Peggy Noonan: How Mitt Romney came to give The Speech--and how he did.
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.)...
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.
Read entire article at WSJ
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.