I’m writing from 31,000 feet, on my way home from a week in Rome and Madrid. One of the niceties of traveling abroad is a break from the endless American-centric news cycle at home. But yesterday I happened to catch some footage of Barack Obama in Florida, and I couldn’t help but note that he was wearing a flag pin on his suit jacket lapel.
My initial reaction was disappointment. Obama’s principled disdain for a symbol he characterized as “a substitute for true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to national security” particularly resonated with what I had written on this page in September 2006: “The lapel pin is emblematic of how this administration has chosen to govern: relying on symbolism, slogans and ideology, rather than analysis and reason.”
But the realist in me understands that a candidate can’t win the Presidency on principle alone. And if a shallow and ill-informed electorate wants to judge a candidate based on what he wears, rather than what he thinks and says, then the path of least resistance is to conform. There are more important battles to be fought.
But other than repeat the whispered charges that Obama is somehow not fully American, our media isn’t doing much to uncover the latent nativism behind them. Why is the one Presidential candidate with a non-European surname being questioned about patriotism, when his non-flag pin wearing rivals get a free pass? Why do reporters simply correct the record on his religion, rather than ask why many Americans see the faith of a Presidential candidate’s dad to be a disqualifier? Especially in a country whose founding legend rests on immigrants seeking religious freedom?
Perhaps it’s because not many of the doubters are first-generation native-born Americans themselves. And we’re not a group whose patriotism the rest of America should doubt. We’ve spent quite a bit of time in our ancestral countries, seeing first-hand how the rest of the world lives on a fraction of the material comfort we enjoy at home. Our parents are living examples of the boundless opportunity available to anyone willing to study and work hard. For us, the “American Dream” is hardly a nebulous phrase that the rest of America learns about in sixth grade social studies class.
America could benefit from a healthy dose of this perspective after eight years of a man whose pre-Presidential travels only included visits to London and Mexico. While John McCain and Hillary Clinton might threaten to bomb Iran (to appear funny and tough, respectively), I see some of the damage we’ve wrought in Baghdad and can’t help but think that the buildings look not unlike that my grandparents’ Bombay apartment complex. Filled with real people that are just trying to make a living, but whose home just happened to be in the wrong place in a smart bomb’s targeting processor.
Our current leadership demonstrates how easy it is to put America’s unique combination of boundless resources, entrepreneurial culture, and rule of law to work toward disastrous ends. Perhaps it’s time for someone who is grateful for being able to pin a flag to his breast, rather than someone who does it because he’s known nothing else.
2 comments:
Isn't it unfortunate that a lot of conveniences in our lives today have been born out of initiatives of war - take the GPS we use in automobiles, for example. And, ironically, an ugly byproduct of the War, the Hummer, reminds us of the scenes on Baghdad streets when we see them pull into grocery store parking lots in suburban America!
Good piece, Nihal. Showing off a flag pin is essential because appearance counts in our society today, not honesty and candor, and not even common sense. Look at Scott McClellan, former White House press secretary. He describes Bush in his soon-to be-published memoir as someone with a "lack of inquisitiveness", Condi Rice as "too accommodating" to her boss and the media as "complicit enablers" who allowed the White House to manipulate public opinion in favor of the Iraq war. Only the Washington establishment is stunned by these revelations that have been obvious to most Americans all along. Why is it that McClellan and others before him put their integrity on shelf when they are part of the inner circle? Why does this candor to bash Bush burst only when a book deal is guaranteed? Hypocrisy is the watchword and not even our sacred flag is safe from its clasp.
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