Capture the flag

Republicans are pushing an absurd flag-burning amendment. Will their mom 'n' apple pie ploy torch the Democrats?

By Michael Scherer

Read more: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Politics, News, Gay Marriage, Michael Scherer, 2006 Elections

AP Photo/Rick Bowmer

A protester burns an American flag outside the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles in August 2000.

June 26, 2006 | WASHINGTON -- If only for a cigarette lighter, Rick Monday would have gone down in history as just another above-average baseball player, a left-hander who peaked with a 32-home-run season. But on April 25, 1976, two bell-bottomed protesters jumped the outfield fence at Dodger Stadium and streaked onto the field with an American flag, a bottle of lighter fluid and a pack of matches. The first match didn't light. By the time they got the second match going, Monday had run over to snatch the flag away, making his mark as the slugger who saved the Stars and Stripes.

Thirty years later, it is politics as much as patriotism that keeps Monday's achievement in the headlines. Senate Republicans have been treating him like a war hero in recent weeks, passing a resolution to commemorate his courage and holding a Flag Day rally on the lawn outside the Capitol in his honor. The slugger brought with him the yellowed and tattered, but uncharred, flag he saved in Los Angeles, as six senators took their turn at a podium to praise Old Glory and memorialize the outfielder's spot decision. "It is arguably one of the greatest moments in the game," praised Sen. Jim Bunning, a Kentucky Republican, who played as a pitcher in the major leagues until 1971. "Like Rick, we should do everything we can to protect and honor our flag."

The festivities were not timed to celebrate the anniversary of Monday's flag swipe, which occurred months ago. Rather, Monday has offered himself as a poster boy for the latest attempt to pass a constitutional amendment to ban flag desecration, which by Senate tradition rears its head most summers to coincide with the Fourth of July. The debate is set to go to a vote as soon as Tuesday. "It must be that time of year," joked Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold at a Democratic counter-rally several hours after the Monday tribute. "The danger here, though, is that this one is close."

Real close. The current vote counts used by both Republicans and Democrats put the flag amendment within one vote of the two-thirds majority needed for passage -- the closest margin on this issue in the history of the republic. A total of 14 Democrats, including Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Dianne Feinstein of California, are expected to join 52 Republicans who support changing the Constitution to allow federal prohibitions of flag burning. A solid minority of senators, including Majority Whip Mitch McConnell and two other Republicans, are expected to hold back the tide. The House, meanwhile, has already passed the flag amendment, under the unlikely leadership of Jack Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat, and Duke Cunningham, a now-convicted California Republican.

Majority Leader Bill Frist claims to be optimistic. "There is a new spirit coming across the county," he told Salon after the Monday rally. "I think you can feel it in the last six months -- people coming together around the flag."

In public, Democratic leaders have scorned Frist's flag gambit as a sequel to the recent debate over a gay marriage amendment. "I think the Constitution is too important to be used for partisan gain," Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont said Monday, echoing his comments earlier this month on the marriage amendment. But with so much intra-party division, apparently the politics of the flag are far more complicated than marriage.

The biggest boogeyman for amendment supporters is not a Democrat at all, but Kentucky's senior statesman McConnell, a principled stickler when it comes to the First Amendment, as evidenced in his vocal opposition to campaign finance reform on free speech grounds. McConnell is also a rising star in the Senate, and is already preparing to take over for Frist as majority leader in January. "If he votes against it, he will be the 34th vote," said Daniel Wheeler, the president of the Citizens Flag Alliance, a pro-amendment lobby, who pointed out that the GOP long ago endorsed the amendment. "He will be the one that kills his party's platform."

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