Obama and the Flag Pin Presidency

After listening to Karl Rove suggest that Barack Obama wasn't a real American because he didn't wear a flag pin and after watching John McCain's ad "The American President that Americans have been waiting for," I wondered aloud:

Can Obama fashion a counter-narrative that neutralizes the idiocy of a flag-pin campaign? Time will tell, and/but if he can't do it, no other Democrat can either.

Turns out that he can do it, of course. Is there a candidate better than Obama at this sort of thing?

Here's Obama speaking in Butte, Montana at a Democratic Party dinner:

...We know that from now until November, the status quo will fight back with the same old politics that seeks to divide us by race and region; gender and party; the politics that uses religion as a wedge, and patriotism as a bludgeon; the kind that speaks to our fears instead of our hopes.

We can choose to listen to all this. We can allow it to distract us from talking about jobs, or health care, or Iraq for yet another year and another election. Or this time, we can choose to end it.

I love this country not because it’s perfect, but because we’ve always been able to move it closer to perfection. Because through revolution and slavery; war and depression; great battles for civil rights and women’s rights and worker’s rights, generations of Americans have shown their love of country by struggling and sacrificing and risking their lives to bring us that much closer to our founding promise. And as long as I live, I will never forget that I am only standing here because they did.

This is a country where my grandfather signed up to defend after Pearl Harbor and my grandmother sacrificed on a bomber assembly line – a country that thanked this small-town Kansas couple with a college education and a chance to raise my mother in a home of their own.

It’s a country where the letters and prayers of my father were answered – a young Kenyan who wanted nothing more than the chance to study in a magical place called America.

It’s a country where the improbable love of my parents was actually possible; where my mother could raise me without much money but still send me to the best schools in the nation; a country where I’ve seen hope triumph in neighborhoods that were devastated by joblessness and poverty; where I’ve seen ordinary Americans find justice in a courtroom; where I’ve seen progress made for working families who need leaders who are willing to stand up and fight for them.

That is the country I love. That is the promise of America. And in this election, if we can shed our cynicism and our doubts and our fears; if we remember that we rise or fall as one people, and that we can meet any challenge that comes our way if we meet it together, then I believe that this generation will do its part to perfect our union and keep our promise alive in the twenty-first century. Good night, God Bless, and as they say here in Butte, “tap ‘er light.”

In the early twentieth century, Butte, Montana, was one of the preeminent mining centers in the nation. Of all the specialized mine workers, the blasters who placed dynamite charges to extend the mine drift had the most dangerous work. Whether on or off the job, they often parted from one another with the words, “Tap ‘er light, pard.” Their words referred to the need for blasters to take special care in tamping down a charge. A carelessly laid charge could detonate prematurely with fatal results. Predictably, blasters tended to be a cautious, savvy group both underground and at the bargaining table...Be cautious, know what you’re getting into, get the training you’ll need, get paid fully for your efforts, and take your time.