Did Mormons Get A Bounce From Mitt?

But with Romney's candidacy, the scrutiny was different.

"I know Mormons and members of the church that felt like it was a terrible thing that Romney was running because we opened ourselves up to criticism," says Joel Campbell, a Mormon who teaches journalism at Brigham Young University.

"It certainly opens the conversation, but whether the conversation will be a friendly one or a contentious one, I'm not sure," says Shipps. "I do think it alerted a lot of upper-middle-class, exceedingly successful Mormon lawyers and doctors . . . to the reality that not everybody thinks being Mormon is great. If you grow up in the mountain West and you grow up in a Mormon community and you send your kids to church and all the kids are going to school where there's mostly Mormons and there's not a lot of drugs and there's not a lot of crime, everybody thinks, 'Oh, being Mormon is just so wonderful.' And to realize that this is a perception that is very provincial."

This is the nub of it, really. Romney seemed so Mormon, so squeaky clean, so Pollyanna-ish, even. (Remember when he went to Michigan and said he could bring those lost jobs back?) Romney's seeming normalcy isn't the norm anymore. Maybe we understand better those who've strayed or failed and recovered -- or, for that matter, those who aren't fabulously successful and can't put tens of millions into their own campaigns. Maybe we relate to the family lives of other candidates, candidates who have been divorced, who have blended families, whose children don't all campaign with them (and may not even like them). Sure, they're messier, but messy is authentic.

There was more to it than that, of course. Some evangelical voters -- who don't want messy -- see Mormonism as something other than Christianity. Mike Huckabee, an evangelical and former pastor, was speaking to them when he said, "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the Devil are brothers?"

All of this gives Mormons something to chew on for years to come.

Maybe it was all for the good, no matter what, says Campbell. He quotes the prophet Brigham Young on the issue of persecution:

"Every time you kick Mormonism you kick it upstairs."

"That's kind of the optimism of Mormons," Campbell says, adding: "I guess that may sound like Pollyanna or something."