< Why Do We Care About Flag Pins?

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Heard on All Things Considered

July 4, 2008 - ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

The Fourth is a day given over to symbolic displays of patriotism - the rockets' red glare, a Sousa march, a guy on stilts dressed as Uncle Sam. It's patriotic pageantry and it's hard to imagine someone faulting a candidate by saying he doesn't eat hot dogs on the Fourth of July. Our dealings with the flag are something else, even with flag lapel pins. A voter in Pennsylvania this year asked Barack Obama during a televised debate why he didn't wear one.

Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois): I wore one yesterday when a veteran handed it to me, who himself was disabled and works on behalf of disabled veterans. I have never said that I don't wear flag pins or refuse to wear flag pins. This is the kind of manufactured issue that our politics has become obsessed with and once again distracts us from what should be my job when I'm commander in chief.

SIEGEL: Well, flag pins were not always such vital accessories worthy of questions in presidential debates. To find out how they got that way and when, we've called upon Julian Zelizer, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. Welcome.

Professor JULIAN ZELIZER (Princeton University): Thanks for having me.

SIEGEL: How far back do flag pins go?

Prof. ZELIZER: Well, we've seen the use of flags, flag pins or actual flags since about the Civil War. It's really a phenomenon of the post-Civil War period when Americans tried to start figuring out what held this country together, and then using the flag as a symbol of both patriotism and loyalty to all aspects of the country.

SIEGEL: Is there a moment when you can see the flag pin, the lapel pin, becoming a little more partisan symbol than that?

Prof. ZELIZER: Yeah, I think one important moment is in 1896, when William McKinley runs against William Jennings Bryant. His manager, Mark Hannah, uses the flag. We don't know if it was pins so much as draping the candidate and the candidate's trains in flags. Another important moment comes during World War I. When Woodrow Wilson in 1917 goes to Congress and asks for a declaration of war, most members of Congress wear a little flag pin on their lapel, and opponents of the war, including Robert La Follette, refused wear it.

SIEGEL: La Follette, of course, was the Wisconsin progressive. And in both of those cases, the wearing of the flag, while it's ostensibly patriotic and non-partisan, actually connoted a position in some political debate.

Prof. ZELIZER: Absolutely. When the members are wearing it, when Wilson approaches them to go to this war in Europe, it's clearly when you wore it a sign that you would be with the president. And when La Follette doesn't wear it, it's just the opposite. He does not support this war.

SIEGEL: In my lifetime, it seemed that it was during the Nixon administration that the flag lapel pin really had its heyday.

Prof. ZELIZER: Yeah. It's really after Vietnam where we see the lapel pin everywhere on politicians and become really such a controversial symbol. Nixon is first - one of the first people to very explicitly pick up on its use. He had seen in the 1970 midterm campaign how many Republicans wore the pin as a symbol that they were against the anti-war protests going on. And in the 1972 election, he and H.R. Haldeman, his advisor, start to use the pin as a way to kind of send a signal to the quote/unquote "silent majority," that this is a candidate for them.

SIEGEL: Chris, the sight of the American flag pin on the lapel is, in a way it's a slight civilian echo of a military decoration. It's a hint of that.

Prof. ZELIZER: It is. I mean, yes. It's also very much a product of an America that has no draft anymore. I mean, I think it's a product of post-1960s America because there are no obvious ways in which many Americans show whether they are patriotic or not. I mean, we had 30 years, from World War II through the '60s, where you had to serve. We don't have that anymore. So there's a kind of vagueness in terms of, you know, how do you show that you're really patriotic? And then it lends itself to symbolic things, like putting a pin on your coat.

SIEGEL: Well, Julian Zelizer, professor of history at Princeton University, thank you very much for talking with us.

Prof. ZELIZER: Thanks for having me.

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