Littwin: Is America ready for a 'first'?

By Mike Littwin, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published June 23, 2007 at midnight

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I'm having a conversation with a friend about the presidential race. It's not as compelling as talking about, say, the Rockies-Yankees series or even the inconvenient truthiness of the overheated weather. But still, in my case, it's a living - and with a generous expense account.

So, I tell him that although I think Hillary Clinton is the clear favorite on the Dems' side, that if the Democrats are smart (a questionable construct), they'll nominate Barack Obama.

The way for the Democrats to win, I say, is to follow the JFK model - in which a young, apparently idealistic and relentlessly forward-looking candidate offsets a tired (or, in the case of George W. Bush, wearisome) Republican administration.

This is how Bill Clinton won. It's, of course, how Kennedy won. And nobody at this point wants to be associated with Bush - not even Dick Cheney, who has now gone so far as to claim his office is not in the executive branch. I wonder if that means they'll take away his keys to the White House gym.

But here's the question Democrats have to ask themselves: Why should they want to argue about the Clintons all over again when it's so much more fun - and possibly more productive - just to bash Bush?

As I'm talking, I feel like I'm making great sense - sorry, but it's an occupational hazard - when I suddenly see a puzzled face before me.

"You really think this country is going to elect a brother?" he asks.

The question is, of course, perfectly legitimate. And the answer is that no one has any idea what the answer is.

We know what we want it to be. When the presidential race began, there was this novelty concept that America could have its first (fill in the blank) president. First woman president. First black president. First Hispanic. And then, it started to become more clear: first Mormon.

You can argue that Hillary Clinton benefits from attracting the woman vote, certainly in a Democratic primary. And when people ask - and some do - whether America is ready for a woman president, I'm tempted to ask: Ready how exactly? Among the countries that have had women presidents would be, uh, Pakistan.

In the case of Hillary Clinton, you have to wonder how much the issue is gender and how much the issue is Hillary Clinton. It's a question I'll ask Rush Limbaugh the next time he invites me on the show.

But when John Edwards says that he is the most electable Democrat, it's also true that people immediately wonder whether he's talking about the fact of his accent - straight out of a To Kill a Mockingbird courtroom - and that the Democrats haven't elected a non-Southerner since JFK. Because there's also the fact that he's the only white male in the Democratic top tier and that every president has been - you could look it up - a white male.

Which brings us to Mormons and Mitt Romney and whether being a Mormon makes a difference. Let's just say when he gets the underwear question, it's not about boxers and briefs.

A recent USA Today/Gallup poll found a shocking result - that only 72 percent said they would vote for a qualified Mormon nominee. The number was 88 percent for a woman and 94 percent for a black.

When I was doing a Romney piece last week in New Hampshire, it was easy to find people uneasy about Romney's faith. One person told me the Mormon religion was a "cult" and then wondered what other "strange" things Romney might believe.

Somebody once said that religions are cults plus time. In 1960, Kennedy answered the Catholic question, and who even knows which candidates are Catholic today. In 2000, Joe Lieberman ran as an Orthodox Jew, and it didn't seem to matter.

And here's the strange part: When George Romney - Mitt's father - ran for president way back in 1968, the Mormon issue was not an issue. I'm old enough to remember and I don't remember anything, and not just because it was 1968. I've read a lot about this race, and no one seems to remember it being an issue.

It has been suggested that it's an issue now because evangelical Christians have become such an important Republican voting bloc. Many evangelicals are unhappy with John McCain and Rudy Giuliani, and Romney - a born-again social conservative - has made a direct appeal to "people of faith."

In fact, you can find an Evangelicals for Mitt Web site, where the media are blamed (of course) for stereotyping them as "ignorant and intolerant simpletons," and that goes on to say Romney is "clearly the best choice for people of faith."

Suddenly, this election looks like a test - of tolerance. I wonder how we'd look to ourselves if we failed.

I read a story recently about Mo Udall, a Mormon - if not of the most religious stripe - who ran for president in 1976. He was once at a golf tournament and asked what his handicap was.

"Handicap?" he said. "I'm a one-eyed Mormon Democrat from conservative Arizona. . . . You can't find a higher handicap than that."

littwinm@RockyMountainNews.com.

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