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Follow the rules,
don’t trail in
president’s dust

IF you're the president of the United States, you can pretty much have little things the way you want them.

A late-night craving will have your body man rousing a fry cook to grill up your favorite cheeseburger with onion rings on the side.

Curiosity about an Elmore Leonard novel sends a minion or two scurrying to a bookstore.

The latest blockbuster comedy will be queued up for you in a private theater. No need to fret, as ordinary people do, about disturbances from other members of the audience -- you know, those annoying chatterers and noisy popcorn chompers.

When you go cycling with selected men (no women invited) from the currying White House press corps on your own private prairie, they obey what's known as "the first rule of biking" -- that no one is allowed to pedal past you.

Even super-biker Lance Armstrong curtails his brawny Tour de France surges to stay in line with the rule and politely avoids bringing up his opposition to the war in Iraq.

When the power of your office girdles Republican loyalists in Congress, you can pretty much have bigger things the way you want them, too.

Most of them will obey the first rule of politics -- talk stink about the president at your own peril. As for faint-hearted Democrats, it's easy to dismiss them as incidental when you hold a puffy mandate from voters.

Too bad then that Cindy Sheehan showed up at Bush's Crawford doorstep earlier this month, drawing in a different kind of heat to the already sizzling Texas environment by stepping out of line and defying the rules designed to protect the president from being held to account.

Sheehan's cred is her grief. Her son, Casey, 24, is among the 1,871 men and women, including one from Hawaii Thursday, who thus far have died in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and few would want to hurt her further.

The usual tabloid-television propagandists and cadre of media conservatives have tried, digging up what dirt they could find about her, though the worst they have managed to find is that her husband, himself heartbroken, is seeking a divorce.

She has been labeled a tool of the left and the unpatriotic hate-Bush contingent. Anti-war groups have indeed taken advantage of her, transforming her into a symbol, using her to amp up the volume on their views.

But they're not the only ones.

Republicans in Congress, who always have their ears to the ground, are sensing discontent. Outside the beltway, more and more people are worried about the pace of the war, about the cost in lives and dollars, about the length of time troops will have to remain in Iraq.

If people are worried, so is Congress, as much about the loss of votes as the loss of lives. Republican strategists are concerned that their majority appears vulnerable in next year's election. Presidential aspirants, mindful of Bush's falling approval numbers, are stepping away from the tight formation they've held with the president, a handful even suggesting setting deadlines for withdrawal.

They, too, are taking cover from the heat in a Gold Star mother's shadow.

And, really, who is Cindy Sheehan? She is a woman who has seen the expected progression of life disrupted by war. Her son left this world before she did. He will never marry, never present her with grandchildren, never share another birthday, an argument or a cooling summer evening with her.

Above all, she is an American. She is empowered to ask questions of the man and the people who lead the country, to examine U.S. policies and demand corrections when they are wrong.

She's following the rules, the ones that guarantee that citizens get to say what they think and what they want their leaders to do. More of us should do the same.

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