MTP Transcript for Feb. 25, 2007

MS. GOODWIN: Well, in both cases it seems there are people who are worried. Four out of 10 claim in a poll about Romney that they’re worried that somehow the Mormon church will be controlling his actions, just as they were sure that John Kennedy was building a tunnel to Rome to have the Vatican control him. John Kennedy knew he had to take it head on, and he did it twice. I mean, West Virginia, originally, before the primaries, he was way ahead, 70 to 30. And then a few months later, after he got more publicity, they went down, and he had flipped with Humphrey, he was 30-70. He said, “What happened?” “Well, they didn’t realize you were a Catholic before this all began.” So he decided, he said right then, “I can’t believe that my country would deny me the right to be president from the day I was baptized.” But then it still didn’t go away, even though he won West Virginia, so he gave a speech in Houston to the ministers, which some people are urging Romney to do as well, to make a major speech in which he said, you know, “I will not speak for my church. My church will not speak for me. And if the finger of suspicion is pointed toward Catholics, some day it may be towards Baptists, some day towards Quakers,” or he may have said some day toward Mormons. So it may be that Mr. Romney’s going to have to deal with this issue head on, because it does seem like there’s a subterranean concern out there, not knowing much about Mormonism, and fearing he might be controlled by some hierarchy.

MR. RUSSERT: Let’s go back to September of 1960 when President Kennedy—then Senator Kennedy—went to Houston, said, “I’m not a Catholic candidate for president. I’m the Democratic candidate for president who happens to be Catholic.” And he also went on to say this, let’s listen:

(Videotape, September 12, 1960)

FMR. PRES. JOHN F. KENNEDY: I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic zealot would tell the president, should he be Catholic, how to act and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote.

Whatever issue may come before me as president, if I should be elected, on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling, or any other subject, I will make my decision in accordance with these views, in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be in the national interest. And without regard to outside religious pressure or dictates.

(End of videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: Dan Balz, clearly saying to the country, “I may be a Catholic, but the Catholic Church is not going to govern the country.”

MR. BALZ: And Mitt Romney is basically saying the same thing, as a candidate who happens to be a Mormon. What’s interesting about this is this was never an issue when his father was running for president. This is really become an issue now in part because of the rise of evangelical Christians as a potent force inside the Republican Party. I don’t think this is so much a general election issue for Governor Romney as it is on the issue of can he get through the Republican primaries. There was one recent poll that said the 45 percent of white evangelical Christians view the Mormon religion unfavorably. That’s an unfortunate situation for Governor Romney, and I think he’s trying to address it forthrightly. And we will see, as we go forward, whether people are willing to accept the idea that he is a man of faith, that he believes in Christian values, and that people will respect him for that. But there is, there is, A, a lot of, if you will, ignorance about the Mormon religion in this country. Most people will say they no very little about it. They know only a little bit more about Mormon religion than they do about Islam. And there is suspicion about it, particularly among evangelicals. So, in a place like South Carolina, a state that could be a crucial Republican primary, this could be an issue for Governor Romney.

MR. RUSSERT: Byron York, the one thing that Governor Romney has done, however, is talked about his positions on abortion, on gay rights, on stem cell research, and his positions have evolved on all of those.

MS. GOODWIN: “Evolved” is a nice word.

MR. RUSSERT: Doesn’t that complicate his problem? You heard Senator Kennedy talking about divorce and birth control.

MR. YORK: Right.

MR. RUSSERT: He wasn’t changing positions on those issues, but Governor Romney is now embracing positions much more consistent with the evangelical right than he did when he was governor of Massachusetts.

MR. YORK: Oh, yeah. We, we may not know the effect of the Mormon thing until Election Day, but what is hurting him right now is the social issue stuff. And voters are getting kind of the full position or a full picture of what his positions were in Massachusetts, not only that, in his debate with Teddy Kennedy in 1994 for the Senate where he talked about protecting a woman’s right to choose, but in 2002, when he ran for governor of Massachusetts, he made it very clear that his position, at least officially, was strongly pro-choice. I talked to the director of Massachusetts Planned Parenthood, who did an interview with him in that. He filled out a questionnaire for them. He was very strongly pro-choice. So now he says that, that he had a change of heart in late 2004, and that—over the stem cell issue, and that he came to believe that, that this was how far we had gone away from the sanctity of life, and he changed his position. And he’s still got a long way to go to convince the people for whom abortion is a big issue that he’s genuine on this.

MR. RUSSERT: Maureen Dowd, what’s your sense of Governor Romney, his—the issue of being a Mormon and the issue of evolving positions on sensitive issues like abortion, stem cell research, gay rights?

MS. DOWD: Yes. I haven’t covered him yet, but I did grow up in a family—I mean, we held our breath for a whole year hoping that JFK would not get hurt by his affiliation with the Catholic Church. But since that time, W has sort of merged church and state, while trying to keep it apart in Iraq. So I’m fascinated to watch that race.

MR. RUSSERT: Doris Kearns Goodwin, how does a candidate go forward publicly and say, “This is how I now feel on issues like abortion, and gay rights, and stem cell research, and yes, it may differ from the way I used to feel, but I have changed my mind or I have grown, or I have had a...”

MS. GOODWIN: An epiphany? You know, I think it’s easier if you’re moving from a position that was less tolerant to one that’s more tolerant, as the country has like, for example, on gay rights. If you’ve been less tolerant before on civil rights, and yet the country’s moved forward, you can say, “Yes, I’ve learned and I feel better.” It’s harder if you move backwards. And what it seems with Mr. Romney, he was so strong on gay rights, and now he seems to be taking some of that away. And then the real problem becomes is it worth it to have to dance, as you do, almost a tango to win the primary and then worry about the general election. What’re you doing to your character? I mean, Adlai Stevenson once said the hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving you’re unworthy of winning. And I think all of them have to figure out how far are they going to go just to win this thing, and where is some consistency in their own character.

MR. RUSSERT: The issue of being a Mormon and polygamy, Governor Romney’s great-grandfather had five wives. But I thought Kate O’Beirne of the National Review handled that issue in an interesting way. Maureen Dowd, you’ll enjoy this. Kate O’Beirne wrote this: “Should Mitt Romney join a 2008 race that included John McCain, Rudy Giuliani [and] Newt Gingrich, ... the only guy in the GOP field with only one wife would be the Mormon.”

MS. DOWD: I know. I know. Yeah, Rudy’s the one with multiple marriage problems.

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