Your Place or Mine?

This evening will see Obama present his State of the Union message to Congress and to this Country. I’d like to miss it as I can barely stand to be in the same room with the man but, when you write a political Blog, it’s almost a prerequisite. However, in order to make it more palatable, you could try my game. There really aren’t any rules so you can make up your own or use mine.

First, make sure nobody is driving home. Then have an ample supply of popular adult beverages ready to hand. Then every participant chooses 2 keywords and every time one of those words are uttered by Obama, the person gets to take a sip or a slurp or a gulp or whatever.

My words are “investment” and “civility” and my tipple is straight malt Scotch Whiskey. But you can use them too if you wish. That’s just fine with me.

But when you see Obama tonight you will see four things: he will enter the hall, he will ascend the rostrum to be greeted by the vice president and the speaker of the House, then there will be the speech itself and, finally, the reactions of members of the Congress and others in the hall.

Here is the one thing you will not see and probably have never seen. You won't see what is behind the president and above the vice president and the speaker of the House. And because you won't see it, you won't know that you are missing something of surpassing importance.

Think about it for a moment. Why do television cameras never pull back and give a wide-angle view of the president delivering his speech? That is certainly routine for TV: It is considered uninteresting to TV viewers to have a fixed view of a subject.

Why, then, have almost no Americans ever seen what is located above the president, the vice president and the speaker of the House?

Chiseled in the marble wall behind the speaker and vice president, in giant letters, are the words "In G-d We Trust."

The immediate reaction is to wonder: Why have we never seen that before?  After all, we’ve been watching presidential State of the Union addresses for about 40 years.

Here is a theory -- and I say "theory" because it can’t be proved one way or the other.

A generation of Americans has been raised to regard any mention of G-d outside the home or place of worship as a violation of the deepest principles of our country. To the men and women of the left-leaning news media, in particular, "In G-d We Trust" is an anachronism at best, an impediment to moral progress at worst. The existence of those giant chiseled words so disturbs the media that, consciously or not, they do not want Americans to see them.

I do not for a moment believe that there is any conspiracy here. In some ways, I actually wish there were. I wish a handful of media executives had gotten together and conspired to instruct their various cameramen to avoid a wide-angle view of the president.

But, alas, no such conspiracy is necessary. The words "In G-d We Trust" emblazoned in giant letters behind the president of the United States just don't sit well with the secular media. So you won't see them.

We have been led to believe that America is supposed to be a secular country. But that was never the case. We were founded to be a G-d-centered, G-d-based country with a non-denominational government. And that is what those chiseled words affirm.

Yet millions of Americans -- religious and secular alike -- would be stunned to see what every member of the House sees almost every working day.

When this was mentioned to some congressmen they said that, just as remarkable is the fact tha,t when the president is speaking in the House chamber, he is facing a giant sculpted image of Moses holding the Ten Commandments.

Imagine how this scene would go over in American homes -- behind the president of the United States are the words "In G-d We Trust," and in front of him is Moses carrying the Ten Commandments.

This would astound and even confuse an America raised to believe that the words "separation of church and state" are in the Constitution, that those words prohibit the government from acknowledging even a nondenominational God and that no speaker at any public high school graduation ceremony may say "God bless this graduating class."

That is why, I am convinced, no camera tonight will give you a long or wide view of the president. It might change more than Americans' views of the presidential rostrum. It might change Americans' views of America.

Want to visit for tonight’s game?

Bring the 14 year-old Oban for me.