Expect to see lots of headlines like this one between now and November: McCain Keeps His Faith to Himself, at Church and in Campaign. Or like this: McCain doesn't put his faith out front. The campaign has pretty obviously decided to finesse McCain's history of refusing to be The Second Coming of George W. Bush* by not pandering to the Religious Right. They're going to do it just the way you see in those headlines: oh yes, McCain is a religious guy, he just doesn't like to wear it on his sleeve, unlike those shallow not-Christians Obama and Clinton.

We know how well that strategy worked for John Kerry. It'll be interesting to see if it works any better for McCain. He's certain to get a friendlier media narrative out of it than Kerry ever did.

I will give McCain props for this story, as related by the Bloomberg piece:

In Vietnam, a pared-down church service provided some routine in captivity. As the senior lieutenant in his Hanoi cell block, McCain led an 11 a.m. Sunday service after the prisoners' morning meal of "weed soup,'' said Swindle, a former commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission who is advising McCain's campaign.

When the guards had cleared, the senior officer would cough or tap the letter "c,'' signaling to other captives that it was time to worship. The service began by reciting the 23rd Psalm, though "we did it in the plural,'' said Swindle, "so it was 'Yea, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we will fear no evil.'''

I love that bit about the 23rd Psalm, it seems very appropriate to the context.

By itself, of course, this wouldn't work. There are too many red-meat Republican evangelicals out there. So the McCain campaign is going to pair his personal narrative with a political one. CBN's David Brody quotes RNC Deputy Chair Frank Donatelli to that effect:

“All I can say is that it will be aggressive. Senator McCain’s aides at all levels will be talking to pro-family groups. Senator McCain himself will engage with pro-family groups. The problem with the DNC outreach is the party that embraces abortion on demand and retreating in the face of our enemies I would think would have a great deal of difficulty reaching pro-family voters.”

“We are going to have a very aggressive program to reach out to religious voters whether they are Evangelical, Protestant, Catholic or whatever. That is a staple of our campaign because what we find is that the most religious voters certainly in terms of Church attendance tend to vote Republican more than the general public. There are a lot of voters there for us. The senator’s team has been meeting with these (pro-family) groups. He has conducted some meetings and he’ll continue to have such meetings. I think the test here is what we are saying in terms of issues. The issues that are of concern to religious voters namely winning the war on terror and appointing and supporting judges to the federal bench that will interpret the constitution and not make social policy, those are bedrock issues as far as Senator McCain is concerned. I believe that as the campaign goes on this will become more and more evident. We’ve got plenty of time here, lots of time for meetings and interaction and I just believe that as we go forward that the groups you’re talking about will become more and more comfortable with our campaign.”

Ordinarily, I'd rip Donatelli a new one for equating faith with the "pro-family" agenda. But in this case, his comments are fairly easily translated. There is a demographic within the GOP (IIRC, about 10-15%) who are hyper-vigilant on these issues. Those are the so-called "values voters," and they really do put abortion and homosexuality at the top of their agenda. So Donatelli is signaling them: we hear you, and we won't forget you when the time is right.

Again, we'll have to wait and see how well that works.

*Which of course would make him the Third Coming of Ronald Reagan.