Mitt Romney does rather well, I think, in his encounter with ABC News' George Stephanopolous, especially in the way he (and his wife Ann Romney, who also sat for the interview) handled "the Mormon question." ABC provides the complete transcript of the interview.
Stephanopolous hammers away, trying to drive wedges between Romney and Catholics, first, then between Romney and evangelical Christians, and then between Romney and Muslims. The latter is the most absurd as Stephanopolous zeroes in on the Mormon faith's belief that Jesus Christ will reign on earth for 1,000 years after His return.
Stephanopoulos: I wonder how that would be viewed in the Muslim world. Have you thought about how the Muslim world will react to that and whether it would make it more difficult, if you were president, to build alliances with the Muslim world?
Romney: Well, I'm not a spokesman for my church. I'm not running for pastor in chief. I'm running for commander in chief. So the best place to go for my church's doctrines would be my church.
Stephanopoulos: But I'm talking about how they will take it, how they will perceive it.
Romney says its true that Mormons believe that Jesus will return and reign in Jerusalem for a thousand years, but Our belief is just as it says in the Bible, that the messiah will come to Jerusalem, stand on the Mount of Olives and that the Mount of Olives will be the place for the great gathering and so forth. "That that being said," Romney says, "How do Muslims feel about Christian doctrines? They don't agree with them."
Belief in a future 1,000-year-reign of Jesus on Earth is not something unique that Romney would bring to the Oval Office. At least some Christian presidents of the last century have come from faith traditions that subscribe to that view - including, in recent times, both Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, two Southern Baptists who each had some success bring Muslims and Jews together on peace accords.
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