George W. Bush: sequestered?(alienated from reality)

In a 1970s made-for-television film entitled "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble," John Travolta played a young man who had been born with a defective immune system. Vulnerable to infection if he came into contact with any living thing, the character was apparently doomed to live out his life in a hermetically sealed, germ-free environment.

Although the metaphor is an imperfect fit, the lengths to which the Bush administration has gone to sequester George W. Bush from contact with critical opinions suggests a parallel.

As investigative author James Bovard documents in his valuable book The Bush Betrayal, during presidential visits outside Washington it has become standard procedure for the Secret Service, working with local police, to banish peaceful protesters from any location where Mr. Bush might see them. On several occasions, those not content to be confined to "free speech zones" have been arrested and charged with various offenses.

Among that number were St. Louis resident Christine Mains and her five-year-old daughter. During a January 2003 presidential visit to a Boeing plant in St. Louis, Mrs. Mains refused to be relegated to a "free speech zone." As a result, the mother was arrested and taken away in a police car, and her terrified daughter was hauled away in another. During that visit, writes Bovard, the police--acting in cooperation with the Secret Service --"would not allow any media inside the protest area and wouldn't allow any of the protesters out of the protest zone to talk to the media."

An even more drastic version of the presidential "bubble" ...