This kind of thing portends the kind of petty mudslinging that will make this next presidential campaign one of the most acrimonious in US history. From Glenn Kessler's article on the Washington Post website:

“We are the only people on the earth that put our hand over our heart during the playing of the national anthem. It was FDR who asked us to do that, in honor of the blood that was being shed by our sons and daughters in far-off places.”

— Mitt Romney, Feb. 2, 2012

This is a strange one.

Kudos to Andrew Kaczynski at Buzzfeed for first spotting this claim, though it turns out that the former Massachusetts governor also said this at least once before, during a stump speech in Iowa in December.

The first part of this statement is simply wrong. As Kaczynski noted, Romney ran the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics and surely should have noticed the many athletes with their hands on their hearts during the playing of their national anthems.

We randomly searched YouTube for the playing of the national anthem for various countries and quickly found several examples, such as Japan and Brazil, that disprove Romney’s claim of American exceptionalism.

...

But what about the rest of Romney’s claim — did President Franklin D. Roosevelt institute this? The history on this salute is interesting, and actually has more to do with the Pledge of Allegiance than the national anthem.

The Facts

A spokesman for Romney did not respond to a query, but the candidate may be bringing this up to remind voters of a flap that occurred during the 2008 campaign, when then-candidate Barack Obama did not put his hand over his heart during the playing of the national anthem.

Obama later said that he had been taught as a child that the hand goes over the heart during the Pledge of Allegiance, but that it was optional during the national anthem.

Actually, the U.S. Flag Code says that, for civilians, the hand should go over the heart during both the pledge and the anthem. But the language is precatory (“should”), not mandatory (“shall”). In other words, Obama may have violated a patriotic custom enacted by Congress, but no legal sanctions are authorized for failing to put one’s hand over the heart during the national anthem.

Read the rest of Kessler's article and the surprising connection to Nazi Germany on the Washington Post website.