Mitt Romney is no Jack Kennedy

We know that informal qualifications for presidential electablity are more imporant than the formal qualifications that all of the candidates on both sides of the horse race have. And though we have a "Separation of Church and State" in this country -- Religion -- especially among Republican primary voters is a key qualifier.

Sen. John F. Kennedy confronted concerns about his religion head-on in the 1960 campaign that made him the first Roman Catholic to be U.S. president.

Now, GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney is trying to ease the concerns of Christian conservatives about his Mormon faith, in a speech Thursday from George H.W. Bush‘s presidential library at College Station, Texas, 90 miles from JFK‘s venue.

Here is the famous Kennedy speech, from the JFK presidential library:

These are the real issues which should decide this campaign. And they are not religious issues — for war and hunger and ignorance and despair know no religious barriers.

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute — where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote — where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference — and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew — or a Quaker — or a Unitarian — or a Baptist. It was Virginia‘s harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson‘s statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim — but tomorrow it may be you — until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.

That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of presidency in which I believe — a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.

I want a chief executive whose public acts are responsible to all groups and obligated to none — who can attend any ceremony, service or dinner his office may appropriately require of him — and whose fulfillment of his presidential oath is not limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual or obligation.

And in fact this is the kind of America for which our forefathers died — when they fled here to escape religious test oaths that denied office to members of less favored churches — when they fought for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom — and when they fought at the shrine I visited today, the Alamo. For side by side with Bowie and Crockett died McCafferty and Bailey and Carey — but no one knows whether they were Catholic or not. For there was no religious test at the Alamo.

I do not consider these other quotations binding upon my public acts — why should you? But let me say, with respect to other countries, that I am wholly opposed to the state being used by any religious group, Catholic or Protestant, to compel, prohibit, or persecute the free exercise of any other religion. And I hope that you and I condemn with equal fervor those nations which deny their presidency to Protestants and those which deny it to Catholics. And rather than cite the misdeeds of those who differ, I would cite the record of the Catholic church in such nations as Ireland and France — and the independence of such statesmen as Adenauer and de Gaulle.

But let me stress again that these are my views — for contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party‘s candidate for president who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters — and the church does not speak for me.

Whatever issue may come before me as president — on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject — I will make my decision in accordance with these views, in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise.

But if the time should ever come — and I do not concede any conflict to be even remotely possible — when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office; and I hope any conscientious public servant would do the same.

But I do not intend to apologize for these views to my critics of either Catholic or Protestant faith — nor do I intend to disavow either my views or my church in order to win this election.
If I should lose on the real issues, I shall return to my seat in the Senate, satisfied that I had tried my best and was fairly judged. But if this election is decided on the basis that 40 million Americans lost their chance of being president on the day they were baptized, then it is the whole nation that will be the loser, in the eyes of Catholics and non-Catholics around the world, in the eyes of history, and in the eyes of our own people.

But if, on the other hand, I should win the election, then I shall devote every effort of mind and spirit to fulfilling the oath of the presidency — practically identical, I might add, to the oath I have taken for 14 years in the Congress. For without reservation, I can "solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution . . . so help me God."
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Columnist Richard Cohen says its absurd that Romney feels compelled to make a speech that will be compared to JFK's (though JFK had a mch easier sell) that is basically a religious litmus test.

http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_7625229

But as David Schuster's report on Harball reported, candidates as far back as Al Smith losing to Herbert Hoover and Kennedy and Jimmy Carter winning elections in the 1960 and 1976 have had to address their religious beliefs.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/&fg=&from=00&vid=969fbfc1-8ea2-4323-9ade-5ea1f8fdd4b1&playlist=videoByTag:mk:us:vs:0:tag:Source_Hardball:ns:MSNVideo_Top_Cat:ps:10:sd:-1:ind:1:ff:8A

The question is, does it matter to you what your president's religious beliefs are?