But faith is also personal. You can be touched by a candidate’s faith, or interested in his apparent lack of it. It’s never wholly unimportant, but you should never see a politician as a leader of faith, and we should not ask a man who made his rise in the grubby world of politics to act as if he is an exemplar of his faith, or an explainer or defender of it
We have the emphasis wrong. It’s out of kilter. And the result is a Mitt Romney being harassed on radio shows about the particulars of his faith, and Hillary Clinton–a new-class yuppie attorney and board member–announcing how important her Methodist faith is and how much she loves wearing her diamond cross. For all I know, for all you know, it is true. But there is about it an air of patronizing the rubes and boobs.
We should lighten up on demanding access to their hearts. It is impossible for us to know their hearts. It’s barely possible to know your own. Faith is important but it’s also personal. When we force political figures to tell us their deepest thoughts on it, they’ll be tempted to act, to pretend. Do politicians tend to give in to temptation? Most people do. Are politicians better than most people? Quick, a show of hands. I don’t think so either.
They aren’t harrassing Romney because he’s a Mormon, they’re harrassing him because he’s a [i]Republican[/i] Mormon. No one in the MSM seems a bit concerned about Harry Reid, after all.
I agree and disagree. Character is more important than individual professed religion in a candidate for me. I don’t like hypocrisy. Bill Clinton called himself a southern Baptist. What a sham. If a candidate professes to be a Catholic and is as pro-abortion rights as Giuliani, I could not begin to consider him.
#1. Harry Reid isn’t running for President. Neither is Orrin Hatch. Etc.
If a politition claims to be religious then he or she can be called on it. If Kerry claims to be Catholic to attract the Catholic and or religious vote, then he can be called on his votes on abortion.
If someone claims to be Christian then I expect he or she to be one 24/7 and not claim to be Christian for convenience.
In otherwords I expect a politition to actually believe in the values he or she proclaims. Then I can vote for them or against them. What I do not want is for them to lie in order to be elected. Which, of course, is precisely what they do.
#3 – a distinction without a difference. As SML, Reid wields considerable power in crafting, passing and blocking legislation. That he does so without the hint of religious controversy where Romney can barely escape the question is no coincidence. I suspect that, as was noted in another thread, political and social concerns invariably trump religious belief on the Left, whereas such loyalties tend to be inverted on the Right.
If I vote for a man I mostly care about what he has done and what his experience is. From there it will be his charactor that holds him to his whims or convictions. God is a part of all of that but the last thing I want to find is hypocracy.
Noonan is pretty much right.
just an fyi–if you like Noonan’s writing, she has an excellent book out about Pope John Paul called John Paul the Great. She is a person for whom faith is very important, so it is interesting to see her take on faith in the candidates.
This is a very nice piece indeed. Thanks for posting it.
robroy, some candidates make a selling point of their faith, in an appeal to voters, and if they do, then whether they live their faith becomes an issue of character. When they don’t appeal to it in public, then I think it’s a more private issue. If Guiliani, for instance, begins making an explicit appeal for the Catholic vote, then his failed marriages and abortion opinion become a very public matter. I suspect he’s always been a cultural Catholic and not a seriously practicing one — like many people I’ve known.
I do think Romney gets put on trial a bit more than most candidates because he has put religion into play in trying to woo “values” or “New Right” voters (whatever you want to call them.) But all candidates who throw in aspects of their personal lives will get called on stuff. If I say I am an NRA member and a hunter, that will have political ramifications that I will have to answer for in certain demographics. Likewise, if I am a trial lawyer and a member of the ACLU, that likewise has political ramifications.
How very expedient for Peggy Noonan to receive this revelation now. People are no more focused now on candidates’ personal faith than they have been for the past several decades. The only difference is that now, for the first time in two decades, religious issues are not working to the advantage of Noonan and her gang of nasties.