No "Religious Dilemma" Here

EJ Dionne attempts to identify a "religious dilemma" for Mitt Romney.

As a preliminary matter, when Dionne says that "Romney's biggest problem is that he is running in a Republican Party that has been saturated by religion in recent years" he conveniently forgets an interesting fact -- namely that Romney's Mormonism is, apparently, a greater disqualifier for Democrats than it is for Republicans. (See this TIME magazine poll finding that Democrats in greater numbers are less likely than GOP'ers to vote for a Mormon; see also here, reporting on a Newsweek poll that found more Dems than Repubs wouldn't vote for a candidate based only on his Mormon faith).

At any rate, Dionne goes on to define Romney's "dilemma" as follows:

To win votes from the religious right while pushing the Mormon issue aside, Romney therefore has to say that religion matters a great deal -- and also that it doesn't. Any wonder why this is such a tough matter for him to discuss?

That's simply not true. To win votes, Romney has to say that theology doesn't matter a great deal to the decision about who would make the best President -- rather, what matters is "religiosity" in the broad sense, and the virtues and values it instills (with the policies that emanate from them). In other words, Romney has to make the argument that the details of a candidate's theology shouldn't matter, but the fact that he is, in fact, a believer -- and that his faith stresses the same virtues resulting in the same policy preferences as evangelicals -- matters a great deal.

And frankly, that makes a lot of sense. Perhaps the scariest outcome would be to have a person of little or no faith in The White House. After all, the presidency of the US is such a powerful position that it's important that the president understands that he is accountable to Someone even more powerful and important than himself.