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Overall 2008 debate winners?

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RE: The usual hypocritical religious load of junk

Comment comment by Brandon on 12 December 2007

I understand that it is possible for a church that remains open to new revelation to go in any direction. Thus, I can see how the top-level, theoretical idea of MDR might worry you. But, this generality doesn't apply in all situations, and, by looking at the specifics of this particular situation, it is easy for me to see how Mitt could make the promises he did.

I ran across a decent list of these reasons why the LDS Church could not control Romney in office, and I think they are worth repeating here:

  1. Romney’s personality and biography, which evidence a free-thinking, moderate, Liberal (Big L), independently intelligent mind and a determined will.
  2. Strong political incentives for a President Romney never to be seen as a stool pigeon for his church.
  3. Strong political incentives for the LDS Church not to get involved in the ugly and high-profile business of pressuring a political leader (for an organization that has proven to be both very conscious of its public image and quite hesitant to become entangled in government at any level).
  4. The LDS Church’s unblemished history of non-meddling, including zero record of any pressure placed on Harry Reid, Michael Leavitt, Gordon Smith, and other highly-placed Mormon politicians.
  5. The LDS Church’s explicit policy of maintaining complete neutrality in elections and keeping its distance from the political arena.
  6. The interest of a large, five million-member LDS American population in maintaining its nascent status as part of the American mainstream, and the influence that constituency must have on decisions by church leaders.
  7. The voices of the 200 to 300 administratively conservative general leaders of the church who have direct influence on and personal relationships with the church’s President.
  8. The moderate and mainstream records and personalities of the Church’s President, Gordon B. Hinckley, and Thomas S. Monson, his likely successor.
  9. The deeply ingrained LDS belief in and support for the Constitution and American Institutions.
  10. The LDS Church’s general lack of political positions and longstanding tendency to be extremely deliberative and slow in making significant course adjustments.

Given the above, I hope you can see how Mitt would be comfortable making the promises he did. I also hope you can see how theoretical generalizations sometimes don't fit the individual cases.

Lastly, I read a decent review of Romney's speech here that ended with the following:

A candidate for president should be judged, I suggest, by four criteria: (1) his declared values and proposed policies; (2) his character and credibility; (3) his competence to deliver; and (4) his prospects of winning nomination and election. (Or “her,” as the case may be.) On all four scores, I expect that, with yesterday’s address on “Faith in America,” Mitt Romney has also significantly advanced his candidacy.

I hope he's right.

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