Thinking along the lines of Metaphor and War and doing some longer-gestation writing about the coming presidential contest, I've been particularly influenced by HST and his style of coverage, and am working on something similar. Tinkering with the notion that my man Howard Dean is among other things the "empowerment candidate," the candidate that wants to make individual agency and action a central theme of his campaign and presidency -- this in contrast with Bush who takes a kind of Father Protector role, tells us to support the troops and keep shopping, but otherwise not to do anything out of the ordinary. What I've got on the Dems is still in the works, but here's an excerpt of what's cooking on Bush.

Summer 2003
It is a desperate season. The winds of war are blowing hot and hard with little relief in sight. With the economy heading into a stagnant swampy summer -- vacations and temporary jobs traditionally do little to kick the beast back to life -- by the time the school year rolls around so many state economies will be floundering that it will be very hard not to notice the difference. You'll start seeing it in bad ways, a change in the air: more cripples on the street begging for change, more insane people running loose, more mean looks and petty squabbling. The people are divided and sad and most of all frightened.

Bush the Father Protector has failed them, but like a child who represses memories of parental abuse they don't want to believe it. It's painful to admit that you put your faith in someone and that they let you down. There's a contingent that will maintain that even though Bush lied about WMD and even though Iraq is a mess and even though the economy is in the doldrums that the President is still the best man to lead the country. It's too painful to believe otherwise after having committed.

This is the basis of the hard sell: that the rubes will keep fooling themselves long enough for the salesman to slip out the door, get into his car and drive away with their money -- that he'll get away clean before they are able to come to terms with the fact that they'd been screwed.

Hopefully realization, a breaking of the Father Protector frame, will wash over the land in time to ditch this criminal administration. These people are crooks and cronys and collaborators, down to the (wo)man. Bush is going to have a rude surprise when he finds out that his military swagger can't solve the Israeli/Palestinean conflict, that waving his dick around doesn't really solve anyone's problems, and that giving his board-room buddies yet another sop of a tax cut really didn't create 1.4 million jobs.

But he's got devious people working to keep him in power and they'll use every scare tactic in the book to keep people from rolling over on daddy. This is family business and what goes on here does not leave this house.

The burning question will be whether enough of the population can come to terms with the fact that this president has failed this country in monumental fashion, whether they will rise up and dump this embarassing ass-clown, or whether the people will sink further into into fearful abused catatonia and lie dormant on election day. It's still too far out to have much of a hint, but many of us are banking on people waking up to their own situation and throwing the bums out.

More later...