The Patriotism Problem

When he was really rolling in February, Barack Obama would close every speech with a peroration about the importance of hope. The setup always seemed a bit defensive to me — an attack on the pundits and party elders who thought he was too idealistic, a "hopemonger" who needed to have the "hope boiled out of me." Having knocked down that straw man, he would soar through an American history of hope, from the colonists to civil rights marchers. It was the core of his message: patriotism defined as change, the creation of a more perfect union. And so it was rather shocking to hear Obama speak — stripped down and hope redacted — in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on April Fools' Day, his peroration transformed into a Clintonian pledge to get up every morning as President and devote himself to the single mothers, the laid-off workers, "the working families of Pennsylvania."

Obama did add his old hope riff at the end of a question-and-answer session later in Scranton, Pa., but it seemed an afterthought. The bulk of his presentation, especially the Q&A;, was solid protein. He offered Hillaryesque, do-good details: If we return to the national obesity levels of 1980, it would save $1 trillion in health-care costs! He claimed that the mortgage-lending industry had spent $185 million on lobbying over the past decade, and Big Pharma had spent $1 billion. He gave comprehensive answers about trade, immigration and military procurement. He was detailed but never dull. He was, in fact, quite impressive — another sign that this is a candidate smart and supple enough to grow and adapt — even though the substance was buried by media accounts of his transparent common-man photo ops: bowling, watching the NCAA tournament in a bar, drinking Pennsylvania's legendary Yuengling beer.

There were signs that Obama's hard work and extensive television advertising were paying off: various polls showed the race tightening a bit. The talk-show muttering had migrated from Jeremiah Wright to Clinton's Bosnian sniper-fire fantasy. Hordes of new voters were registering in Pennsylvania. It was not impossible that Obama would turn Clinton's predicted victory into a closer-than-expected moral defeat.

But there was still something missing. I noticed it during Obama's response to a young man who remembered how the country had come together after Sept. 11 and lamented "the dangerously low levels of patriotism and pride in our country, the loss of faith in our elected officials." Obama used this, understandably, to go after George W. Bush. "Cynicism has become the hot stock," he said, "the growth industry during the Bush Administration." He talked about the Administration's mendacity, its incompetence during Hurricane Katrina, its lack of transparency. But he never returned to the question of patriotism. He never said, "But hey, look, we're Americans. This is the greatest country on earth. We'll rise to the occasion."

This is a chronic disease among Democrats, who tend to talk more about what's wrong with America than what's right. When Ronald Reagan touted "Morning in America" in the 1980s, Dick Gephardt famously countered that it was near midnight "and getting darker all the time." This is ironic and weirdly self-defeating, since the liberal message of national improvement is profoundly more optimistic, and patriotic, than the innate conservative pessimism about the perfectibility of human nature. Obama's hopemongering is about as American as a message can get — although, in the end, it is mostly about our ability to transcend our imperfections rather than the effortless brilliance of our diversity, informality and freedom-propelled creativity.

Patriotism is, sadly, a crucial challenge for Obama now. His aides believe that the Wright controversy was more about anti-Americanism than it was about race. Michelle Obama's unfortunate comment that the success of the campaign had made her proud of America "for the first time" in her adult life and the Senator's own decision to stow his American-flag lapel pin — plus his Islamic-sounding name — have fed a scurrilous undercurrent of doubt about whether he is "American" enough.

"In this campaign, we will not stand for the politics that uses religion as a wedge and patriotism as a bludgeon," he said on the night that he lost Ohio and Texas. But then he added, "I owe what I am to this country, this country that I love, and I will never forget it." That has been the implicit patriotism of the Obama candidacy: only in America could a product of Kenya and Kansas seek the presidency. It is part of what has proved so thrilling to his young followers, who chanted, "U-S-A, U-S-A," the night that he won the Iowa caucuses. But now, to convince those who doubt him, Obama has to make the implicit explicit. He will have to show that he can be as corny as he is cool.

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