‘Meet the Press’ transcript for Dec. 16, 2007

MR. RUSSERT:  I want to ask you about an interview you had with Sam Stone--Sunstone magazine.  Here's it on the cover.  It's a Mormon-based magazine.  This is from November of '05, and it says, quote, "Romney sought advice from the man he admires most in this world, Mormon President Gordon Bitner Hinckley.  The conversation eventually turned to whether a run for the presidency would be good for him and the church.  The specifics of the conversation are, of course, known only to people who were there."

Should voters be concerned that you were seeking input from the leader of the Mormon church as to whether or not you should run for president?

GOV. ROMNEY:  Well, the decision about running for president was one that I made entirely by myself, and I got a lot of advice from a lot of people, some solicited, some not solicited, as you might imagine.  And the decision was made by my sons and daughters-in-law and my wife and myself in December of last year.  And I got, I got the kind of support that, that I guess a lot of folks would hope that they'd get from their family, each of them recognizing that there was a downside for them personally and potentially for me, but that these are such critical times in our nation's history with the threat of radical jihad, the, the new competitive threat that we face from China and, at the same time, our domestic problems--overspending, overuse of oil, failure in our schools and so forth--that it was time for someone that had experience outside government to finally take the reins in Washington to get us on the right track.  But I'm, I'm happy to get as much advice as I can from as many people as I can.

But I, I also pointed out in my address, as you know, in, in College Station that, that I would accept no guidance or, or input of an inappropriate nature from anyone in any religion.  The, the leaders of a faith have their responsibility and authority in the sphere of their faith, but in the sphere of public, of the public domain, they have, they have no authority.

MR. RUSSERT:  So if President Hinckley told you it would not be in the best interest, in his judgment, for you to run for president, you would still run if you'd made that decision?

GOV. ROMNEY:  I would have listened to a lot of people on a lot of topics, but the decision was mine, and the nature of my faith is not to have church officials tell you what to do.  I believe very firmly in the principle of, of free agency, people making their own decisions and doing what they think is right.

MR. RUSSERT:  Did he encourage you?

GOV. ROMNEY:  He didn't offer any advice on, on, on a run for office whatsoever.

MR. RUSSERT:  Let me ask you about one of your supporters, a Dr. Bob Jones III.

GOV. ROMNEY:  Mm-hmm.

MR. RUSSERT:  ...an evangelical leader, and this is what he said about your faith.  He said it was a "cult," an "erroneous religion." How can you accept the support of someone who would trash your faith in that way?

GOV. ROMNEY:  Well, you know, religions are in a competitive battle.  They're competing for souls and adherence.  And the good news is that Bob Jones may not agree with my faith--and obviously he does not--but he does believe that I'm the right person to be president of the United States, and that's because he believes that a person of faith should lead the nation, an individual who's pro-life, who's adamantly in favor of traditional marriage, an individual who has the skills and background to get America back on track internationally and domestically.  So we have, we have very common ground when it talks--when, when we talk about what's needed for the country.  I mean, I think he and I would agree that our church needs pastors, but, but the, the White House needs a president.  And he backs me as a president, not as a pastor.  And I'm not running for pastor in chief, I'm running for president of the United States. And I believe, and he believes that my values, my experience through the private sector at the Olympics and then in government, as well as my vision for America is right for America.  So I'm delighted to have his support and some say when all this is over, we'll probably talk about religion, too.

MR. RUSSERT:  He went on.  He said this:  "I'd be very concerned if he tried to make it appear in any" way--in any "of this statements that Mormonism is a Christian denomination of some sort.  It isn't.  There's a theological gulf that can't be bridged." He's saying cult.  He's saying erroneous religion. He's saying you're not a Christian.  How can you accept the support of someone who's so dismissive of a faith that you treasure?

GOV. ROMNEY:  Well, people have differing views about faith, as you understand, and, of course, as I indicated there are, there are competing faiths in this nation.  But the, the great thing, of course, is that our values are the same.  We have Christians and Jews for instance.  They don't have the same faith, but we certainly have the same Judeo-Christian foundation, and it's those common values that allow us to select people regardless of their faith for, for positions of secular leadership.

MR. RUSSERT:  But you wouldn't call Judaism a cult or erroneous religion, would you?

GOV. ROMNEY:  Well it's--I certainly wouldn't.  But each of us has their own approach to how we're going to describe other people's faiths.  At the same time, I, I think you recognize that to, to someone like Dr. Jones, the, the term Christian means something different than it does to other people.  To some folks the term Christian refers to a certain group of evangelical faiths that adhere to the Nicene Creed and so forth.  And if that's the definition of, of Christian that they have, why, that's their right to define it that way.  There are others who say, "No, if you believe as I do, that Jesus Christ is the son of God, that that makes one Christian." And so people have different definitions, but in, in the realm of religion, which is separate in this sense, in the, in the realm of doctrines and differences and histories between churches, that's very separate that the--than the affairs of state.

But fortunately, in the affairs of state, values, values that come from our religious foundation, values that come from our common belief that we are descendants or children of God, that we are brothers and sisters, that we have responsibility for one another, that liberty is a gift of the divine, those values are common throughout this great land.  And, of course, the great experiment of America initially was to bring people here for religious liberty.  They got here and began to be just as intolerant here as they'd been at home.  But the brilliance of what happened at Philadelphia was that the founders recognized that we could be a land which welcomed the diversity of faiths and we could therefore promote people in business, in, in secular life, not based upon what they believed, or even based upon the color of their skin--ultimately it took us a while to figure that one out--or their gender or their sexual orientation, we would promote people in our society based on their ability and that has made all the difference in the world.  We lead the world because of that, that power and greatness associated with that recognition.

MR. RUSSERT:  You, you raise the issue of color of skin.  In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court, Brown vs.  Board of Education, desegregated all our public schools.  In 1964 civil rights laws giving full equality to black Americans. And yet it wasn't till 1978 that the Mormon church decided to allow blacks to participate fully.  Here was the headlines in the papers in June of '78. "Mormon Church Dissolves Black Bias.  Citing new revelation from God, the president of the Mormon Church decreed for the first time black males could fully participate in church rites." You were 31 years old, and your church was excluding blacks from full participation.  Didn't you think, "What am I doing part of an organization that is viewed by many as a racist organization?"

GOV. ROMNEY:  I'm very proud of my faith, and it's the faith of my fathers, and I certainly believe that it is a, a faith--well, it's true and I love my faith.  And I'm not going to distance myself in any way from my faith.  But you can see what I believed and what my family believed by looking at, at our lives.  My dad marched with Martin Luther King.  My mm was a tireless crusader for civil rights.  You may recall that my dad walked out of the Republican convention in 1964 in San Francisco in part because Barry Goldwater, in his speech, gave my dad the impression that he was someone who was going to be weak on civil rights.  So my dad's reputation, my mom's and my own has always been one of reaching out to people and not discriminating based upon race or anything else.  And so those are my fundamental core beliefs, and I was anxious to see a change in, in my church.

I can remember when, when I heard about the change being made.  I was driving home from, I think, it was law school, but I was driving home, going through the Fresh Pond rotary in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  I heard it on the radio, and I pulled over and, and literally wept.  Even at this day it's emotional, and so it's very deep and fundamental in my, in my life and my most core beliefs that all people are children of God.  My faith has always told me that.  My faith has also always told me that, in the eyes of God, every individual was, was merited the, the fullest degree of happiness in the hereafter, and I, and I had no question in my mind that African-Americans and, and blacks generally, would have every right and every benefit in the hereafter that anyone else had and that God is no respecter of persons.

MR. RUSSERT:  But it was wrong for your faith to exclude it for as long as it did.

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