The Holy Cow! Candidate - © Copyright 2005 The Atlantic Monthly
But here’s betting that Romney won’t fade away. There are too many things in his favor. To name just a few: As a Republican in a Democratic state, he can plausibly claim to be a moderate when it suits him. He has an illustrious pedigree (his father was a Cabinet secretary as well as a governor and a presidential candidate). He has an impressive business background (which is attractive to both Main Street and Wall Street Republicans). His stands against stem-cell research and gay marriage, as well as abortion, make him appealing to social conservatives. His state adjoins New Hampshire, site of the first primary. And at fifty-eight he is virile and handsome. The guy just looks like a president—hardly a negligible consideration. The abiding uncertainty is how his Mormonism will play. Much depends on whether it is seen as irrelevant, as an interesting quirk, or—worst case—as something that will scare off both red-state fundamentalists (who have sometimes seen Mormonism as non-Christian) and blue-state secularists.How did a Mormon become governor of a state where Roman Catholics are by far the largest religious group? And how did a now avowed conservative rise to power in a place where, in the words of Massachusetts’s Democratic Party chairman, Phil Johnston, George Bush is “the Devil”? What, in short, is Mitt Romney’s secret?
The answer is not simple. But I can tell you that, frankly, it begins with those presidential looks. Standing over six feet, graying neatly at his temples, with a sharply cut jaw and the whitest teeth I’ve ever seen, he looks in certain lights like the actor Ted Danson (most famous for playing Sam Malone on Cheers), only handsomer and more wholesome, and with real hair. In other lights he resembles the gray-templed comic-book superhero Reed Richards (a.k.a. “Mr. Fantastic,” of the Fantastic Four), whose superpower is the ability to stretch himself across great distances and into impossible positions. But his appeal also comes from the natural ease and warmth that one feels in the vicinity of a man who unselfconsciously uses words like “neat” and “gosh” and “wow,” as if everyone spoke that way. “Wow,” he said when I piled a bunch of biographies of his dad onto his desk in the Massachusetts statehouse one day. “My goodness! It’s been a long time.” A speech of his in New Hampshire in June was laden with his typical expletives. “Gosh … what a great group,” he said when introduced. “Boy, you are so great.” And, about an old lady who introduced him before a speech, “Ruthie is amazing.”
July 30th, 2005 at 6:52 pm
I read the article, Gurl, and I agree that it is very good. Questions like those about the garments WILL be asked, and geting them out of the way early, and in a manner which flatters the Governor, are a bonus.
I honestly think that the punditocracy is overestimating the hostility of evangelicals to Mormons. What they want is a moral PERSON, and Romney is that.
Don’t forget, Gore was the Baptist, and Bush is a Methodist. The person is bigger than the denomination.