In his very entertaining and insightful book "Is There Life After High School," Ralph Keyes interviews writer Nora Ephron and hundreds of others about their lack of popularity in high school.

Seems guys wouldn't ask Ephron out because she was too enthusiastic about answering questions in class.

Her solution: Appearing dumb by not raising her hand to answer questions. "It made a tremendous difference," she said. The lower stayed her hand, the more she got asked out.

"I realized the kind of patheticness of it: A, I stopped raising my hand; B, I felt I had to, and C, it worked," Ephron recalled.

That, sadly, is the state of American presidential politics these days.

Barack Obama is like Ephron in that, A, he has started wearing a flag lapel pin, B, he felt he had to and, C, it'll work in convincing some people that he is a true patriot.

After months of not wearing a flag lapel pin, Obama has succumbed to pressure and sometimes wears one.

With the economy in the toilet, high gas prices forcing families to eat potted meat as a meal rather than a snack and our soldiers fighting two wars that show no signs of ending, a mere fashion accessory worn or eschewed by presidential candidates has taken on a significance it doesn't deserve.

Does the pin make Obama any more patriotic, any more fit to lead this country out of the abyss that the current flag-pin-wearing administration has led it into?

Anyone with a brain -- or who doesn't get news exclusively from Fox News -- knows it does not.

If anything, Obama should've stuck a pin in months ago, simply to stop moronic reporters from asking him about it.

Early in Obama's campaign for the Democratic Party nomination, the absence of a flag pin in his lapel was a big news story.

When he first began what many considered to be a quixotic quest for the nomination last year, he explained, "I won't wear that pin on my chest. 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 testimony to my patriotism."

Good luck with all that, O.

Eloquent and succinct, Obama's statement would have silenced concerns about the lapel pin -- if, that is, this weren't a country that seeks to prove daily the old dictum, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."

Anyone who entered journalism to help change the world must've cringed the first time -- and then the 700th time -- a reporter asked Obama, "Why aren't you wearing a flag pin?"

Whether Obama is patriotic enough to be president is something voters will have to decide for themselves, but wearing a flag pin will tell them nothing, one way or the other.

I'll bet you the fiver in my pocket that the same people who got mileage out of criticizing Obama for not wearing a flag pin will now excoriate him for flip-flopping on the flag pin issue.

Speaking of fivers -- or, more precisely, of the man whose picture is on it, Abraham Lincoln -- there was a television public service announcement featuring him in the 1970s. Aimed at keeping kids from dropping out of school, the PSA depicted the nation's 16th president, who never graduated from high school, being rejected for a job.

"Look, Lincoln," the sandwich-smacking interviewer tells him, "I know you're a smart guy, and you know you're a smart guy, but you ain't goin' nowhere without that sheepskin, fella."

It's obvious that Obama's campaign manager or someone else told him the same thing: I know you're a smart guy, and you know you're a smart guy, but you ain't goin' nowhere without that flag pin, fella.

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