A Mormon in the White House?: 10 Things Every Conservative Should Know about Mitt Romney

On January 4, 2007 Willard (Mitt) Romney, born 1947 in Michigan, ended his four year elected term as Governor of Massachusetts. On February 13, 2007 he officially announced his run for U.S. President as a candidate within the Republican party. Less than a year later, February 7, 2008, Mitt Romney announced his withdrawal in favor of Senator John McCain from a race that he was losing badly for the Republican nomination. The national election that chose Democratic Senator Barack Hussein Obama to be President followed in November 2008, nine months later. *** Meanwhile on March 12, 2007 there was published the book A MORMON IN THE WHITE HOUSE? 10 THINGS EVERY AMERICAN SHOULD KNOW ABOUT MITT ROMNEY. Author was Hugh Hewitt, Law professor at Chapman University in southern California, host of a nationally syndicated daily radio talk show and widely read blogger at HughHewitt.com. *** In his book Hugh Hewitt makes two main points: (1) Mitt Romney is eminently qualified to be President of the United States and (2) his vigorous practice of his Mormon faith is not a disqualifier for that high office -- though it may cause millions to vote against him for no other reason. ***Hewitt points to Romney's spotless personal and family life as a starting point for being qualified. From the Governor's biography he focuses on Romney's two years as a Mormon missionary in France. Six months advance immersion in French had laid a foundation for him to remain fluent in that languge even today. Having completed a year at Stanford before his time in France, Romney then went back to college, graduated from Brigham Young, then completed a joint doctorate at Harvard in business and law. He next went to work for global management consultant firm Bain & Company outside Boston. *** Bain and its rigorous methodology for fixing ailing company's was absorbed into and remains part of Romney's psyche. A team of "Bainiacs" would be sent to an ailing company, spend weeks sizing up the problems, with emphasis on gathering data, interviewing, analyzing and then prescribing. Some executives would then hang around the firm to make sure recommendations were implemented. A few years later Mitt Romney took other hard charging Bainiacs with him to found Bain Capital. This new firm not only consulted but invested and sometimes took over an ailing company, turned it around and sold it for a profit. ***In 1981 Romney was summoned back to parent Bain & Company to turn it around, which he did. Chapter Three of A MORMON IN THE WHITE HOUSE? then details Romney's 1999- 2002 turnaround of the woefully mismanaged winter Olympic games in Salt Lake City, with stellar results and big bragging rights. *** Chapter Seven is entitled "Under the Golden Dome: Romney's Governorship." In 1994 he had run unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Ted Kennedy. He won the governorship of Massachusetts in 2002 but did not campaign for re-election in 2006. His successful incumbency is remembered for vigorous intervention in Boston's "Big Ditch" scandal and for crafting a state health insurance system. *** After concluding that Willard Mitt Romney is eminently qualified to be President, author Hugh Hewitt devotes no few pages to Romney's Mormon faith. Under the original U.S. constitution, religious tests for office are impermissible. Indeed, according to Hewitt, several Presidents have been outside any recognizable Protestant/Catholic mainstream. George Washington's religion was clearly Freemasonry. Thomas Jefferson was an agnostic at best. Abraham Lincoln never joined a church. ***Hewitt tackles and shoots down three fears of American evangelicals of Mormon Mitt Romney in the White House: (1) Mormon leadership in Salt Lake City will tell him what to do; (2) 60,000 male Mormon missionaries will redouble their zeal to make all Americans Mormon and (3) the Mormon faith is just too weird. All these fears were laid to rest in interviews by the author first of evangelical Protestant Chuck Colson and then conservative Roman Catholic Archbishop of Denver Charles Chaput. Said Chaput inter alia: "If Mormon missionaries are successful, it's because other religious communities are too often doing a bad job." Speaking of whether Mormons are handicapped by their "weird" beliefs, Archbishop Chaput said: "If they're hobbled in any way by their beliefs, they're extraordinarily good at hiding it" (Ch. 10). *** Hewitt's A MORMON IN THE WHITE HOUSE? 10 THINGS EVERY AMERICAN SHOULD KNOW ABOUT MITT ROMNEY is useful for understanding the Romney presidential campaign of 2011 - 2012. The author, a Presbyterian, is unabashedly pro-Romney and has no patience for people who say that they will never under any circumstances vote for a Mormon in the White House. On the negative side, the book is probably twice as long and wordy as it needs to be to make all its points. On the other hand, whether it's discussing the "Big Ditch" scandal in Boston or all the problems of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, A MORMON IN THE WHITE HOUSE? does not lose itself in trivia or minutiae. It is worth reading. -OOO-