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A Mormon President?
Not since John F. Kennedy has a presidential candidate been faced with a what some may call a Presidential ‘religious test.’ Nevertheless, as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney may be the next in line. According to a 1999 Gallup Poll, 17% of respondents said they wouldn’t vote for a Mormon.
Romney, is dismissive of the religious hurdle, but others suggest there may be more barriers there than he realizes. With Hillary Clinton as the likely foe, is it possible that the United States could have a Mormon president in 2008?
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Not Like Me = Bad by markmcb
I have no doubt that Romney’s LDS affiliation will be a gigantic hurdle to overcome. However, I wonder if the average I’m-not-voting-for-a-Mormon person doesn’t do so because they have strong beliefs against the LDS church based on a sufficiently thorough knowledge of the church, or if it’s simply because they’re seen as different. I have no data, but I’d guess the latter is true (no pun intended). I’m curious if anyone else puts more faith in the general populous than I do.
Track record by Brandon
I don’t have a deep knowledge of Romney’s past, but the articles seem to portray a person that knows where to draw the line between religion and politics. For example, although he is firmly against homosexual marriage, when the Massachusetts Supreme Court decided to legalize it, he enforced the law. From the American Spectator article:
bq. "I’m as clear as I can be to people as to what my views are. When I ran for office I indicated I did not favor same-sex marriage or civil unions and I have simply stood by that position. At the same time, I’ve indicated I’m a person who will follow the law. I respect the process of the law and if the legal processes result in a conclusion I disagree with, I will nonetheless follow the law. I swore to do that when I became governor. A lot of what is passed by the legislature is not as I would pass it, but I will implement it and enforce it."
This, of course, is in stark contrast to the controversial issues last year where mayors authorized homosexual marriages despite the laws of the state.
Another interesting bit on Romney’s resume is what he’s done with the budget in Massachusetts. The same article states that Romney balanced the budget there without raising taxes, "despite a daunting $3 billion deficit." The state’s "rainy day fund" is now at its highest level ever at $2.3 billion.
Back to the main issue, though, I don’t see why Romney shouldn’t be able to meet and of the Mormon criticisms very easily. Sure, people have issues with the brand of Christianity Mormons believe, but what does that have to do with being President? Are critics really going to posit that he can’t lead our country because he doesn’t accept the Athanasian doctrine of the Trinity? Of course not; that is completely irrelevant. Romny appears to recognize this. As it states in the Chicago Sun-Times article, "Romney wisely has no intention of lecturing America on Mormon theology. Rather, he cites the 1838 speech in Springfield, Ill., by the young Abraham Lincoln, in which he said, let reverence for the laws … become the political religion of the nation."
Lastly, I wonder what might happen to the the average person’s conception of a "Mormon" if Romney happens to not only gets elected, but also becomes a historically excellent president.
More thoughts on the potentiality of a Mormon President by Brandon
Multiple news sites are running a story written by Cal Thomas on this issue. It ends with,
bq. "If an ambulance hits me, I care less where or how the driver worships than I do about his sense of direction to the nearest hospital. It troubles me not that a Mormon might be president. It does trouble me a great deal that so many people would think a person’s faith – whether one shares it or not – should be the only reason to deny someone the presidency Perhaps if Romney decides to run it won’t matter too much of that 37 percent, anymore than it eventually did during the 1960 campaign when the issue was Catholicism."
An Evangelical Problem by Brandon
I ran across another very informative and well-written article on this subject in the September 2005 Washington Monthly entitled, "Mitt Romney’s Evengelical Problem; I thought it was very interesting how the article distinguished between various types of "anti-Mormonism;:
bq. Americans have indeed become more religiously tolerant, but the first Mormon to run for president will clearly have to change some minds. In the late 1960s, the percentage of Americans who said they would not vote for a Jewish or Catholic presidential candidate was in the double digits; by 1999, those numbers had fallen to 6 and 4 percent, respectively (roughly the same as the percentage of voters who say they wouldn’t vote for a Baptist). Compare that to the 17 percent of Americans who currently say they would have qualms electing a Mormon to the White House. That number hasn’t changed one whit since 1967 …
bq. Some of this anti-Mormonism is a fairly fuzzy sort of bias, based mostly on rumors and unfamiliarity and the vague feeling that Mormons are kind of weird. It’s a wobbly opposition that can be overcome by good public relations that defuses concerns about the religion and shifts focus to the personality of the candidate. This is how someone like Romney gets elected in a blue state like Massachusetts, where even Republicans are generally tolerant.
bq. But moderate Republicans aren’t the ones who could derail a Romney candidacy. His obstacle is the evangelical base—a voting bloc that now makes up 30 percent of the Republican electorate and that wields particular influence in primary states like South Carolina and Virginia. Just as it is hard to overestimate the importance of evangelicalism in the modern Republican Party, it is nearly impossible to overemphasize the problem evangelicals have with Mormonism. Evangelicals don’t have the same vague anti-LDS prejudice that some Americans do. For them it’s a doctrinal thing, based on very specific theological disputes that can’t be overcome by personality or charm or even shared positions on social issues. Romney’s journalistic boosters either don’t understand these doctrinal issues or try to sidestep them. But ignoring them won’t make them go away. To evangelicals, Mormonism isn’t just another religion. It’s a cult.
Later, I think the author makes a good point later in attributing the biggest impact to Mitt’s potential campaign as coming not from his opponent, but from word of mouth and "push polls."
bq. The worst may come not from the push polls but from the preachers. Churches that show movies portraying Mormonism as a cult or that sponsor crusades to convert Mormons aren’t likely to turn around during the campaign and say, "Oh, never mind."
Evangelicals for Mitt by Brandon
Interestingly, I ran across a website run by evangelical Christians who are supporting Mitt Romney as the best candidate for the Presidency in 2008, evangelicalsformitt.org. The site seems well organized and it has some good information and perspective, in my opinion.
Decision based on history, not faith by Brandon
I ran across an article from The American Specator on this topic that concluded with what I thought was a poignant paragraph on this topic. Speaking of Mormon politicians:
bq. Maybe it would be better to judge their commitment to a free political order by looking at their behavior instead of trying to square that commitment with outsiders’ interpretations of their theology.
bq. In this case, Mormons have a long, bipartisan tradition of responsible secular governance: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (whose ascension doesn’t seem to have caused any concern), Democratic Congressmen Mo Udall and Dick Swett, longtime Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, and Romney himself don’t appear to have taken all their cues from Salt Lake City. There is no evidence that any of them "view U.S. politics as a stage on which the ultimate divine drama is likely to play itself out, with a Mormon in the leading role."
Book on a Mormon in the White House by Brandon
It appears there will be a book published entitled "A Mormon in the White House?: 110 Things Every American Should Know about Mitt Romney" by Hugh Hewitt. He’s written an introduction (of sorts) to the book on ABC News. From that summary:
bq. If you ask a list of people whether Barack Obama’s race ought to be a factor, they will shudder and collectively say, or shout, absolutely not. And they would be right to do so.
bq. If you ask a similar list of people whether Hillary Clinton’s gender ought to be a factor, they will shudder and collectively say, or shout, absolutely not. And they would be right to do so.
bq. But pose the "Mormon question" to hundreds of Americans, and very few will look at you with shock or even curiosity. What is going on here?
bq. Not surprisingly, I think that takes a book to answer in full, but the short course is that anti-religious bigotry serves a lot of agendas. The war on faith in America — the effort to drive faith-based people from the public square and faith-based arguments from polite conversation — has been under way for three decades, and is picking up steam. A Mormon is just a convenient target, and one that provides media pundits with a convenient cover. They voice their concern with Romney’s faith by putting that concern into the mouths of unnamed evangelicals.
The author also has a response to what he calls "The New New Bigotry," as evident in articles such as those published on Slate and the Denver Post. I thought the following comments were interesting:
bq. In mid-November I addressed a session of the Evangelical Theological Society, an organization of more than 4,000 evangelical scholars. I used the time to warn the theologians that the secular press would soon be approaching them to harvest anti-Mormon quotes for use in profiles of Mitt Romney, and to recognize that to the extent they cooperated in the project to chase Mormons from the public square, and to legitimize the sort of private religious test the public counterpart to which is specifically forbidden by the Constitution, they would be building their own pyre.
Interesting op ed: by Brandon
The uncle of a friend of mine wrote an article on this subject entitled "Mormons & Mitt Romney: No reason to support or oppose him; which was published in the San Diego North County Times. I thought the following was particularly persuasive: