1 Boring Old Man

Pins and Panders
Obama Wears His Independence on His Lapel

 Sometimes I think the best thing about Barack Obama is that little empty space on his lapel. It is where other politicians wear the American flag pin, a kitschy piece of empty symbolism that tells you nothing about that particular person except that he or she thinks like everyone else. Obama’s flag, invisible to the naked eye, is the Jolly Roger of a politician thinking for himself.

The flag pin issue arose last fall when someone noticed that Obama was campaigning in the patriotic nude. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, wearing the pin had become de rigueur for politicians. Obama, too, had worn the pin but took it off when he started "noticing people wearing a lapel pin, but not acting very patriotic." Some of these people, he said unconvincingly, were not voting for veterans’ benefits and the like — "not voting to make sure that disability payments were coming out on time."

I suspect more to the point — and much more important than votes on veterans’ issues — was Obama’s sense that the flag pin, rather than representing patriotism, was an emblem of conformity and hypocrisy. Richard Nixon, for instance, sported one while undermining the Constitution and, in private, cursing all sorts of minority groups. And history does not record whether his vice president, Spiro T. Agnew, took his off on the solemn occasions when he received bribes in the White House. Somehow, the flag pin did not improve the character of either man…

I’m proud of Obama for calling this one for what it is. I was also proud of the way he handled the Reverend Wright saga. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that it will have the correct effect in this nasty climate. I’m pretty sure Obama can beat McCain. There are lots of reasons for thinking that, but one of them is the vigor with which the Republican machine is trying to push Clinton into the nomination – Operation Chaos [below] being but one particularly desparate example.