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New York City, as always, what a dream! A sally deep into enemy territory! A signal that all of America was his for the taking! Not so long ago, when the Republican convention was being planned, the President and the rest of his administration imagined their return to the best of their top-ten moments as a way of launching a second drive on the White House. Washington's own Lion King would take Broadway and the Democrats would fall like some ratty Iraqi army. From the heart of Manhattan, they would bask in the glow of post-9/11 America, of brave policemen and firemen in the ruins of two great towers, of a president with a bullhorn and a touch of gold. With their plans in place, the dreams only grew -- of an administration triumphant and of an unscathed war president with his mission finally accomplished. The Republican Convention in Manhattan would be a coup de théâtre, a lightning strike, a fabulous blow from which the political opposition might never recover.
How times change though. Now, angry policemen and firemen are picketing outside Madison Square Garden ("The Republicans are coming to bask in the glow of Sept. 11, and yet the firefighters and police officers who died in record numbers and continue to be the frontline defenders for this city haven't had a contract for more than two years," said Stephen J. Cassidy, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association); protestors are heading for New York in what may be prodigious numbers; and the Bush administration, suddenly in something like flight, appears capable only of locking itself inside Green Zone Manhattan. Even "security," even "safety" -- less and less this president's selling points -- turn out to be fatal obsessions. As Nick Turse makes clear below, the man who uttered the mocking phrase," bring 'em on," is about to become the safest man on Earth. His ability to ensure his own security remains unparalleled -- and a kind of madness. Now, let's sweep back the curtain and see what Republican Manhattan will look like in the summer of 2004.
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