Howard Kurtz notes wryly:

The press seems downright excited at the prospect of the first female president.

The idea of the first black president has journalists all but giddy.

But the first Mormon president? Whoa! That's a different matter.

Then there was this:

" 'Look, let's be honest, Mormons are weird,' says a former Democratic gubernatorial candidate from Massachusetts, voicing a view widely shared by secularists and Evangelicals alike."

As an outside living in Utah for going on nine years now, I was somewhat amused by the comment because I think I finally understand it.

"Weird" is code for they won't drink with you and they won't have sex with you.

Every time I have out-of-state business visitors, there is always a discussion about the oppressive drinking environment here, but the fact is that Dallas has more restrictive regulations that Salt Lake does. The real issue is that nobody else is drinking, which is disconcerting for visitors that come from a culture were every social interaction occurs over an alcoholic beverage.

It just seems so damn unfriendly.

Mormons just don't get this. They are very social people in general and when they want to socialize, they do it without crutches. I make a point of telling visitors that Mormon abstinence isn't because they believe alcohol is evil (breweries, distilleries and taverns were common features in pioneer Mormon Utah...), but because its a sign of their faith. During the pioneer period, Mormons eschewed products like alcohol, tobacco, eastern fashions for women and leather goods because you needed cash to buy them. Cash being rare on the frontier, faithful Mormons sacrificed these luxuries to pay ship fare for convert immigrants from Europe (Utah's ancestry is most British and Scandinavian which might seem obvious from all the blondes...). What was initially informal became a symbol of Mormon faith and was institutionalized in the early 20th century.

The dearth of promiscuity has proven a problem in attracting single professionals. Young Mormon women can feel like old maids at twenty-two. Should you come on to a comely lass in Ogden, its likely she's married and quite possibly a mother. Mormon men are also likely to be married what seems to be impossibly young. In spite of the conventional wisdom in the larger society about young marriages, the divorce rate isn't. According to a Los Angeles Times article in 2000, Mormons who are married in temples have only a 6% divorce rate. Overall, Mormons have about the same rate of divorce as Jews. The media comments that Romney's family is an impressive political prop, but might be shocked to learn that its as common as field mice among Mormons.

Weird isn't it? But a good kind of weird. Mormons appear to understand commitment in an instinctive way, which may account for the fact that they are overwhelmingly politically conservative. That isn't to say they aren't Democrats, just not very liberal Democrats.

Its such a robust culture that non-Mormons, or gentiles, as they are sometimes called, can find themselves overwhelmed by the shear pervasiveness of it. Even Mormons who have cut ties to the institutional church, still find themselves incontrovertibly Mormon in their cultural outlook. D. Michael Quinn, a professional historian and divorced, gay, excommunicated Mormon coined the term DNA Mormon to account for his essential Mormonness? Mormonanity? in spite of the abrogation of his religious association.

There are a lot of subcultures in the U.S., many of them assuredly weirder than the Mormons. Of course those subcultures tend to be obscure and marginalized. Mormons have been around for nearly one hundred and eighty years. They settled much of the western U.S. and have woven themselves very tightly into the political and economic life of the nation. The comparison to American Jews gets made all the time and for legitimate reasons--both groups are about the same size, inordinately influential, close-knit and mainstream in a non-mainstream kind of way.

Do they have a secret, conspiratorial agenda? Not at all. What they do have are interests. Mormons got involved in politics as a matter of self-preservation, but fundamentally its a culture and institution focused on improving the family and the individual. A lot of their interests coincide with Evangelicals, but many don't and the entire approach is different. Evangelicals have figures like Pat Robertson or groups like "Focus on the Family"; lobbies to concentrate political power. The concentration of Mormons as a population means that Mormon political power comes from high representation in state legislatures, governorships and Congressional delegations. Mormons aren't on the outside looking in, they are part and parcel of the power structure. Surely you've heard of Harry Reid and Orrin Hatch?

The integration of Mormons into the national life precludes strange little agendas that favor them specifically--hence you get Harry Reid defending gambling in Nevada and Mitt Romney engineering universal health care in Massachusetts. Mormons are nothing if not pragmatic. The existence of a hierarchal leadership in the Mormon church gives some people pause, but from all I can observe, they appear to be almost exclusively concerned with the care, maintenance and growth of the church itself. They aren't in the business of endorsing candidates at any level of government (although many candidates make it a point to highlight their Mormon bona fides...).

Weird is as weird does. If this is weirdness, I'm happy to be acquainted with it.