What Cindy Sheehan Means

Cindy Sheehan is not a college student, but she is doing what college students used to do, which is to camp out on the doorsteps of power and demand explanations. Of course, it would take a 48 year old woman to remember those distant times. Today, most students are clearly too busy contemplating their navels, as in, "should I pierce it or not."

Of course, one of the problems in the 60's was that students, even educated college kids, didn't carry much moral weight when they took control of college admin buildings. Their hearts and minds were usually in the right place, but they lacked the gravitas that age and experience bring, especially if that experience includes the death of your beloved child.

So Cindy waits along the highway, like one of the Jobes left behind. And that is essentially what she represents; a American who has been forgotten by her nation, who has been forced to take to the dusty road in hopes of some small recompense, a future, an answer.

The question, of course is, will she get it? No.

Bush will never stray "off the ranch" anymore than he will stray "off message," because they are one in the same thing. The Crawford ranch is not a place, it's a symbol. It speaks volumes. It embodies the "sleeves rolled-up, truck-driving, brush-clearing" image that this "Yale-educated, born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-his-mouth" has managed to sell to a very gullible public. Leaving the ranch, even for a ten-minute chat with Cindy, just isn't in the cards, or the game plan.