Those America-hating Democrats

“Dissent is the highest form of patriotism," as Thomas Jefferson did not say.

Despite frequent attribution to Jefferson, the actual author is Howard Zinn, the renowned historian. Still, it has a nice Jeffersonian ring. Maybe Barack Obama can derive some comfort from it as he faces cheap assaults on his love of country and a new attack ad on his wife.

The Tennessee Republican Party has come out with a Web spot replaying Michelle Obama's notorious moment of candor when she said that the enthusiasm, diversity and commitment she saw in the campaign made her, for the first time, "really proud of my country." In the video, upstanding Tennesseeans counter with the usual my-country-right-or-wrong — not that we are ever wrong.

In 2006, the Tennessee Republican Party enriched our culture with the attack ad on Senate candidate Harold Ford, the one with the bottle blond who winks and breathes, "Call me!"

Yes, Michelle Obama should have been more tactful, more sophisticated about how the 24/7 news cycle can make a federal case out of a rookie mistake. But the question of patriotism was bound to come up. In 1960, there were dark mutterings about John Kennedy's loyalties: America or the pope? Bill Clinton's student protests against the Vietnam War sent Republicans into outrage overdrive in 1992. John Kerry won three Purple Hearts fighting in Vietnam. George W. Bush stayed home. Kerry got the Swift-boat treatment; Bush, wrapped in his red, white and blue security blanket, got the White House.

This year, the Dittoheads of talk radio and Fox "News" patrol Barack Obama's lapel like it's the North Korean border: Obama's talking to veterans' groups, and there's the flag pin. He's pandering! Oops! It's gone again. Now he's revealing his true America-hating self! As one GOP wag put it, Obama is "George McGovern without the military experience."

Stupid as this stuff is, it works — and not just with Republicans. In exit polls some Democrats in Indiana and Pennsylvania said they had "heard" Barack Obama declined to say the Pledge of Allegiance. There are dark stories about Obama's "association" with a former member of the Weather Underground — even though Obama was in the 4th grade back in 1970 when the Weathermen were fooling with bombs. Even a few among the allegedly lefty National Public Radio audience questioned Obama's American bona fides. Two callers to the Diane Rehm Show on May 16 fretted over the senator's "refusal" to wear a flag pin, expressing a wish to vote for a candidate who "loves America."

Oh, for God's sake, people. Do we seriously think any presidential candidate hates America? Even Ralph Nader? People run for president out of some arcane cocktail of ego, sense of mission, lust for power, and desire to improve the nation. The money's so-so, the humiliations (see above) manifold, and while flying on Air Force One sounds cool, the threat of assassination balances it out. So let's just agree right here, right now, that all the candidates for president care deeply for their country.

Patriotism should not be judged by facile symbols (what do you want to bet those flag pins are made in China?). Do we want to be told that we're "Number One," or do we want to engage in a serious critique of the nation's failings and come up with a plan to remedy its problems? Thinking people are sometimes proud of their country, sometimes baffled by it, sometimes appalled by it. Patriotism is in the process. As Langston Hughes' patriotic poem Let America Be America Again says:

America never was America to me.

And yet I swear this oath —

America will be!

Diane Roberts is the author of Dream State, a book about Florida.