Count Your Blessings
By Michael Kinsley
Friday, January 26, 2001; Page A23
When did they pass the constitutional amendment requiring every president and
would-be president to end every speech with the words, "God bless you and God
bless America"? Even a nonbeliever cannot reasonably object to the sentiment.
If I turn out to be mistaken about the central question of the universe, I'll
be happy enough that others were doing some celestial lobbying on my
country's behalf. And if the words are pouring into an unhearing ether,
there's no harm done.
Furthermore, it seems to have worked, so far. But is even God starting to
tire of the constant special pleading? This rhetorical sign-off is filtering
down from major speeches by national leaders to everyday speeches by members
of Congress to casual remarks by local officials. It's starting to be
suspicious if a politician doesn't conclude a public statement this way. The
missing phrase echoes loud. What's your problem, buddy? You don't want God to
bless America?
And how do we even know that the practice is limited to public statements?
One imagines the politician at home:
"Pass the salt, honey. God bless you and God bless America."
"More apple pie, Dear? God bless you and God bless America."
"May I be excused, please, Dad? God bless you."
"Just one moment, young lady. And? And?"
(Sigh.) "And God bless America."
"That's better. You're excused. God bless you and God bless America."
An unscientific romp through the databases tends to confirm that the great
American tradition we had better refer to as GBY/GBA only recently acquired
its status as the politicians' answer to "Have a nice day." ("Have a nice
day, Senator." "God bless you and God bless America.") The outbreak is worse
during election years, of course, and 2000 may have been a milestone. The
Political Transcripts file of the Federal Document Clearing House shows 13
uses of GBY/GBA in 1996, eight in 1997, seven in 1998, 12 in 1999 (including,
for example, a news conference on impeachment by Rep. Bob Barr) and 27 in
2000. This year has started out with five GBY/GBAs in just the first three
weeks: two from President Bush, two from former president Clinton and one
from Jesse Helms.
The broader Dow Jones Publications Library, tracking hundreds of media
outlets around the world, shows 338 uses of the terms "God bless you" and
"God bless America" (together) since the beginning of last year. This
obviously includes some repetitions, and the database is larger for more
recent years, but the historical comparison is nevertheless ominous. A search
of the equivalent 13-month period in 1990-91 shows only 12 GBY/GBAs. And from
January 1980 through January 1981, as far as the Dow Jones Publications
Library is concerned, nobody uttered the magic words at all!
Is it possible, I wondered, that Ronald Reagan didn't end his inaugural
addresses this way? Remarkably, Reagan's first inaugural speech, in 1981,
ended with a relatively simple, "God bless you and thank you." His second, in
1985, signed off, "God bless you and may God bless America." Nevertheless, I
suspect that emulation of the Great Communicator is responsible for this
dubious tradition. Imagine if any president from now on tried to get off the
swearing-in platform and start trying out all the buttons in the Oval Office
without a GBY/GBA. The nation would proclaim in one voice, "Go back. You
forgot to say, 'Mother, may I?' "
In another disturbing trend, God is being called on to bless you and then
bless various individual states. The Dow Jones database coughs up 21
citations for "God bless you and God bless the state of . . .," plus other
direct calls for blessings on "California" and other places self-confident
enough to assume that God already knows they are states. There is no record
of anybody ever saying, "God bless you and God bless the District of
Columbia."
We seem to be the only country that goes in for this particular formula. A
search in English through U.S.-based media collections has obvious
limitations, but nothing turned up for "God bless you and God bless the
United Kingdom" (or Britain or Great Britain or England) or "God bless
France" or Russia or Serbia or India or China or Canada. "God bless you and
God bless the European Community"? Zippo.
It's widely known that the United States is one of the most religious nations
on earth. What GBY/GBA illustrates is that religion is becoming a larger part
of our official public life, not a smaller one as many people puzzlingly
insist. There's no need to be an ACLU hysteric about this. But it does, for
example, make the complaints of some John Ashcroft supporters that he is a
victim of the political culture's alleged antipathy to religion hard to take
seriously.
And official promotion of religion -- even when it's not specific -- can
reach a point where it infringes the rights of nonbelievers. President Bush
has cut off family-planning funds for international organizations that
finance abortions on the grounds that money given for one thing frees up
money for the other. But he does not apply the same logic to his plans to
subsidize church-based education. If a birth-control grant to some agency
amounts to taxpayers funding abortions, why isn't a grant to a church school
essentially forcing me to pay for candles and incense?
What?
Oh. Almost forgot. God bless you and God bless America.
Michael Kinsley, editor of Slate (www.slate.com), writes a weekly column for
The Post.
