Mitt Romney\u2019s conflicts with the Kennedy family go back well before comparisons of his religious speech to John F. Kennedy\u2019s 1960 speech in Dallas, where he addressed a group of Baptists on the topic of church and state. In the early 1990s, when Romney challenged Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy for his Senate seat, the issue of religion came up. The Boston Globe ran a piece on November 14, 1993\u2014introducing Romney the politician to Massachusetts. His Mormon faith received only cursory attention within a larger biographical context. But as the Senate race heated up, Romney\u2019s faith received increasing notice, and the first of many comparisons to the senator\u2019s brother, John Fitzgerald, appeared in the press. In a May 22, 1994, Boston Globe article, John Aloysius Farrell discussed \u201cThe Mormon factor; Like JFK three decades ago, Mitt Romney has to overcome religious prejudice.\u201d Another story appeared in the Globe on the same day by Frank Phillips and Don Aucoin. <\/p>\n\n
The 1994 Senate race provided a window into some of the challenges Romney would face in the 2008 presidential campaign. Back then, the press was largely sympathetic to Romney\u2019s dilemma as a Mormon candidate in a politically liberal state\u2014reporters cast him as part of a religious minority and took exception to some of the blistering remarks by Ted Kennedy\u2019s campaign surrogates and tactics that painted him as a zealous adherent of a nefarious sect. Yet it was the press that, even while defending Romney, were reminding voters of an aspect of Romney\u2019s personal life he may have wished would stay relegated to offstage.
\u00a0
In the lead-up to Romney\u2019s formal announcement for president, the press was already vetting him. Just one month after the Globe reported that Romney had acknowledged he was thinking about running for president, an article appeared in the same paper on July 21, 2005, entitled \u201cAre we ready for a Mormon president?\u201d Like much of the coverage from the 1994 race, the article defended Romney and critiqued attacks by liberals on the controversial or \u201cexotic\u201d elements of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. <\/p>\n\n
On February 13, 2007, when he entered the race, a spate of stories addressed the issue of his faith head-on. USA Today ran a page-one story that day entitled \u201cWill Mormon faith hurt bid for White House? Mitt Romney says his religion isn\u2019t a factor, but some voters say it is.\u201d However on the day after his announcement, a number of major national and regional papers ran stories focusing more on the challenge Romney would face in convincing the party faithful of his conservative credentials than of the orthodoxy of the LDS church, although almost all dealt with the latter subject, framing it as more an obstacle than a boon to his candidacy. On February 14, 2007, Dallas Morning News columnist Carl Leubsdorf asked \u201cCan Romney win? About-face on social issues may be his biggest hurdle.\u201d On the same day, The Star Ledger (Newark, NJ) ran a story about his announcement that only once briefly mentioned his Mormon faith and did not even address the challenge his faith would pose to voters. If there was any heavy scrutiny toward Romney\u2019s religion on the day after he announced, it was more likely to be found in the pages of the international press than domestic (one notable exception being The New York Daily News, whose headline read \u201cRomney Sez: Make Me 1st Mormon Prez\u201d). <\/p>\n\n
In choosing the Dearborn, MI, location for his announcement speech, flanked by his spouse and children, and in framing his candidacy as an entrepreneur seeking to change Washington politics, Romney was able to stave off the questions about his faith for the moment. But on February 15, 2007, the editorial pages began to sound off: Los Angeles Times writer Zev Chafets denounced anyone who would attack Romney on the basis of his religion: \u201cHis opponents need to make that case, however, without relying on spurious charges of bigotry by association or ugly whispers about his religious affiliation. That sort of thing was supposed to have been settled by the election of John F. Kennedy back in 1960.\u201d <\/p>\n\n
Robert Novak, while not the first journalist to discuss a Romney speech on faith akin to JFK\u2019s 1960 address, did argue that it was wise for Romney to avoid such an address in a Chicago Sun-Times editorial on April 27, 2006: \u201cRomney wisely has no intention of lecturing America on Mormon theology. Rather, he cites the 1838 speech in Springfield, Ill., by the young Abraham Lincoln, in which he said, \u201cLet reverence for the laws . . . become the political religion of the nation.\u201d In other words, religion should not make that much difference in America.\u201d But Novak, in a prescient if ominous prediction, warned that Romney would be forced to give just such a speech down the road: \u201cThe intense reaction Romney will meet almost surely will require a stronger response than he now envisions. He has supporters who believe that he must go before the public and declare that the imposition of a religious test on U.S. politics is unfair, unreasonable and un-American.\u201d <\/p>\n\n
Days later (May 3, 2006), the Boston Herald printed a page-two article on a story first picked up by US News & World Report, \u201cMormon Mitt must faith facts; Eyes JFK-style speech on his religious beliefs.\u201d In it, while not directly quoting Romney as saying he would have to give a speech, the story implies that on May 2\u2014he made just such a statement. The US News article appeared in the May 8 edition, but was printed earlier and actually broke the story. Its author made the link to Kennedy in a not-so-subtle way: \u201cNow, 46 years later, Massachusetts has coughed up another presidential hopeful who belongs to what some see as a weird religion\u2014the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And the candidate, Republican Gov. Mitt Romney, plans to copy, almost exactly, JFK\u2019s winning approach.\u201d Both the Sun-Times and the US News & World Report stories appeared within days of each other, and were the first papers to report on a possible Kennedy-esque speech on religion. The Orlando Sentinel also picked up the story the next day, May 4.<\/p>\n\n
Increasingly, the press began to speculate about Romney giving a Kennedy-style speech. The speculation was coupled with reports of Romney\u2019s meetings with key evangelical representatives and other efforts to appease a critical group that could be skeptical of a Mormon in the White House (The Christian Science Monitor, January 22, 2007, The New York Times, February 8, 2007 and the Arizona Republic, February 28, 2007). The Christian Science Monitor\u2019s January 22 edition asserted in an editorial that \u201cJust as John Kennedy had to allay public fears of his relationship to the Roman Catholic Church, so Romney is being encouraged to give a speech about his relationship with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.\u201d A tough analogy for any candidate to live up to, Kennedy\u2019s 1960 speech had been held up as the gold standard\u2014a brilliant piece of presidential campaigning that would be hard for anyone to eclipse. But clearly, by this time, the pressure was on for Romney to address the nation in a similar fashion.<\/p>\n\n
\u00a0By July, papers were quoting Romney directly on the possibility of such a speech. \u201cI have thought about that,\u201d Romney told the Associated Press on Thursday, July 26, 2007. \u201cI haven\u2019t made a final decision, but it\u2019s probably more likely than not.\u201d But over time, the media would report more frequently that \u201cadvisers\u201d and \u201cobservers\u201d were making the case that he should give such a speech. The Philadelphia Daily News editorialized that \u201cstrategists have reached for the obvious analogy. Romney, they say, should make a speech confronting the questions about his religion like the one Kennedy made to Baptist ministers in Houston soon after he won the Democratic nomination.\u201d The same piece was one of the first to speculate on the crucial differences, though, between Kennedy\u2019s speech and what Romney\u2019s might look like: \u201cIf they (Romney\u2019s advisers) were to read that speech again, they might reconsider. Kennedy arranged his talk around the rhetorical device of \u201cthe America I believe in,\u201d but his America is substantially different from the one that Mitt Romney and his would-be constituency has been working to establish.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Finally, after months of speculation and little direct confirmation by either Romney or his campaign, a story broke in The Boston Globe (February 27, 2007) after the paper obtained a 77-slide PowerPoint presentation prepared by his strategists. The presentation addressed how Romney\u2019s Mormon faith could pose a problem for the campaign: \u201cIt (the presentation) also suggests Romney might soon need to address the issue head-on, perhaps as John F. Kennedy did in a 1960 speech amid concerns about his relationship to the Catholic Church\u201d reported the Globe. The slideshow was dated from December 11, 2006. The Houston Chronicle picked up the story the following day, also mentioning the potential site for a potential speech, as did the Hartford Courant the following week, on March 4, 2007. <\/p>\n\n
On October 4, 2007, evangelical leader James Dobson announced that he, along with a group of other prominent evangelicals, may resort to supporting a minor third-party candidate if the GOP failed to nominate one conservative enough. The Boston Globe, in a front-page article the following day, quoted Richard Land, who said he\u2019d advised Romney in 2006 to give a JFK-style speech. \u201cLand said he told Romney: \u201cYou can close that deal. You need to do what John Kennedy did, you need to defend the right to run.\u201d\u201d<\/p>\n\n
The calls for Romney to deliver a speech started to snowball, to the point where, in the following week, The Boston Globe reported on a National Journal survey of prominent Republicans, 59% of whom agreed that Romney should give a speech addressing his faith. By early November, the Los Angeles Times was reporting that \u201cRomney has mused about making such a speech, and most analysts expect him to do so at some point.\u201d Even so, Romney himself had meant it when he said he wasn\u2019t decided on what to do. On Nov. 11, 2007, Newsday quoted Romney as saying \u201cThe political advisers tell me no, no, no\u2014it\u2019s not a good idea. It draws too much attention to that issue alone.\u201d Back and forth it went, though, and like many other editorials, the Dallas Morning News on November 30, 2007 declared that it was \u201cTime to Channel JFK: Romney would be wise to give speech on his faith.\u201d Three days later, The Washington Post reported that the Romney campaign had officially decided he would give a speech entitled \u201cFaith in America.\u201d The article was a brief piece of straight reporting, appearing on Page 4. There were a number of news reports on December 3, 2008, about the Romney\u2019s decision. From the statement prepared by his campaign, the speech would be framed as a defense of religious and civil liberty. <\/p>\n\n
\u201cThis speech is an opportunity for Governor Romney to share his views on religious liberty, the grand tradition religious tolerance has played in the progress of our nation and how the governor’s own faith would inform his Presidency if he were elected,\u201d according to the statement. \u201cGovernor Romney understands that faith is an important issue to many Americans, and he personally feels this moment is the right moment for him to share his views with the nation,\u201d read the statement. <\/p>\n\n
But regardless of how the campaign tried to frame the speech, the press already had their story, even before it was delivered. On December 4, 2007, The Globe ran a piece entitled \u201cJFK\u2019s words were a turning point,\u201d that analyzed\u2014from hindsight\u2014the ways in which this was true, and applied the Kennedy principle to Romney.<\/p>\n\n
By and large, the media viewed Romney\u2019s timing as a response to his competitor Mike Huckabee\u2019s rise in the polls, and the challenge he would face among evangelical voters in the upcoming Iowa caucuses. The Tampa Tribune on December 5, 2007, attributed the speech timing to Huckabee\u2019s recent appeal among conservative voters. The Grand Rapids Press on December 3, 2007, did too: \u201cThe decision, made after months of debate at his Boston headquarters over whether to make a public address about his religion, comes as the former Massachusetts governor\u2019s bid is threatened in Iowa by underdog Mike Huckabee. The ex-governor of Arkansas and one-time Southern Baptist minister has rallied influential Christian conservatives to erase Romney\u2019s months-long lead and turn the race into a deadheat.\u201d A poll released in The Des Moines Register also on the 3rd showed Huckabee surpassing Romney for the first time, and on the eve of the Iowa caucuses.<\/p>\n\n
Some of the first news reporting following Romney\u2019s December 6 speech was deeply sympathetic: \u201cIt\u2019s hard not to be impressed with the speech former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney gave Thursday on faith and religion,\u201d reported USA Today on December 7, 2007. Marc Caputo of the Miami Herald praised the speech in an analysis on the same day, \u201cIf giving the speech were like singing in a choir, then Romney hit all the right notes.\u201d A few other outlets, including the New York Post (\u201cFailed Bid to put the Religion Issue to Rest\u201d) were not as kind. In the weeks that followed, some papers\u2014especially in their op-ed pages\u2014used the Kennedy comparison to critique Romney (see Maureen Dowd\u2019s New York Times column, \u201cMitt\u2019s no JFK\u201d, from December 9, 2007).<\/p>\n\n
While there was no consensus among the media on what Romney\u2019s speech accomplished, in general, more questions were raised than were put to rest. On January 3, 2008, Huckabee won soundly in Iowa, a surprising victory that marked the beginning of the end for Romney, who exited the race in February. For Democrats, though, Iowa had its share of surprises as well, with Obama demonstrating that he was a strong competitor for the nomination even then. <\/p>\n\n
As if to hand off the baton, a January 9, 2008 editorial in the New York Times entitled \u201cA Tale of Two Speeches,\u201d compared Obama\u2019s post-Iowa victory speech with Romney\u2019s speech in Texas the month before. \u201cObama\u2019s, which (referenced race), was a success, while Romney\u2019s was decidedly not,\u201d wrote Tim Rutten. Within a few months, the attention would be placed on Obama again, also for a speech\u2014one that would draw more attention to his faith, race and ethnicity than had occurred in the campaign to date. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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