Mitt Romney: The Anti-JFK?

Is Mitt Romney the anti-JFK? This is what David Sarasohn of The Oregonian (Portland, OR) thinks. He writes in his article, "Romney's anti-JFK speech," that Romney's recent speech actually is the antithesis of what JFK was aiming for in his own historic speech: to convince voters to choose him in spite of his Catholicism (a faith that is still suspect today; just ask John Kerry) since his faith was private, not public. Rather, Romney argues that voters should choose him because of the religious views he would bring to the presidency.

Whence cometh the current obsession with religion on the part of the presidential candidates? The "values voters" of 2004 probably have a lot to do with it. The Democrats running this time are much more conversant with mainstream evangelical Christianity than the Democratic front runners of 2004.

Reading Romney's speech, it eventually becomes clear what is missing from it: any mention of the possibility of Americans who have no religion. The America portrayed in his speech is 100% theist and overwhelmingly Christian. In his America, there seems to be simply no room for unbelievers or doubters of any stripe. The only mention of unbelief is in the passage in which he denigrates Europeans as "too 'enlightened'" to pray. Surprisingly, at least here he seems to recognize that it is the establishment, not the absence, of state-supported religion that inevitably diminishes the religious vibrancy of a nation.

There is one statement Romney makes with which I fully agree: "We face no greater danger today than theocratic tyranny..." However, it is not just from the radical Islamists that Romney mentions. This danger comes from radical Christianists as well.