Pins and Panders - Obama Rises above it

Richard Cohen

Sometimes I think the best thing about Barack Obama is that little empty space on his lapel. It is where other politicians wear their 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. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, wearing the pin had become de rigueur for politicians. Obama too had worn the pin but had taken 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 if 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.

Obama better expressed his feelings later in the campaign when he was asked by ABC's Charlie Gibson why he didn't sport the lapel pin and he answered, if I may paraphrase, that the flag flew in his heart.......