Maybe it was the polls that showed him slipping further behind. Maybe it was the lackluster performance at the last debate. Maybe it was seeing Hillary Clinton raise more money than him in the last quarter.
Whatever it was, I think Barack Obama is having a really good week. He’s starting to act like the candidate that a lot of us expected him to be all along.
Today, for example, an ABC reporter in Iowa asked Obama why he isn’t wearing a flag pin on his lapel. “You don’t have the American flag pin on. Is that a fashion statement?” the reporter asked, at the end of a brief interview with Obama. “Those have been on politicians since Sept. 12, 2001.” Instead of some canned response, Obama actually gave a thoughtful reply.
“You know, the truth is that right after 9/11, I had a pin,” Obama said. “Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we’re talking about the Iraq War, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, I decided I won’t wear that pin on my chest.
“Instead,” he said, “I’m going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great, and hopefully that will be a testimony to my patriotism.”
Good for him. For far too many, wearing a pin is itself a patriotic exercise, which in and of itself, is rather hollow. Someone can oppose American civil liberties, prefer to stifle dissent, support un-American policies like torture and the elimination of habeas corpus, but so long as the stars and stripes are on his or her lapel, their patriotism should be considered unimpeachable. What nonsense.
It’d be easy for Obama to simply wear the pin and avoid the question, but instead he articulated a more important point about ideas carrying more weight than symbols. It was a small gesture, but it’s an admirable one.
It comes on the same day as a terrific statement on U.S. torture policies…
“The secret authorization of brutal interrogations is an outrageous betrayal of our core values, and a grave danger to our security. We must do whatever it takes to track down and capture or kill terrorists, but torture is not a part of the answer — it is a fundamental part of the problem with this administration’s approach.
“Torture is how you create enemies, not how you defeat them. Torture is how you get bad information, not good intelligence. Torture is how you set back America’s standing in the world, not how you strengthen it. It’s time to tell the world that America rejects torture without exception or equivocation. It’s time to stop telling the American people one thing in public while doing something else in the shadows. No more secret authorization of methods like simulated drowning.
“When I am president America will once again be the country that stands up to these deplorable tactics. When I am president we won’t work in secret to avoid honoring our laws and Constitution, we will be straight with the American people and true to our values.”
…and some leadership on the von Spakovsky nomination…
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Wednesday derailed a plan blessed by Senate leaders to vote on controversial Federal Election Commission White House nominee Hans von Spakovsky, a move giving Democrats time to breathe in the ongoing Senate stalemate on FEC nominees.
…and the same week as a very good speech about the intersection of politics and foreign policy.
“[When it comes to Iraq], the American people weren’t just failed by a President – they were failed by much of Washington. By a media that too often reported spin instead of facts. By a foreign policy elite that largely boarded the bandwagon for war. […]
“The fact that violence today is only as horrific as in 2006 is held up as progress. Washington politicians and pundits trip over each other to debate a newspaper advertisement while our troops fight and die in Iraq.”
Why hasn’t Obama been hitting notes like these all along?