Who Loves America?

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 love—love for his country—in 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
point—a 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
serve—a 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 useful—and distracting—to pretend that one of these
candidates loves America more than the other.