...You must acquit?
POWERLINE BLOG
In "When the Mitt doesn't fit" I wrote about the following paragraph of the Christian Science Monitor column by Mansoor Ijaz:
I asked Mr. Romney whether he would consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his cabinet as advisers on national security matters, given his position that "jihadism" is the principal foreign policy threat facing America today. He answered, "...based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration."
I asserted that if the quote was accurate, Governor Romney had demonstrated a poor understanding of an issue he should have thought through long ago. But was the quote accurate? The Romney camp in fact disputes the accuracy of the quote and has sent us two interview excerpts in response to Ijaz's column.
Before the column was published, Governor Romney appeared on CNN's "Situation Room." In the interview, says Romney Internet coordinator Stephen Smith, Governor Romney made very clear that he makes hiring decisions "based upon people's merit and their skill" regardless of religion, race or ethnicity:
Governor Romney: "...But I also think that suggesting that we have to fill spots based on checking off boxes of various ethnic groups is really a very inappropriate way to think about how we staff positions. I'm very pleased that, among my Cabinet members, for instance, I had several African-American individuals. I had people of different backgrounds. But I don't go in every circumstance I'm in and say, OK, how many African-Americans, how many Hispanic-Americans, how many Asian-Americans, and fill boxes that way. I fill responsibilities based upon people's merit and their skill. And, sometimes, it includes many ethnic minorities. And, other times, it includes different minorities. But I'm very pleased with my record."
Governor Romney was also asked about Ijaz's Monitor column after it was published yesterday. Stephen Smith provides this transcript:
REPORTER: Governor, there is a report today that a businessman says that a closed fundraiser in Vegas a couple weeks ago, he asked you a question about having an Islamic person in your cabinet and you said that based on the population of Muslims in the United States that you don't think it would be justified?
GOVERNOR ROMNEY: No. His question was did I need to have a Muslim in my Cabinet to be able to confront radical Jihad and would it be important to have a Muslim in my Cabinet and I said, "No, I don't think that you have to have a Muslim in the Cabinet to be able to take on radical Jihad anymore than during the Second World War we needed to have a Japanese-American to understand the threat that was coming from Japan or something of that nature." I just rejected that argument number one, and then number two, I point out that people who would be part of my Cabinet is something that I really haven't given a lot of thought to at this point, but I don't have boxes that I check off as to their ethnicity. It's not that I have to have a certain number of each different ethnic group; instead I would choose people based upon their merits and their capabilities.
REPORTER: So you would be open to having a Muslim person....
GOV. ROMNEY: I'm open to having people of any faith and ethnic group, but they would be selected based upon their capacity and their capabilities and the values and skills that they could bring to the administration. But I don't choose people based upon checking off a box.
Governor Romney accordingly disputes the accuracy of the quote as provided by Ijaz, at least in part. He apparently does not dispute that he referred to "...the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population" or that he said "I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration." So I don't find Governor Romney's statement fully responsive. At NRO's Campaign Spot, Jim Geraghty files a "Big Muslims-in-the-cabinet round-up" and notes that Ijaz stands by the accuracy of his quotation.
Ijaz's column is based on an exchange that took place at a closed Romney fundraiser in Las Vegas. Ijaz of course first came to fame as a financial supporter of Bill Clinton. Ed Morrissey looks at Ijaz's substantial history of Democratic campaign contributions and criticizes the Monitor for "journalistic malpractice" by failing to disclose it. (He separately notes Ijaz's grating self-promotion.) In response to my inquiry Stephen Smith informs us that the Las Vegas fundraiser was attended by approximately 175 donors at $100 a head and that Ijaz paid the freight.
I conlude that Governor Romney may not have given a satisfactory answer to Ijaz's question at the fundraiser, but that it was at most a slight misstep with respect to which he deserves the benefit of the doubt. |
