Those looking for hints about what role faith might play in the
presidential election campaign would do well to recall Ted
Kennedy’s bitter and bruising 1994 Massachusetts Senate campaign
against Mitt Romney.
Facing the prospect of losing his well-worn seat to the
political novice, Kennedy and his surrogates unleashed a broadside
against Romney’s Mormon faith. The episode may offer a preview of
how the Obama re-election campaign will address Romney’s faith, and
how Romney will respond.
Sen. Kennedy was the weakest he’d ever been as he sought
re-election in 1994. In his six terms in office, Kennedy had never
trailed a general election opponent in a poll, and he’d never won
by fewer than 14 percentage points.
But 1994 was different. Since his last election, the image of
Kennedy as a philandering, reckless drunk had been etched in
voters’ minds, in part due to revelations of his carousing that had
emerged three years earlier in the rape trial of his nephew,
William Kennedy Smith.
Plus at 62, Kennedy looked tired, old and overweight — a stark
contrast to the relatively young, fit, clean-living Romney.
“Kennedy fatigue,” more than one political pundit observed, had set
in. By September Romney had won the Republican primary and was
neck-and-neck with Kennedy.
Desperate to tarnish Romney’s family man image, Kennedy and his
surrogates attacked Romney’s faith, citing the Mormon Church’s past
racially exclusive policies and its denial of the priesthood to
women. (To cover himself, Kennedy also began publicly calling
for the ordination of women in the Catholic Church.)
Kennedy was making a calculated appeal to female voters,
political commentators said, a demographic Kennedy had long
depended on but was struggling to attract that year.
Kennedy had plenty of help from surrogates, including nephew
Joseph Kennedy, then a Massachusetts representative. “I believe
very strongly in the separation between church and state,” Rep.
Kennedy, who referred to himself as his uncle’s “pit bull,” told
the press. “But I think that if a particular church has a belief
that blacks are second-class citizens, and that’s the stated belief
of the church, or that women are second-class citizens, I mean you
ought to take a look at those issues.”
The race-based attacks were, by any objective measure, unfair.
For one, Rep. Kennedy’s accusation that the church still
discriminated against black members was flat out wrong. The church
had changed its policies years earlier and by then allowed black
members to hold leadership positions.
What’s more, there was no proof that Romney approved of his
church’s past discrimination. In fact, Romney’s father, George, a
former governor of Michigan, was a fierce civil rights activist,
ahead of his time both in his church and in the Republican
Party.
And Mitt clearly admired his father for that leadership. “He
marched in civil rights demonstrations or parades, opposed the
Goldwater platform in 1964 and refused to endorse Goldwater as a
presidential candidate when my father was governor,” the candidate
explained at a campaign event. “So despite the misunderstanding
about my church, my father’s personal views were manifest by his
actions in the public and private arenas.”
Romney was also targeted by what Ron Scott describes in his
recent book
Mitt Romney as a coalition of “somewhat ad hoc, but
passionately dogged, Mormon anti-Romney advocacy groups that
badgered him relentlessly throughout the 1994 campaign.”
At one point, four members of his Mormon congregation charged
that Romney had a few months earlier referred to gays and lesbians
as “perverse.” Others demanded that Romney discuss his church’s
opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment and the practice of plural
marriage (which the church had outlawed a century earlier).
Romney tried to carefully separate himself from his church on
some cultural issues. “My church feels that abortion is not a good
choice,” he told Bay Windows, the state’s gay and lesbian
newspaper. “However, my mother advocated for the legalization of
abortion. So they, like I, can live by and have personal beliefs
which celebrate the diversity of our society, and fight for the
right of all people to live by their own beliefs and to make their
own choices. Their example and my experience is one of showing
respect and tolerance for all others.”
The Kennedy campaign refused to disavow Joe Kennedy’s comments.
The senator then backtracked on previous promises not to raise
religion, suggesting that Romney should be asked tough questions
about his faith.
“Of course, it’s about religion,” Martin Nolan, a longtime
Boston reporter told the New York Times about the purpose
of Kennedy’s attacks. “Mormonism is an exotic concept in
Massachusetts. It’s part of his game plan to create doubt about his
opponent any way he can.”
Finally, after remaining silent about the attacks on his faith
for weeks, Romney summoned the media to his campaign headquarters
in late September, with his 87-year-old father at his side.
There was an obvious irony in Kennedy’s attacks, and Romney
portrayed them as a betrayal of President Kennedy’s legacy. “In my
view,” Romney said, “the victory that John Kennedy won was not for
just 40 million Americans who were born Catholic — it was for all
Americans of all faiths. And I’m sad to say that Ted Kennedy is
trying to take away his brother’s victory.”
Then, as Michael Kranish and Scott Helman recount in their
recent book
The Real Romney, George Romney, who had been wandering
through the press gaggle visibly agitated, suddenly blurted out, “I
think it is absolutely wrong to keep hammering on the religious
issues. And what Ted is trying to do is bring it into the
picture.”
The press conference marked a turning point in campaign. The
next day, a Boston Globe editorial stated, “It’s fine to
ask Romney what he thinks about welfare and other social issues,
but don’t hit him for following the tenets of faith within a
religious community.”
The Catholic Archdiocese of Boston also condemned the attacks.
An editorial in the diocesan newspaper The Pilot chastised
the Catholic Kennedy as well as the Boston Globe: “And why
have they [the Globe] raised the issue of Mitt Romney’s
Mormonism again and again? Does one have to be a cynic to think
that the Globe would like to portray Mitt Romney as an
anti-women Mormon and therefore unfit for the Senate?”
Rebuked by his allies, Kennedy performed what NPR described as
“an about face” on Romney’s religion, halting the religious attacks
and training his fire on, among other things, Romney’s work at Bain
Capital. Joe Kennedy called Romney to apologize, then released a
letter in which he claimed to “deeply regret” his remarks.
Kennedy’s poll numbers began to recover, and by mid-October the
incumbent enjoyed a double-digit lead. On Election Day, Kennedy won
comfortably by 17 points.
SO WHAT, IF ANYTHING, does all this portend for 2012? Desperate
to rally minority and female voters, the Obama campaign might be
tempted to raise the Mormon Church’s past policies. All accounts
suggest Obama has ditched the mostly above-the-fray campaign he
waged in 2008 and is employing a brass-knuckle approach this time
around.
“What Obama and his team have accepted is that, while there’s a
lot to be said for changing politics and elevating the discourse,
your most important job as president is to defend your priorities,”
the New Republic’s Noam Scheiber wrote recently. “And the
way you do that is to win.”
To that end, the campaign has hired Stephanie Cutter as deputy
campaign manager to oversee its daily combat operation. According
to Scheiber, Cutter is legendary among Democrats for her
“Dresden-esque” campaign tactics, referring to the Allies’
overwhelming and indiscriminate bombing of Dresden, Germany, at the
close of World War II.
As a White House advisor told Scheiber, “It’s always been true
that you’re either playing offense or defense, and offense is
better than defense.”
There is a case
to be made that Romney’s faith is a net benefit to him and his
candidacy. But that doesn’t mean Obama won’t lash out if he gets
desperate.
In a close race, with a by-any-means-necessary campaign
comfortable with gratuitous rhetorical firebombing and incendiary
attacks, it may not be a matter of if Obama attacks Romney’s
religion, but when.
