Bob McCarty Writes

Mitt Romney delivered his long-awaited “Faith in America” address this morning, prompting many to wonder whether his effort will be enough to propel him to the Republican presidential nomination. In me, the speech prompted a different reaction. Possibly because I watch too much television, I found myself unable to clear from my mind images of a the “Buzzword Bingo” television commercial IBM began running recently.

That commercial features an auditorium full of employees, many of whom choose to play a game called “Buzzword Bingo” to pass the time while forced to listen to the presentation. The game, as its name implies, involves identifying corporate buzzwords printed on the bingo-style cards they hold in their hands. Near the end of the spot, one female employee, apparently playing the game for the first time, makes the mistake of shouting “Bingo!” in the middle of the executive’s presentation.In the spirit of “Buzzword Bingo,” I decided to analyze Romney’s speech, the complete text of which appears here. In the text below, the “buzzwords” appear in bold face while the number of times each was used appears immediately afterward in bold face and inside parentheses. So let’s begin.

Not surprising in a speech titled, “Faith in America,” Romney used the words religion/religious (40) more often than any other. Coming in second were the words America/American (32), followed by faith (23), God (15), liberty (13) and president/presidency/presidential (11).

The list of buzzwords used less than 10 times in the speech includes Constitution (7), prayer (6), state (6), moral/morality (6) and separate/separation (5), followed by tolerance (3), father/fathers (3), challenge/challenges (3), Islam or Islamist (2). and Jesus Christ (2).

Most noteworthy to me, however, was Romney’s decision to use several words sparingly. For instance, he never uttered some of the words and phrases most often associated with his faith, such as Latter-Days Saints (as in “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-days Saints”), LDS (the acronym for the church) or missionaries (the guys who wear black and white clothing and ride bikes).

Finally, he used the word, Mormon, only once, leaving me to wonder whether, indeed, his faith has become a political liability to him and his campaign.