The flag is a gimme.  Honor it, display it, and let the candidate tell people what it means to him or her.  There is no reason for a liberal or progressive to mess up on flag issues...

Obama has managed stagecraft reasonably well....As Peggy Noonan has noted, Obama takes questions on a plane--planting the image of a President in people's minds....He did a press conference a la' a President last week.....

Substance matters but so does image....The classic is Leslie Stahl's report on Reagan years ago where they did a segment showing how Reagan hid behind the flag, with lots of footage of a smiling Reagan and flags....The Reagan campaign thanked Stahl saying it helped them--the pictures were so pretty.

Obama's greatest challenge is having people reject him because he is seen as too risky, inexperienced, different, etc.  He has to show voters he knows the words and the songs, and will sing the ritual songs of America....He is not different from them.....

Stahl's piece was so hard-hitting in its criticism of Reagan, she recalled, that she "worried that my sources at the White House would be angry enough to freeze me out." Much to her shock, however, she received a phone call immediately after the broadcast from White House aide Richard Darman. He was calling from the office of Treasury Secretary Jim Baker, who had just watched the piece along with White House press secretary Mike Deaver and Baker's assistant, Margaret Tutwiler. Rather than complaining, they were calling to thank her. "Way to go, kiddo," Darman said. "What a great story! We loved it." "Excuse me?" Stahl replied, thinking he must be joking. "No, no, we really loved it," Darman insisted. "Five minutes of free media. We owe you big time." "Why are you so happy?" Stahl said. "Didn't you hear what I said?" "Nobody heard what you said," Darman replied. "Come again?" "You guys in Televisionland haven't figured it out, have you? When the pictures are powerful and emotional, they override if not completely drown out the sound. Lesley, I mean it, nobody heard you."