Why I Support Mitt Romney
Mitt Romney’s speech on religion last week was a missed opportunity. He took the occasion to posit some feel-good Universalist theology that, frankly, there’s no way he actually believes, when he could have turned it into a major advantage over every one of his opponents. His goal should not have been to convince the Christian Right that Mormonism is an acceptable religion, but rather to prove that he himself is a qualified and capable candidate to lead the country. And that task is, or could have been, much easier.
Firstly, we are not electing a religious leader. Even given the Christian Right’s agenda to legislate morality, how different could the legislative agendas of the Mormon Church and the wider Christian Right be? As great as the doctrinal chasm between Mormonism and Orthodoxy is, no difference between his position and the goals of the Christian Right can be attributed to his Mormonism. Of course, the Christian Right’s agenda is dubious at best anyway (I’m looking at you, Huckabee and supporters). Though Romney actually is in line rhetorically with a lot of it, the main thrust of his campaign is elsewhere - fiscal policy, for example.
But the Mormon issue is not necessarily a campaign detriment to be neutralized, as he has so far made it out to be. Mormonism is a demanding religion, requiring intense self-discipline. In everything. From wider personal moral conduct to little things like diet, every aspect of life is strictly self-controlled. Now compare to Giuliani, now on his third marriage, or Clinton, who was recently caught planting reporters in her press conferences. The thought of the words “Romney” and “scandal” in the same sentence is almost ludicrous, because people know him as a sober and self-controlled guy.
But enough about personal lifestyle. The real question is how this discipline translates into job performance. The answer, as it turns out, is stunningly well. As governor in Massachusetts, he reengineered the healthcare system from wasteful and incomplete to lean and complete. And he did it without incurring exorbitant deficits, all because he had the tenacity to look over the numbers and draw ambitious but realistic conclusions from them. As CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the 2002 Olympics, he took a $379 million revenue deficit and restructured the entire hierarchy to produce a $100 million profit. And as far as the nation has fallen into debt, we need now more than ever not only fiscal responsibility, but ambitious cost cutting and a massive waste-cutting government restructure if we are to reclaim for the long-term the value of the Dollar.
Fiscal responsibility isn’t the only effect of Mormon self-discipline. Foreign policy will benefit from his propensity towards impossibly ambitious yet always pragmatic approaches. Such competence could only serve to quell the vitriol increasingly coming from places like Europe and Asia (but don’t expect Venezuela to quiet down anytime soon regardless of what we do). In fact, there’s hardly a function that the President serves that wouldn’t benefit from a disciplined and phenomenally competent bearer.
I just hope that he can capitalize on that in time for Primaries.
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