A new low has already been struck with an exploitation of the religious issue with claims that some of Governor Mitt Romney’s Mormon ancestors had multiple wives.

Are Governor Romney’s ancestors going to be on the ballot? The fields are so crowded that I hadn’t noticed. The irony in all this, as someone has pointed out, is that Governor Romney seems to be one of the few politicians these days who has had only one wife.

The religious issue was supposed to have been put to rest back in 1960 when John F. Kennedy was elected as the first Catholic president. Actually, it wasn’t that big an issue in 1960, and some cynics said that the only one talking about it was JFK himself. ~Thomas Sowell

As I have said before, the AP story on Romney’s ancestors was a huge boon and benefit to Romney by making it clear how Mormonism has changed and how basically normal and conventional his family life is and has been.  People who don’t understand that really puzzle me.  The idea that a story that could only improve the public’s perception of Romney and his religion is a “low blow” or a “new low” is just bizarre.  Take note, journalists: only write scurrilous hit pieces that denigrate the candidate himself in especially lurid and gruesome ways, or else you will be accused of…writing scurrilous hit pieces.

It seems perverse to pretend that Kennedy’s Catholicism was not a problem that cost him votes.  People seem to forget that Kennedy prevailed in what was at that point the closest electoral victory in a presidential contest ever, and even then he probably only prevailed thanks to fraud.  It seems strange to argue that a Democrat could not have reasonably expected to do much better than Kennedy did.  In a country where roughly 50% of the population identified with the Democratic Party at that time and GOP party identification was at one of its lowest points at roughly 25%, Kennedy pulled a mere 49.7% of the vote.  The Democrats failed to carry Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana, all but one of which Truman had carried in 1948 with a similar percentage of the national vote.  Kennedy did not carry these states because of something to do with his candidacy.  Arguably it was not his Catholicism that did him in with voters in these states, but it seems odd to pretend that Kennedy did not underperform compared to the total Democratic/Dixiecrat/Progressive take of 54% in 1948.  Given that his Catholicism is one of the most plausible explanations for Kennedy’s performance, all this talk of how it didn’t really matter seems awfully like wishful thinking on the part of Republicans who are trying to pretend that Romney’s Mormonism will not be an issue.    

Surely I am not the only one who notices the strange incongruity of Republican whining about the “dirty tricks” of talking about Romney’s ancestors while Democrats talk up the frankly strange and partly foreign ancestry of Barack Obama as if it were itself a qualification for being President.  Just the other day in Selma Obama once again made his parentage and his biography his “in” with the civil rights leadership by tying (rather cleverly, as far as it goes) his parents’ marriage and, by extension, his birth to the civil rights movement.  This is identity politics at its most elemental, and Obama has been playing the game masterfully. 

Romney meanwhile has fumbled about throughout his career with references to his parents, talking about his mother’s Senate run in ’94 and ’02 (though he doesn’t talk about her Senate run anymore, you’ll notice!) and then reminiscing about his father at the Henry Ford Museum.  The museum was “full of cars and memories” of his father, while Romney was just full of it.  Then his supporters become indignant that anyone would bring up his polygamous ancestors, even though this provides a helpful contrast with Romney himself.  In the meantime, Obama quite freely and happily talks about his family background, even though his probably polygamous Muslim grandfather, his father’s multiple marriages, his parents’ divorce and his absentee father hardly qualify as the kind of family history that a candidate might be inclined to publicise.  Like Clinton, though, Obama has taken to making his biography into a political asset (Clinton sometimes did this by inventing the most egregious lies) by weaving it into a story of struggle and wrestling with his own identity, and in this way he tries to make the strangeness of his family background into a sort of virtue.  This works well with Americans, many of whom are obsessively genealogical, while the Romneyite horror at revelations about Romney’s family comes across as the reaction of people who find their candidate’s ancestry profoundly embarrassing and scandalous.  Take note: it is the Romney boosters, not his critics, who have been making the most out of this story. 

American voters may not know much, but they are not completely foolish.  What a man’s great-grandfather did or didn’t do is of no concern to them.  But if a candidate and his supporters seem unduly embarrassed by the man’s own ancestors, some folks will think he and his supporters are a bit odd.  Surely, of all Americans Mormons should be the most interested in telling about their family histories.  In viewing the telling of that history with such horror and offense, Romneyites give the impression that there is some reason why we should view this story about Romney’s ancestors as a slight against Romney, when instead they could try to turn it to his advantage.  

Both Obama and Romney have potential political liabilities because of their backgrounds.  The difference is that Obama knew his background could be a liability, so he got out in front of attempts to define him and worked to tell his own story.  Romney continues to operate on the optimistic, but probably false assumption that his Mormonism will be irrelevant.  He might be right, but everything we think we know about attitudes on this subject says otherwise.  The longer Romney avoids talking about his background, the greater the advantage his critics will have to paint him as we see fit.  To the extent that the Romneyites express dismay each time the subject comes up, they are hurting their candidate and helping those who want to shut him down.