknowable quantities of political candidates:

At the end of the day, it’s not about finding the candidate who “really” has the best views. Instead, insofar as the issues matter to you (and, obviously, there are considerations beyond “the issues” in play) it’s about finding the candidate who has the best platform. We can’t peer into their souls and we don’t really need to.

This is an argument I’ve made in other contexts. We can’t know politicians’ true intentions (for instance, whether they are attempting to mislead the public or not) and we also can’t know whether they are good people, devout, etc. in private (see, for instance, the case that was made on behalf of John Ashcroft during his confirmation hearings). Indeed, these are the areas in which politicians are most likely to be deceptive and in which the press is most likely to fall into narrative-driven pathologies (Bush is friendly, Gore is a liar, etc.). Though politicians do deviate from their campaign platforms, the positions they take are arguably a much more reliable guide to their performance in office than trying to read their minds.