Jack and Mitt

BD has a lengthy post comparing Jack Kennedy’s September 1960 speech defending his candidacy against anti-Catholicism, and Mitt Romney’s speech yesterday which was touted to do the same about his Mormonism.

Reading the two full texts, some distinct difference come to light:

1. Mitt’s speech is a looooooot longer.  I’ve been reading The Gettysburg Gospel, and I’ve come to realize that a profoundly good speech tends to be a short one — hitting its theme, making its points, then getting out of the way before it gets into trouble or dilutes the message.  Mitt’s so busy hitting every Republican and Religous Right talking point about religion in America that his speech ends up sounding like a thousand others we’ve heard in the last couple of decades.
2. Kennedy made it clear he was the Democratic candidate for President, not the Catholic candidate.  Mitt makes it clear he’s not the Mormon candidate, but the Religious candidate.  While Jack allows, even in passing, for those of no faith (or no organized faith), Mitt hammers home that, by cracky, this is a nation of religious people.  Now, I don’t know how Jack would have reacted to the idea of an atheist or agnostic presidential candidate, but you can’t prove it one way or another from his speech.  Mitt, clearly, paints this as a government of the religious, by the religious, for the religious.  Kennedy might have been nervous about Godless Communists, but he firmly stands on the Constitution.  Mitt, who talks a lot more about golden-hazed tradition than the Constitution, stands, I suspect, with the man who introduced him,  who famously suggested that atheists aren’t real citizens.
3. That segues into another major difference — Jack drew a sharp line between church and state.  Mitt, instead, conflates them, making the Founding Fathers old-time religious types, and mixing 18th Century Deism with 1950s “In God We Trust.”  Jack was arguing his religion should make no difference.  Mitt was arguing that his religion does make a difference, in the war against (ooooooh!) secularism.
4. Jack Kennedy declined to talk about his religion, or his religious beliefs, aside from acknowledging his Catholicism.  He spoke of his civic beliefs, instead.  Mitt Romney talked at length about his theology, about what he thinks about Jesus, etc.  Rather than standing on principle and telling the electorate to look at his record, not where he goes on Sunday mornings, Mitt panders to the religious to say, “Hey, we’re all in this together against those secularists and jihadis, right?”

I’ve read Jack Kennedy, and you, Mitt, are no Jack Kennedy.

If nothing else, thanks, BD, for pointing to the JFK speech — there are some excellent quotes to pull from it …