In Mitt We Trust?

OUR LONG national nightmare is over. OK, OK -- it was just a fever dream, but work with me. Yesterday, Mitt Romney proclaimed that he will not -- repeat not -- remove the word “God” from America's currency. Glad he cleared up that burning-bush issue. Never mind that no one is advocating it. Barack Obama certainly isn't. But Romney went all Elmer Gantry anyway before a Virginia Beach crowd, chastising Obama and the Democrats for not mentioning God in their political platform. The Dems did in fact remove a pro forma plank on faith-based initiatives, but later reinserted it after conservative bible-thumpers went all Inquisition on them. For Romney, this is all about pandering to religious right voters. But since it's a safe bet that those folks won't be voting for Obama anytime soon, it isn't clear why the Dems caved on this silly issue (apart from being pussies). “We’re a nation that’s bestowed by God,” Romney ordained, as if the Almighty is heavily invested in the speck of dust we occupy in the vastness of the universe. I suspect the Lord is bemused by our child-like attempts to categorize religion as right or left on some political spectrum. I also suspect He would agree with Gandhi's view that humankind is "not divided into watertight compartments called social, political and religious. All act and react upon one another." As for Mr. Romney's gambit, Proverbs 14:8 best sums it up: “The wisdom of the prudent is to understand his way: but the folly of fools is deceit.”