During the Bush Administration, it was either Barbara Lee or Maxine Waters who invited Cindy Sheehan to the State of the Union Address.\u00c2\u00a0 She was barred.\u00c2\u00a0 The reason was pretty much to avoid the display that was just enacted by Joseph Wilson.\u00c2\u00a0 On any number of occasions, at Bush election campaign gatherings and through “Medicare Reform” meetings, people with anti-war t shirts or Kerry \/ Edwards bumper stickers were barred, questioned by officials.\u00c2\u00a0 Further, Bush’s town hall meetings were screened far beyond the paranoid conjecture that Obama has for him.\u00c2\u00a0 Further, Obama’s gatherings have been met by protesters — off stage at friendly church grounds — brandishing guns, a display which is taxing on secret service attention and resources as they fumble around the 400 percent increase of death threats.<\/p>\n
I get the sense of the surreal with some “movement conservative” commentary throwing the charge of hypocrisy in remembering the Bush years.\u00c2\u00a0 Take the matter of Joe Wilson.\u00c2\u00a0 This has been met with “revelations” and discoveries of, for instance, Pete Stark saying mean things about the president.\u00c2\u00a0 He said Bush is a liar, you see, and therefor how can we say that Wilson was off base for calling Obama a liar?\u00c2\u00a0 “Wow.\u00c2\u00a0 You don’t say?”\u00c2\u00a0 Where the equivalence is here, I don’t know.<\/p>\n
What happened at Bush’s SOTU addresses?\u00c2\u00a0 A few occasions of booing.\u00c2\u00a0 Other manners that effectively display one’s displeasure include, for instance, Ted Kennedy shaking his head furiously.\u00c2\u00a0 And then there was that moment where he was perhaps dozing off, perhaps not.\u00c2\u00a0 The camera loves those to pick those things out.\u00c2\u00a0 Perhaps Wilson’s problem was that he had to up the ante in order to get some name and face recognition?\u00c2\u00a0 Also workable, in group dynamics,m is the old run of the mill partisan dividing sit up versus sit at various presidential applause lines.\u00c2\u00a0 This is more interesting with divided government where it’s immediately apparent without camera roll over — the Speaker versus the Vice President, and was also interesting during the Clinton years when he gave the Republicans almost as many stand-up moments versus the Democrats as he did his Democratic party — the rules of “Triangulation”.<\/p>\n