I missed a lot of current events while I was in Mexico, mostly on purpose; things are kinda grim right now—poverty rate up; gas prices up; national parks, under attack; killings in Iraq, up; Pat Roberston, advocating assassination; Bush vacation, still continuing—and sometimes you just need to take a break. Plus, it’s hard to talk about US affairs while in any other country in the world, because everyone else just thinks the United States has lost its mind. (Funnily enough, just like they did when the GOP was making such a hoo-hah out of Monica Lewinsky….why does the GOP continue to do these things that make no sense to anyone beyond our borders?) I’m sufficiently a patriot so that I don’t like to travel to another country and trash the United States…but on the other hand, how can you defend the Bush administration these days?

So, I took a break.

I eased back into politics last night by watching Cindy Sheehan giving an interview to Bill Maher on Real Time with Bill Maher. There are times when I think Sheehan is loopy, or worse, like when she talks about “Palestine.” But when she sticks to the subject of the war in Iraq, she is pretty impressive: thoughtful, hard to fluster, and moral without being preachy. She has two things going for her: she’s honest, and she speaks common sense. You can tell, that’s what drives the right-wingers nuts about her. She’s not fancy, and she speaks the truth—her truth, at least. They want to discredit her, but it’s not so easy to do.

I think that’s what makes her such a powerful, if unexpected, counterpoint to the president. When he talks of Iraq these days, he’s neither making sense nor being honest; it’s hard to believe that even he believes what he’s saying about all the terrific progress we’re making there. Bush has a credibility gap, and his only response to the problem is to keep repeating the same rhetoric that worked in the months after 9/11.

It’s enough to make me wonder what Karl Rove is up to…because a president who once showed such deft political skills seems to have acquired a tin ear. Meanwhile, Sheehan is acquiring a touch of Harriet Beecher Stowe—the little woman who, to paraphrase Lincoln, didn’t start a war, but may be ending one.