If the badge fits

Watching Barack Obama leave the United Nations building in New York after delivering his speech, I noticed a little sparkle reflecting off the bright glare of the cheesy grin. It was a lapel button and not just any lapel button but a United States flag one.
The President's predecessor was a famed wearer of one and many Tea Party advocates love their little pricks, but Obama has always been more ambivalent towards this adornment. In the early stages of his presidential campaign he was scornful of it and rightly so, but when the Republicans got a bounce following their convention, he took it up until the election was in the bag, reckoning that even if it gave him one per cent or even half a per cent extra support from patriotic lunkheads it might well be worth it. He unceremoniously ditched the clasp when riding high in his honeymoon period, but during the pitched battle to pass comprehensive medical reform, he adopted it again. Once the law was passed, the badge once more fell into abeyance. Yet as the mid-term elections look worrying for the Democrats, the sentimental mantle has popped up for a third time as Obama campaigns and deigns to wear it unabashed. One per cent or even half a per cent may be the difference in Senator Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader, winning or losing his home state of Nevada.
Obama's intellectual argument that this little strip of metal symbolises nothing as to a person's true intent is cogent, for one could be a traitor and still wear it in order to deceive, but in a land where wild lies cannot be dismissed as fantasy but have to be vehemently rebutted each and every single time, intellectual honesty is a political commodity worth very little, as Senator John McCain has found out in his primary round for re-election. It is a sad reflection of modern American politics.