Romney and Religion

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 28, 2007 8:49 AM

As a political matter, Mitt Romney's Mormonism is not insignificant, considering that polls show that a sizeable chunk of the population is concerned about it.

As a journalistic matter, though, I had thought it was settled. Romney's religion shouldn't be any more or less an issue than any other's candidate's beliefs.

It was important to Joe Lieberman's life that he is an Orthodox Jew, but the media didn't obsess on it. Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister, just made an ad talking about his faith. George W. Bush, at an early Iowa debate, named Jesus as his favorite philosopher. Rudy Giuliani, like John Kerry before him, occasionally gets asked about Catholic bishops who threaten to withhold communion because they support abortion rights.

But in none of these cases is there a press presumption that a presidential candidate has to defend his faith. Nor, in my view, should there be.

Now comes a leading contrarian, Christopher Hitchens, to argue in Slate that Romney needs to 'fess up about his strange religion, and that wussy reporters are giving him a pass:

"It ought to be borne in mind that Romney is not a mere rank-and-file Mormon. His family is, and has been for generations, part of the dynastic leadership of the mad cult invented by the convicted fraud Joseph Smith. It is not just legitimate that he be asked about the beliefs that he has not just held, but has caused to be spread and caused to be inculcated into children. It is essential.

"Here is the most salient reason: Until 1978, the so-called Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was an officially racist organization. Mitt Romney was an adult in 1978. We need to know how he justified this to himself, and we need to hear his self-criticism, if he should chance to have one . . .

"Until 1978, no black American was permitted to hold even the lowly position of deacon in the Mormon Church, and nor were any (not that there were many applicants) admitted to the sacred rites of the temple. The Mormon elders then had a 'revelation' and changed the rules, thus more or less belatedly coming into compliance with the dominant civil rights statutes. The timing (as with the revelation abandoning polygamy, which occurred just in time to prevent Utah from being denied membership of the Union) permits one to be cynical about its sincerity. . . .

"There is also the question--this one more nearly resembles the one that John F. Kennedy agreed to answer so straightforwardly in 1960--of authority. The Mormons claim that their leadership is prophetic and inspired and that its rulings take precedence over any human law. The constitutional implications of this are too obvious to need spelling out, but it would be good to see Romney spell them out all the same.

"So phooey, say I, to the false reticence of the press and to the bogus sensitivities that underlie it. This extends even to the less important matters. If candidates can be asked to declare their preference as between briefs and boxers, then we already have a precedent, and Romney can be asked whether, as a true believer should, he wears Mormon underwear. What's un-American about that?"

I would agree it's fair game to ask Romney about the church's past racial practices. But the danger is that we in the media won't stop there, or even with said underwear, in making Mormonism an issue.

National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez is not in Hitchens's camp:

"Mitt Romney's religion keeps coming up on the presidential campaign trail. He seems, at times, a little annoyed that this is the case. I am, too. Any American or admirer of the constitutional system would also be.

"Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That fact alone could keep commentators in business. 'Are they Christians?' 'Was the Garden of Eden really in Missouri?' 'And about the undergarments . . . '

"What all these questions have in common is that they have nothing to do with the presidency of the United States. . . .

"We have no established religion, and we have no religious tests in our constitutional system. Romney's religion is a topic for religious conferences, not for talk shows. And it certainly should not keep a man from the White House. An early November poll from the Wall Street Journal/NBC indicated that only 38 percent of respondents thought America is ready for a Mormon president. But this race has not gone national yet, and once the American people get the chance to meet Romney, they will see him as the qualified candidate with executive experience that he is."

On that very subject:

"Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said yesterday that he hopes to convince voters that his Mormon faith is mainstream.

" 'I think as people come to know my faith they'll recognize that the values of my faith are -- they very much flow from the Judeo-Christian tradition of this country. I believe in God, I believe in Jesus Christ, I believe in the equality of all humankind,' Mr. Romney said in an interview with The Washington Times."

Here's an interesting example of the slippery slope. Writing in the Christian Science Monitor, Mansoor Ijaz, an American-born member of the Islamic faith, charges that Romney "demonstrated an aggravating hypocrisy in his reply to my query on one of his key foreign policy positions. It's a stance that should give pause to all Americans who are considering voting for him.

"I asked Mr. Romney whether he would consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his cabinet as advisers on national security matters, given his position that 'jihadism' is the principal foreign policy threat facing America today. He answered, ' . . . based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration.'

"Romney, whose Mormon faith has become the subject of heated debate in Republican caucuses, wants America to be blind to his religious beliefs and judge him on merit instead. Yet he seems to accept excluding Muslims because of their religion, claiming they're too much of a minority for a post in high-level policymaking. More ironic, that Islamic heritage is what qualifies them to best engage America's Arab and Muslim communities and to help deter Islamist threats."

By the way, says Captain Ed, the Monitor should have disclosed that Ijaz is a big-time Democratic donor. And he's right.

Romney's unusual answer draws flak from Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum:

"What's really telling about this is that you can almost see the gears turning in his brain when he came up with this answer. Obviously he had to say 'no,' because he knows that the Republican base would go nuts over the idea of a Muslim in his cabinet. But he can't just say that, can he? So his Bain-trained analytic mind went searching for a plausible excuse and the first thing that popped out of the wetware was a numerical explanation: (a) minorities deserve cabinet positions in proportion to their population, (b) one cabinet position is 5% of all cabinet positions, (c) therefore only groups with at least 15 million members are 'justified' in getting one, (d) Muslims aren't even close to that, so (e) no dice. However, since they do make up about 2% of the population, they certainly qualify for 2% of all the lower level positions.

"Any Tammany Hall ward heeler would understand the logic, but even Silent Charlie understood that this kind of thing wouldn't fly at the presidential level, and that was nearly a century ago. Maybe Mitt should have stayed quiet too."

But Huckabee isn't staying quiet, as the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder notes by quoting from an interview that Huck gave Salon:

" You know, I just don't think that's an appropriate issue for me to get into, the nuances of the Mormon faith. And it is not the sole criteria by which I think a person should be judged fit or unfit for the presidency, any more than I think people ought to necessarily make it the defining issue for me. I am very comfortable answering questions about my faith. I am probably the only candidate that has been subjected to this sort of detailed questioning about faith. I don't think Romney has even been. And my faith is a pretty mainstream view of the world and of the Bible. But I accept that as part of the whole process. I just think all of us should be prepared to answer questions regardless of what our views are, and let people sort that out. But that's why I don't feel comfortable in saying, 'Let me tell you what this guy believes.' You know what? I don't know what he believes. Even if I knew what his church believes, I don't know that I can say what he believes until he expresses it.

"What Gov. Huckabee is telling Salon's Michael Scherer is that Romney's religion can be a criteria by which people judge him, and that he believes that Romney ought to be subjected to questions about the content of his religious faith -- questions that Huckabee asserts have not been asked before."

Now for some horse-race stuff. Reacting to a survey showing Hillary Clinton losing to several Republicans a year from now, the New Republic's Jason Zengerle rightly questions the genre:

"I think these new polls just show the bankruptcy of the whole electability argument--which was the larger point of my story. Take, for instance, the fact that of all the Republican contenders in the polls Mike cites, Mike Huckabee does the best against Hillary, beating her by 5 points. Does that mean Huckabee is the most electable Republican? No. It just means that right now he's the least known Republican candidate--and one who's riding a favorable wave of national press to boot.

"If Huckabee were to get the GOP nomination, you can be sure that his unfavorable numbers would skyrocket--partly because more people would then know more about him, and partly because of the currently polarized state of American politics (in which half of the electorate is almost guaranteed to hate someone who represents the other half).

"Hillary is probably more sensitive to these sorts of electability polls than any other candidate--since the chattering class has decided that electability is the biggest question of her candidacy--but I'd imagine that the folks in Hillaryland are far more concerned about her dwindling (or vanished) leads over Obama and Edwards in Iowa and New Hampshire than they are about her standing vis-a-vis Rudy/Romney/McCain/Huckabee."

TPM's Greg Sargent suggests the whole premise is bogus:

"Two polling firms -- Zogby and Gallup -- released surveys of the presidential race that offered strikingly different conclusions. The Zogby poll found that Hillary is trailing five leading GOP candidates in general election matchups. The Gallup Poll, by contrast, found that Hillary, and to a lesser degree Obama, has a slight to sizable lead over the top GOP contenders.

"A couple of other things that distinguish these two polls: The Zogby one is an online poll, a notoriously unreliable method, while the Gallup one is a telephone poll. And, as Charles Franklin of Pollster.com observed yesterday, the Zogby poll is completely out of sync with multiple other national polls finding Hillary with a lead over the GOP candidates. The Zogby poll actually found that Mike Huckabee is leading Hillary in a national matchup. The Gallup findings were in line with most other surveys.

"I don't need to tell you which poll got all the media attention. Do I?

"The Zogby survey was covered repeatedly on CNN, earned coverage from MSNBC, Fox News, and Reuters and was covered by multiple other smaller outlets."

Gallup got squat.

John McCain's problem is that no one is beating up on him? That's the Roger Simon thesis:

"In politics, you don't draw attacks for only two reasons: You are a saint or you are irrelevant.

"According to the RealClearPolitics Poll Averages, McCain is in fourth place nationally, fifth place in Iowa, third place in New Hampshire and fourth place in South Carolina. So he could use some buzz, even if it's in the form of an attack."

Attention, blog triumphalists: You win this round. At least according to this Slate report by Christopher Beam:

"You know it's 2007 when a candidate, in this case Mike Huckabee, holds a bifurcated conference call, first with reporters, then with bloggers. I listened in on both calls to see what the differences were. The reporters' questions were much more concise and polished. But the bloggers' questions were more substantive by a long shot. Here's a sampling of the reporters' questions, paraphrased:

"How much flak are you getting for endorsements by Chuck Norris and Ric Flair? Is the drop in violence in Iraq making it a less important campaign issue? What's it like facing the Clinton political machine? Why aren't you spending more time in Iowa right now? What do you think of Romney and Giuliani going after each other? What's going to be your strategy coming out of Iowa?

"Compare that with questions raised by the (largely pro-Huckabee) bloggers:

"Can you speak about the Arkansas home-schooling bill that came up when you were governor? How is the Fair Tax likely to affect tourism in Michigan? What are your thoughts on a parental rights amendment? How do you plan to make education a bigger issue on the trail? Can you respond to claims that your economic policies are in line with populist traditions of the Democratic party? What would you say to immigrants turned off by all the anti-immigration talk among Republicans?

"Everyone knows the media is shallow, horse-race obsessed, blah blah blah . . . but in many cases, bloggers really are the ones driving discussion of the issues."

We'll get around to Huckabee and the issues . . . any month now.

Finally, do these people never learn?

"The American Red Cross dismissed its president and chief executive, Mark W. Everson, on Tuesday, citing his 'personal relationship with a subordinate employee.' "