Mitt Romney

According to some Mormon traditions, God and Jesus have made babies—God with the Heavenly Mother, and Jesus with one of his wives.

Long before Sarah Palin met CPAC and the Duck Dynasty clan discovered A&E, George Gallup Jr. famously declared 1976 the “Year of the Evangelical.” Subsequent commentators often pluralized “evangelical.” They might have done the same for “year,” too. In many years hence—1980, say, or 2004—it was 1976 all over again, to judge from the headlines. Those election years highlighted the Christian Right, a force that was not on Gallup’s radar screen back when Jimmy Carter was the prototypical evangelical in public life. 

The years of the evangelicals were not only about campaign politics, however. 

The presidential campaign has been an exhausting marathon. Yet it's hardly touched on some major issues facing the nation.

Kudos to Mitt Romney for suggesting a concrete and sensible income-tax reform: capping deductions at $17,000.

Now, it's not clear whether he means tax liability or taxable income. As Dylan Matthews explains, that's the difference between a highly progressive (in the technical sense, not the euphemism-for-liberal sense) proposal and one that would affect a lot of middle-class households.

The question isn't who gives more and who receives more at a given moment. It's whether the use of tax dollars serves the common good.

I don't get that excited about the perennial calls for civility in politics. Treating others with respect is important, and I certainly have no problem with political discourse that's even friendly and good-humored. But it's not clear that the latter serves any purpose beyond itself—that it builds understanding or encourages useful moderation or enables compromise. Chatting may be generally preferable to yelling, but it's not really a solution to division and gridlock.

I do, however, appreciate timely reminders that our neighbors include those we disagree with.

Romney's faith, like Obama's, is distinctly American yet often misunderstood. And campaigns are rarely an occasion to increase understanding.

"Between now and Election Day," writes Peter Beinart, "anti-Mormonism is going to be the Democratic Party’s constant temptation for one simple reason: there are votes in it." I'm not sure I'd call it the party's "constant temptation," but Beinart is certainly right that bigotry against Mormons remains a politically potent force in the U.S., and that the Democrats aren't above exploiting it.

But is Beinart right that the Democrats have a bigger religious bigotry problem here than the Republicans do?

So it turns out that the president and first lady's tax burden for last year was only 20.5 percent. Does this make Obama a hypocrite for criticizing Mitt Romney's low tax rate?

Only if he blames Romney personally for not voluntarily paying more. As I said in Romney's defense a while back, the problem isn't that presidential candidates with plenty of money aren't willing to pay their taxes. The problem is that their taxes are too low.

John F. Kennedy's famous
Houston speech on church and state during
the 1960 presidential campaign elicited Rick Santorum's after-the-fact disgust. Though Santorum
misrepresents the speech in some ways--Kennedy didn't say anything about
limiting religious institutions and leaders from speaking on public issues--he
is right to find the speech theologically lame.

I don't have much to add about Mitt Romney's assertion
that he doesn't need to worry about the very poor on account of the
safety net he aims to dismantle and the Democrats he aims to unseat.
Except that you really should read Gail Collins.

It's not what the headlines are highlighting, but Mitt Romney's 2010 tax return
includes one impressive fact: his charitable contributions amounted to
$7 million. I know, this hardly put him at risk of losing one of his houses
and ending up out on the street till his driver could pick him up and
take him to one of his other houses. Still, giving away almost a third
of your income is nothing to sneeze at.

Mormons are in the familiar situation of being on the
defensive theologically and politically. But they are also
in terra incognita: they are viewed as
leading the way in preserving family values.