A Mormon in the White House?
by Hugh Hewitt
(Regnery Publishing, 311 pages, $27.95)
Mitt Romney has a friend in Hugh — Hugh Hewitt that is. The radio
talk-show host, Harvard grad, and Ohio sports aficionado has
nothing but praise for the former Bay State governor and GOP
presidential candidate. And the case for Romney is one that the
L.A.-based lawyer-educator can make without pounding the table.
Certainly, convincing Republicans to support a Massachusetts Mormon
as their 2008 standard-bearer will be an easier task than begging
party activists to back Harriet Miers — a lost cause that the
former Reagan Justice Department staffer undertook in 2005 via a
series of walk-the-plank radio briefs.
An alternate title for this Romney hagiography might be
McCain in the Outhouse! — as readers are never far from a
page on which the Arizona senator is taken to the political
woodshed. Indeed, there are no less than seven index references to
McCain’s collusion with the “Gang of 14” — the bi-partisan group
that preempted Senate filibusters against a handful of Bush
judicial nominees but kept others from receiving up or down votes.
Among other grievances, Hewitt lambastes the “maverick” Republican
for collaborating with Democrat Russ Feingold on a
speech-restricting campaign finance bill and for teaming up with
Ted Kennedy on legislation that would repeat the 1986
immigration-amnesty fiasco. But so much for the candidate Hewitt
calls a “Great American, lousy senator, and terrible
Republican.”
A Mormon in the White House? (note the question mark)
focuses primary attention on the unfinished biography of Mitt
Romney — the fourth child of three-term Michigan Governor George
Romney and of his talented wife, Lenore. The book was written,
Hewitt says, because “Mitt Romney ought not not be
President because of his religious beliefs.” To make that case
Hewitt showcases the governor’s impressive credentials and explains
why those qualifications shouldn’t be shunted aside by a
recrudescent “religion test” that would overturn the social
consensus reached in 1960 with John Kennedy’s election and would
violate the spirit of the Constitution’s Article VI prohibition
against religious tests for office.
Hewitt notes that Mitt Romney, unlike his father, is a five-star
product of America’s higher education system — topping stellar
years at Brigham Young with a joint degree from Harvard Law and
Harvard Business School. These academic achievements were followed
by a series of career triumphs, first at Bain and Company, then at
Bain Capital — a firm founded by Romney in 1984 and grown into a
multi-billion dollar investing powerhouse. Flush with this success,
Romney was tapped to rescue his old firm, Bain and Company, from
the verge of insolvency. That task prepared him for an even more
impressive salvage operation — the scandal-plagued 2002 Salt Lake
Winter Olympic Games. This triumph is chronicled in Romney’s own
book, Turnaround.
Hewitt touts with radio repetitiveness the business technique
Romney successfully employed throughout his career — the “Bain
way” — a method of information gathering, debate, and analysis
that took the case-study curriculum at Harvard Business School an
implementation step further. In 2003, Romney brought these talents
to his new job as governor of Massachusetts — turning a huge
projected deficit into a surplus, without raising taxes. Romney’s
aggressive response to the massive, and eventually tragic,
mismanagement of the “Big Dig” project provides an example of
acting under pressure. In this instance the governor was able to
oust the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority’s Chairman and CEO and to
commence a top-to-bottom construction review — with authority now
vested in the governor. Whether Romney’s universal health insurance
plan will be scored as another political victory is yet to be
seen.
Even more impressive, from the perspective of social
conservatives, was the tenacity Romney displayed in supporting an
initiative that called for a constitutional referendum on the state
Supreme Court’s 4-3 mandate for same-sex marriage. Other actions
that win points with most conservatives are Romney’s
beyond-the-Bain-way veto of embryonic cloning legislation and his
refusing to extend diplomatic courtesies to Iran’s former
President, Mohammed Khatami.
In addition to career accomplishments, Hewitt focuses attention
on Romney’s family life — as a son, a husband, and father to five
sons. Summer trips, practical jokes, mission work, courting
secrets, and other not-too-private moments constitute a portrait of
wholesome affection and commitment on which the media are tempted
to place a “too good to be real” label. A Boston Globe hit-piece
written in 1994 during Romney’s senate race against Ted Kennedy,
typifies this kind of jaded journalism. That article directed its
embarrassed misgivings toward Romney’s “too perfect” wife, Ann — a
remarkable woman who subsequently won dressage medals amid a
successful therapeutic regimen to counter her multiple
sclerosis.
Having established his candidate’s credentials, Hewitt addresses
the book’s central concern — whether Mitt Romney’s religion should
matter to voters and reporters. In his introduction Hewitt notes
with dismay a November 2006, Rasmussen poll that found 43% of
voters unwilling to vote for a Mormon candidate. Hewitt later
observes that the “Mormon question” was largely a non-issue during
George Romney’s run for the Republican nomination in 1968. That
ill-fated campaign was done in, for the most part, by media spin
directed against a man (born in a Mormon community in Mexico) who
wasn’t a member of the cosmopolitan elite.
A major argument that Hewitt employs to distinguish Mormons from
fringe sectarians is that church members are now firmly ensconced
in American life — a point made by David Broder and Stephen Hess
when they wrote The Republican Establishment in 1967. That
“Establishment,” of course, included Michigan Governor George
Romney. Hewitt points out that two other Mormons, besides Romney’s
father, have conducted recent presidential campaigns — Orrin Hatch
and Mo Udall. To this list of prominent Latter-day Saint pols, one
could add the name of Nevada’s Democrat Senator, Majority Leader
Harry Reid.
Beyond the fact that Mormons populate both sides of the
political aisle, Mitt Romney’s record in very blue Massachusetts
should suffice to rebut any conspiratorial ideas about a
Utah-centered theocracy. Moreover, the candidate’s perfect-pitch
responses to questions about the political influence of the Mormon
Church are reinforced by statements from LDS leaders who forswear
any role in partisan politics.
To acquaint readers with the general contours of the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Hewitt dedicates several pages
to the group’s history and theology. (In 1996, Hewitt was involved
in a PBS production, Searching for God in America, that
also explored the Mormon faith.) Finally, as a supplement, the
author provides a transcript of his conversation with two
conservative Christian religion professors — a brief discussion
about Mormonism and whether the two gentlemen could conscientiously
vote to put a Mormon in the White House. (Both said they
could cast such a vote.)
Beyond the damage done by needlessly ditching a talented
Presidential candidate, Hewitt rues the harm that will befall the
country if secular journalists and political operatives begin to
scrutinize office-seekers’ religious beliefs. The “Mormonism is too
weird” objection can easily become an argument against those who
believe in transubstantiation, the Assumption of Mary, or the
biblical account of creation. (Chris Matthews’ question about
evolution, recently directed to GOP presidential candidates at the
Reagan Library, is an example of what Hewitt hopes to avoid —
queries that open the door to reportorial inquisitions about
biblical inspiration, Papal authority, or whether candidates really
believe this “crazy Jesus stuff.”)
Hewitt observes that an Atlantic Monthly journalist has already asked Romney about his
liturgical undergarments — and that additional cases of
anti-Mormon and anti-religious bigotry (e.g. Slate’s
Jacob
Weisberg) have popped up in the press. Media response to the
Supreme Court’s recent ruling on partial-birth abortion also seems
to validate Hewitt’s fears — as journalists who take their cue
from New York Senator Chuck Schumer haven’t been shy about playing the
“Catholic
card” against judges presumably guided by Church dogma on the
topic and not by established principles of jurisprudence.
In sum, Hewitt’s message is that Mitt Romney has become a
political canary in the coalmine. If a man of Romney’s intellectual
and professional stature is taken down simply because of
his religious beliefs, others will follow. Permission will have
been granted to destroy political opponents across the religious
spectrum for believing “weird” things — or perhaps for being
excessively moral in the eyes of a skeptical, secular press.
