Elder Hart (circa 1992) on my mission in Poland. The two gentleman are not Mormon converts (or prospects for that matter). They are, shall we say, not thirsty. Note: this picture was taken at 1:00PM in the afternoon

Wow! A non-hit piece from a leftist rag about Mitt Romney and Mormonism. Will wonders never cease!

Noam Scheiber in The New Republic has an excellent piece entitled: "How missionary work trains Mormons to stump for Mitt" (subscription req'd) comparing the canvassing approach of modern politics to the experience that many Mormons get on a mission (full disclosure here, I'm a member of the LDS Church).

I was holding my breath reading the article waiting for some asinine line about Mormon underwear and authoritarian rule from the secret room in the Salt Lake City Temple... happily it never came.

Here are some key graphs:

There's no question that the enthusiasm of affluent Mormons is a huge boost for Romney. The former Massachusetts governor could not have solidified his first-tier status without his impressive fund-raising haul, and the haul would not have happened without his Mormon base. But, then, as the Romney campaign never hesitates to point out, this kind of advantage is hardly unheard of in presidential politics. Michael Dukakis tapped the wallets of affluent Greek-Americans in 1988; Joe Lieberman benefited from outsize Jewish donations in 2004.

This is accurate. Just as Rudy Giuliani will draw from Italians, Obama from African Americans and John McCain from traderous RINOs (j/k)...

Romney's Mormonism does, however, confer at least one truly unprecedented advantage--one that could be decisive in a closely contested primary. It derives from an aspect of the Mormon community that the press has largely underplayed: the vast grassroots organizing potential of thousands of highly-disciplined young missionaries.

OK... just so Erik Erickson doesn't get plastered by Hugh again... let me make this absolutely clear. Noam is not saying that Mormon missionaries will be canvassing for Mitt but that the experience they gain on a mission is akin to political grassroots activities and that return-missionaries (RMs as Mormons call them sometimes) will make great ground troops for Mitt.

Once more for emphasis: NO MORMON MISSIONARY WILL BE HITTING THE PAVEMENT FOR MITT. If fact, I suspect that the LDS Church will give explicit instructions to missionaries to avoid discussion altogether about the subject.

Back to TNR:

The Mormon Church is somewhat vague with the details of missions, so I've relied on two Mormon sources to get a sense of how the process works. (Some of the particulars may have changed since they served in the 1990s, but the broad thrust should be the same.) The typical mission begins with a three-week training course at the aptly named Mission Training Center in Provo, Utah. There, the Mormons receive a crash course on the missionary lifestyle and the rudiments of spreading the good word.

Arguably the most important skill they acquire in this regard is how to get in the door, and the trainees hone this skill through extensive role-playing. For example, they are taught to search for common ground with potential converts--everything from their taste in cars or pets to their religious worldview. "Take the belief in Jesus Christ," says one of the former missionaries. "We might have different beliefs about Him, but most people do believe in some sort of Supreme Being, they have ideas about that. You build on that, go from there." It's not so different from the way a canvasser might seek a connection with a voter over, say, a shared interest in the environment.

There are roughly 100 regional missions in the United States (out of about 340 worldwide), each of which is divided into several zones of about 20 missionaries, with each zone subdivided into three or four districts. Upon arriving at his or her mission, a young Mormon will meet with the mission president--usually a respected member of the Mormon community called to serve a three-year term--who assigns the missionary to a district. Once there, he or she will be paired with a more experienced partner--called a "companion"--who functions as an on-the-job trainer. Most missionaries work twelve hours a day, six and a half days a week. They live on small stipends, in Spartan quarters--secondhand furniture, no TVs or computers--and dine on such extravagances as cereal and peanut butter. The Church allows them to call home exactly twice a year: on Christmas and Mother's Day. Rejection is overwhelmingly the most common feature of their existence.

Veterans of early primary states like Iowa and New Hampshire often speak in the obscure shorthand of "ones," "twos," and "threes." Ones refer to the voters who are solidly with your candidate. Twos are people who are either leaning that way or are altogether undecided. Threes are people who support your opponent. The job of the organizer is to convert all the twos to ones and to keep the ones from backsliding. The total number of ones at any given time is known as the campaign's "hard count." (Tellingly, Trippi constantly complained that the Dean campaign lacked a meaningful hard count.)

It turns out that Mormon proselytizing is remarkably similar to corralling voters in this respect. In effect, the missionary's universe also consists of ones (the people firmly on track to be baptized as Mormons, known as the "baptizing pool"), twos (people open to converting but who haven't entirely made up their minds, called the "teaching pool"), and threes (people who slam doors in their faces--i.e., the vast majority). As in politics, the twos receive the most attention. The Mormon technique for winning over metaphysical undecideds involves asking a person to make a series of gradually escalating commitments. After the first encounter, the missionary might ask them to read a passage in the Book of Mormon and pray about it. Over time, the missionary will petition the prospect to abstain from cigarettes, alcohol, and out-of-wedlock sex. (The canvasser, by contrast, will usually settle for convincing someone to display a yard

Really good stuff and altogether accurate. Of course if you read Hugh Hewitt's book this would be old hat.

More on this soon...

Labels: Mormon, mormonism