'President Romney'? Massachusetts' governor could be first Mormon in Oval Office

If there seems to be a budding ecumenism between evangelicals and Mormons, a version of it may involve Romney. During my visit to his office, I noticed a tall bookcase containing memorabilia from campaigns past and also the Bible his father held when he was sworn in as governor and which Mitt Romney held when it was his turn, in 2003. I also saw other books, none of which Romney said occupied his time, save for the one with a blue back he pulled from its shelf. It was "The Purpose Driven Life," which has sold more than 22 million copies and is back on the best-seller lists. The author is Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church, the megachurch in Southern California. Romney said he recently had a breakfast scheduled with Warren, who'd sent him the book. The night before they were to meet Romney realized he hadn't read it, so he did, all 40 chapters. When they met the next morning, "Rick told me I just had to read one chapter a day, for 40 days!"

As for the question that I came to Boston to ask Romney — whether he thought a Mormon could be elected president — he said: "This is a nation that will always welcome people of faith, and my party, in particular, will welcome people of faith. I think if you said, 'Look, we have a candidate for you, and you can know nothing about this person, except (his) religion, that's the only thing that you can know, this person is a Mormon, but that's all you can know. Do you want (him) as president?' Well my guess is with all of the misunderstanding and lack of understanding and differences between one religion and another, that I think a lot of people would say, 'Gosh, I am not sure that that makes me feel real comfortable.' But if you said, 'Here's a human being that has done this and this and this, and here's (his) family, and here (are his) political views,' and so forth, then (the person is) going to get defined by those other things far more than by (his) religion alone and (his) religion would be seen as the basis of values that would either be consistent with the voters' or inconsistent."

At another moment during the interview, Romney pursued the point in a different way by positing "stick figures" — people we know nothing about "except we are told their religion. Well, we are going to say, 'I like that one better than that one, and I don't like this one, but I like that one.' But there are no stick figures in politics; you have human beings, who have families, who have lived careers, who have political positions, whom you have watched debate. You know them as human beings, and their religious affiliation actually becomes only one small part of the person."

Here Romney had in mind his father. "I think before anyone heard of my dad, the fact that he was a Mormon could have been a real big matter of consideration" when he decided to run for governor. But after people got to know him as the president of an automobile company, and then as the chairman of the convention that wrote the new state constitution, Romney said, they liked him. And the thought some people might have had — " 'Oh, he's a Mormon!' — well, so what? It became such a footnote."

Indeed it did, and it appears that the son hopes it will be the same with him — if he runs for president. Mitt Romney is a man comfortable being who he is, and prepared to let Americans assess him as they will.

---

Terry Eastland is publisher of The Weekly Standard.