Walker's World: Sheehan's tipping point
Martin Walker
August 19, 2005
WASHINGTON, Aug. 19 (UPI) -- It has become fashionable in the media around the world, and not just in the United States, to suggest the encampment of the bereft mother Cindy Sheehan outside President George W. Bush's Texas ranch represents some kind of tipping point for American public opinion and the war.
There are heads of state who attract fewer TV crews than Mother Sheehan has routinely faced over the past week. From CNN to Al Jazeera, the BBC to Russia's NTV to All India Radio, her days of global fame suggest this first anti-war protest to catch the public imagination is the story the global media has been waiting for.
But does the sudden celebrity of a mother mourning the death of her soldier son represent a deeper political shift in American opinion? Certainly the latest Gallup poll for CNN suggests that a small but growing majority of Americans consider the war to be a mistake, by a margin of 54 against 44 percent. And it is politically significant that another 56 percent now tell the pollsters they want some or all American troops withdrawn. The poll had a margin of error of 3 percent. One Democratic senator, Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, has put the real issue onto the agenda by calling for complete U.S. withdrawal by the end of next year.
The opinion polls gave the story legitimacy, and the sidebar stories were as telegenic as they were plausible. Candle lights flickered prettily against the twilight backdrop of the empty White House in Washington. Hollywood stars added their own glitter to the cause on the West Coast. The story keeps changing, generating new headlines each day. A conscience-troubled Texan decided to let Mother Sheehan squat on his land, right next door to the Secret Service post outside the president's ranch. And now she has flown back to California, to tend to the sudden illness of her own mother.
The Sheehan phenomenon has now spread. The TV screens and America's front pages this week have reported the nationwide vigils inspired by Sheehan's example. And it all made for excellent television in this silly season of August when the Congress and Supreme Court are not sitting and editors become desperate for stories to fill the insatiable hunger of the 24-hour news cycle.
The grief and anger of a mother at the death of her soldier son is always poignant. But Sheehan's loss has evidently become agonizingly vulnerable to political exploitation and over-interpretation; witness the remark by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd that "The moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute."
That can depend on which Mother Sheenan is speaking. These days, she says she is angry because here son was murdered "for a neo-con agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the army to protect America, not Israel."
But she spoke rather differently after she met President Bush in June of last year. According to the Sheehan's family's local newspaper, The Reporter, of Vacaville, Calif., Mother Sheehan then said of President Bush: "I now know he's sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis."
"I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he's a man of faith," she went on, a year ago. "For the first time in 11 weeks, they felt whole again. That was the gift the President gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together."
Her remarks are not necessarily contradictory, and even if they are, a mother who has lost her son is not to be judged. And many Americans have changed their minds about the Iraq war and its aftermath over the past year, just as she has evidently done.
Until now, many of the opponents of the Iraq war had almost despaired of the American public, assuming the casualties of a professional Army would not produce the kind of anti-war movement that marked the Vietnam War in the era of conscription, 40 years ago. And there have been no massed college protests, probably because the students are not going to be drafted.
But the casualties among reservists and the National Guard have been a growing concern. The deaths this month of 20 reservists from one unit, the 3rd Battalion of 25th Marine Regiment, all from the heartland cities of Cleveland and Columbus in Ohio, have brought the costs of the war into a sharper focus. And the parents of one of the dead Marines, the 23-year old college student Edward "Augie" Schroeder, have become almost as famous as Mother Sheehan, because unlike her, they couch their critique in terms that resonate with patriotic and level-headed Americans who do not think this war is all about Israel.
"President Bush had said he wants to support the 1,800 who have died by continuing the war until we win," Schroeder's mother, Rosemary, told the TV cameras. "Well, continuing the same thing without changing what you're doing is like the classic definition of insanity -- doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. So if we're not going to do it differently, it's just going to be throwing 1,800 more bodies on the same scrap heap."
There is little respite in prospect for the Bush administration. The American media have won their Freedom of Information case, demanding the right to screen and record the images of coffins coming home from Iraq. The other human costs of the war, like the one returning soldier in three who has psychological problems, or the 8,000 troops so badly wounded they can never return to duty, are sinking into the public perception.
There are worried mutterings coming from Republican Congressmen, all now back in their constituencies and listening to the concerns of their voters, who are starting to feel nervous about the mid-term elections next year. They are starting to feel a certain disconnect from the political fortunes of their party's nominal leader; President Bush does not have to face another election, but they do.
And yet we may still be a long way from that famous tipping point, at which public opinion becomes irreversibly hostile to the war. The polls were almost equally grim in January, until the heartwarming sight of the Iraqis voting in their first free election persuaded many Americans that there was something in Iraq worth fighting for. An agreement next week by the Iraqis on their new constitution could revive some of that hopeful mood, and even rally some of that faltering Republican support behind Bush's grand design of democratizing the Middle East. And the political establishment, including leading Democrats like Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, still broadly agrees that an American withdrawal, or even the announcement of a date for withdrawal, would be a major strategic mistake.
Bush himself has yet to enter the fray, to come out in bold defense of his policies against the protesters in the forthright way that Britain's Tony Blair has done. Maybe he and his advisers have calculated that with just two weeks to go before Labor Day, it is worth letting the media's summer storms burn themselves out. Most Americans, after all, are still mentally at the beach, still focused more on their vacations than on Iraq.
And many in the Bush administration are looking at another tipping point altogether, the one that shows tax revenues soaring by $262 billion, or 14 percent this year -- the strongest possible justification for those controversial tax cuts of Bush's first term. If the budget deficit is starting to come under control again, and the economy is growing its way not just out of recession but out of deficit, then Bush's advisers may be right to dismiss the Mother Sheehan phenomenon as one of those fleeting 15 minutes of fame. A presidency that keeps its nerve, and has at least some good news to promote, can withstand a great deal of media pressure even when a mourning mother is tugging at the national heartstrings.
Copyright 2005 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
There are heads of state who attract fewer TV crews than Mother Sheehan has routinely faced over the past week. From CNN to Al Jazeera, the BBC to Russia's NTV to All India Radio, her days of global fame suggest this first anti-war protest to catch the public imagination is the story the global media has been waiting for.
But does the sudden celebrity of a mother mourning the death of her soldier son represent a deeper political shift in American opinion? Certainly the latest Gallup poll for CNN suggests that a small but growing majority of Americans consider the war to be a mistake, by a margin of 54 against 44 percent. And it is politically significant that another 56 percent now tell the pollsters they want some or all American troops withdrawn. The poll had a margin of error of 3 percent. One Democratic senator, Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, has put the real issue onto the agenda by calling for complete U.S. withdrawal by the end of next year.
The opinion polls gave the story legitimacy, and the sidebar stories were as telegenic as they were plausible. Candle lights flickered prettily against the twilight backdrop of the empty White House in Washington. Hollywood stars added their own glitter to the cause on the West Coast. The story keeps changing, generating new headlines each day. A conscience-troubled Texan decided to let Mother Sheehan squat on his land, right next door to the Secret Service post outside the president's ranch. And now she has flown back to California, to tend to the sudden illness of her own mother.
The Sheehan phenomenon has now spread. The TV screens and America's front pages this week have reported the nationwide vigils inspired by Sheehan's example. And it all made for excellent television in this silly season of August when the Congress and Supreme Court are not sitting and editors become desperate for stories to fill the insatiable hunger of the 24-hour news cycle.
The grief and anger of a mother at the death of her soldier son is always poignant. But Sheehan's loss has evidently become agonizingly vulnerable to political exploitation and over-interpretation; witness the remark by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd that "The moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute."
That can depend on which Mother Sheenan is speaking. These days, she says she is angry because here son was murdered "for a neo-con agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the army to protect America, not Israel."
But she spoke rather differently after she met President Bush in June of last year. According to the Sheehan's family's local newspaper, The Reporter, of Vacaville, Calif., Mother Sheehan then said of President Bush: "I now know he's sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis."
"I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he's a man of faith," she went on, a year ago. "For the first time in 11 weeks, they felt whole again. That was the gift the President gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together."
Her remarks are not necessarily contradictory, and even if they are, a mother who has lost her son is not to be judged. And many Americans have changed their minds about the Iraq war and its aftermath over the past year, just as she has evidently done.
Until now, many of the opponents of the Iraq war had almost despaired of the American public, assuming the casualties of a professional Army would not produce the kind of anti-war movement that marked the Vietnam War in the era of conscription, 40 years ago. And there have been no massed college protests, probably because the students are not going to be drafted.
But the casualties among reservists and the National Guard have been a growing concern. The deaths this month of 20 reservists from one unit, the 3rd Battalion of 25th Marine Regiment, all from the heartland cities of Cleveland and Columbus in Ohio, have brought the costs of the war into a sharper focus. And the parents of one of the dead Marines, the 23-year old college student Edward "Augie" Schroeder, have become almost as famous as Mother Sheehan, because unlike her, they couch their critique in terms that resonate with patriotic and level-headed Americans who do not think this war is all about Israel.
"President Bush had said he wants to support the 1,800 who have died by continuing the war until we win," Schroeder's mother, Rosemary, told the TV cameras. "Well, continuing the same thing without changing what you're doing is like the classic definition of insanity -- doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. So if we're not going to do it differently, it's just going to be throwing 1,800 more bodies on the same scrap heap."
There is little respite in prospect for the Bush administration. The American media have won their Freedom of Information case, demanding the right to screen and record the images of coffins coming home from Iraq. The other human costs of the war, like the one returning soldier in three who has psychological problems, or the 8,000 troops so badly wounded they can never return to duty, are sinking into the public perception.
There are worried mutterings coming from Republican Congressmen, all now back in their constituencies and listening to the concerns of their voters, who are starting to feel nervous about the mid-term elections next year. They are starting to feel a certain disconnect from the political fortunes of their party's nominal leader; President Bush does not have to face another election, but they do.
And yet we may still be a long way from that famous tipping point, at which public opinion becomes irreversibly hostile to the war. The polls were almost equally grim in January, until the heartwarming sight of the Iraqis voting in their first free election persuaded many Americans that there was something in Iraq worth fighting for. An agreement next week by the Iraqis on their new constitution could revive some of that hopeful mood, and even rally some of that faltering Republican support behind Bush's grand design of democratizing the Middle East. And the political establishment, including leading Democrats like Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, still broadly agrees that an American withdrawal, or even the announcement of a date for withdrawal, would be a major strategic mistake.
Bush himself has yet to enter the fray, to come out in bold defense of his policies against the protesters in the forthright way that Britain's Tony Blair has done. Maybe he and his advisers have calculated that with just two weeks to go before Labor Day, it is worth letting the media's summer storms burn themselves out. Most Americans, after all, are still mentally at the beach, still focused more on their vacations than on Iraq.
And many in the Bush administration are looking at another tipping point altogether, the one that shows tax revenues soaring by $262 billion, or 14 percent this year -- the strongest possible justification for those controversial tax cuts of Bush's first term. If the budget deficit is starting to come under control again, and the economy is growing its way not just out of recession but out of deficit, then Bush's advisers may be right to dismiss the Mother Sheehan phenomenon as one of those fleeting 15 minutes of fame. A presidency that keeps its nerve, and has at least some good news to promote, can withstand a great deal of media pressure even when a mourning mother is tugging at the national heartstrings.
Copyright 2005 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
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