Should Willard Mitt Romney be elected president, one thing is certain: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, also a Mormon, will not be dropping by the White House once each month to do his “home teaching” — delivering a brief spiritual message and addressing the family’s temporal and religious needs.
Not because Reid is a Democrat — but because he lives in a suburban ward, the Mormon version of a parish. Geography, not personal preference, determines ward assignments. Therefore, the task for “home teaching” the president and first lady each month will fall to an ordinary member of the Washington Third Ward, a grittier inner-city church district that includes the White House.
“Home teaching” works the other way around, too. Adults like Romney are required to “home teach” two or three families each month.
Imagine the most powerful man in the world calling on families in a housing project once each month. If Romney is elected, you can bet it’s going to happen.
It would be fitting — and oh so Mormon — if the day after Mitt and Ann move in to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. representatives from the Relief Society (the women’s organization) of their new ward, bearing casseroles and the almost iconic lime green Jell-O dish, dropped by to welcome them to the neighborhood and the ward.
Even if the routines have to be modified somewhat for security reasons, they will continue. Ministering to the needs of other people in high-touch ways, and, equally important, being ministered to, may become hallmarks of the Romney administration. It underscores teachings that every citizen has a leadership role to play in the nation: e pluribus unum — out of many, one!
The diplomats may be wondering: What about the booze? “Iron Rod” Mormons (a descriptive derived from The Book of Mormon that has become synonymous with “unflinching adherence”) don’t drink. Mitt still blushes when he confesses that in his “reckless youth” he once tried a cigarette and tasted a beer.
But a Mormon White House need not be alcohol-free. Even the founder of the religion, Joseph Smith, was an accommodating host. Over wife Emma’s objections, he offered cigarettes and whiskey to visitors. He may have even tippled a little himself: In that era, Mormons were not the teetotalers they are today. In fact Mitt’s ancestors uncorked a bottle of wine to celebrate their missionary successes in England.
While Romney is unlikely to imbibe, he has been exposed to the expectations of the world while serving as the CEO of Bain & Company, a hard-charging and savvy international management consultancy; organizer of the 2002 Olympic Winter Games, which effectively loosened the tight liquor laws in Utah; and while serving as governor of Massachusetts. Alcohol will likely remain a staple at the White House, but his personal example may prove to be a restraining influence.
He was sympathetic, for instance, when a campaign aide was arrested for driving under the influence. But he couldn’t resist chiding that “this wouldn’t have happened if you were a Mormon.”
Romney is frugal. He counts beans. After “swimming around in the numbers” over the first two weeks as governor, Romney came up with plan to lop $500 million off a projected $650 million budget deficit. Thereafter, he balanced the budget for three consecutive years and added $1.2 billion to the depleted rainy-day fund without raising taxes. Was there pain and griping? Absolutely. But Massachusetts was once again living within its means.
He is less certain and consistent about social issues. Supporters say his indecisiveness suggests only that he’s still grappling with the legal, ethical and moral complexities of free choice, abortion and equal protection under law and caring for and representing the needs of the poor and underserved. His lack of clarity seems to caution others to avoid oversimplification.
On the hustings, Romney often comes off as supremely, even smugly self-confident, incapable of connecting with common folk. Some family members empathize, suggesting tongue-in-cheek that in a different time and place Mitt would have made the ideal benevolent king. King Arthur at his roundtable in Camelot may be an apt comparison, for it is said that Romney the leader has always been a good listener and incisive questioner, the kind of chief who provoked rousing, even contentious, debates and instilled in his charges the feeling that he knew their jobs as well or better than they did.
When his team presented then-Gov. Romney with a long list of reasons the state should undertake a new commuter railroad project, he listened patiently, then, a little exasperated, demanded to hear from someone who fiercely opposed the project.
Once decisions are made, however, he expects all wholehearted support. Backbiting and second-guessing are the surest ways a team member can find himself with no a seat at the table, excluded by silence and tight-lipped smiles.
While straight-laced Romney may give lifestyle reporters little to work with, there is a bright side: relatives. There are more than 100 in the immediate family, including the five Romney sons — good-looking and fun-loving all, happily married with kids of their own, and just beginning to adjust to the pressures of life in the fishbowl. If President Jimmy Carter’s Bud-drinking brother, Billy, were still with us, he might forecast: “Even compared to the Kennedys or the Carters, these Romneys may prove to be one hell of an interesting ride.”
Ronald B. Scott is the author of “Mitt Romney: An Inside Look at the Man and His Politics” (Lyons Press), out now.