Before attending a rally to hear vice president Dick Cheney, citizens in New Mexico were required to sign a political loyalty oath approved by the Republican national committee. "I,
... do herby endorse George W Bush for reelection of the United States." The form noted: "In signing the above endorsement you are consenting to use and release of your name by Bush-Cheney as an endorser of President Bush."
At every rally, Bush repeats the same speech, touting a "vibrant economy" and his leadership in a war where "you cannot show weakness". He introduces local entrepreneurs who praise his tax cuts. (More than one million jobs have been lost in his term.) Then Bush calls on questioners. More than one-fifth of them profess their evangelical faith or denounce gay marriage. In Niceville, Florida, one said: "This is the very first time that I have felt that God was in the White House." "Thank you," replied Bush. Another: "Mr President, as a child, how can I help you get votes?" In Albuquerque, he was told: "It's an honour every day when I get to pray for you as president." And this one: "Thank God we finally have a commander-in-chief." Others repeat attack lines on John Kerry's military record to which Bush responds with an oblique but encouraging "Thanks".
Since the birth of the US party system, presidential candidates have gone directly to the sovereign people to make their case. After the Democratic convention, Kerry travelled from New England to the northwest doing just that. Not one of the hundreds of thousands who attended his open-air rallies had to pledge allegiance to him, and he encountered organised Bush hecklers as part of the price. At his rallies Bush is a pseudo-populist. But these controlled environments reflect his deeper view of the presidency as sovereign, preempting democracy.
Floundering in the polls, without a strategy for Iraq, unwilling to say the name of Bin Laden, he is secure in the knowledge that the cheering multitudes have been selected. Ask President Bush has crystallised the underlying issue, framed succinctly by the greatest American poet of democracy, Walt Whitman, who wrote: "The President is there in the White House for you, it is not you who are here for him."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/comment/story/0,14259,1286212,00.html
The emperor has no clothes. But wait until November to tell him. Shh...
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