George W. Bush is a born-again Christian; President Obama has been a regular church-goer for decades; Jimmy Carter taught Sunday school. But no previous president or serious candidate can rival Romney for the time and energy spent in running a religious organization and ministering to its members.
Over the course of two decades, Romney served as spiritual and administrative leader for a Boston-area church and then as the head of a dozen Mormon churches....
Faith-based credentials such as Romney's are normally gold on the campaign trail. Yet Romney does not speak of his time as a church leader in Belmont. His Republican presidential campaign biography doesn't mention any of his church roles, not even his stint as Sunday school teacher.
"People in his campaign wished he'd never been a Mormon or a Mormon leader," said Ronald B. Scott, a fellow Mormon and the author of a just-published book about Romney, "Mitt Romney: An Inside Look at the Man and His Politics." "They haven't said, 'How do we turn this sow's ear into a silk purse?' And he doesn't talk about it."
Mitt Romney
