A trivial-seeming but important detail in the "surge" speech

These were the last words of President Bush's speech just now defending the commitment of more troops to Iraq:

We go forward with trust that the Author of Liberty will guide us through these trying hours. Thank you and good night.

A spiritual allusion? Sure. One of the skillful and continuing traits of George W. Bush's rhetoric has been the deft use of religious references that will be noticed by the part of the audience most likely to welcome them and that will skid right past the parts of the audience they might annoy. In many of his early speeches, written on the Michael Gerson watch, the President used "Providence" to similar effect. Like Author of Liberty in this speech, Providence was capitalized in the released versions of the speeches, to make the spiritual resonance clear.

But the most startling aspect of the conclusion was the phrase it did not include.

Here was the way the President ended his most recent major speech about Iraq, the "Strategy for Victory," a little more than a year ago:

May God bless you all, and may God continue to bless the United States of America.

And here was the closing sentence of his State of the Union address a little less than a year ago:

May God bless America.

Since the time of Ronald Reagan, virtually all major presidential addresses have had to end this way. Once Reagan made this the standard sign-off for a speech, who could dare do otherwise? This practice has made my skin crawl. I object as a one-time speechwriter, but even more as a citizen. This lazy formulation relieves the speechwriter, and ultimately the politician, of the responsibility of coming up with an actual idea on which to end the speech. It demeans the concept of divine blessing. It has become pap, the political equivalent of "Have a nice day."

Who could break this pernicious pattern? Only a president whose piety -- and whose support from the most religious parts of the electorate -- were not in doubt. Thank you, President Bush. And may God bless whoever wrote these closing words.