Obama Faces Test in Asserting His Own Brand of Patriotism
By Alec MacGillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 4, 2008
The questions come on cable and radio talk shows, and sometimes from skeptical voters at his own rallies. "Hi, Barack. I am a supporter, a believer and a volunteer for you, and I'm trying to convince my mother to be one also," a woman said at a campaign event last week in Kokomo, Ind. ". . . One of the issues she has heard is that you do not address the flag."
As Sen. Barack Obama tries to secure the Democratic presidential nomination and turn his attention to the presumptive GOP nominee, Sen. John McCain -- a war hero who survived more than five years in enemy captivity -- he is facing a crucial test of one of his driving themes: redefining what it means to be a patriot.
After watching past Democratic candidates wither under Republican attacks, Obama has sought throughout his campaign to present his own vision of patriotism, with a call for uniting the country and restoring its values that is, in its way, as redolent with gauzy American exceptionalism as the "shining city upon a hill" of Ronald Reagan.
In forceful tones, he has warned against using the Sept. 11 attacks to "scare up votes instead of as a way to bring the country together," condemned the "politics of fear," and demanded an end to the "mind-set that got us into war" in Iraq. When asked in October why he does not wear an American-flag pin on his lapel, he took the question head-on, saying he had worn one after the terrorist attacks but had stopped because it "became a substitute for . . . true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security."
(Continued here.)
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 4, 2008
The questions come on cable and radio talk shows, and sometimes from skeptical voters at his own rallies. "Hi, Barack. I am a supporter, a believer and a volunteer for you, and I'm trying to convince my mother to be one also," a woman said at a campaign event last week in Kokomo, Ind. ". . . One of the issues she has heard is that you do not address the flag."
As Sen. Barack Obama tries to secure the Democratic presidential nomination and turn his attention to the presumptive GOP nominee, Sen. John McCain -- a war hero who survived more than five years in enemy captivity -- he is facing a crucial test of one of his driving themes: redefining what it means to be a patriot.
After watching past Democratic candidates wither under Republican attacks, Obama has sought throughout his campaign to present his own vision of patriotism, with a call for uniting the country and restoring its values that is, in its way, as redolent with gauzy American exceptionalism as the "shining city upon a hill" of Ronald Reagan.
In forceful tones, he has warned against using the Sept. 11 attacks to "scare up votes instead of as a way to bring the country together," condemned the "politics of fear," and demanded an end to the "mind-set that got us into war" in Iraq. When asked in October why he does not wear an American-flag pin on his lapel, he took the question head-on, saying he had worn one after the terrorist attacks but had stopped because it "became a substitute for . . . true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security."
(Continued here.)
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