Cindy Sheehan and George W. Bush have a lot in common right now. Both of them have massive image problems, and both of them are, in a way, doing the right thing. Sheehan has every right to petition her president for an audience, and protest outside of his ranch. Like all critics of president Bush over the past 5 years, she has seen TV and online pundits rip her character apart for exercising her 1st Amendment rights and wanting to talk to the man who is responsible for sending her son to his death in Iraq, but she is doing nothing wrong here.
Of course, Sheehan is not the only parent of a fallen soldier to become disillusioned for a president who once seemed to be the natural friend of the military. In Ohio, the state responsible for giving him a second-term, and has just recently lost 16 soldiers in Iraq, “parents of a fallen Marine urged President Bush to either send more reinforcements to Iraq or withdraw U.S. troops altogether.”
And Sheehan has been joined by numerous other parents of dead soldiers. Of course, Sheehan gets all the attention, partly because both the left and the right enjoy taking advantage of her relatively extreme positions (after all, if people focused on moderate, yet genuinely grieving parents, they might actually have to talk about the war in Iraq rather than the PR battle between them and Bush, and it would harder for conservatives to attack her character as they have repeatedly done to Sheehan).
Bush, for his part however, is also right. He should not be blamed for refusing to see her (both Christopher Hitchens offers pretty good reasons why). After all, he already met with her once, as he has many families of victims, and in our complex society, citizens simply cannot be expected to have a conversation with the president whenever they want. He is simply too busy running the country. Further, Bush knows that it is neither company nor sympathy that Sheehan wants, but actual policy reversal and Bush is not going to do that. Although he could have (and should have) met with her in the beginning for PR purposes only to defuse this early on, his decision to avoid her now is understandable and acceptable.
Of course, the similarities between the 2 end there. The biggest difference is that I sympathize with Cindy Sheehan and what she is trying to do, and I have no sympathy for Bush. This is not because she lost a child and he has not (although obviously it is hard for me to dismiss or insult anyone who loses a son in combat, even if Limbaugh, etc. have no moral qualms about it). No, the biggest reason why I cannot sympathize with Bush is simply because of his behavior as president. Although I have previously expressed my concern about how he governs in terms of policy, I am speaking here about image.
Bush should be too busy running the country to have an audience with someone who clearly will not be contented with anything that Bush could possibly have to say. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? He’s NOT too busy running the country, he is taking a Maureen Dowd says in this morning’s NY Times, “This president is in a truly scary place in Iraq. Americans can't get out, or they risk turning the country into a terrorist haven that will make the old Afghanistan look like Cipriani's. Yet his war, which has not accomplished any of its purposes, swallows ever more American lives and inflames ever more Muslim hearts as W. reads a book about the history of salt and looks forward to his biking date with Lance Armstrong on Saturday.”
This is nothing short of amazing. Numerous critics have noted how Bush asks sacrifices only from soldiers and not from either Americans or his special interest supporters. The image of Cindy Sheehan holding vigil while Bush rides his bike in the background, and telling reporters that he has to get on with his life is an appalling lack of sensitivity and shows tremendous detachment from what is going on. Obviously, Bush is finished running for office. I can only hope that a Democratic Congress, if elected, will force this administration into actually taking some form of positive action on almost any front rather than spend more time at his ranch while the nation suffers in silence.
7 comments:
The "he met with her once already" trope is pretty silly. There's a quota? A lifetime limit? There's plenty of people who meet the president more than once: the only thing they have that Sheehan doesn't is.... access. A toadyish attitude helps, but influence and power are really what count.
While I wouldn't make light of Sheehan's personal loss - that of the life of her son, her willingness to be publicly duped, (or is it "Duked"), makes this nothing short of tragicomedy. Is she aware of how many nutbags, in their endless search to legitimize their propoganda, are now going to take to her "analysis" like flies to a, a you know what? In a sidebar war between people who have something useful or unuseful to say, something honorable or political to give, the meek and the useful idiots, I'd say Ariel Sharon got less on all counts out of Sheehan's son than David Duke did out of Sheehan. Not that that's useful for anything other than an interesting sense of perspective on the account which so many others would have us believe.
I guess a more concise perspective is it makes the whole "it was all done for Israel" argument look ever more like a ploy of desperation, whether intellectual, or in this case, emotional.
It's hard not to be cynical, but unless an event such as that which occurred in 1929 repeats itself, the Democrats won't be able to galvanize - on the national level - an offer of anything that looks feasibly and sufficiently _more_ "positive" by comparison. I really think they need to find a new philosophical/political direction, or if not, follow the general lead of the GOP (as it seems they are generally doing now) the way the Republicans did the Dems for so many decades. It will take more than just discontent against Bush; large numbers of Republican legislators would have to be seen as incompetent to their own constituents for them to lose their edge as a party. Unless I misread you and you are distinguishing Bush's agenda from that of the GOP at large, as I do. Of course, if the GOP institutionalizes a monolithic approach nationally - particularly on "cultural" issues, as it has done so many times in the recent past, they will be blown out of the water. We'll have to see which party will take its respective lessons more to heart. That either party could win the presidency in '08 wouldn't yet change the overall dynamic between the parties.
Regarding your last comment, American politicians have recently become quite ever more adept at shrugging off (and playing off) embarrassment, out of necessity. I'm still not convinced the violence in Iraq will perturb an ultimately more positive outcome, even if their country becomes, ironically, more capable sooner rather than later of handling a U.S. withdrawal that looks increasingly less like a road to utter failure. I think the disgruntled young Saudis who now appear to comprise the footsoldiers of the insurgency will be less likely to come in and suicide-bomb the place once we're gone, unless the violent televised reels that encourage them to come stop first.
It really is too bad, but then again, I don't think I've ever really been wedded to either party, at least certainly not through a sense of party loyalty. The best thing someone can do is stay true to their own ideals, understand where they do and don't converge with their interests, and the way I look at it, the parties should come looking for you. It is their responsibility to identify and build successful coalitions, not the voter's.
The upside is, it makes the personal leadership qualities of individual candidates matter more and more - whether by standing out from a monotonous Republican consensus or by standing out from the monotonous Democratic lack of one. On a related note, I hope this post doesn't come across as unnecessarily prosaic!
Lee -
Respectfully, (since it's not in my character to enjoy p***ing on someone else's parade), Edwards' rise to prominence must be viewed in the context of the vaccuum of major forces elsewhere in his party. The Dems tried the gimick of using military creds alone to make candidates more attractive, which, as Wesley Clark can attest to, didn't work, and energy independence (as opposed to lowering gas prices), fiscal responsibility and ending a tolerable degree of corruption might be idealistic, but not necessarily popular enough to rally voters.
The grand slam prescription for the Middle East sounds all well and good (if not a bit like a catchy slogan), but again, whether or not people will respond should be considered separately from the endless (and necessary) degree of unresolved academic speculation over what exactly are all the relevant political dynamics in the Middle East, let alone what we can or should do about them, for their sake or ours.
He is supposed to be too busy running the country, but he's spent nearly a quarter of his time in office on vacation. Every month he spends on vacation, another hundred American soldiers (give or take) die.
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