A New Hampshire poll gives Obama a 51% approval rating and a 10 point lead over Romney in the general election. The last poll gave Romney a 3 point lead, so to be fair I call Obama's lead at about 6 points. The state's 4 electoral votes could be pivotal in the 2012 election. For example if Obama won several of the upper Midwest states plus NM, CO, and NV he could lose OH, VA, NC, SC, & Florida and be at 268 electoral votes, with a NH win putting him over the magic number of 270 electoral votes. 

Obviously, the reverse would hand the election to Romney. Wouldn't it be a uniquely American story if two hundred years after a man left hard-scrabble Vermont, discovered a religion in New York, the religion so flourished out in the new West that the spirit of the man, Joseph Smith, would now return to New England to claim the U.S. Presidency? Perhaps we should detach ourselves from the raucous political process and look at both stories, Obama's and Romney's. Is there someone claiming that freedom in America has declined?

The year the Smith family left Vermont, 1816, was known across New England as the Year of No Summer. Solar activity plus volcanic ash in the stratosphere most likely caused winter-like conditions which made crops fail. The Smith clan moved on down to Palmyra, New York, near where Joseph eventually unearthed the golden tablets. As I look at the massive hand hewn beams in the living room of my 1850's Vermont village house, 1816 doesn't seem so distant. In fact, 1844 seems quite close at hand---that was the year Joseph Smith announced his candidacy for President of the United States. Joseph Smith was mayor of a town in Illinois and had his own militia. He was arrested and then murdered while awaiting trial.

Frank Rich has written an article which to my mind reopens the discussion of Romney's Mormon faith, in the context of whether his faith in itself is instrumental in masking the man. Rich said something else which startled me, that Ann Romney's parents were excluded from her own marriage ceremony. There is a certain point at which I focus on the odd thought of a President whose religion is completely off the radar. 

In terms of the great private and inner religious life of a President, how much of a veil do I accept? The marriage of one of the President's children, for example. Not that I would want to attend, but for heavens' sake I can even watch a Royal wedding in Britain on television. Please don't bring up the Chelsea Clinton wedding.

Frank Rich relates how contemporaries of Romney confessed to never really knowing him, and proffers that the absence of Romney being able to present himself in the context of his faith is part of what makes him seem so out of touch. Romney's campaign will brand with a scarlet letter anyone who dares to bring up Romney's Mormon faith. Don't go there. Fine. Except...

I think there is another aspect to the hands-off Romney's faith strategy. The last thing Romney's handlers want is a biographical comparison between Obama and Romney, an essential fact of this uniquely American free for all---in other words, which biography do people relate to the most? It is perhaps a comparison which makes Obama look more like apple pie than Romney. Thinking in terms of New Hampshire, remember the words of Robert Frost, "A Yankee is a person who eats apple pie for breakfast".

It is unfortunate that Romney's Mormon faith is off the table. The Mormon religion is history. It's bed rock. It's intruiging.

As a book collector I once found an 1874 Book of Mormon in a small shop in Atlantic, Iowa. I talked the nice lady down from $15 to $10. When I researched it, I realized that it was the "Reorganized" church, a separate sect still head quartered in Missouri, and in 2001, renamed the Community of Christ. When I checked on the internet there was a listing of just such a book in a book store in nearby Missouri with an over-edit in caps---THIS BOOK HAS BEEN STOLEN.

Intrigued, and remorseful for "stealing" a rare book for $10 in Iowa, I called the woman at the Missouri store on the off chance I had come by her book. I told her I would give it to her if she could describe it as the one stolen from her. I am larcenous but I have my limits. She asked me, "does it have snippets of family history written on the end papers?" I said no. She thanked me but said it wasn't the same book. 

What had happened was that about a month after she listed the book---physically, she had put it in a box in her storeroom along with some other related books and family memorabilia, much of it about the early Mormons---she had an in-store sale and someone peeled off, went right to it in her store room and then snuck the box out a side door. 

My 1874 Book of Mormon, in mint condition, has no written secrets and is not located at my house in Vermont. There are several more on the internet you can buy in the $500 range and you too can create history. First find some authentic old ink in someone's barn in New Hampshire. The trick is to get the ink to migrate into the paper at the rate which a forensic specialist would expect for a book of that age. Just jury-rig a vacuum cleaner to pull the ink through. (I can't believe I'm revealing all of this, but it's all in the book about Mark Hoffman, the ex-Mormon and master forger.)

The Missouri reorganized church, or Community in Christ, founded by eldest son Joseph Smith III has an illustrious past. One of the more mysterious aspects of its relationship with the main church in Utah is contained in the book, "The Poet and the Murderer", about a man of Mormon heritage, a book dealer from Salt Lake City, a master forger, and now in prison for the brutal murder of two people---one Mark Hoffman. He gained entry to the secret archives of the mother church and stealing the end papers from old Mormon works, he forged documents meant to cast doubt on certain aspects of the Mormon faith, and related to the heritage of the Reorganized church in Missouri. 

Hoffman was able to get the two churches competing for the purchase of the documents, the mother church having no lack of cash and winning the auctions. BTW, Hoffman forged an estimated thirty thousand signatures on childrens books which is why I will not give a signed Arthur Rackham a second look unless there is iron clad assurance it never passed through Hoffman's hands. Hoffman was so good that he composed an Emily Dickinson poem, forged it on archaic note paper and sold it as a new discovery to the Emily Dickinson museum for $30,000. I suppose it would be really taboo and or even cheeky to wonder if in the archives in Salt Lake City there is a prophesy of a Mormon winning the Presidency in 2012. 

Worse than cheeky, my son-in-law, Bud, lives in Missouri and is an evangelical Republican voter. He has his own library of anti-Mormon literature. I'm thinking of calling him, "So, Bud, are you going to vote for a Mormon for President". I apologize in advance for such an un-liberal thought. Bud works in my company, so such a comment is untoward and possibly illegal, but I would really like to needle him about it. Obama lost Missouri by 4000 votes, but if he should win it this time around I might give religion a second go-around.

We have been warned--- Romney's Mormon faith cannot be made part of the current political discussion, certainly none of its secrecy, intrigue or vibrancy in American history. But I wonder if Frank Rich is right---that trying to exclude the most driving force in Romney's life is what creates the feeling of his detachment. The strategy may well backfire, Romney remaining behind an impenetrable screen.  

The recent Yankee poll gives me hope that Obama will win this November. A friend described Yankees as buying used cars, half-soling their shoes, and if they come by a swimming pool---using it to farm fish. I think the last place Adelson, the Koch Brothers and the rest of Romney's Super Pacs can buy an election is in New Hampshire---in fact, it's likely to cause the opposite effect and give a win to Obama. 

Perhaps this will be the year where the spirit of Joseph Smith will return to New England and put a Mormon in the White House. But in keeping with the year of no summer when the Smith clan left nearby Vermont for greener pastures, I'd like to think that 2012 will be the year of no Adelson, no Koch brothers, no Romney, and by definition, no Mormon President.