SEPTEMBER 24, 2012
If you happen to be a Republican campaign operative and/or a Fox News Channel chat host, that unexpectedly joyful Convention in Charlotte the other week made for glum viewing. One of the few points of light on the right was the discovery, just as the festivities were getting under way, that the Democrats had drafted a platform that—like George Washington’s farewell address, Abraham Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech, and the Constitution of the United States—does not mention God by name. Hallelujah!
According to Media Matters, Fox News managed to alert its viewers to this deplorable development twenty-two times within the first sixteen hours after the Convention’s opening session. Fox’s Bret Baier seized on a statement issued by David Silverman, the president of an organization called American Atheists, splashing it across the screen in big bold caps:
WE ARE OBVIOUSLY HAPPY THAT THE DEMOCRATS ARE TAKING THESE POSITIVE STEPS. WE ARE LOOKING FOR THE INCLUSION OF EVERYONE AND WE ARE HOPEFUL THAT THAT INCLUSION WILL CONTINUE TO THE POINT THAT WE CAN DEPEND ON MR. OBAMA TO REPEAL THE FAITH BASED INITIATIVES AND REINFORCE THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE.
For different reasons, both Mr. Silverman and Fox News were hopeful that they could “depend on Mr. Obama.” But Mr. Obama declined to coöperate. Soon, the word came down from the White House, one “God” was pencilled in, and the delegates saw that it was good. (The Democratic Party now officially regards “potential” as “God-given.”) Anyway, on closer inspection, the platform turned out to be anything but a paean to irreligion. Indeed, you didn’t have to be a follower of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens to find the plank entitled “Faith” a little cloying:
Faith has always been a central part of the American story, and it has been a driving force of progress and justice throughout our history. We know that our nation, our communities, and our lives are made vastly stronger and richer by faith and the countless acts of justice and mercy it inspires. Faith-based organizations will always be critical allies in meeting the challenges that face our nation and our world—from domestic and global poverty to climate change and human trafficking. People of faith and religious organizations do amazing work . . .
And so on.
Nevertheless, by the time the Democrats were streaming out of Charlotte the Fox folks had mentioned the aforementioned non-mention eighty-four times. “I think it’s rather peculiar,” Paul Ryan, the Vice-Presidential nominee, said in one segment. “There sure is a lot of mention of government, and so I guess I would just put the onus of the burden on them to answer why they did all of these purges of God.” Ryan’s running mate, for his part, had previously judged it unwise to cast aspersions on other people’s religious beliefs. A few days later, though, having experienced a post-Conventions dip in the polls, Mitt Romney decided what the hell.
Taking a page from the playbook of George H. W. Bush (who, nice guy and relative moderate though he was, based the non-Willie Horton half of his successful 1988 campaign on the fantasy that his opponent despised the flag and the Pledge of Allegiance to it), Romney led a Virginia crowd in reciting the Pledge. “That pledge says ‘under God,’ ” the Republican standard-bearer thundered, as Pat Robertson, the Christianist broadcaster and onetime (also 1988) Presidential candidate, stood behind him, clapping. “I will not take God out of the name of our platform,” Romney went on, a bit clumsily. “I will not take God off our coins. And I will not take God out of my heart!”
As campaign promises go, these should be easy to keep. First, given that President Obama had just put God’s name into his platform, Governor Romney would be foolish to take it out of his. Second, the “In God We Trust” motto has been on coins ever since 1864, when James Pollock, an old boarding-house chum of President Lincoln’s, whom Lincoln had installed as director of the Mint, put it there. Although Lincoln was what many in the 2012 G.O.P. would deride as a RINO (he was for expanding voter eligibility, not suppressing it, and he was a big spender on infrastructure projects, especially high-speed rail), he retains some residual respect in the party he founded. Third, the heart. With politicians, that’s a gimme.
God had been all over the place in Tampa, where Romney’s introducer, Senator Marco Rubio, declared that “faith in our Creator is the most important American value of them all.” (America’s founders weren’t so sure. As they put it, “No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”) The deity was not entirely absent in Charlotte, though. One of His deputies there was Sister Simone Campbell, the leader of the recent Nuns on the Bus tour, which highlighted the gap between the Romney-endorsed Paul Ryan budget and Roman Catholic social teaching; her speech praised the Affordable Care Act. Another was New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who had capped his anti-Obamacare politicking by maneuvering himself into delivering the closing benediction at the Republican Convention. Having him do the same for the Democrats was good strategy for prelate and Party alike, turning down the heat on both.
It must be said, however, that Dolan’s prayers were a trifle tougher on the Dems than on the Reps when it came to his (if not His) big priorities, abortion and gay marriage. Regarding the former, in Tampa Dolan merely called upon God to confer blessings on “those yet to be born and on those who are about to see you at the end of this life” and referred in passing to “the sacred and inalienable gift of life.” In Charlotte, he was more pointed:
Thus do we praise you for the gift of life. Grant us the courage to defend it, life, without which no other rights are secure. We ask your benediction on those waiting to be born, that they may be welcomed and protected.
He gave marriage equality a miss in Tampa. In Charlotte, though:
Show us anew that happiness is found only in respecting the laws of nature and of nature’s God. Empower us with your grace so that we might resist the temptation to replace the moral law with idols of our own making, or to remake those institutions you have given us for the nurturing of life and community.
It was not hard to guess what idol, and what institution, the Cardinal had in mind. On the other hand, his reference to “nature and nature’s God” was not so clear. The phrase was there to echo the Declaration of Independence. But Dolan must know that it is pure Deism—Jeffersonian code words for a non-supernatural God, a God who creates the universe and its laws and leaves the rest up to us. Could it be that we were witnessing an unheard-of political phenomenon, a dog whistle to voters who, whether or not they believe in a rights-endowing Creator, have their doubts about the sort of deity who begets sons, writes books, performs miracles, and determines the outcome of football games? Probably not. That God won’t hunt. ♦
ILLUSTRATION: TOM BACHTELL
Source: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2012/09/24/120924taco_talk_hertzberg#ixzz26nLjJmPT
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