The politics of patriotism

THE LAST time a Democratic presidential candidate was nine points ahead in a two-horse race, less than four months from a general election, Republicans throttled him with the flag. Michael Dukakis’s alleged crime was to have vetoed a bill, as governor of Massachusetts, that would have compelled teachers to lead their pupils in the pledge of allegiance. The Democratic nominee in 1988 said he had had no choice, the bill was unconstitutional. But for his navy-hero Republican opponent, George H.W. Bush, this was a worrying reflection of the swarthy Mr Dukakis’s “values”.

He and other Republican leaders began reciting the sacred pledge at every opportunity. At the Republican convention that year John McCain, a senator and former prisoner-of-war, told a remarkable story about one of his fellow captives sewing Old Glory out of rags with a bamboo needle. Their Vietnamese captors discovered it and pulverised the flag-maker. But no sooner had he been dragged back to their communal cell, half-blind from his beating, according to McCain, than he was back at it with his bamboo splinter, “making that flag because he knew how important it was to us to be able to pledge our allegiance”.

Mr Dukakis’s subsequent hammering underlined how completely the Republicans owned patriotism (and how ruthlessly they were prepared to use it). A...