Bubble Shrub

Dan Froomkin writes about the dauphin's personal green zone:

What does it say about the president of the United States that he won't go anywhere near ordinary citizens any more? And that he'll only speak to captive audiences?

President Bush's safety zone these days doesn't appear to extend very far beyond military bases, other federal installations and Republican fundraisers...

When was the last time that Bush spoke in a forum open to citizens who are representative of the diverse array of views in the country? Certainly not since last October's presidential debates, and not often before then, either.

The White House advance team has long been sensitive to the potency of imagery in presidential events, going to great lengths to stage dramatic backdrops for Bush's appearances. In particular, they have used uniformed, on-duty military audiences many times before to underscore his case for war.

During last year's campaign, White House advance teams began screening audiences at Bush events to insure that only supporters were allowed in. After the election, that policy gave way to a new, "invitation only" approach, in which tickets to so-called public events were distributed largely by Republican and business groups. Now Bush is in phase three, where almost everyone he appears before is either on the federal payroll or a Republican donor...

The last speech Bush gave that was not explicitly controlled by the White House was in downtown Norfolk on Oct. 28. It wasn't exactly a random group. About half the crowd was in uniform, and more than 70 military members sat on risers on the stage behind him. But some tickets were available to the public through the local Chamber of Commerce.

The result: Bush got heckled. As Tamara Dietrich wrote in a column for the Hampton Roads Daily Press: "[A] man stood up in Chrysler Hall, yanked open his shirt to expose his 'Dump Bush' T-shirt in full view of shocked members of Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network seated nearby and cried, 'War is terrorism! Torture is terrorism!' before he was hustled out by security people.

" 'That was me,' says Tom Palumbo, anti-war activist and, now, presidential party-crasher. 'I think maybe he heard me. I know he looked befuddled.'"

I doubt anyone with a record like Shrub's--noteworthy only in it's level of abject failure--would want to appear much in public either.