Did Mitt Romney have to give a speech on religion? Yes. When you're in a race so close you could lose due to one issue, your Mormonism, you must address the issue of your Mormonism. The only question was timing: now, in the primaries, or later, as the nominee? But could he get to the general without The Speech? Apparently he judged not. (Mr. Romney's campaign must have some interesting internal polling about Republicans on the ground in Iowa and elsewhere.)
But Mr. Romney had other needs, too. His candidacy needed a high-minded kick start. It needed an Act II. He's been around for a year, he's made his first impression, he needed to make it new again. He seized the opportunity to connect his candidacy to something larger and transcendent: the history of religious freedom in America. He made a virtue of necessity.
He had nothing to prove to me regarding his faith or his church, which apparently makes me your basic Catholic. Catholics are not his problem. His problem, a Romney aide told me, had more to do with a particular fundamentalist strain within evangelical Protestantism. Bill Buckley once said he'd rather be governed by the first thousand names in the Boston phone book than the Harvard faculty. I'd rather be governed by Donny and Marie than the Washington establishment. Mormons have been, in American history, hardworking, family-loving citizens whose civic impulses have tended toward the constructive. Good enough for me. He's running for president, not pastor. In any case his faith is one thing about Mr. Romney I haven't questioned.
It is true that some in his campaign thought a speech risky, but others saw it as an opportunity, and a first draft was ready last March. In certain ways Mr. Romney had felt a tugging resistance: I've been in public life--served as governor, run the Olympics, run a business. I have to do a speech saying my faith won't distort my leadership?
In May he decided to do it, but timing was everything. His campaign wanted to do it when he was on the ascendancy, not defensively but from a position of strength. In October they decided to do the speech around Thanksgiving. Mr. Romney gathered together all the material and began to work in earnest. Then they decided it would get lost in the holiday clutter. They decided to go after Thanksgiving, but before Dec. 15. The rise of Mike Huckabee, according to this telling, didn't force this decision but complicated it.
The campaign fixed on Dec. 6, at the College Station, Texas, library of George H.W. Bush, with the former president introducing him, which would lend a certain imprimatur (and mute those who say his son's White House is pulling for Rudy Giuliani).
It is called his JFK speech, but in many ways JFK had it easier than Mr. Romney does now. The Catholic Church was the single biggest Christian denomination in America, representing 30% of the population (Mormons: 2%, six million). Americans who had never met a Catholic in 1920 had by 1960 fought side by side with them in World War II and sat with them in college under the GI bill. JFK had always signaled that he held his faith lightly, not with furrow-browed earnestness. He had one great question to answer: Would he let the Vatican control him? As if. And although some would vote against him because he was Catholic, some would vote for him for the same reason, and they lived in the cities and suburbs of the industrial states.
Mr. Romney gave the speech Thursday morning. How did he do?
Very, very well. He made himself some history. The words he said will likely have a real and positive impact on his fortunes. The speech's main and immediate achievement is that foes of his faith will now have to defend their thinking, in public. But what can they say to counter his high-minded arguments? "Mormons have cooties"?
Romney reintroduced himself to a distracted country--Who is that handsome man saying those nice things?--while defending principles we all, actually, hold close, and hold high.
His text was warmly cool. It covered a lot of ground briskly, in less than 25 minutes. His approach was calm, logical, with an emphasis on clarity. It wasn't blowhardy, and it wasn't fancy. The only groaner was, "We do not insist on a single strain of religion--rather, we welcome our nation's symphony of faith." It is a great tragedy that there is no replacement for that signal phrase of the 1980s, "Gag me with a spoon."
Beyond that, the speech was marked by the simplicity that accompanies intellectual confidence.
At the start, Mr. Romney was nervous and rushed, his voice less full than usual. He settled down during the second applause, halfway though the text--"No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith. For if he becomes president he will need the prayers of the people of all faiths." From that moment he was himself.
He started with a full JFK: "I am an American running for president. I do not define my candidacy by my religion. A person should not be elected because of his faith, nor should he be rejected because of his faith." No "authorities of my church" or any church, will "ever exert influence" on presidential decisions. "Their authority is theirs," within the province of the church, and it ends "where the affairs of the nation begin." "I will put no doctrine of any church above the plain duties of the office and the sovereign authority of the law." He pledged to serve "no one religion, no one group, no one cause, and no one interest." He will not disavow his religion. "My faith is the faith of my fathers. I will be true to them and to my beliefs."
Bracingly: "Some believe that such a confession of my faith will sink my candidacy. If they are right, so be it." Whatever our faith, the things we value--equality, obligation, commitment to liberty--unite us. In a passage his advisers debated over until the night before the speech, Mr. Romney declared: "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind." He made the call. Why? I asked the aide. "Because it's what he thinks."
At the end, he told a story he had inserted just before Thanksgiving. During the dark days of the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia, someone suggested the delegates pray. But there were objections: They all held different faiths. "Then Sam Adams rose, and said he would hear a prayer from anyone of piety and good character, as long as they were a patriot. And so together they prayed." At this point in Mr. Romney's speech, the roused audience stood and applauded, and the candidate looked moved.
There was one significant mistake in the speech. I do not know why Romney did not include nonbelievers in his moving portrait of the great American family. We were founded by believing Christians, but soon enough Jeremiah Johnson, and the old proud agnostic mountain men, and the village atheist, and the Brahmin doubter, were there, and they too are part of us, part of this wonderful thing we have. Why did Mr. Romney not do the obvious thing and include them? My guess: It would have been reported, and some idiots would have seen it and been offended that this Romney character likes to laud atheists. And he would have lost the idiot vote.
My feeling is we've bowed too far to the idiots. This is true in politics, journalism, and just about everything else.
Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father" (Penguin, 2005), which you can order from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Fridays on OpinionJournal.com.
"He held up a mirror and, for the first time in a long while, Americans did not have to avert their gaze. They could see themselves reflected and be both proud and humbled by their country's unique beauty." 
"And it is hard to see how Romney does not benefit hugely from what was a quintessentially 'American' address." 
"He partially wrote and then delivered a speech that was a deeply felt love poem to America, a defense and celebration of its religious vibrancy and world-shaping commitment to liberty." 
"He satisfied his first goal – arguing that his Mormon faith shouldn't disqualify him – and he did so while affirming his personal loyalty and devotion. While acknowledging that there are some who 'would prefer it if I would simply distance myself from my religion or disavow one or another of its precepts,' he stoutly and emphatically refused to bend. 'That I will not do,' he declared. 'I believe in my Mormon faith and I endeavor to live by it. My faith is the faith of my fathers – I will be true to them and to my beliefs. Some believe that such a confession of my faith will sink my candidacy. If they are right, so be it.' 
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This is my greatest fear. As someone who is both a social conservative AND an economic conservative, I've always suspected that the South American model of social conservative/economic populist could possibly catch fire in the United States and have the same detrimental economic consequences as they have experienced in South America.
If elected, Mike Huckabee would be that fear realized.
Like many of the wannabe conservatives... by jforFRED
Huckabee is putting on a show, fooling people into thinking he is someone he is not. He is receiving a free media ride right now because he is a good talker. Without funny one-liners at the last debate, he was a non-issue. It would be nice to see him respond to a question with something other than a sermon or a joke. I've been critical of Romney's flip-flopping (he did give a good speech today) and of Guiliani's reference to 9-11 or New York on every issue (I still admire his leadership.)
Though a strong Fred Thompson supporter, I'll take Mitt or Rudy any day right now over Huck. Are voters really fooled into thinking that this guy is anything other than a comedian with a theology degree? Early in this campaign, despite my obvious support for Thompson, I was able to find something positive about all the other top tier candidates. I've yet to find anything about Huck. (other than the party line of taking him over Clinton any day.) If voters are concerned that America will have trouble voting for a Mormon for president who is doing his best to prove he will not govern as a Mormon, what will America do with a candidate who seems to be nothing without his Bible?
Separation of church and state still should mean something.
www.fred08.com
The first (and last) Fred08 link on my site!
Gopher holes by David Ribeirao
Mike Huckabee reminds me of the gopher that lived in my backyard for a few months. For quite a while there was only one hole with the dirt piled around. Every once and a while the cute little gopher would poke it's head out and we didn't really mind having him around. Then it actually became kind of fun to see him poke his head out of the hole, it made us smile. Then I woke up one morning and there was another pile of dirt, the next day another, and so on until there was dirt all over the place.
Long story short - we finally poisoned the gopher and got rid of the dirt.