Obama Fiercely Defends His Patriotism
Democrat Also Decries Criticism of Rival McCain on Service to Country

By Jonathan Weisman and Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, July 1, 2008; A01

INDEPENDENCE, Mo., June 30 -- Dogged by persistent rumors questioning his belief in country, Sen. Barack Obama journeyed to Middle America on Monday to lay out his vision of patriotism, conceding that he has learned in this presidential campaign that "the question of who is -- or is not -- a patriot all too often poisons our political debate."

"Throughout my life, I have always taken my deep and abiding love for this country as a given," Obama said in the 29-minute address to about 1,150 people crowded into a gymnasium at the Truman Memorial Building, named for former president Harry S. Truman. "It was how I was raised. It was what propelled me into public service. It is why I am running for president. And yet at times over the last 16 months, my patriotism has been challenged -- at times as a result of my own carelessness, more often as a result of the desire by some to score political points and raise fears about who I am and what I stand for."

Obama's speech came on the same day that his rival for the White House, Sen. John McCain, pushed back hard against criticism of his own record as a Navy flier and a prisoner of war. On Sunday, retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark questioned McCain's qualifications for the White House. "He hasn't held executive responsibility," Clark said on CBS's "Face the Nation." "I don't think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president."

Obama rebuked that line of attack Monday, acknowledging McCain by name in saluting veterans "who have endured physical torment in service to our country."

"No further proof of such sacrifice is necessary," he said. "And let me also add that no one should ever devalue that service, especially for the sake of a political campaign, and that goes for supporters on both sides." In a statement, a spokesman for the senator from Illinois said that Obama "rejects yesterday's statement by General Clark."

Polls have shown that a small but statistically significant slice of the electorate continues to question Obama's patriotism, especially in white, working-class regions.

The mere act of giving the speech just four months before Election Day was extraordinary for the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee. Obama has built his candidacy on the promise of change in a year in which a vast majority of Americans think the nation is on the wrong track. But he has repeatedly been forced to address false rumors that he will not recite the Pledge of Allegiance, place his hand over his heart during the national anthem or wear an American-flag pin on his lapel. He wore a flag pin for Monday's speech.

In mid-June, the Obama campaign started a Web site, Stop the Smears, to combat such allegations, even posting videos of the candidate leading the Pledge of Allegiance as he opened a Senate session. But among some circles, the beliefs have become ingrained -- egged on by Internet videos such as one that pans over Democratic presidential candidates in Iowa with their hands over their hearts during the national anthem. In the video, Obama has his hands clasped in front of him. Another shows his wife, Michelle, saying that for the first time, she is proud of her country.

Obama tried to take the offensive on Monday, saying that he "will not stand idly by" while his patriotism is questioned.

Former Senate majority leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), a key Obama adviser, said by e-mail: "At times in the past, Democrats have given the impression that they would rather not have the debate. Barack would prefer to engage in the debate. I am pleased that he is."

Obama's speech put the issue in a broad historical perspective, speaking of charges that Thomas Jefferson had sold the nation out to the French and that John Adams "was in cahoots with the British." He also questioned policies enacted in the name of patriotism, including Adams's Alien and Sedition Acts, Abraham Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, and Franklin D. Roosevelt's internment of Japanese Americans.

"The use of patriotism as a political sword or a political shield is as old as the republic," Obama said. "Still, what is striking about today's patriotism debate is the degree to which it remains rooted in the culture wars of the 1960s -- in arguments that go back 40 years or more. In the early years of the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War, defenders of the status quo often accused anybody who questioned the wisdom of government policies of being unpatriotic."

But he was quick to say the '60s-era protesters did their part to bring on those charges "by burning flags, by blaming America for all that was wrong with the world, and perhaps most tragically, by failing to honor those veterans coming home from Vietnam, something that remains a national shame to this day."

And he tried to put the issue of patriotism into his own, unusual biography, which took him as a child from Hawaii to Indonesia, from a home headed by a single mother to one led by grandparents.

"For a young man of mixed race, without even a father's steadying hand, it is this essential American idea -- that we are not constrained by the accident of birth but can make of our lives what we will -- that has defined my life, just as it has defined the life of so many other Americans," he said. "That is why for me, patriotism is always more than just loyalty to a place on a map or a certain kind of people. Instead, it's also loyalty to America's ideals, ideals for which anyone can sacrifice, or defend, or give their last full measure of devotion."

When controversy exploded over the fiery sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., his former longtime pastor, Obama proved he could blunt a political threat when he challenges it head-on. His speech on race, given in Philadelphia in March, was hailed for its candor and eloquence, and in the days that followed it, he quickly moved back to the central themes of the primary campaign: the economy and the Iraq war.

But just as Wright has not disappeared from the political landscape, no one expects the patriotism question to be quelled with one speech. This time, campaign aides say, Obama will stick with the theme of patriotism through this Fourth of July week, when he will travel to conservative-leaning regions of eastern Ohio, the Mountain West and the Northern Plains.

"I give him credit. He is taking this very seriously," said presidential historian Robert Dallek, who compared Obama's travails to those of John F. Kennedy, who was plagued by whisper campaigns about the divided loyalties of the would-be first Catholic president.

Those anti-Catholic whispers were a real threat to Kennedy, Dallek said, but they were not abetted by the stubborn, unruly Internet, nor were they stoked by the undercurrent of race that Obama faces.

Kennedy went on the offensive in 1960, charging that his Republican opponent, then-Vice President Richard M. Nixon, had been weak on Cuba and had allowed a "missile gap" to develop with the Soviet Union.

Democrats appear to be taking a page from the Kennedy playbook. Jon Soltz, the head of the anti-Iraq-war VoteVets.org, joined in, writing on the Huffington Post Web site, "While we should all honor Senator McCain's service, that doesn't mean we should necessarily honor it by putting him in the White House to take up George W. Bush's third term."

McCain's campaign moved quickly to counter the criticism.

"If that's the kind of campaigning that Senator Obama and his surrogates and supporters want to wage, I understand that," McCain said. "It doesn't reduce the price of a gallon of gas by one penny. . . . It doesn't help an American stay in their home they're afraid of losing. I expect to discuss in this campaign the challenges we face."

The campaign convened a "truth squad" of half a dozen men who had served with McCain in the military to defend the senator on an issue that many believe to be the one unassailable piece of the Republican's résumé: his status as a war hero and as a military expert.

Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), a former Navy secretary and a longtime McCain friend, said he was "utterly shocked" by Clark's comments and called them "disrespectful." Retired Navy Adm. Leighton Smith added that "it is inconceivable to me that anyone could take a shot at Senator McCain's military experience. . . . General Clark is way off base on this one."

Robert C. "Bud" McFarlane, who served in Vietnam and was later President Ronald Reagan's national security adviser, said Clark's comments "may be part of a larger gambit" to undermine McCain's status as a war hero and an expert on foreign-policy matters.

"Senator Obama someday may have the good fortune to engage with foreign leaders or to become as well read as John McCain in history or national security affairs," McFarland said. "But it doesn't exist right now."

In a bit of irony, one of McCain's defenders was retired Col. George "Bud" Day, a fellow prisoner of war who appeared in the Swift boat ads that disparaged the military service of 2004 Democratic nominee John F. Kerry. Democrats accused McCain and Day of hypocrisy; Day defended himself and the ads.

"The Swift boat, quote, attacks were simply a revelation of the truth. The similarity doesn't exist," he said. "One was about laying out the truth. This one is about attempting to cast another shadow."

Shear reported from Washington.