Irony, Speechified

Mitt Romney's speech aimed at comforting Christians about his Mormonism hit most of the right notes.

It is comforting to know that

As Governor, I tried to do the right as best I knew it, serving the law and answering to the Constitution. I did not confuse the particular teachings of my church with the obligations of the office and of the Constitution – and of course, I would not do so as President. I will put no doctrine of any church above the plain duties of the office and the sovereign authority of the law.

Yet, within just a couple column inches, he contradicts himself:

There are some for whom these commitments are not enough. They would prefer it if I would simply distance myself from my religion, say that it is more a tradition than my personal conviction, or disavow one or another of its precepts. That I will not do.

How wonderful, to have it both ways. Just as with the Bible or the Quran, one would not have to search the Book of Mormon particularly carefully or long to find divine precepts that collide head on with the Constitution.

Then he raises the very real concern he either has not read, or has not understood, the very Constitution he swears to uphold:

There are some who would have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church's distinctive doctrines. To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution.

Memo to Mitt: the prohibition of which you speak is imposed upon the government, not voters. As Christopher Hitchens puts it:

... Romney makes himself absurd by saying that Mormons may not be asked about the tenets of their faith, lest this infringe the constitutional ban on a religious test for public office. Here is another failure of understanding on his part. He is not being told: Answer this question in the wrong way, and you become ineligible. He is being told: Your family is prominent in a notorious church that proselytizes its views in a famously aggressive manner. Are you only now deciding to make a secret of your beliefs? And if so, why? Would he expect a Scientologist to be able to avoid questions about L. Ron Hubbard?

Ultimately, though, Romney, by being just careful about what he did not say as he was about what he did, probably accomplished his goal. According to David Brooks:

It is not always easy to blend an argument for religious liberty with an argument for religious assertiveness, but Romney did it well. Yesterday, I called around to many of America’s serious religious thinkers — including moderates like Richard Bushman of Columbia, and conservatives like Neuhaus and Robert George of Princeton. Everyone I spoke with was enthusiastic about the speech, some of them wildly so.

We will ignore that, according to both Brooks and Romney, only the avowedly religious may be considered serious religious thinkers.

Here is where irony kicks in. As Harry has said, the only good Christian / Mormon / Muslim is a bad Christian / Mormon / Muslim.

Mitt Romney is a bad Mormon: if there is a uniquely Mormon precept he will not toss onto the scrap heap in the quest of electoral favor, he has kept it to himself. Just so with every other candidate.

I doubt there is a non-theist whose concern about Romney's Mormonism rises above the comatose: what is the likelihood of sectarian nonsense from someone belonging to something like two percent of the confessional market? He has no need to mollify those who are the greatest skeptics, somehow without being religious thinkers.

Instead, his ecumenical spackle was directed at his fellow theists, primary among them those that tread the fine line between goodbad and badgood Christianity.

Theists are their own worst enemies.

Unless they are Good Theists, that is.