Thursday, December 06, 2007
A Tale of Two Kenneths
One is a cousin, and strongly conservative. One is a friend from school, and probably would call himself moderate or liberal. Both are lawyers. Both are bright guys. Both have now blogged about Mitt Romney. One loves him. One doesn't. Me? I think I'm somewhere in the middle.
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12 comments:
Well, I'm happy to be teed up like this :)
I'd say I'm moderate, my current party affiliation is none: non-partisan. My current presidential preferences, in order, are Obama, Huckabee, and Biden.
What these three share is a willingness to engage issues honestly and thoughtfully. Right now, that's the primary characteristic I'm looking for in a president. I'm looking for these characteristics because I'm a big believer in Truth and Reason as cornerstones for appropriate action, and that usually Truth and Reason are ascertainable and applicable to an issue if one is willing to honestly and thoughtfully engage the issue.
The candidate who I don't see these characteristics in are Edwards (now that I think about my actual least favorite candidate), Clinton, and Romney.
What issues do people feel Romney has not engaged honestly and thoughtfully? What do people want to hear more about? I'm not asking this in a challenging way--I'm genuinely curious.
I don’t think that Romney is trying to mislead the people by evading the facts of his religious affiliation. If people want to know what his belief system is, they can go to mormon.org or lds.org, the church’s official websites, and everything is explained there. Romney shouldn’t have to take all of his campaigning time explaining his religious beliefs when that information can be found elsewhere. What I want to know is how he’s going to deal with the war, immigration, and how he’s planning on running the Whitehouse.
I haven't been following Romney that long, so I can't give a long list of times he's been unthoughtful or unforthcoming. However, the first time I paid attention to him was the first time I heard him sound this way.
What I'm referring to is Romney's recent difficulties explaining his faith, and it's relationship to the presidency, managing to sound both unforthcoming and unthoughtful about both the Bible and the Constitution.
And it's not like these are unimportant documents or as if faith doesn't matter to the presidency. Has President Bush's faith affected his presidency? Of course it has.
I'm open to being proved wrong, that Romney is actually honest and thoughtful, but his recent activities have made me think otherwise.
Romney's reputation for expediency and lack of philosophical core are also in my mind when I see him having difficulty handling questions about his faith. He appears to have a history of notable policy changes that coincide with the positions of whomever he's trying to get to elect him. So when I see him having trouble answering questions about his faith, when the safe bet is that if he answered them honestly they'd hurt his candidacy, it's very easy for me to imagine that he's just not being truthful about what he really thinks, or, again, that he doesn't "get" how what he thinks is relevant to being president.
What difficulties or troubles explaining his faith do you believe has Romney has had? How has he sounded unforthcoming and unthoughtful about the Bible? I don't see it.
Sure, the Constitutional argument you take issue with was muddy. Within the context of the entire speech, however, he demonstrated a grasp of the relationship between faith and public office that satisfied me.
I believe his reputation for lacking a "philosophical core" is entirely undeserved. The mantra "Mitt says whatever will get him elected" is more a product of repetition and hearsay rather than substance.
Sure, Romney has changed his position on certain policies. If such changes automatically amounted to pandering, he'd have problems. But I think its healthy for public office-holders to thoughtfully reconsider their policy positions based upon new things learned and observed. I believe Romney's changes are a product of thoughtful observation rather than trying to hoodwink voters. In any event, while I haven't agreed with certain policy statements he has made in the past, I've always been satisfied with his actions in office.
People are free to choose whatever candidate they think is best, but I have cause to believe that a lot of people are prematurely rejecting Romney--an exceptionally principled, moral, intelligent, accomplished, and scandal-free candidate with tremendous organization and managerial capacity--based on innuendo and pretext. And that bothers me. They're not giving him a fair shot.
Ken,
I'll pay attention to Gov. Romney and see if what you say pans out. You sound like a sincere, thoughtful, intelligent guy--and for that reason I'll try to give Romney some objective attention. And I agree that the ability to change one's mind can be a good sign and not a bad one.
But what I've seen so far is Romney showing a high level of discomfort talking about the nature of the Bible as well as his religious belief, and a poor handling of the Constitution which shows either he doesn't understand it or is willing to use it inappropriately for political advantage.
As for his speech yesterday, I think he had good moments such as when he expressed his simultaneous devotion to his church and independent political judgment. But other points struck me as pandering, such his willingness to describe Jesus as Son of God, Savior of Man, but unwillingness to say much more about his doctrinal distinctives. Why is this pandering? Because it appears calculated to make him seem acceptable to the Evangelical and Catholic Right when everyone knows that the Mormon conception of Jesus if fundamentally different than the Evangelical or Catholic conception. If it weren't so, then we wouldn't spend time trying to convert one another. I'm not saying I wouldn't vote for him because I disagree with Mormons about the nature of God, but I'm not impressed by his trying to make it look like we do agree. He doesn't get to be the "Christian" candidate by paying lip service to the superficial similarities between Mormons and Evangelicals. Again, my problem isn't with the doctrinal differences, but with the tactic of trying to win Evangelicals over by pretending their doctrines are close enough. This just seems dishonest.
I hope you're enjoying this Dave.
Thanks for your candor, Kenny. I have a few last thoughts on Romney. One of these days we can have an Obama day or a Huckabee day, or, for mutual sport, an Edwards day.
The reason Mitt Romney doesn’t need to turn his campaign into a Mormon Sunday-School lesson is because, as you said, his audience was mainly those who know differences exist. Romney’s express intent in giving his speech was to inform Christians that despite differences, he is a friend to Christianity.
First, I don’t think there is anything malevolent about focusing on common beliefs rather than differences. Don’t misconstrue an olive branch to be misdirection, especially when Romney is endeavoring to lead an overwhelmingly Christian nation.
Was Romney’s profession of his faith in Jesus Christ, without more, simply calculated to please a crowd? No. Despite fundamental differences (which Romney expressly noted there are), Romney’s statement was an announcement of his core belief, not a disingenuous smokescreen. How do I know? Because it’s the center of my faith, as well. Everything else in Mormonism takes second-fiddle to Jesus Christ. Romney stated he is a devout Mormon. People can educate themselves on the differences between a Mormon’s and a Christian’s beliefs about Jesus Christ.
Romney has never attempted to portray himself as the “Christian” candidate. Only Mike Huckabee—the “Christian Leader,” as his commercials say—has attempted to do that. Romney has simply expressed that Christians can count on him as an ally.
Romney said in the last debate that he believes the Bible is the Word of God. That’s what we believe. We Mormons don’t use Bibles as coasters. If you thought he appeared uncomfortable saying it, so be it, but it isn’t a misrepresentation about what we believe.
In short, I don’t think Romney is trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes. It’s clear he’s Mormon. He hasn’t tried to hide that.
In the end, it is his policies, not the specifics of his theology, that will govern his presidency, should he be elected. He has been forthright about the doctrines that will inform his policy-making.
That’s all I got to say about that.
Ken, I think that's a fair interpretation of Romney's recent actions, and I'll try assuming I've too quickly bought into the smear that he's expedient and not principled to see if I can't see Romney as you portray him.
I am enjoying it - though I came out of my room the other night and warned my roommate that I might have started a war. Fortunately, I am confidentt hat both of you are genuine, thoughtful, considerate people - and I remain optimistic about the ability of such people to handle differences of opinion the way I wished politicians did.
I do think I'll need to recruit you guys to talk about other candidates, because you're both smart enough to frame your arguments well, different enough politically to have genuine differences of opinion, but similar enough to be able to find some common ground, too.
I didn't see more than sound bytes of Romney's speech so far, but there was one point that I got hung up on. That was, to paraphrase, that the authority of the church doesn't extend over the office. JFK made a similar statement concerning the Catholic church, and I think most overtly, genuinely, religious people seems to follow a similar line of thought - though those who follow a strong central authority seem compelled to state it more clearly.
I'm generally bothered by the proliferation of (as it appears - though I CERTAINLY cannot see their hearts, and I don't mean to condemn anyone in what I'm about to say) Christians In Name Only. That is, there's a minimum level of religiosity that politicians need to get elected. But underneath the veneer, there aren't many fruits that we should expect.
And a statement about where the authority of the church (which is, I believe, in both the Mormon and Catholic mindsets no less than the voice of God, whether through a prophet, or through the vicar of Christ) stops... well, it bothers me. It bothers me because it should be impossible for someone who is not the applicable voice to make such a statement... because it seems to me that God's authority stretches to cover every aspect of life in the world.
It would be another thing to say "I'll choose to follow what I feel is best for the country. I will welcome the counsel of God's authority/voice/etc, but I also will choose for myself what course of action to follow." And I think that's what people are saying. But I think it gets framed from a "the church has no authority here" instead of "I'll choose to reject that authority."
I fear I've done a poor job communicating my question, but it's a minor thought that's been rolling around in my head recently.
I should also note for the record that these are the two most frequent guys reading my blog (at least, as far as I can breakdown the #s). They're #1 and #2 (who is which depends on the time frame referenced) in links to my blog.
So, did I know I was probably starting some form of comment combat? I suspected it might happen. But I'd rather see some intelligent discussion on an issue than the sound-byte "debates" that are standard political fare.
Dave,
I agree with your concern about Romney's statement regarding church authority. The way I've framed this concern is the I'm concerned about people who claim their religion is a private matter, as if it can be cordoned off so as not to bother the dinner guests. For me, my faith is not like this--as you said, it's at least theoretically all-encompassing. So when someone talks about their faith as if it's a compartmentalized aspect of their life, I basically don't buy their faith.
I think this goes beyond the political arena, and I think there is a good deal of confusion in the public square about what faith and religion are. This leads to a lot of argument that amounts to confusion of terms, but leads to vehement accusations that usually get around to mentioning the Scopes Monkey Trial. For example, back to Romney, a lot of people have said 'his faith has nothing to do with how he'll be President; what's relevant are his values.' I have no doubt, Dave, that you immediately see how this statement doesn't appear coherent to me. Doesn't religion at least shape values, if not provide values directly?.
Anyway, I don't mind hashing out issues with Ken or anyone like him who seems genuinely interested in getting to the right answer. Unfortunately the majority of people do not debate as a means to get to truth, but as a means to win for their interest group.
And as to Ken's earlier suggestion, I welcome an time to discuss other candidates, particularly Obama or Huckabee.
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