The Reluctant Mormon

By TIMOTHY EGAN
NYT

Politicians are trained from the time they mouth their first public lie to be reflexively certain about everything. So it was startling and certainly encouraging to hear Jon Huntsman sound less than convinced the other day about the God of his Mormon upbringing.

“That’s tough to define,” he said, when asked whether he still belonged to a church whose founding tenets are based on golden tablets discovered by a teenage boy in upstate New York.

In Utah, the state named one of the best-managed in the country while Huntsman was its governor, his equivocating was a major news story. He’s showing doubt! The shame. And in Iowa, a state Huntsman said he would skip in the Republican nominating process because he doesn’t believe in the farm and ethanol subsidies that are sacrosanct there, Secretary of State Matt Schultz was harshly critical of him for “distancing himself from his Mormon faith.”

For the record, Huntsman says he believes in God, is a Christian and is proud of his Mormon heritage. That should be more than enough. As a problem-solving governor, (winning a second term by a 58-point margin), and Mandarin-speaking ambassador to China, he brings a strong resume to the presidential race.

(More here.)