A ringing, and touching, endorsement of Romney from a transplanted Aussie.
To start with, there’s the matter of his faith. To Australians, Mormonism is one of those funny not-quite-a-cult things that Americans produce in ridiculous numbers. Before anyone gets up in arms — Australians hold this same opinion of most of the Baptist churches, practically all the mega-churches, 100% of televangelism, and a good chunk of the traditionally “black” churches. For most Aussies, if it doesn’t fall into the buckets of Catholic, Anglican (aka Episcopalian), or Uniting (formed by a merger of Methodist and Presbyterian), it doesn’t really count as Christian.
Anyone who gets up and talks about how their faith says they should do this or that is an automatic target for ridicule in Australia, because it’s invariably either a holier-than-thou thing or a way to browbeat everyone else into doing what they want. The Aussie view leans much more towards “the actions make the person.”
And Mr. Romney simply doesn’t talk about his faith. He just gets on and does things. As far as I can tell — not being Mormon and not knowing much about the faith — he simply does his best to follow the principles espoused without making a fuss about it. It’s just … something he does.
Pretty much how I feel about the man myself. Perfect? No. Incorruptible? Probably a lot more so than most of us. Strong? Yeah, I think there’s plenty of evidence of that. Right all the time? Oh hells no.
Just compare and contrast to what we have now.
I fully expect the man to be hated and reviled within a year of taking office, simply because I believe he is able to make the hard decisions that are going to have to be made, and take the heat for them. It could well be he is just old-fashionedly honorable enough (remember that word?) to do the right thing and let the devil take the hindmost. With any luck, we’ll see.
via Glenn