Shorter Bush: “War on Terror?  Culture War? Same thing…”

President Bush said yesterday that he senses a “Third Awakening” of religious devotion in the United States that has coincided with the nation’s struggle with international terrorists, a war that he depicted as “a confrontation between good and evil.”

Bush told a group of conservative journalists that he notices more open expressions of faith among people he meets during his travels, and he suggested that might signal a broader revival similar to other religious movements in history. […]

“There was a stark change between the culture of the ’50s and the ’60s — boom — and I think there’s change happening here,” he added. “It seems to me that there’s a Third Awakening.”

The First Great Awakening refers to a wave of Christian fervor in the American colonies from about 1730 to 1760, while the Second Great Awakening is generally believed to have occurred from 1800 to 1830. (emphasis mine)

Some people understandably take solace in religion (among other things) in difficult times, and he takes it as some sort of repudiation of the last 50 years.   Wonderful…

This would be one of those cases where who you say something to matters as much as — if not more than — what you actually say.  Telling a bunch of right-wingers that you see a “third awakening” serves as a promise of favors to come, whereas saying it at, say, an official press conference just scares people.  They call it “message discipline”, no?

In his comments yesterday, aides said Bush was not casting the war as a religious struggle but was describing American cultural changes in a time of war.

“He’s drawing a parallel in terms of a resurgence, in dangerous times, of people going back to their religion,” said one aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the session was not open to other journalists. “This is not ‘God is on our side’ or anything like that.”

Ah, the other part of message discipline.  Saying something ridiculous & then have your aides spin the hell out of it.  If he were simply making a comparison, then there’d be no point to him saying it, it’d be a “no shit” statement.  Therefore, not only is “god is on our side” the true meaning, but also “btw: by ‘our side’, I mean christianity, not the US as a whole”.

Don’t see it?  Then next press conference ask him: “do you think god is on our side?”.  He won’t be able to answer, because “yes” would confirm his nuttery to others & “no” would piss off his base.