By FRANK BRUNI
Published: February 4, 2012
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CloseDiggRedditTumblrPermalink LAST week he did it again, wading into
a discussion of money — or, rather, of the "very poor" who lack it —
and succumbing to yet another pink slip of the tongue. Mitt Romney is
forever being tripped up this election cycle by the topic of wealth.
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Not, interestingly, religion. That was the angst last time around, and
the extent to which the dynamic has changed, with mammon supplanting
Mormon as the bejeweled albatross around his neck, was reflected in
another recent comment of his, one that prompted less notice and was
interpreted in a particular and highly revealing way.
At one of the debates just before the Florida primary, as he and Newt
Gingrich jousted over the Latino vote, he answered Gingrich's charges
that he was anti-immigrant by calling them "repulsive" and declaiming,
"My father was born in Mexico." Many news reports mentioned the
moment, casting it as an example of his newfound readiness to take the
fight back to Gingrich.
But only a few of those reports recognized what an odd line of defense
Romney had employed, given why his father was born there. The family
lived south of the border because Miles Park Romney, Mitt's
great-grandfather, had fled the United States after the passage of an
1882 law that explicitly banned polygamy, which he practiced. He was
reputedly instructed to till a polygamous Mormon colony on foreign
soil.
When Romney first ran for president in 2008, there was so much
discussion about the potential impact of his Mormonism, and his own
concern about it was deep enough, that he delivered a set-piece speech
designed to rebut any lingering impression of the religion as an
exotic, even loopy sect. In that painstakingly calibrated address, he
said the word Mormon all of once. Christ or Christianity came up
repeatedly.
Four years later, he still avoids the word, trumpeting his
faithfulness without specifying the faith. What's surprising is that
no one around him — not reporters, not rivals — talks about it all
that much, either. The Romney-Gingrich showdowns in South Carolina and
Florida got plenty nasty: at one point the Gingrich camp, flashing
back to Romney's term as Massachusetts governor, falsely accused him
of pretty much wresting kosher food from the mouths of Holocaust
survivors. But neither Gingrich nor his allies played the Mormon card,
even though nearly 20 percent of the Republicans and independents
surveyed by Gallup last year said they wouldn't support a Mormon
presidential candidate.
Steve Schmidt, who managed John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign,
said there was a simple, good reason to let Romney's Mormonism be.
"It's baked into the cake," he said, explaining that at this point,
voters are well aware of it, have already decided if it matters to
them, and that's that. Anyone trying to use it against Romney, even
obliquely, might succeed only in being branded a religious bigot,
especially in a country "that becomes more tolerant of difference all
the time," Schmidt said.
His assessment is borne out by what happened when Politico, in a
report last August, said that President Obama's tacticians were
contemplating a general-election strategy that would underscore ways
in which Romney seemed "weird." The adjective sounded suspiciously
like a stand-in for Mormon, as Romney's enraged lieutenants noted, and
the White House hastily denounced the Politico report as dead wrong.
Two months later, a prominent Baptist pastor at the Values Voter
Summit in Washington called Mormonism a cult and encountered an
instant — and warranted — backlash.
Will that be the end of it? One longtime Republican strategist I
talked with predicted that Gingrich would broach Romney's Mormonism
yet, with the aim of mobilizing the Mormon-wary evangelicals who vote
in southern primaries on March 6, "Super Tuesday."
That's a regrettable motive. But there are valid reasons for the rest
of us to home in on Romney's religion, not in terms of its historical
eccentricities but in terms of its cultural, psychological and
emotional imprint on him.
His aloofness, guardedness and sporadic defensiveness: are these
entwined with the experience of belonging to a minority tribe that has
often been maligned and has operated in secret? Do his stamina and
resilience as a candidate reflect his years of Mormon missionary work
in France, during which he learned not to be daunted in the face of so
much resistance that he won a mere 10 to 20 converts, according to
"The Real Romney," a biography published last month?
And what of his sometimes huffy expectation that voters accept his
current stances against abortion and gun control, to name two flips,
and stop fussing over so many contrary positions in the past? Does
that track with Mormonism's blithe reluctance, according to its
critics, to explain controversial tenets that it has jettisoned, like
a ban on black clergy members that was in place until 1978?
A tactful desire to avoid any sensationalizing of Romney's faith has
created a tendency not to give it appropriate due. To read "The Real
Romney," which represents an exception, is to realize the utter
centrality of religion in his life. One of the book's most arresting
passages describes a moment when Ann, his wife-to-be and then a
Protestant, asks him what Mormons believe. His detailed explanation
moves her to tears, perhaps because it's so heartfelt, perhaps also
because he's so nervous about her reaction.
The news media's caution about focusing on Romney's religion mirrors
his own reticence, which, as Frank Rich pointed out in New York
magazine last week, may be a big reason he can't connect with voters
in a visceral, intimate way. He's editing out the core of his
identity. He's muffling his soul.
"His church experience is, I think, one of the great humanizing
influences in Mitt Romney's life," said Patrick Mason, a professor of
Mormon studies at Claremont Graduate University. Mason noted that if
Romney would embrace that side of himself, he could beat the rap that
he's never been exposed to hardship by recounting his missionary
experience. "That's usually a very spartan lifestyle, and by
definition most of the people you're talking to are going to be poor."
Romney's even longer period as a Mormon lay leader in Boston involved
counseling and consoling people dealing with marriage problems,
addiction, unemployment: some of life's messiest, scariest stuff. He
must have gained a fluency in human frailty. But when The Times's
Sheryl Gay Stolberg was researching an article about that time, Romney
predictably declined her interview request.
He has released tax returns, putting his Swiss accounts in the
foreground. But he still cloaks his church duties, consigning his
French proselytizing to the background.
Is it the right political calculation? I'm not sure. But I know it
makes for a woefully incomplete portrait, denying voters something
that they deserve — and that might well cut his way.
More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/opinion/sunday/bruni-mitts-muffled-soul.html?ref=opinion
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
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