Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted

By: Lisa Kadonaga

"I thought Quebec City was -- first of all, I got to see Quebec City in kind of a near-empty state, which was beautiful."

- George W. Bush, July 18th, 2001

The central fact of cities is that they are created by people. I have walked through cities that were a bit like Mr. Bush describes. Sometimes this happens so early in the morning that nobody is about -- or after midnight, when you make your way through darkened streets, past living rooms lit by the blue glow of television sets. On occasion I've felt the eerie stillness after a blizzard or ice storm. But all the time, I knew that people were merely asleep, or indoors, their presence still undeniable.

By definition, an empty city is no longer a true city, with no residents going about their business, and no sightseers. If you're sensitive to the regular pattern of comings and goings, this kind of blank spot is jarringly obvious.

There's something wrong about an urban void. Writers and filmmakers know what makes us uneasy -- War of the Worlds, The Quiet Earth, and High Noon didn't have to show bodies, just the absence of people on the streets when they should have been evident.

What I thought was revealing about Mr. Bush's comment was his implication that this absence of people was what made the scene so pleasing. In this case, the reason the city was empty was the big fence which barricaded off whole sections of the downtown. To ensure the peace of mind of Mr. Bush and the other visiting leaders, it was guarded by riot police armed with plastic bullets and tear gas.

I come from a family of solitary types -- but while I understand a little of what it's like to be alone in a crowd, unlike Mr. Bush I wouldn't able to ignore the barricades like that.

All the times I've been to Quebec City it was teeming with people, hurrying from shop to shop, eating in sidewalk cafes, conducting loud arguments between wrought-iron balconies, hanging laundry on overhead clotheslines -- all the things that make it a live, working city, not some prettified EPCOT fantasy. Maybe I'm prejudiced by having observed this city going about its everyday business, but surely Mr. Bush, who is older and more widely travelled than I am, has seen enough to know what a normal active downtown looks like. For someone who claims to be sociable and gregarious, this disruption didn't seem to bother him very much.

I was disappointed that he liked seeing it without the people -- yet it doesn't come as a surprise. There's a lot of evidence that he'd rather be by himself, but frequently puts on being the life of the party because others like it and expect it. And now he's a man who, quite literally, will never be cropped out of a photo again. From now until the end of his life, he will be surrounded by people, to protect and see to him.

Canadian journalist Allan Fotheringham, reporting on this year's international summits, said that in Quebec City, the entourage of people required to advise, assist, and protect Mr. Bush occupied all of a 424-room hotel. Four hundred people went to Europe with him in June, and 700 to the G-8 meeting in Genoa. Even after he leaves office, there will be Secret Service protection and office staff.

To someone who prefers being alone, I imagine that this is disconcerting. It may account for some of his remarks in the early days of his administration. Several times, Mr. Bush expressed his surprise at how "nicely" the President is treated -- for example, coming into his office each morning to find it neatly dusted, and fresh flowers left for him.

Critics have scoffed at this -- given his family background, surely he must be familiar with the concept of home help. Well, maybe not to this degree. Hillary Clinton described what it's like to be isolated in that kind of protective bubble, where the most mundane, ordinary tasks -- standing in a grocery checkout line, boiling an egg, looking for your reading glasses -- are things which other people want to do for you. If you are a person who uses these simple actions to center yourself in the world, it is a continuous struggle with your employees and handlers to maintain even a semblance of normality.

Do I feel sorry for Mr. Bush? Not really. He, more than most people, knew what this job would entail. So he shouldn't really complain that it's "following him around", as he put it recently during a vacation in Maine.

The Quebec City comment is not the first time he's appeared oblivious to inconveniencing others. Tourists at the Jefferson Memorial on July 2nd complained of being herded out prior to Mr. Bush's arrival, to make room for visitors brought in for the occasion. Most people would accept a president cutting in line, due to security and scheduling requirements -- but recently questions have been raised about the number of ticketed appearances, and blocking off access to a public landmark during peak holiday times so that he can be photographed with carefully-selected "average Americans".

Staging is something which he and his administration resort to frequently. Even more so than previous leaders, faked photo-ops are the rule of the day, from the Republicans who made up the mob that disrupted the recounts in Florida last year, to the Congressional staffers asked to pose as "working people" earlier this spring.

The central paradox is that his campaign presented him as populist, a regular guy raised in an average American suburb. But Mr. Bush's background was built on private property. The press made much of him scorning to spend his holidays at the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, but overlooks the fact that he has built his own compound down in Crawford. It is not so much a working ranch or farm as an Eastern-style estate, set in Central Texas. At a photo-op in Waco, he expressed the sentiment that owning property was an important American quality.

In reality, most people on this continent own little more than a house and scrap of yard, if that. For the majority of us, our childhoods were shaped by public lands and parks. This experience contributes to a small, but significant uniting factor: thinking of things in terms of "us" and "our", rather than "me" and "mine". No wonder many of us would feel uncomfortable at the thought of an entire city being disrupted on our behalf. And it's no wonder that Mr. Bush doesn't seem to share this sense of unease. All his life, the "Keep Out" and "No Trespassing" signs on country clubs or private retreats were referring, not to him, but to us.