Romney Would `Put No Doctrine’ Above Presidential Office
COLLEGE STATION, Texas _ Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, hoping to ease voters’ doubts about putting a Mormon in the White House, promised Thursday that religion would never interfere with his duties in the Oval Office.
“I will put no doctrine of any church above the plain duties of the office and the sovereign authority of the law,” Romney said in a much anticipated speech at the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library in Texas. “A president must serve only the common cause of the people of the United States.”
His speech came less than a month before the first-test Iowa caucuses, and reflects a growing concern in his campaign about the impact that his faith will have on Republican primary voters. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, has surged in Iowa polls _ at Romney’s expense _ despite a much tighter campaign budget and far lower expectations to fulfill.
Romney’s address, titled “Faith in America,” prompted inevitable comparisons to John F. Kennedy’s speech on religion in 1960. To be sure, there are some striking parallels. Then, as now, Americans had qualms about the faith of a leading presidential candidate, who also had distinguished himself in Massachusetts politics.
And when former President Bush introduced Romney at his library, the former Massachusetts governor was about 100 miles from the Rice Hotel in Houston, where the Roman Catholic Kennedy famously told Baptist ministers on Sept. 12, 1960, that he’d never take orders from the Vatican.
Romney referred to Kennedy’s speech near the beginning of his own remarks.
“Almost 50 years ago, another candidate from Massachusetts explained that he was an American running for president, not a Catholic running for president,” Romney said at the beginning of his speech. “I do not define my candidacy by my religion. A person should not be elected because of his faith nor rejected because of his faith.”
But 1960 isn’t 2008, when candidates are expected to discuss, even brag about, their religious traditions. And the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the official name that Mormons give their faith, is much smaller, much newer and, for most Americans, far more controversial and mysterious than Catholicism.
Top aides reportedly counseled Romney not to delve into a discussion of his faith, fearing that it could backfire and raise more questions than it answered. But Romney said Americans would rather see him stand up for his beliefs than walk away from them for political convenience.
“Some people believe that such a confession of my faith will sink my candidacy. If they are right, so be it,” he said. “But I think they underestimate the American people. … Americans tire of those who would jettison their beliefs, even to gain the world.”
Those expecting a blow-by-blow account of Mormonism and its history won’t find it in the text of Romney’s remarks. But Romney embraced his religion, which teaches that Jesus Christ visited America after his resurrection and told a modern-day prophet, Joseph Smith, to restore his true church.
Romney said he believed that Jesus Christ was the “son of God and the Savior of mankind,” but he acknowledged having differences with traditional Christian faiths.
“My church’s beliefs about Christ may not all be the same as those of other faiths,” he said. “Each religion has its own unique doctrines and history.”
Yet he made it clear that he’d stick by his faith and never “disavow one or another of its precepts.”
“That I will not do,” Romney said. “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.”
Though he took great care to highlight his support for keeping religion out of government policy-making, he seemed to get the most applause when he hailed the contribution of religion to the political arena and defended the rights of Americans to put religion and its symbols on the public square.
“In recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning,” Romney said. ”They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America _ the religion of secularism. They are wrong.”
He also took a jab at European secularism, favorably contrasting American worshipping practices with those in the old world. Speaking of the “magnificent cathedrals” he’d visited in Europe, Romney said they were “so inspired, so grand _ and so empty.”
“Raised up over generations, long ago, so many of the cathedrals now stand as the postcard backdrop to societies just too busy or too `enlightened’ to venture inside and kneel in prayer,” he said.
Romney cautioned that the other extreme, violence in the name of religion, is “infinitely worse.”
“We face no greater danger today than theocratic tyranny, and the boundless suffering these states and groups could inflict if given the chance,” he said.
After the speech, Romney’s wife and children joined him on the stage, along with former President Bush and former first lady Barbara Bush. Romney returned briefly to mingle with invited friends and supporters, but he didn’t take questions from the news media.
During his introduction, Bush said he had a “long history” with the Romney family and called the candidate a friend. But he made it clear that he wasn’t endorsing anybody in the Republican race.
“I simply have too much respect for many of the candidates (and) consider them friends,” Bush said.
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(Root reports for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.)
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(c) 2007, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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