So apparently Barack Obama is back to wearing an American flag on his lapel. It’s such a seemingly minor matter, yet one that tells us something worth knowing about the junior senator from Illinois.

To begin at the beginning. Just who among the right wing attack machine made this an issue? Was it Floyd Brown or David Bossie? The Young Americans for Freedom? Maybe the RNC? Perhaps relatives of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth? Or maybe even the ghost of Lee Atwater? Actually, it was Barack Obama. This is from an October 4, 2007 Associated Press story:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says he doesn’t wear an American flag lapel pin because it has become a substitute for “true patriotism” since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Asked about it Wednesday in an interview with KCRG-TV in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the Illinois senator said he stopped wearing the pin shortly after the attacks and instead hoped to show his patriotism by explaining his ideas to citizens. “The truth is that right after 9/11 I had a pin,” Obama said. “Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we’re talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security. “I decided I won’t wear that pin on my chest,” he said in the interview. “Instead, I’m going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great, and hopefully that will be a testament to my patriotism.” On Thursday, his campaign issued a statement: “We all revere the flag, but Senator Obama believes that being a patriot is about more than a symbol. It’s about fighting for our veterans when they get home and speaking honestly with the American people about this disastrous war.“

So Senator Obama declared those who wore an American flag pin on their lapel were relying on a “substitute” for “true patriotism,” which apparently he alone embodied. And in a Democratic primary that he thought would be decided by the hard Left, Obama manfully declared, “I won’t wear that pin on my chest.”

To top it all off, Obama and his campaign made sure that, having put this issue in play, none of his critics could say a word about it. If they did, they were guilty of trying to “distract us from the issues that affect our lives” and “turn us against each other.” Serious people don’t care about trivial things like an American flag pin on a lapel–except when you’re Barack Obama, who considered it a serious enough matter to first remove it and then proudly declare his courageous act of defiance to the Democratic voters of Iowa. And now that he’s essentially secured the Democratic nomination, Senator Obama is . . . once again wearing an American flag on his lapel!

It’s understandable if you’re a bit confused by all this. Late last year the American flag lapel pin was a substitute for “true patriotism.” So what has changed between then and now to make it a symbol worth wearing once again? What happened to the proud declaration that “I won’t wear that pin on my chest”? Why, the general election in November. If you understand that, the clouds will part and everything will become clear again. What you should have paid attention to is not the arguments Obama made, but the constituency to which he was playing. Obama tacked left in the Democratic primary, ridiculing people who wore an American flag on their lapel, perhaps because it played well with that particular audience. But now that he’s going to be the nominee, it might not play so well–and gosh darn it, who says there’s anything wrong with wearing an American flag on your lapel anyway?

What we see in this little episode is a man who is extremely smooth and skilled–he saw he had a potential problem and he’s now addressing it–and also deeply cynical (even as he runs against, you guessed it, cynicism). He is able effortlessly to put issues in play and then, with the aid of the MSM, declare those issues off-limits–until he decides to declare them legitimate again. Welcome to the wonderful, transcendent, sublime “new politics” of Barack Obama.