Obama seeks to rebrand patriotism

(Via Washington Post - msnbc.com.

The questions come on cable and radio talk shows, and sometimes from skeptical voters at his own rallies. “Hi, Barack. I am a supporter, a believer and a volunteer for you, and I’m trying to convince my mother to be one also,” a woman said at a campaign event last week in Kokomo, Ind. “. . . One of the issues she has heard is that you do not address the flag.”

As Sen. Barack Obama tries to secure the Democratic presidential nomination and turn his attention to the presumptive GOP nominee, Sen. John McCain — a war hero who survived more than five years in enemy captivity — he is facing a crucial test of one of his driving themes: redefining what it means to be a patriot.

After watching past Democratic candidates wither under Republican attacks, Obama has sought throughout his campaign to present his own vision of patriotism, with a call for uniting the country and restoring its values that is, in its way, as redolent with gauzy American exceptionalism as the “shining city upon a hill” of Ronald Reagan.

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