Romney and JFK

"Mitt's No J.F.K.," was the title of Maureen Dowd's December 9th column about Mitt Romney's December 6th speech, "Faith In America". She wrote:

The problem with Mitt is not his religion; it is his overeager policy shape-shifting. He did not give a brave speech, but a pandering one. Disguised as a courageous, Kennedyesque statement of principle, the talk was really just an attempt to compete with the evolution-disdaining, religion-baiting Huckabee and get Baptists to concede that Mormons are Christians.

“J.F.K.’s speech was to reassure Americans that he wasn’t a religious fanatic,” Mr. Krakauer agreed. “Mitt’s was to tell evangelical Christians, ‘I’m a religious fanatic just like you.’”

The backdrop, he said, is “the wickedly fierce competition between Mormons and Southern evangelicals to convert people.”

The world is globalizing, nuclear weapons are proliferating, the Middle East is seething, but Republicans are still arguing the Scopes trial.

Count on Dowd to accuse someone of "shape-shifting" and "pandering" while doing a little "topic-shifting" and "pandering" herself. Hey, the world is globalizing, nuclear weapons are proliferating, the Middle East is seething, and Maureen Dowd is making catty, cleverness-challenged comments about...the Scopes trial? Thankfully, some serious, intelligent, and informed commentators did examine the JFK-Romney comparison. For instance, George Weigel:

According to the shared wisdom of the punditocracy and the blogosphere, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney badly needed a "JFK moment" when he flew into College Station, Texas, to deliver a Dec. 6 speech on religious conviction and American democracy at the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library. But what, precisely, do we mean by a "JFK moment" on matters of church and state?

John F. Kennedy's speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association was a rhetorical and political success, in that it successfully defused the "Catholic issue" in the 1960 presidential sweepstakes. Yet no serious student of the centuries-long American debate on church and state regards the Kennedy speech as a significant substantive contribution to our national reflection on the endlessly interesting, endlessly complicated question of how religious conviction can (or should) shape a politician's public action. At Houston, JFK declared his faith a private matter which had had no public consequences on his legislative career and would have no impact on his performance as president. At Houston, John F. Kennedy won by changing the subject.

It remains to be seen whether Mitt Romney's speech is as politically effective as JFK's. But at College Station, Romney displayed a greater seriousness about the questions at issue than Kennedy did at Houston. And in doing that, Romney may actually have advanced the national conversation on religious conviction and public life. In a campaign season that all too typically involves the political manipulation of consumer passions by means of sound-bites and advertising, that would be no mean accomplishment.

Read all of Weigel's commentary. There was also Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. And Fr. Robert Sirico.

• Baptists encourage Mormon candidate to be more like a Catholic (Nov. 13, 2007)

Comments

[David]

Christ is in our midst!

Some helpful posts on this topic include the following:

Mitt Romney and Mormonism

Mitt Romney Speaks on Faith and Politics

Romney for President

[David]

Don't miss Deacon Keith Fournier's commentary and personal interview with Gov. Mike Huckabee.

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Governor Huckabee Speaks with Catholic Online

The following interview is the best I have seen this entire election cycle by any candidate.

poetic knowledge (imagination and creativity), arts and music education, and the natural law

[Robert Miller]

The pivotal flaw in Romney's address is his assertion that today's European cathedrals and churches were emptied as a result of European governments' having expressed "confessional" commitments in the past.

If a community is predominantly Christian, its government MUST confess that it is Christian. If a community is predominantly Catholic, its government MUST confess that it is Catholic.

The problem in Europe is that its governments got themselves under the control of people who were (are) ideologically anti-Christian and/or anti-Catholic.

Our US churches and other places of worship may experience better attendance than their European counterparts, but that has nothing to do with our civil arrangements. From the beginning, the US government has refused to make any Christian confession -- notwithstanding Justice William O. Douglas(!)'dictum in a 1940s opinion. The US is just a little "behind" its European counterparts.

Romney's argument is Free Exercise (and good as far as it goes). JFK's was anti-Establishmentarian (and harmful for Catholics and the whole US polity). The problem with both arguments is that true Catholic/Christian free exercise MUST eventually involve something at least of what the Constitution describes as an "Establishment of Religion".

[Nino]

I am so frankly upset every time I read this nonsense re:JFK and..no church tellm me what to do and how to behave..dur,,thats for sure..Kennedys moral life proved that as does Rudy..he also snickered the same thing,re-assuring all concerned that morals will never cloud any political decision he ever will make....when one panders to the devil and his followers one soon rises with fleas...