Obama's Elitism is Fixable

I'm a supporter of Barack Obama. I fit into his demographic nicely - I'm a 23-year-old student at a posh university, where the mere mention of Texas causes snickers throughout the aisles. I don't know how to change a diaper, but I do know how to edit a Facebook profile.

And I'm sad to see Obama shooting himself in the foot. It seems like it's a daily occurrence lately. One day, my candidate of choice refuses to pin an American flag to his shirt, calling it "a substitute for true patriotism." The next day, it turns out that the man whose entire political message has been based on being "President of the United States of America" is best buddies with an angry and divisive pastor, and instead of kicking the guy out of his campaign and leaving his church, Mr. Unifier is trying to achieve some kind of balancing act, giving a stirring and passionate address that completely dodges the issue.

I'm sad to see Obama shooting himself in the foot for such a stupid reason. Because I can recognize it in a heartbeat: like most of progressive America, Obama is uncomfortable being patriotic.

All of the damage can still be undone. Instead of addressing the issue of race in general - a stirring but transparent attempt to change the subject - Obama should offer the public some words of honesty, along the lines of: "I turned to my pastor in the past for spiritual guidance, but never agreed with his political views. But now that I am running to be this nation's president, I realize that I have to leave my pastor and his church behind, because his views are the exact opposite of what I stand for." Period. No equivocation.

When Michelle Obama said she had "never been proud of [her] country" until her husband ran for president, I doubt she really meant it. She is simply too intelligent to fail to recognize that while there are many flaws in this nation, there are also many things to be very proud of. If she wants her husband to be elected she should admit this the next chance she gets. Here's a suggestion: "Of course I recognize there is much to be proud of in this country, I simply meant that I was never as proud of my country as I am today, with Barack running for the White House. This country is a wonderful place, but it needs change desperately, and it's on the verge of achieving it." That's all it would take.

This would strike many of my colleagues and fellow Obama supporters as somehow dishonest, or pandering. I hope that it isn't. And the reason is pretty simple. There's nothing wrong with being patriotic.

Realizing the truth of that simple statement is the single biggest step the American Left has to take to come back from the political wilderness.

There are different kinds of patriotism. There's the kind that revolves around the belief that America is the greatest nation on this Earth: We're number one, and therefore everybody else isn't. This is half a step away from a world full of "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" and "crazy towelheads," and the kind of arrogant foreign policy that pits the United States into a cold war against the rest of the world, democracies and dictatorships alike. That's the kind of patriotism that I, and many others, have right to be disgusted by. Maybe someday, George W. Bush will be hunting for armadillos out on his ranch, and suddenly stop and realize, in a dusty moment of clarity, how foolish it was for America to insist (or believe) that it was somehow better than everybody else. Are we really that insecure?

But there's also a different kind of patriotism, and it's about time our leaders started making it clear that this is the kind of patriotism this country needs. The kind that doesn't insist that America is the best nation on this Earth, but that still recognizes that it is a good nation. A nation of essentially decent people. A nation that, above all, has the potential to change for the better.

We're proud of our hometowns, why can't we be proud of our country? All of it is just a collection of hometowns. If you're from Bird City, Kan., you don't have to believe that Bird City is some kind of perfect utopia to justify buying a fellow Birdie a beer. Republicans and Democrats need to realize that they really are all part of the same team, and buy one another a beer.

I was hoping Barack Obama would be the one to pick up the tab, with all his donations.

I would venture so far as to say that you could be from North Korea, and still be proud of being Korean, without endorsing the horrible regime in Pyongyang that is butchering your people. Just like today, you should be able to be proud of being German, without immediately raising suspicions that you've got a swastika hidden in the attic. It is precisely to prevent patriotism from being usurped by a dangerous group or ideology that we all have to be patriotic.

Remember that scene in Easy Rider where the main character sweeps in on his motorcycle, American flags proudly painted on his helmet and the front of his bike? The day the counter-culture stopped proudly brandishing American flags is the day it began to disintegrate. That's the day it devolved into a self-destructive frenzy of drug use and cheap thrills, while its more accomplished members settled into an ego-massage chair.

I have a sneaking suspicion that one of the key questions in U.S. politics is: What kind of politics better defines what it means to be American? So long as we all associate the phrase "Born in the U.S.A." with the willingness to invade other countries, with financial success and heterosexuality, America will remain in the grips of a depressing conservatism. The day that progressive Americans start convincing their neighbors that people who are gay, or black, or poor, and - most importantly - that they themselves are full-blooded Americans, is the day this nation starts to come together again. I was hoping Obama would be the leader who would start proving that to people.

Obama needs to stop running for Dean of Harvard Law School, and start running to be the guy that everybody wants to have a beer with. It's pretty simple - if you don't think this country is capable of changing for the better, why are you running for president? And if you do believe in America, then why are you afraid to pin a flag to your shirt?