MITT ROMNEY – he of the inscrutable, overly polished and occasionally robotic mien – is striving mightily to humanise himself just three weeks before the first round of voting begins. That means no topic, be it his experience with humble toilets (“a bucket affair”) or his faith, is off limits.
Four years ago, Romney rarely talked of his Mormon faith during his presidential campaign.
In recent days, though, he has invoked his time as a missionary and church pastor when asked to explain how he, a man whose net worth is estimated at $200 million, could relate to the everyday concerns of average Americans.
At the Republican debate on Saturday night, each candidate was asked to recall when a financial strain had forced them to cut back on a necessity.
While many of those onstage talked about their humble upbringings, Romney, the son of a governor, began by acknowledging: “I didn’t grow up poor and if somebody is looking for someone who’s grown up with that background, I’m not the person.”
However, he continued, experiences through his church had given him empathy and understanding for less fortunate people. “I was able to serve my church overseas and to meet people there that had very difficult circumstances in their life,” Romney said.
“I also spent time in this country, serving as a pastor in my church and, again, having the occasion to work with people that were really struggling.”
As the race tightens and Newt Gingrich surges to the top of the polls, Romney is seeking to draw contrasts between himself and the former speaker of the House, whose three marriages and later-in-life conversion to Roman Catholicism are viewed as political liabilities by the Romney campaign.
Talking more freely though about his faith is a calculated risk. A New York Times/CBS News national poll in September found that among evangelical Republican primary or caucus voters, 41 per cent said that people they knew would not vote for a Mormon for president.
However, in a more recent Times/CBS News Iowa poll, 75 per cent of evangelical voters who said they definitely or probably planned to attend the Republican caucuses said they would vote for a Mormon candidate; 19 per cent said they would not.
Both Iowa and South Carolina, two of the first three nominating states, have large populations of evangelicals, many of whom do not accept Mormons as Christians. (In 2008, Romney finished a disappointing second in Iowa after evangelicals – who make up roughly a third of the Republican caucus voters – coalesced around Mike Huckabee, a former Baptist pastor.)
Just two months ago, Romney’s religion bubbled up in an unwanted way when a Baptist pastor from Dallas, who supports Texas governor Rick Perry, told a gathering of Christian conservatives that Mormonism was “a cult” and that “Mitt Romney is not a Christian”.
That led Romney to demand that Perry repudiate the pastor’s remarks. “I just don’t believe that that kind of divisiveness based on religion has a place in this country,” he said at the time.
Now, however, Romney seems to be embracing his faith in a more comfortable and public way.
He speaks about it in general terms, highlighting his role as a leader and servant, rather than getting into the specifics of Mormon beliefs. Starting with the debate on Saturday, Romney has talked about his church three times in as many days.
At an event on Monday in Madison, New Hampshire, a voter wondered whether Romney could truly understand poverty because he came from “a fairly good background”. Romney responded by talking about the 10 years he spent as a pastor in his church, counselling its members.
Those who sought him were “sometimes people with marital problems, sometimes with a child who was errant and a lot of times, with people who had financial difficulties,” Romney said, adding that he oversaw Spanish-, Cambodian- and Chinese- speaking congregations.
A day earlier, at a town hall in Hudson, when a voter asked Romney to share an experience that had helped change his perspective, he immediately turned to his time as a young missionary in France, living off a monthly stipend of $110.
“You’re not living high on the hog at that kind of level,” Romney said. He recounted how he and his fellow missionaries would sometimes pay a few francs to use a public shower once a week or rinse off in the kitchen with a bucket and a hose.
“A number of apartments I lived in when I was there didn’t have toilets. We had instead the little pads on the ground. Okay, you know how that works. There was a chain behind you, it was kind of a bucket affair.”
The audience laughed at Romney’s response, which seemed geared toward tackling the central problem of his campaign: forget about having a beer with him – the rub against Romney is that people just can’t quite get a read on him.
“Ultimately people vote for who they like, who they know and who they agree with on policy and principle, and I think Mitt Romney can win people over by doing all three,” said Utah congressman Jason Chaffetz. “And for who they like and who they know, you’ve got to open up even more about who you are and your wife and your family.”
The Romney campaign is quick to dispel the notion that there is any strategic shift at play here. “I think maybe because it’s Christmas time, he’s sort of more reflective?” suggested Stuart Stevens, Romney’s senior strategist.
– ( New York Times)