God & the Inauguration: a Battle Not Worth Fighting

Worth fighting?

A founding premise of this blog is the idea that political symbols have value – “myth, power, value,” as a professor of mine used to say – both as campaign tools and as methods of molding the national consciousness. As a result, political symbols are worth fighting over, not just as a battle in the culture war, but as a means of political expression. However, sometimes a symbol is just a symbol – or, fighting over it just isn’t worth the price.

This is a lesson that Michael Newdow hasn’t learned. Newdow, perennial atheist litigant, filed late last year (ha!), demanding that the White House & the Obama transition team purge any reference to God from the official, state-sanctioned elements of the inaugural ceremonies:

According to the complaint, the plaintiffs “have no objection at this time” if President-elect Barack Obama chooses to add the words himself. “The president, like all other individuals, has Free Exercise rights, which might permit such an alteration.” But, the complaint adds, “no such free exercise rights come into play on the part of the individual administering the oath to the President.”

Newdow – who is likely to lose his case, just like he did in 2001 and 2005 – needs to pick his battles. Certainly there are times when jousting over political symbols is worthwhile, but expunging God wholesale from the political discourse is neither a tenable goal, nor desirable. Where God enters the public discourse simply because that’s the way it’s always been, rather than out of an attempt to proselytize or increase public religiosity, we should balk at fighting history, and save our resources for the fights that matter. Even if Newdow could hope to secure a victory, it would be less than Pyrrhic, inviting a public backlash that would drown Establishment Clause litigation for years to come. I don’t like those odds, and I don’t know why Newdow does.