Only Atheist Politicans?

So, I was reading a little editorial piece over at yahoo. It suggested that only atheists should be politicians. It points out that current theocratic regimes aren't functioning well, that religious issues in the political forum leads to a different set of priorities in debate than what is optimal from a civil perspective, and had some kind of nonsensical commentary about how Christians consider poverty holy and don't want to get rid of it.

I have to vigorously disagree on a wide variety of points. First off, by removing religious individuals you are not going to remove religious topics from the public forum, mostly because those topics are (and should) be determined by the population at large as opposed to simply those who happen to be in Congress. Besides, shouldn't Congress be representative of the the population in any feasible way so that the government generally shares the concern of the people? So what if there's more discussion than simply necessary on issues like abortion, gay marriage, and stem cells? That's not what is gumming up the works in Washington.

Additionally, by removing religious individuals from holding political office you are less safeguarding religion than you are creating an opportunity for activist members of atheistic religions (like LaVeyan Satanism, for example) and those aggressively atheistic individuals who believe that religion in general is dangerous and should be removed. Those people who feel that they know best and all others either agree with them or are wrong are no the unique province of theistic religions, and only by allowing open discussions can we safeguard ourselves from such tyranny.

That being said, finding candidates that are quality yet have that deep psychological need for power required to seek Federal Office are rare enough as it is, what do we really get for ignoring what few good candidates that do exist simply because they happen to also have religious beliefs?

In general, I'm just upset by the lack of thought that went into this piece. It simply doesn't reflect reality. If any group is "best suited" to being a neutral party on this topic it would be agnostics, those who claim that the existence of deities is unknown or unknowable, as opposed to atheists, who are making a belief claim that there is no god. Besides, I have never seen anyone provide compelling reason to say that there is definitively no deity of any sort, but plenty of people have generalized quibbles with one religion or another.