In case you haven't heard, John McCain is a patriot who served his country in Vietnam, was held as a prisoner of war in the "Hanoi Hilton," refused early release out of loyalty to his fellow prisoners, and came back home to continue serving his country in the U.S. Senate.
And if you hadn't heard, well, all you need to do is turn on your TV.
On July 8, McCain rolled out a new commercial that opens with shots of hippies dancing during the "Summer of Love" and points out that during that same summer, a certain someone was showing a different kind of loveâlove for his countryâin Vietnam.
Using antiwar hippies as a political foil is a favorite tactic of McCain, who ran a similar commercial during the Democratic primaries attacking Hillary Clinton for her support of a Woodstock Museum. This time, the hippies are just a warm-up for the McCain commercial's main pointâa jab at Barack Obama's reliance on words rather than, say, past military deeds, and an insinuation that Obama's love of country is not quite as fully formed as his opponent's: "Beautiful words cannot make your lives better. But a man who has always put his country and his people before self, before politics, can."
As Mark Schmitt writes in the June issue of the American Prospect, Republicans are beating the patriotism drum not just because it's the season of barbecues and fireworks, but because, having failed to govern in a sensible manner over the last eight years, appeals to nationalism are all they have left. Therefore, writes Schmitt, McCain is being "recast entirely in terms of his biography, his honor, his character, his American-ness."
He's not the only one being recast. Obama, having concluded that he can't simply ignore the insinuations about his lack of patriotism, spent July 4 in Butte, Montana, watching a parade with his family and waving a tiny American flag. (See Black Friday by Adrian Ryan.)
Obama also answered a request from Parade magazine, a Sunday newspaper insert not normally considered an arbiter of fitness for the presidency, that he explain what patriotism means to him. Yes, it's come to this.
As it turned out, McCain answered the same call and, in doing so, ended up proving himself wrong about the relative powerlessness of words.
McCain's response was dry and didactic. Obama's was well-written and moving. "I remember my grandfather's funeral," Obama wrote. "As I listened to the rifles fire in salute and the long, solemn notes of taps... I thought about the country that my grandfather was so proud to serveâa country where we have the unparalleled freedom to pursue our dreams."
Will the people who give the patriotism debate traction actually read Parade magazine and get over their concerns? Doubtful. It's too usefulâand distractingâto pretend that one of these candidates loves America more than the other. 
