Too good to be true?
Posted by lizdavies on February 15th, 2007
I’m ashamed to admit it, but the thing I find most intriguing about Mitt Romney is his name. I assumed ‘Mitt’ must be short for something (it’s his middle name, by the way – don’t you think ‘Willard Romney’ would sound a tad more distinguished?), and according to Wikipedia that part of his name comes from his relative Milton Romney, who played for the Chicago Bears…the ‘Willard’ comes from J. Willard Marriott, of the hotels. Hmmm.
But aside from his name, Romney is an interesting candidate. In fact, the Politico stated that “Mitt Romney is so good he is almost too good.” Officially announcing his candidacy for the Presidency at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan (after staying at a Marriott hotel…), Romney is another one of those odd Republicans in the race this time round which is making the primaries all the more exciting.
Romney has two big problems to overcome that stop him from being the GOP’s dream candidate – he recently flip-flopped in a massive way and therefore can’t be trusted with preserving his stance on issues so precious to the social conservatives…and he’s a Mormon. When I initially heard about Mitt Romney months ago, I didn’t think this would be an issue. But interestingly enough, it is, and it’s a big one.
But first, the flip-flop (or massive flip, depending on how much you like Mitt Romney). Romney was Governor of Massachusetts until recently, one of the more liberal states in the US, and when competing with Edward Kennedy for the Senate seat in 1994 said he was pro-choice. Now he claims the opposite, leading Sen. Kennedy recently to state that Romney is actually a “multiple choice” candidate. Many claim, as they have done on this blog, that Iraq will be the buzzword in this election and that social issues will matter less than they usually do. But I have a sense that Romney’s flip-flop will in fact make this an issue, whether it naturally would be or not – it’s an easy target for his opponents to go after, and will therefore constantly be out in the open. So in this sense the social conservative vote will still matter an awful lot, and everyone’s going after it, with McCain and Romney vying with each other for the support of such esteemed conservatives as Pat Buchanan and Jerry Falwell. I can’t help but wonder if the fact that there’s no obvious candidate for the social conservatives to line up behind in fact makes them even more powerful - their support can make or break a Republican contender and for that reason everyone wants to come out top. In essence, they could be the kingmakers.
But, strangely enough, the fact that Romney is religious may be the thing that makes or breaks him. If elected, he would be the country’s first Mormon President, as no news story fails to point out. So what? JFK was the first Catholic President.
However, this situation is entirely different – The Politico points out that when JFK was running Catholics made up 25% of the population, whereas in 2003 under 2% of Americans were Mormon. On top of this, Catholicism may be slightly out of the ordinary in America, but it has nowhere near the weird connotations that are usually usually associated with Romney’s religion. In a Gallup poll conducted last Tuesday, 54% of Republicans said they would vote for a well-qualified Mormon without a single thought…but 42% said they would either not vote for a Mormon, or would have serious reservations. A Post/ABC poll from December shows 39% of Republicans saying Mormonism would make them less likely to vote for a candidate…and the reservations voters have about gender or race are significantly less than this.
But is this an irredeemable situation? Probably not. Romney has a lot of time to inform voters about his beliefs, and provided the inevitable attack ads telling everyone Romney would encourage polygamy don’t detract from this, he may well (in fact, stands a very good chance) come out on top. He’s already spent the majority of his announcement speech stressing his conservative values (”the family is the foundation of America”) and his religious beliefs (”I believe in God and I believe that every person in this great country, and every person on this grand planet, is a child of God.”). He looks much better against Barack Obama than John McCain does, since both Obama and Romney are quite clearly attractive (girls, you know it’s true) and charismatic, and perform well on television. The JFK comparisons on both sides are just beginning…
Mitt Romney Joins 2008 Presidential Race [Washington Post]
Mitt Romney [MittRomney.com]
Ex-Massachussetts Governor Romney Makes White House Bid Official [CQPolitics.com]
Filed under: election2008, uspolitics on February 15th, 2007
Too good to be true?…
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I like this place. It’s certainly much more active that the blogs for Politics socs at my local university.
The LDSers, or Mormons, I’ve met are generally an honest bunch - earnest, hard-working, friendly and wishing only the best for my spiritual wellbeing. I would not feel uneasy at any holding public office if they did not define themselves as such. However, the prospect of Romney being the first Mormon president *is* different from JFK’s Catholicism or Dubya’s lapsed Methodism.
Those faiths developed in far more credulous times, as part of a natural progression belief-systems and mythologies. Joseph Smith, however, lived sufficiently close to our time for his process of ‘revelations’ to be described as the work of an immensely disturbed mind. He lived well into the modern age, seeing in the steam engine and telegraph and the likes, yet he still ‘translated’ the Golden Plates using giant kalidescopes called Urim and Thummim, and embarked on the process of “spiritual wifery” which so out-raged his community.
Fortunately, after the migration to Utah and attempts to join the Union were confounded by the persisting permission of polygamy, the LDS president experienced a fortuotous vision in 1890 which outlawed polygamy.
Think of the comment of the Electric Monk in Dirk Gently’s Detective Agency: he started believing things which they wouldn’t believe in Salt Lake City.
The political and technological climate in which this campaign will be run makes things very hard for candidates on whom the public is yet to form an opinion. The Republicans can throw all they like at Hillary, but if you don’t dislike her already, it’s unlikely that there’s anything anyone can show you that’s going to make you change your mind. Romney, by contrast, will suffer from the coincidence of two facts. First, people’s thoughts about him are still very much malleable. What voters see and hear about him in the next few months will shape a lot of impressions. Second, this is the first presidential election cycle in the era of mass online video. No candidate will be able to escape from their past gaffes or unpopular statements of belief. As Liz says, Romney’s 1994 Senate campaign provides a rich seam of material for his opponents. This video in particular is already making the rounds among social conservatives.
The only defence against the awesome power of YouTube is to be so well known nationally that new data won’t change many minds. Hillary seems safest from this particular threat. Rudy Giuliani certainly does not.
It does seem to me to be quite unfair to attack Romney for his Mormonism - the story of Joseph Smith and the origins of the Church of the Latter Day Saints may seem bizarre to many, but if you have been brought up with it in the last few decades, I don’t see why it’s any more a demonstration of credulity than the origin-myths of other forms of Christianity or any other ‘mainstream’ religion.
Equally, it seems unfair to attack Mormons for the association of their religion with polygamy; Mitt Romney is not a polygamist, and his church excommunicates practitioners of polygamy. The holy books of Judaism and therefore Christianity, and Islam contain passages which encourage or accept polygamy: Deuteronomy, for instance, contains helpful advice for which wife’s children should inherit.
Romney will always have to deal with a public a large proportion of which is suspicious of his Mormonism. It seems a shame that some people will consider this far more than his political views or actions (though of course political and religious opinions can never be totally separated). However, I’m not sure I could bring myself to extend this tolerant view to, say, Scientologists, so where I draw the line I do not know.
The advantage of Mormonism is that it is a “strong” system- strong in the sense that it has distinctive, identifiable and memorable traits.
These characteristics will, firstly, provide a mood of suspense ( always useful in any drama , as American politics unmistakeably are) which will help propel the voters towards the Romney phenomenon , first as a matter of curiousity and an associated skepticism, and then as an attractive idea once they discover more about the culture and find it’s “not that different” from others. This rebound from skepticism- an over- reaction, in a sense, is part of what ultimately turned JFK into an American hero in the eyes of Protestants.
Secondly, Mormonism has tremendous latent political value in the international setting. Why? Because the antithetical metaphysical world conflict- the “clash of cultures”- has put in play gigantic questions of familial responsibility and cultural identity These are questions which the established Western religious philosophies have largely forgotten how to discuss, but which others -Islam being foremost- now claim to answer.
Thirdly, it is in that particular conflict that the Mormon construct has most latent strength. The putative discovery of the tablets by Smith is like a long buried kernel of information, which has not yet been brought into the world of real discussion.
If Smith found actual tablets in hieroglyphs which guided the journey to Utah, the nature and provenance of the modern North American nation is in a very different light from the conventional mythology.
This aspect of Mormonism- historical secular meaning, if you will- is its strongest card in the global political arena. Oddly enough, although the Mormon story seems strange to Americans, it will not seem so strange to citizens of other societies- in the Middle East, for example.
The Mormon can claim (though proof is always a different question) an inheritance from the very sources that the world of Islam claims as its predecessor, although Islam, in part, constitutes a rebellion .
Mormonism is thus stating, in a veiled way, an equal or even superior
share of inheritance from that vast ancient world, a world which modern scientific and archaeologic research is rapidly bringing into focus.