Mormons and Mitt in Time

Just wanted to put down some thoughts on a couple of articles in the May 21, 2007 issue of Time magazine. Now the cover story is on Mitt Romney and his quest for the presidency. A compare and contrast is presented between Mitt and his father George, a fellow businessman and Republican Governor of a Democratic leaning state (in seniors case Michigan). George Romney was the early front runner for the 1968 Republican nomination, but he was 'dethroned' as it were, but some poorly worded comments on Vietnam, and his refusal to toe the line of the newly emerging conservative base. Mitt on the other hand is known as much for his 'flip-flopping' on the issues, as for the fact that he is a Latter-day Saint. Non-the-less I still think Willard Mitt Romney comes across as an extremely capable, and more then nice enough man. However I'm bothered by the seeming expediency and pandering of his position changes over the last few years. Yes there are fine hair arguments to justify those shifts and say that the ex-Governor of Massachusetts didn't change the essence of his internal points of view, but I find that argumentation wanting.

The article that really peaked my curiosity though, immediately followed the Romney feature, and asked the question of 'is it simply bigoted to say you won't vote for someone based on his religion?' My short answer to this would be to say yes, however I think questions of the way a candidate might apply his faith to governing could be legitimate. For example, you don't hear a lot of people complaining about Harry Reid taking orders from Salt Lake City, or Ted Kennedy or John Kerry taking them from the Vatican. I doubt a president Romney would take say, Iraq War policy talking points that originate from the Church Administrative Block, because there are none. There is little in official LDS social policy that is not already part of the base Republican view points on those issues (i.e. pro-life, anti gay-marriage), so I don't see anymore of a conflict there then exists with say Huckabee and Brownbeck. Anyway, when a member of one of the countries largest church's, that has been around for nearly one hundred and eighty years, and already has numerous members in positions of governmental power, decides to run for the oval office, I don't see how it should raise much concern be he Latter-day Saint or Cumberland Presbyterian.

Finally, why do major news magazines have such a hard time when it comes to captioning the pictures in articles about the LDS Church? For example a couple of years ago U.S. News used a picture of Joseph F. Smith from the 1910's, and identified it as the Joseph Smith that died in the 1840's. In this issue of Time we get the following caption for a picture of a General Conference session in the Salt Lake Tabernacle: "Mormons attend their annual conference in their largest church, the Salt Lake Temple, above." Well where do I begin to point out where they got that one wrong? I'm hopping that the person who writes the captions is not the same as the person who writes the articles, or else I'll be real concerned about there accuracy (which is usually not much of a problem with the actual texts of the associated pieces). The caption quoted should probably read something like this: "LDS Church members attend a session of their semi-annual conference in the Salt Lake Tabernacle." You could even add the word "historic" if you really felt the need. I'm thinking about writing a letter to Time's editor about this.