Failure of the will? (TomDispatch.com piece)

compiled and edited
by Tom Engelhardt

This was to be a machine for victory and it would be launched like a juggernaut. Powerfully financed, armed with the latest technology, well trained and disciplined. Yes, its proponents claimed, there might be some bumps in the road ahead, but they clearly felt confident. This machine would roll up the opposition. It would be like a liberation for the country, and then they would settle in for a generation, two generations, in power. Think "cakewalk."

No, actually, I'm not talking about the war in and occupation of Iraq; I'm talking about the juggernaut of an election campaign Karl Rove and friends planned at home against whatever scruffy Democrat might be raised up by that "tax and spend" party of pathos. Their campaign would, as the President likes to say, "test the character" of the Democratic enemy, which would naturally be found wanting. The President would remain way above the fray, resolutely, decisively taking care of the nation's tasks in difficult times, until he descended from the presidential heavens on New York City, that Big Apple, so badly tarnished on September 11th, 2001, and was renominated in enemy terrain with all the drama of a visit to pacified Baghdad. There, he would naturally replay -- and remind the American people of -- his triumphs, his victories in the "war on terror" against the greatest backdrop on Earth, better even than the USS Abraham Lincoln on which he landed that jet just after Baghdad was taken. The Republicans, united to a man, would be "on the offensive." They would turn their individual wills into a cumulative will. And with their collective will to win, they would dominate. They would stomp.

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And so it was that our President, that "resolute" figure above the fray (except when it came to almost daily visits to fund-raising events) found himself early in May like any other candidate running for national office on a deluxe bus, traveling the Heartland giving his stump speech, trotting out his wife, trawling for votes, thanking local dignitaries, and making the necessary local references -- in the great dairy state of Wisconsin: "Had a little Culver's ice cream on the way here, too, I want you to know." Well, let me qualify that a bit. This president hasn't exactly traveled anywhere like a normal candidate in years. At a stop in Appleton, Wisconsin, he half-jokingly apologized for this. ("Thank you for putting up with my entourage," he said.) In fact, he arrives not just in state, but like an occupying force. He exists "abroad," as he does in Washington, Crawford, and Camp David, inside his own bubble. In his rare travels around the world, he's literally emptied central cities from London to Manila, creating endless Potemkin vistas for himself. As it turns out, on the stump at home he offers a version of the same, traveling essentially with his own Green Zone inside of which only the friendliest of the friendlies are allowed.


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"In his rare travels around the world, he's literally emptied central cities from London to Manila, creating endless Potemkin vistas for himself. As it turns out, on the stump at home he offers a version of the same, traveling essentially with his own Green Zone inside of which only the friendliest of the friendlies are allowed."

This probably has nothing to do with anything, but I have a wonderful recollection of Bill Clinton campaigning at some state fair, walking among the crowds, wolfing down barbecue with gusto, talking -- really talking -- with people, who didn't seem at all intimidated or afraid to approach him.

Are the differences in the men? In the times? Or both?

I don't like him all that much, but he's a smart man.
That's the difference.

So sad what we've lost.