Tea and sympathy could go a long way

Maureen Dowd is back and in good form with a column on why W doesn't defuse the issue of the mother of an Iraq KIA camping outside his Crawford ranch. That's Cindy Sheehan above, in a photo by Jason Reed of Reuters, with Bill Mitchell, who also lost a son in Iraq.

Dowd writes:

It's amazing that the White House does not have the elementary shrewdness to have Mr. Bush simply walk down the driveway and hear the woman out, or invite her in for a cup of tea . . .

It's hard to think of another president who lived in such meta-insulation. His rigidly controlled environment allows no chance encounters with anyone who disagrees. He never has to defend himself to anyone, and that is cognitively injurious. He's a populist who never meets people - an ordinary guy who clears brush, and brush is the only thing he talks to. Mr. Bush hails Texas as a place where he can return to his roots. But is he mixing it up there with anyone besides Vulcans, Pioneers and Rangers?

FEEDBACK: A reader e-mails: It’s great that The Journal Sentinel chose to run Maureen’s on-the-money column this morning. Glad you repeated it on your blog as this was a great piece. There is only one problem. If you only read the Journal Sentinel you would not know who Cindy Sheehan is. The paper has not breathed a single word about this single person’s quest to ask Bush the questions the media doesn’t have to guts to ask.

Here's an excellent LA Times story on how Cindy Sheehan has raised the stakes.