Then, no doubt from feeling the heat, he was for it:
Obama's Flag Pin Flip-Flop?
In case you missed it, Barack Obama's American flag lapel pin is back. How long it will stay on is anyone's guess.
This week, after eschewing the patriotic symbol for quite some time, Obama started wearing the pin to selected events. On Tuesday, he was sans pin on the Senate floor, but then later donned it while speaking to working-class voters in Missouri during the evening. "I haven't been making such a big deal about it. Others have. Sometimes I wear it, sometimes I don't," Obama said. "We were talking with a group of veterans yesterday. Over the last several weeks people have been handing me flag pins. I thought it was appropriate." Asked if he will continue to wear the pin, Obama said, "If it ends up being on another suit, I might leave it one day, but it's something that I've done before and I'll certainly wear it again."
Obama may make it sound like just a random fashion choice, but there is a large swath of Americans who take symbols like the pledge of allegiance, the national anthem, and, yes, the flag in its many iterations very seriously. And, as former Clinton adviser Doug Schoen pointed out in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this week, these are people — mostly white working-class folk — whom Obama can ill afford to offend given his losses in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Read more: time.com |
