Peggy Noonan on The Question
Just yesterday Peggy Noonan weighed in on The Question. I think she is pitch-perfect. Some excerpts:
[W]e have come to an odd pass regarding candidates and their faith. It’s not as if faith is unimportant, it’s always important. But we are asking our political figures–mere flawed politicians–to put forward and talk about their faith to a degree that has become odd. We push them against the wall and do a kind of theological frisk on them. We didn’t use to.
. . .
No one cared, really, that Richard Nixon was a Quaker. They may have been confused by it, but they weren’t upset. His vice president, Spiro Agnew, was not Greek Orthodox but Episcopalian. Nobody much noticed. Nelson Rockefeller of New York was not an Episcopalian but a Baptist. Do you know what Lyndon Johnson’s religion was? He was a member of the Disciples of Christ, but in what appeared to be the same way he was a member of the American Legion: You’re in politics, you join things. Hubert Humphrey was born Lutheran, attended Methodist churches, and was rumored to be a Congregationalist. This didn’t quite reach the level of mystery because nobody quite cared.
. . .
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.
Read the whole thing.
Posted in Candidate Qualifications, Electability, Political Strategy, Religious Bigotry | 1 Comment » | 
Print this post
| 
Email This Post
madison on 24 Nov 2007 at 3:41 pm #
“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.” Ummm … so does that mean that you agree that Mitt Romney should stop going to evangelical churches and telling people that Jesus is his savior? Or does it mean that you just want Mike Huckabee to drop out of the race so Romney can get back to his craven dishonest pandering for evangelical voters without having to worry about competing with a guy who is better at it because he used to do it for a living?