What says the Brush?

Maureen Dowd has this Op Ed on Bush vs Cindy Sheehan, the "angry mother of a dead American soldier," camped outside Bush's ranch in protest. Dowd nicely captures Bush's isolation, moral obtuseness, and cowardice in refusing to meet Sheehan.

It's amazing that the White House does not have the elementary shrewdness to have Mr. Bush simply walk down the driveway and hear the woman out, or invite her in for a cup of tea. But W., who has spent nearly 20 percent of his presidency at his ranch, is burrowed into his five-week vacation and two-hour daily workouts. He may be in great shape, but Iraq sure isn't.

It's hard to think of another president who lived in such meta-insulation. His rigidly controlled environment allows no chance encounters with anyone who disagrees. He never has to defend himself to anyone, and that is cognitively injurious. He's a populist who never meets people - an ordinary guy who clears brush, and brush is the only thing he talks to. Mr. Bush hails Texas as a place where he can return to his roots. But is he mixing it up there with anyone besides Vulcans, Pioneers and Rangers?

He sent his national security advisor out to talk with her and also has Drudge and the rest of the slime machine out to try to discredit her. Bush has tried to dress his war up by claiming moral and humane purpose:

But his humanitarianism will remain inhumane as long as he fails to understand that the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute.