The Art of Protest: Make It Personal

Confrontations that make news can often be defused with enough finesse. Yet a maladroit president has moved from one explanation of the war to another without convincing the public that his reason for "staying the course" is anything other than a stubborn insistence on. . .staying the course. His June 28 speech at Fort Bragg was supposed to reverse his approval slide but conspicuously failed. When he repeats himself, he sounds less firm than petulant.

He also sounded petulant, as well as insensitive, last weekend, when he said this in response to a reporter's question as to why he could find time for a bicycle ride but not a meeting with Sheehan:

"I think it's important for me to be thoughtful and sensitive to those who have got something to say. But I think it's also important for me to go on with my life, to keep a balanced life. . . . And part of my being is to be outside exercising. So I'm mindful of what goes on around me. On the other hand, I'm also mindful that I've got a life to live and will do so."

Not Lincolnesque, exactly. And easy to attack beside a mother's real grief. Earlier, he did sound respectful of her. But because the president wants to personify steadfastness by staying "on-message," it did not strengthen his hand that he failed to manage the task with her.

The war has been sanitized by physical distance, reticent news organizations, a White House that badly wants to keep the domestic damage -- the coffins and the funerals -- away from the cameras, and paradoxically, by the relatively low number of American casualties (that is, compared with other wars). Now Sheehan has picked up the support of some such as Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of last year's Democratic vice presidential candidate, who don't necessarily agree about what is to be done in Iraq but want an earnest discussion out in public and not in the shadows.

Sheehan may not get face time with the president, but she has already made a brilliant success of getting face time with the media. Bush is not winning the public struggle over what the war means. Aiming to represent the American presence in Iraq as an obvious right, but failing to engage objections and to have a conversation with a woman who has a gripping claim to one, the president only succeeds in undermining its rationale even in the minds of many who feel ambivalent about the state of play in Iraq -- those who worry about what becomes of Iraqis if the United States leaves, or starts leaving, or even announces that it plans to start leaving.

A grieving mother -- a mother who now has her own ailing mother to worry about -- has put the president at bay. A sympathetic neighbor offered land for the protesters' encampment, closer to the presidential ranch. Students will be back at school soon, and Sheehan's camp, should it continue, will likely tug at them, offering a focus for their activity. On Wednesday night, MoveOn.org claimed that there were more than 1,600 candlelight vigils supporting Sheehan around the country. In the small town of Hillsdale, N.Y., I counted 60 protesters; the drivers of many passing vehicles honked in support. The chief organizer, Melinda Gardiner, and a former Vietnam helicopter pilot, Bill Von Ancken, told me they were for immediate withdrawal; another demonstrator, Madeleine Israel, said she thought there were no good choices now that the United States was "stuck there" because of Bush's bad judgment.

Antiwar politicians from both parties have until now largely been avoiding Sheehan. But if the United States does not get some good news about its involvement in Iraq soon, senators and House members may well find that avoidance loses its shine. Other mothers of lost soldiers have flown to Crawford. Whether Sheehan returns from her mother's bedside, she has already succeeded in personifying her movement. Should she and other supporters start haunting more than the president, haunting politicians of all stripes, demanding at the least open debate about our next steps in Iraq, they are likely to build momentum and galvanize still more opposition to staying the course. And a movement will have coalesced, not around gaudy displays, speeches, news conferences or traditional demonstrations, but around an individual's passion to turn her personal loss into a reason for dialogue -- a democratic movement.

Author's email :

toddgitlin@toddgitlin.net

Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University, is the author of "The Sixties" (Bantam) and, forthcoming from Columbia University Press, "The Intellectuals and the Flag."