How do US presidents end their speeches? (with a 3-6-9 postscript)

I just read "Weird Things About King Charles' Coronation" by Naomi Wolf, who argues that the coronation was rendered "uncanny" by slight but noticeable departures from established tradition. I'm not British, didn't watch the coronation, and have no opinion on this, but something else she said jumped out at me:

When we as Americans see the Stars and Stripes saluted - and we know that it is the same salute that goes back most of our nation’s history - we are comforted. When the US President ends his every major speech with the phrase "and God Bless the United States of America", that repetition is not only reassuring, it creates an invocation for our national life extending from deep into the past, giving us promise for the future. All of this is a form of positive magic.

[. . .]

I have noticed that icons, symbols and texts that are culturally central to Western countries, and that are central to the Judeo-Christian tradition especially, are being slightly rearranged, slightly soiled, slightly garbled these days everywhere (just as President Biden keeps systematically not concluding his speeches with: "And God bless the United States of America").

"God bless the United States of America"? Did she do that on purpose, to see if anyone would prove her point by noticing it? The traditional way to end a presidential speech is "God bless you, and God bless America," and Wolf's paraphrase is just the sort of "slightly garbled" modification she decries.

That was my immediate reaction, anyway, but I figured I'd better confirm it. I checked the transcripts of every State of the Union address in the last 100 years, and here's what I found.

First, ending the speech with any form of "God bless . . ." is a relatively recent custom, introduced by Ronald Reagan. Of the 60 pre-Reagan addresses I looked at, 95% end with no such formula. The three exceptions are from Truman ("May God bless our country and our cause," 1953), Kennedy ("may God watch over the United States of America," 1962), and Ford ("God bless you," 1977). Since Reagan's first State of the Union in 1982, though, every single address (with the one exception of Clinton in 1999) has ended with some form of "God bless . . . ."

From Reagan to the present, here is what presidents have blessed at the close of their State of the Union addresses:

Here's how they have referred to their country in these statements:

As for specific, word-for-word formulas, these are the only ones that have been used more than once or twice:

• God bless you, and God bless America. (used 8 times, by Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Trump)
• God bless America. (used 4 times, by Clinton, Bush II, and Trump)
• God bless you. (used 4 times, only by Reagan)
• God bless you, and God bless the United States of America. (used 3 times, only by Obama)
• God bless you all, and may God protect our troops. (used 3 times, only by Biden)
  

So I feel a bit vindicated. Although the formula is neither as old nor as invariable as I had expected, the form I remembered is in fact the most canonical, used twice as frequently as any other. The difference between my own understanding and Wolf's probably has to do with the fact that I left the United States in 2004 and haven't watched a full State of the Union address since then, whereas Wolf presumably listened to Obama's addresses, with their (anomalous) preference for "the United States of America."

Anyway, Wolf's overall point stands: Biden is the only recent president to consistently end his speeches without invoking God's blessing on the country. It's also strange that Biden, not any of the wartime presidents who preceded him, should be the one to introduce "our troops" into the formula.

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Reading Naomi Wolf -- a person whose existence hadn't crossed my mind in years -- made me think of the time she was interviewed by Ali G and managed to come off as cool and likable, something of which feminists seem no longer to be capable. (Then I found out that, after the show, she denounced Ali G as a racist and tried to have the episode pulled! She did manage to be cool and likable while she was actually on camera, which is something anyway.)

This little exchange caught my attention:

Wolf: But let me tell you, honestly, how would you feel if you had to sell sex, your sex?

Ali G: What, if people paid me money for sex?

Wolf: No, honestly! I mean --

Ali G: Wicked! I would be there every day, I would [unintelligible] 24 hours a day, seven days a week, three six nine!

Booyakasha! She walked right into that one. Notice, though, how he uses "three six nine," apparently with a meaning similar to "twenty-four seven." Debbie has brought up 3-6-9 several times in the comments, in connection with Shirley Ellis's "Clapping Song" and a statement by Nikola Tesla, but this is the first time I've ever heard it used in a slang sense. (In the Ellis song, I'd always assumed it had no real meaning but was analogous to "Two four six eight, who do we appreciate.") Has anyone ever heard it used this way before?