by Margaret Carlson

I DIDN’T THINK Cindy Sheehan, the mother waiting on that dusty Texas road for a chance to ask President Bush why her son died in Iraq, was having much effect.

Then I saw her being “Swift-boated” like John Kerry, whose medals and Purple Hearts were all a mistake.

Sheehan, word went out, is a flip-flopper. She’d once accepted the condolences of the president and there was an article in her local paper, which quickly found its way to reporters, to prove it. In it, Sheehan was quoted as saying that Bush wanted “freedom for the Iraqis,” felt “some pain for our loss” and that he was “a man of faith.” All true, and not at all at odds with what she’s saying now, which is that the war is not a “noble” cause, as Bush would have it, and that no one else’s child should die in it.

What that excerpt from her Vacaville paper, provided to the Drudge Report, conveniently left out was the part about the family’s decision to behave in a decorous way on a solemn occasion, despite their feelings about the war.

As she waited for Bush near his ranch in Crawford this week, Sheehan recalled that first encounter with her president, two months after strangers knocked at the door to say her son, Casey, a 24-year-old Army specialist, had been killed in an ambush in Sadr City. She was still in shock at the time of the meeting and didn’t know how to act, she said. Afterward, she didn’t want to tell the local reporter how let down she felt by a president who behaved like he was at a social event, who called her “Mom” and didn’t seem to know the name or gender of her child, referring to him only as her “loved one.”

Even hardened reporters can be flummoxed by Bush. It’s not hard to picture Sheehan dazed by him as he mixed up his styles — guy next door, president, the “mission accomplished” commander in chief — with that of a somber undertaker invoking the “loved one” a few too many times. You can picture Sheehan, a small-town mom with good manners, not wanting to disappoint the folks back home with too much candor.

That time is gone, as Sheehan taps into a growing majority of Americans who wonder if the president gets it….

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