JFK in 1960, Romney in 2007 — Religion in America

Mitt Rom­ney, a Mor­mon, looked yes­ter­day to set aside lin­ger­ing con­cerns about his reli­gion in a high­ly pub­li­cized speech. Imme­di­ate­ly, the speech revived mem­o­ries of John F. Kennedy’s attempt, dur­ing the 1960 cam­paign, to ease con­cerns about his Catholi­cism. We’ve post­ed both speech­es below. The sim­i­lar­i­ties are there. But the dif­fer­ences are more pro­found. I’ll resist the temp­ta­tion to point them out. You can watch the clips and draw your own con­clu­sions.

John F. Kennedy — 1960

Mitt Rom­ney — 2007

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  • Joel G. says:

    Great speech­es by both of them! Would like to have heard more of Kennedy’s.

    Rom­ney’s sound­ing very pres­i­den­tial. It would be nice to hear him cov­er oth­er nation­al issues with equal thought­ful­ness. I hope to hear more like this from him and the oth­er can­di­dates on oth­er top­ics. I saw a clip from his Oral Roberts vis­it where he said that a vote for him does­n’t con­sti­tute an endorse­ment of his reli­gious beliefs–not sure why some have such a hard time under­stand­ing that.
    ‑JG

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