Romney’s Religion

That 2006 quote comes from Barack Obama’s politically self-conscious second book, The Audacity of Hope, whose title was taken from a sermon by Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Of course, in this political era of cross-on-your-sleeve public religiosity, secularists have been in retreat since John Kennedy affirmed the wall of separation between church and state in his 1960 speech to the Houston ministers.

It is a near certainty that religion will show up in a prominent place in the public square of the 2012 presidential campaign. The relevant question is not whether it will appear, but when—and how campaign reporters should cover it.

The New York Times revealed last month in a story by Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg that a leading Republican admaker tried to sell a Super PAC donor on a $10 million ad campaign to highlight Obama’s past relationship with the sometimes incendiary Wright. The vitriolic (and untrue) birther attacks on Obama, which I wrote about last week, are linked to equally fabricated claims that the president is a closet Muslim.
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