Mitt Romney, who is in a position to become the first ever Mormon president, gave a much-anticipated speech this week on the topic of faith, skillfully proclaiming how important faith is in public life, while maintaining that talking about his would be a grave breach of privacy. Was the speech an effective one? I would say so, if your favorite poet is Al Sharpton and you love vague, meaningless, baseless affirmations.

The Mormon religion has only been around for about one hundred and seventy years, so I got to thinking, as many great science fiction authors have before, about what the world will look like after the next hundred and seventy years have passed. What if our descendants will be listening to a member of one of what we think of as a newer cult religion vying for political acceptance? Let's call this candidate, picking a name at random, Suri IV.

Just imagine Governor (or Senator, or Galactic Viceroy) Suri making such a heartfelt plea to look past his (or her, or its) particular religious beliefs and instead focus on what's truly important: that he believes in something. He assures the American public that his church, with its rigid hierarchy and crack legal teams, and fleet of hover-boats, will in no way control his decisions, but rather he will be guided purely by his own faith (as well as whatever his magical mood-meter tells him.)

Where now brave men like Mitt Romney, pushing the bold frontier ala Brigham Young, tread with soft step, they leave behind them the droppings of hope that in our future, anyone can be elected to office, no matter what they believe, as long as they believe something. Native Americans are originally from Palestine? Great! Jesus is going to set up shop in Ohio? Sounds good! You can marry as many women as you want? Keep talking!

One can only hope that our current noble admiration for almost any belief, no matter how unlikely, unscientific, or untrue, can extend to that distant, happy future when President Suri IV steps up and says "In Hubbard we Trust."