Got this in email: " Noon in Crawford at El Rancho Bush"

President Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch was intended as a perfect backdrop for his cowboy image. But a grieving mother, a deadly hurricane, and disenchanted neighbors have brought a dose of reality to his vacation retreat

When the 101-degree Crawford heat scorches the prairie, the dust blows through the sagebrush like a tornado, and fire ants attack your ankles like the Devil's minions, you won't see George Bush flinch. He's too busy beating the hell out of the underbrush, not caring at all whether he soils his work shirts. He doesn't talk fancy, but puts things "in English, or Texan." That's why he vowed to get Osama "dead or alive." His folks aren't "Washington types," but the guys "down at the Coffee Station," Crawford's one, tiny diner. You may have even seen him there on TV, shooting the breeze with them--his trucker and farmer buddies--telling the owner, Nick Spanos, to fire up the grill and make him a cheeseburger.

Like Ronald Reagan and Lyndon Johnson before him, Bush has been impressively successful at packaging himself as that American archetype of honesty, courage, and unshakable conviction: the cowboy. The plan to become one was hatched in the late 90s, when the Connecticut-born Texas governor, who attended Andover and Yale, worked with his close adviser, Karl Rove, to prepare a run for the presidency. The first thing Bush needed was a ranch. In 1999, he picked one, a 1,600-acre spread in Crawford, current population 705, a "dry" town with one blinking traffic light. It was one of the most conservative corners in the country, overflowing with true believers, who would turn every available wall into a Bush photo shrine and tolerate no dissenters. He'd spend, roughly 20 percent of his presidency there--more than any modern president has been on vacation--so the press would get a steady diet of him in his cowboy hat, walking tall down dusty roads.

For almost five years, the plan worked--until one mother from Vacaville, California, Cindy Sheehan, camped outside his ranch for most of the month of August, demanding a face-to-face meeting about why we went to war in Iraq and why her son Casey had to die there, a month and a half before his 25th birthday. Her astonishing presence, in addition to catalyzing a nascent anti-war movement, changed the meaning of Crawford--from Bush's cowboy backdrop to the walled-off vacation compound of an out-of-touch president. Then, after ignoring Cindy, he ignored Katrina. As he squeezed out his last vacation days, a major American city drowned.

The hotbed of Bush delirium extends to Waco, the small city adjacent to Crawford, still synonymous with the 1993 Branch Davidian disaster, in which David Koresh's band of arms-hoarding religious extremists went up in flames after a 51-day standoff with the F.B.I. and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Within minutes of meeting a visitor to their city, Wacoans let you know that the Branch Davidians were actually 15 miles outside of Waco--which is true. That said, the cultural center of Waco is Baylor University, a Baptist institution where, until 1996, students were not allowed to dance. To this day, women are required to cover their upper arms at the gym, because, as the girl at the front desk warns, "sleeveless shirts lead to sports bras."

When Bush was governor, Baylor president (now chancellor) Robert B. Sloan Jr. made his case that Baylor was a perfect fit for Bush's presidential library, which many Wacoans see as the best way to remove the Branch Davidian stigma. "We commented about the world of higher education and the political, the majoritarian view in higher education tends not to be sympathetic to his own political outlook," says Sloan over lunch at Waco's Ridgewood Country Club. In his 10 years as president, Sloan has sought to strengthen the spiritual backbone of Baylor, by demanding that its students and faculty be more devoted to faith, and by fortifying its position in the culture war. When a gay student came out of the closet, for example, his scholarship was quickly revoked. At Baylor, Sloan explains, "you couldn't advocate certain lifestyles. You couldn't advocate pedophilia or bigamy," in contrast, he seems to be implying, to other universities, where multiple spouses and sex between adults and children are encouraged.

Not all true believers are so reasonable. Consider Bill Johnson, 63, who owns the Yellow Rose, Crawford's largest gift shop. "This is God's store," says Johnson, an eerily soft-spoken, intense reed of a man with carefully parted sandy hair, a deep tan, and piercing green eyes. Outside the Yellow Rose, visitors are greeted by two giant tablets beating the Ten Commandments and a replica of the Liberty Bell. Inside, one is greeted by a cornucopia of stuffed real tigers and bears, assorted crosses, old wagon wheels, and, mostly, Bush souvenirs: countless images of Dubya in military gear, Dubya with the Bible, Dubya flanked by eagles, Dubya bobbleheads, life-size Dubya cardboard cutouts, Western White House shot glasses--plus a sign that reads, HITLER, STALIN, CASTRO, AND QADDAFI SUPPORTED GUN CONTROL.

Saddam Hussein--he disarmed his enemies so he could kill them," says Johnson, explaining that, although everyone has a right to his own opinion, Americans who support gun control are no different from genocidal dictators. "That's pretty much the way us folks feel about it."

Just as his store is God's store, the war in Iraq, Johnson insists, is God's war. "In the Bible, it says if you don't protect your family you're worse than an infidel," says Johnson. Jesus the pacifist needs to be seen in context, he explains. "The same Jesus that turned the other cheek is the same guy that…ran out the money changers. He whipped them," The Bible also holds precious wisdom about how to treat people here at home, Johnson believes. Welfare, for instance, violates the message of the Good Book that those who don't work deserve to die. "In Second Thessalonians, it says, 'That the man shall not work, he should not eat.' Just let him starve," says Johnson.

Other true believers are simply basking in the glow of having the coolest guy in the world live in town. On this day in early August, to coincide with the start of Bush's month off, Waco and Crawford society have gathered at Baylor for one of the summer's hottest ticket--a photo exhibition called "Presidential Retreat." There's Tommye Lou Davis, the stunning, extremely well-preserved right-hand woman to Robert Sloan. She's in a cream pantsuit accented with a George Bush scarf fanned out across her blouse like a bib. Over there, taking in a picture of Laura and George, is Shirley Westerfield, who became Crawford's social queen when Bush danced with her at the inaugural ball she threw for him.

"She's so pretty," says Westerfield, a peppy chatterbox, wearing a button-down shirt with a pattern of ferns, as she moves on to the other cheerful images on display here tonight: George giving the thumbs-up; George with his dog Barney; George with his girls; George with his top Cabinet members, enjoying a walk down Prairie Chapel Road; George charming the pants off a black woman getting a house from Habitat for Humanity. Should 60 pictures not be enough, the show is followed by a montage film of more of the same, set to music. Over the movie-soundtrack crescendos and heroic cymbal crashing, one detects "ahs" and even sniffles in the audience. "I got chills," says Westerfield, regaining her composure as she files out of the auditorium.

"He's one of us," she enthuses, over a barbecue-on-paper dinner. "I just like him. He reminds me of my father. You know--blue jeans, 'Let's get in the truck.'" His accomplishments as president--even his war in Iraq--are not only beside the point but barely on the radar. "I don't think about , because I have about five or six girlfriends that I kind of stay in touch with, and we're not talking about the war when we get together."

Friendly and hospitable as most locals are, they can quickly turn into a lynch mob when their man is criticized, as W. Leon Smith, 52, the editor of The Lone Star Iconoclast, discovered. Hardly your fire-breathing liberal, Smith endorsed Bush in 2000 and, in addition to editing the paper, works, unpaid, as the mayor of Clifton, a small town near Crawford.

"We monitored his first term," says Smith, a rather sober-looking grandfather type, sitting back in his decrepit office, where parts of the ceiling are being held up by cardboard and duct tape. "And at some point we needed to make a decision on who we were going to endorse, and the cards kept coming up 'not Bush.'" He and his senior staff members, Don Fisher and Nathan Diebenow, fretted over the endorsement. "I lay there some nights staring at the ceiling, thinking about what we should do," recalls Fisher. In the end, he says, "I don't think we could do anything else in all conscience."

The September 29, 2004, editorial endorsing John Kerry was a dispassionate account of how Bush had failed on a number of issues--stem-cell research, his plans for Social Security, the economy, the debt. But the local reaction was near hysteria. Letters to the editor would not suffice. The paper lost half its subscribers and most of its advertisers. Businesses in Crawford refused to sell it. "There was an active boycott put into place," says Smith, "and have been told they will be boycotted if they support us."

It didn't stop there. Diebenow received phone calls demanding, "Are you a Christian?" (In fact, his father is a local pastor.) "We had e-mails saying, 'We hope you die,'" says Fisher. "Literally, 'We hope you die.'" One man came by the office to say that he and his buddies were going to "run you out of town?' Two college students who were coveting a local festival for the paper were denied admittance and were told that their names were on a list, and to wait right there so the sheriff could be summoned. Should the editors attempt to go into the Coffee Station, "you have to carry your six-guns and go down, like High Noon," says Diebenow. "It really wouldn't surprise us if we were served the door instead of a hamburger."

"If anyone thought that the opinion of three guys in central Texas was going to sway this election one way or another, that person needs to get out more, O.K.?" says Fisher, able to laugh about what happened. Mainly, the three men are profoundly disappointed. "The last defense, the last defiance, that you have is your voice," Fisher says. "When you're lying helpless and injured on your deathbed, so long as you have your voice, the thing is not over."

For the true believers, handling the White House press corps--those neurotic liberal show-offs who descend on their turf for a total of about two months a year--requires a bit more finesse than hate mail and death threats. The press spend their days in the Crawford Middle School gym, sitting in a forced vigil on folding chairs at cafeteria tables beneath basketball hoops. By noon, they've usually clocked 3,000 calories, thanks to a constantly replenished feeding trough of double-smoked bacon, barbecue, and chicken-fried Steak provided by local restaurants. In spite of all the food they get to eat, they are a bunch of whiners, say the true believers. They whine about the heat, they whine about the crickets, they whine about how there's nothing to do.

"I hear a lot of complaints," says Westerfield, who, as part of her volunteer work for the president, picks up his staff and the press corps from the airport and takes them to their hotels in Waco. "Especially when they're right off the plane. They're all busy, 'filing their reports.' I just keep quiet."

Locals feel free to remind the press how out of touch and wrong they are—particularly when the reporters air their opinions in public, like at restaurants. CBS's Mark Knoller found this out after he complained to his dinner partners about the security precautions now taken at airports. A fellow diner overhearing the conversation "felt my remarks were out of line," says Knoller, "and he let me know it." Some locals think such conversations are designed for them. "I was at a restaurant," says one Baylor grad, "and they were having a very grand, esoteric conversation--for my benefit. About cancer research," she says, rolling her eyes. Some true believers will speak up even when a reporter is quietly minding his own business. When The New York Times's David E. Sanger dropped by Starbucks to get his paper, a fellow customer asked him why on earth he'd want to read that liberal nonsense. Sanger admitted that he not only reads it every day but also works there. The man advised Sanger that he ought to go home and set them straight. (For the record, Sanger's ancestors are from Waco and founded a department store there.)

Nick Spanos, whose Coffee Station is festooned with Bush cutouts and Clinton-bashing cartoons, doesn't hesitate to let it be known he thinks journalists are idiots. "We have reporters running out of our ears," says Spanos, his hand on a second, special cell phone he keeps on his belt, in the unlikely event that he needs to be alerted about the arrival of a certain someone. "Newsweek did a deal on where the president's money goes. And one of the parts of the interview was: Does he pay for his cheeseburgers? Yes. And does he leave a tip? This and that. Just pretty much stupid questions, you know?"

The press have also been reminded that they are considered sordid and debauched. When they were first working out of the elementary-school gym, unhappy parents, afraid that child-molesters might be in the group, demanded that a large, steel door be erected between the press and the kids. "We are the unknown…sort of sleazy element," says Julie Mason, White House correspondent for the Houston Chronicle. "I think they feel we're there to attack their president…We're sort of these troublemakers who make the president unhappy."

As Bush sees it, by bringing the press corps to Crawford, he's introducing them to real America. In 2003 his conviction that the press is out of touch with the country was articulated in an interchange at the summer barbecue at the ranch. One reporter asked him, "How do you then know what the public thinks?," to which he responded, "You're making a huge assumption--that you represent what the public thinks."

"He thinks we're effete and elitist and ridiculous and consumed with garbage," Mason says. "He calls it 'goo-goo journalism' when you ask him something introspective, like that question about had he ever made a mistake. We're all a bunch of theater critics…He'll often say, as we're heading there, he'll say something along the lines of 'We're heading to Texas and you're all better for it.'"

On press visits to the ranch, Bush enjoys torturing the journalists physically. He'll drive them around in his John Deere Gator, or load them into one of his fleet of pickups like cattle, so they can feel him attack the rugged terrain. "When you're in the back of his pickup truck and he starts bouncing around on purpose just to watch you sort of flail in the back," says John King, CNN's chief national correspondent, "I think he's just trying to see if he can ditch anybody."

According to NBC's David Gregory, whom Bush publicly ridiculed for asking Jacques Chirac a question in French, "He loves the idea that it really sort of tweaks all of us--you know, the white-wine-swilling, beach-loving East Coast elitist press corps, who would just be dying to spend time on Nantucket instead of Crawford. The fact that it puts us through our paces," says Gregory, "I think he enjoys that even more."

Bush's instinct to out-tough the press corps is so ingrained that once, when standing in front of reporters at a news conference in 106-degree heat, he said, "We've got to get in before we have a heatstroke," only to quickly correct himself: "before you have a heatstroke." That Sanger (a Jew from the Times, of all things) has Texas roots perplexes Bush. "It may not quite fit with his image of New York Times reporters," says Sanger, "as a bunch of Ivy League East Coasters who have little understanding of his Texas world."

The fact that they're on location doesn't mean the press can expect anything like candor. Most of the ranch visits are "off the record," and Bush makes it clear that he's not there to discuss policy. Walking tours are like "boot camp," says Gregory. "He moves so quickly, and you can tell he doesn't really want to talk about substance, so he ends up giving you this kind of Audubon Society tour of his property."

"They tell you nothing and then they slam the door," says Jean-Louis Doublet, from Agence France-Presse, over dinner at El Siete Mares, a Waco seafood restaurant. White House reporters tempted to criticize Bush do so at their own risk, Doublet explains. "Any journalist covering the White House, if they write a story saying they're a bunch of liars…he would do it once and he'd be gone. He'd be an outcast." Then again, feeling outcast is not uncommon among White House reporters. "This administration is so tight-lipped," says Jessica Yellin, a rising star at ABC News, "that I can't imagine the reporters who are 'frozen out' get that much less information than the rest of us."

They're left with exactly what Bush wants to give them--endless shots of him strutting around in his cowboy hat, blue jeans, short-sleeved work shirts, and question-and-answer sessions in which he's leaning on a fence rail. In the summer of 2004, the other reporters envied the A.P.'s Scott Lindlaw when he got invited to the ranch for a one-on-one with Bush--even though his dispatch was nothing more than a play-by-play description of Bush on his mountain bike, climaxing in the president shrugging off a crash. Lindlaw noted that Bush's heart rate is in the range of Lance Armstrong's. The New York Times's Elisabeth Bumiller has devoted several columns to the president's exercise regimen, and has chronicled his problematic knee. Other Crawford dispatches, such as those from Judy Keen at USA Today, read like resort pamphlets. "That natural ambience is what the Bushes love so much about their ranch," Keen writes with Laurence McQuillan in one of her exclusives. "The only sounds are the chatter of birds and the murmur of the breeze through the leaves of the live oak and cedar elm trees. The 'Texas White House' is where the Bushes find peace and solitude." Meanwhile, at the Crawford Middle School, television correspondents deliver their "stand-ups" strategically placed in front of bales of hay or tractors, giving viewers the impression that they're on the ranch, because, as one cameraman explains, the executives back East love the whole ranch thing.

It has been left to Cindy Sheehan to expose the hollowness of Bush's cowboy populism. Far from the treasonous left-wing crackpot she has been painted to be by many of the right-wing pundits, Sheehan was a Catholic youth minister and until recently worked in the Napa County Health and Human Services Agency. She passed on her strong Catholic beliefs and family values to her son Casey. He was an altar, boy for 10 years and an Eagle Scout, and wanted to remain a virgin until he got married.

Casey enlisted in the army in 2000, with the dream of becoming a chaplains assistant. Instead, he became a mechanic. "His recruiter promised him that even if there was a war that he wouldn't see combat because he scored so high on the military competency test," recalls Sheehan one week into her vigil, quickly eating a McDonald's breakfast in a dingy van that's swarming with flies. "He said, 'I'll only be there in support, Mom. My sergeant said you don't have to worry about me.'" Though he was skeptical about the Iraq war, says Sheehan, he went with an unwavering sense of service. "He said, 'Mom, I wish I didn't have to go to the war, but I have to. It's my duty. It's what I've trained for.'" He died on April 4, 2004, less than a month into his tour of duty. There had been intense fighting that night, and help was needed to bring wounded soldiers to safety. Although mechanics do not usually go on such missions, resources were thin, and Casey volunteered. When Cindy saw a burning Humvee on CNN the next morning, she knew somehow that her son was dead.

Together with others who'd lost loved ones in Iraq, Sheehan met with the president shortly after her son's death. The meeting left her without a shred of respect for him. Bush, who had prided himself on his compassion for military families, began the meeting, Sheehan recalls, by asking, "Who are we honoring here?" He didn't know Casey's name. He didn't look at Cindy's pictures of him. He called Cindy "Mom" throughout.

After processing that meeting Sheehan made it her mission to hold Bush's feet to the fire for a good explanation as to why the country went to war. Her quest, as she puts it, is "to make meaning out of Casey's death." In the process, she has seen her life crumble further. She lost her job due to absences. She and her husband, Pat, split up, owing in part to the difference in the way they handled Casey's death. He wanted to distract himself, she wanted to immerse herself. None of this has dimmed her determination. "I'm not afraid of anything anymore," says Sheehan. "I've already had the worst thing happen to me."

Her decision to come to Crawford was not some grand stunt to become a media star. As she tells it, it was a spur-of-the-moment decision she made with her sister, Dede Miller. Here on Prairie Chapel Road, usually a quiet spot, where a truck might drive by every 10 minutes or so, Sheehan finds herself at the center of a surreal scene that's in turn exciting, heartrending, infuriating, and silly. Supporters have arrived from all over the country. Other military families have come to speak out, some who have lost children, and some who are terrified that they might any day. A few left-wing nuts roam from pup tent to pup tent, muttering about how the government was responsible for 9/11.

Over the course of the past week Sheehan has stood in lightning storms, slept in ditches, fought fevers, and endured attacks of fire ants in the middle of the night, only to watch her character get slimed on TV day after day. But support has come from unlikely places. Republican senators Chuck Hagel, from Nebraska, and George Allen, from Virginia, both publicly announced that they believed the president should meet with Sheehan. Dozens of reporters are clamoring for just a few minutes with her. "It's a miracle," she says.

But she also harbors bitterness toward the national networks and newspapers whose reporters are now swarming around her. "I believe the media did not do its job in the run-up to the war," Sheehan says. "They lid not ask the hard questions. They didn't do the investigating. I told that to CNN anchor Anderson Cooper last night, and he said, 'Well, there are only so many questions you can ask.'…Yesterday, a CNN producer told me I had really good timing because it was a slow news week. I said, 'Tell that to the 30 families of the Marines who died last week.'" A few minutes later, Sheehan stands before the media at a press conference and tells them she is doing the job they should have done.

This sudden jolt of ugly reality into Bush's conservative comfort zone naturally has driven the true believers bonkers. Pickup trucks routinely spray Sheehan and her supporters with mud and make sport of coming close to running them over. A local resident, Larry Northern, mowed down hundreds of crosses Sheehan and her supporters had put up, the names of fallen soldiers affixed to them. One shopkeeper remarked that she'd like to release skunks onto the whole group. Plots of land Sheehan's group had been using, which had been county property, were suddenly handed over to Crawford residents, making the protesters trespassers.

But on August 16 one Crawford landowner, Fred Mattlage, stepped in to help, by offering up his property for them to continue their protest. With this, another Crawford was put in the spotlight. This Crawford sees the growing divide between rich and poor in their community and a president who is responsible for it and accountable to no one.

One such Crawford citizen is Larry Mattlage, Fred's distant cousin, whose family has been in Crawford since 1887 and who owns a farm three-quarters of a mile from Bush's property. Mattlage is the real Crawford cowboy--with land, goats, sheep, a white beard, legs that stretch a mile--and he believes that Bush has done nothing for his beloved town except exploit it. First off, the idea that Bush is some kind of "rancher" just makes him laugh.

"He don't know dirt," says Mattlage, who is friendly with Bush's ranch foreman, Robert Blossman. All that brush clearing, Mattlage says, "is for show. It's not necessary… is where the birds live. That's birdseed. That's deer food. That's cow food… makes cedar posts. If they're grown properly, they make a good post that will last forever." Bush's ignorance on the matter doesn't surprise him. "You don't move into these boonies and really understand the land, you know?" says Mattlage. " got a lot of money, and they got access to a lot of machinery and a lot of bulldozers and a lot of destructive equipment, and before you know it, they can screw up something so damn bad…A rich man with a bulldozer is a dangerous thing!" Furthermore, the notion that Bush is "friends" with anyone in Crawford is hogwash. "He's a visitor to this group of people," says Mattlage. "Nobody knows anything about him. I know you better than I know my neighbor."

The history of Crawford, explains Mattlage as he takes you in his white Chevy four-by-four down Prairie Chapel Road, began in the mid-19th century when a bunch of German families settled and became farmers. He knows the ins and outs--which Mattlage married which Engelbrecht, which Westerfield is buried in which cemetery-and he loves every piece. He also loved the way of life he knew until Bush became his neighbor. "These people," he says, nodding toward the farms, "they like to lay their corn, their wheat…Before George Bush, we knew everyone on the road. We knew who stopped on the road. We could go where we wanted."

One of Mattlage's favorite spots in Crawford is the old schoolhouse down on Prairie Chapel Road, which happens to be close to Bush's ranch. But as he approaches Mattlage Road, named after a relative, he's met by a large roadblock and an S.U.V. Mattlage comes to a stop. A young Secret Service man his eyes hidden behind shades, gets out and approaches us. Mattlage rolls down the window.

"How you doing, sir?" says the young man, in Secret Service tones. Mattlage introduces himself and his visitors.

"One of the things that they're writing on is the history of this area," Mattlage says. "And there's a Prairie Chapel Schoolhouse that we would love to take a picture of, the historical markers. Anybody that can follow us there just for pictures?"

"Not while he's in town, sir."

"O.K. Uh, is there anybody we can call to get permission to do that? I mean, we'll have the highway patrol follow us--"

"No. It pulls manpower away from what we already have allotted to. So, I mean, you know, it's a secure perimeter. If you want to wait, I hate to say this, but if you want to wait till September, when he goes back… I know that's not what you want to hear-"

"No."

"Well, these roads become open then, but until then it's a secure perimeter and it's like asking to get into the White House itself."

"Well, I understand that," says Mattlage, his frustration quietly growing.

"I know it's, this is, you know, this is your guys' home and we're visitors here, and I recognize that, and I do apologize for the inconvenience, but, uh, you know, it's, it's the job that we have to do."

Mattlage stares him in the eye, unimpressed. "That's why we're in the war, too."

"I'm sorry?" says the young man.

"That's why we're fighting the war--we're doing the job somebody wants us to do, right?"

"Yes, sir."

Mattlage pulls away and moves on. There's another road up ahead he wants to go down. This one, he explains, does not lead to Bush's ranch. When we get there, same thing.

"What the hell we got here now?" he says, getting more pissed off.

He spots Billy Westerfield, another neighbor, waiting in his pickup to get through, and he rolls down the window.

"What's going on, Billy?"

"He's riding his bicycle."

Mattlage pulls away. "Bush has got a whole ranch to ride a bicycle on. He closes the road so he can ride a bicycle. See, this is like the military. They took a quiet community and turned it into a base."

But it's not just that Crawford has become a police state that has Mattlage riled up. Under Bush, Mattlage has seen the country--and his own life--go downhill. For 30 years he worked in education while he ran his farm on the side. Nine years ago, when Bush was governor, Mattlage lost his job at Texas State Technical College, in Waco, where he was director of counseling. "He goes all over Texas talking about, 'We need technical education,'" says Mattlage, popping chewing tobacco into his mouth as he roams one of Crawford's cemeteries. "Hell, he's the one who cut it when we were doing it. He's the one who cut my job. He's why I don't have a job. Now he's my damned neighbor!"

Mattlage has other problems, too--a family member who is H.I.V.-positive, addicted to cocaine, and can't get help. "To get him into treatment, I'd have to be a multimillionaire or I'd have to gamble and sell everything I got, and he may not even get it. There's no places to go, there's no insurance for him to have, and the fact is nobody cares." Minute by minute, you can see his Clint Eastwood stoicism giving way to rage. He gestures, fed up, with his long arms in the direction of the ranch. "So we got a guy who can ride a bicycle and do all the rest, but I can't get into a drug-treatment facility!"

Mattlage is not the only one frustrated. He sees similar struggles going on with his friends and neighbors. "People want a job, they want a family, they want a house, they want to work. They just want to make a living," he says. He insists none of his neighbors would dare complain about Bush, adding, "The things I'm telling you are just things that I know they would say to me."

What about the true believers? "They're making money off T-shirts. They're making money off hamburgers. Their ski lodge is open."

And Shirley Westerfield? Mattlage chuckles. "She got to dance with him and she thinks she was dancing with Jesus Christ," he says.

If Mattlage is Crawford's real cowboy, then Robert Campbell, a thin, soft–spoken, bespectacled, 62-year-old African-American, is its real president. A 20-year air-force veteran who built bases from the ground up in Vietnam, Campbell moved from Philadelphia to Crawford in 1981 after meeting his wife, who was from here. Upon arrival, he became the sole maintenance worker in Crawford while he put himself through night school, studying business administration. He followed that by earning an advanced degree in social work from Baylor. After that, he went through the seminary at Southern Methodist University. He's now pastor at two churches, serving the African-American communities of Crawford and Waco. Until this past May, he was also Crawford's mayor, an unpaid position he had held since 1999.

In spite of his credentials and in spite of the enormous role he has played in the community, he is someone the president has never shown an interest in meeting--though foreign dignitaries, such as the president of China and the prime minister of Australia, have. Which strikes Campbell as odd, particularly since Bush boasted to the National Urban League Conference in July 2004 about his two black mayors, one in Washington and one in Crawford.

"I thought, Well, that's amazing, since he hasn't had any contact with me since he's been in the White House," says Campbell, laughing as he sits in the pew of his tiny Perry Chapel United Methodist Church, his pressed yellow polo shirt tucked tidily into his jeans.

In Bush's years in Crawford, Campbell has seen the place go from a small, laidback town where no one locked his door to an uneasy place of opportunism, where trees are being cut down to make room for shops. Car parts and home-improvement projects sit in front yards and look as if they haven't been touched in years. Roofs are literally falling in. Mangy dogs roam free. Campbell can count on two hands the number of people in the African-American community who have jobs. Bush has done nothing, he says. "We're his photo op."

Campbell has also seen political tension erupt when before there never was any to speak of. "Since Bush has been here, that's when political affiliation became an issue," he says. "Nobody ever worried about whether you were a Democrat or a Republican. It was a non-issue. Now it's the big thing."

Campbell knows whereof he speaks. After listening to John Kerry talk to the National Conference of Black Mayors, Campbell decided he liked what he had heard, and let it be known that he would vote for him. "That had a lot of people up in arms. They thought I had committed blasphemy because I said it publicly."

Campbell's decision had little to do with how Bush has treated Crawford. As a Vietnam veteran, he thought the war in Iraq was a mistake. "He's sending young men and young women off to war. His Cabinet and these other folks are backing it. I said, 'How many of them have children in the military? And how many of their children are going to go?'" says Campbell, whose nephew is now stationed in Germany and will soon go off to Iraq. "I've been there. I've spent five tours in Southeast Asia and Vietnam during the war. I said, 'Those people shoot real bullets, killing folks.'"

Though neighbors were enraged and he was dissed by councilmen, Campbell doesn't regret speaking up. "In church I say I believe the Lord made my shoulders broad enough and he gives me the strength to carry the load," he says. "I cannot stand in my pulpit and tell the members of my congregation what thus sayeth the Lord and how they are to live if I'm not willing to be bold enough to stand for my own convictions."

On the last weekend of August, marking the end of the president's vacation, the true believers and the skeptics came face-to-face when some 5,500 Sheehan supporters and 1,500 anti-Sheehan demonstrators descended on Crawford. In the 101-degree heat, the tiny town became a tinderbox for the most emotional showdown since the war began.

On one side is "Camp Casey," a giant tent located on Fred Mattlage's land, about a mile and a half from the president's ranch. For anyone who harbors a tinge of embarrassment from the peace-movement antics of the 60s, there is much here to poke fun at. The protesters, who come from Austin and San Antonio, Colorado, New York, California, and Massachusetts, are being shuttled in and out by "peace" vans provided by the Peace House, the local protest shack, which was all but defunct until Sheehan came along. Local volunteers haul around coolers of water and put out food--hamburger buns, but no hamburgers. Young people with piercings sit around tents, some playing guitars, some lazing about on top of one another. A few women are breast-feeding their sweating, unhappy babies. Some people are meditating amid the chaos. The government-was-behind-9/ll faction appears to be gaining ground. Folksinger Joan Baez, oddly clean and fresh among a crowd of the drenched and grimy, pours cold water onto the head of a young woman about to pass out. Without words, she shares lengthy embraces with whoever approaches her, including a hulking gay former Marine who recently came out of the closet on Paula Zahn's show. Then there are the women of Codepink, the antiwar women's group, which is handling press. Wearing pink garments which look like they came off the racks at Barneys, they work their cell phones and BlackBerrys like Hollywood pros. As Al Sharpton and Sheehan head toward Casey's cross to kneel and pray--followed by dozens of cameras--the pink ladies become hysterical. "Media, get off the crosses! Off the crosses!" they yell, as if the crosses were not there for the media's benefit.

In a counterpoint to the silliness, more parents of fallen soldiers have joined Sheehan here, seeking answers to not just why we got into the war but why their children were put in situations they never should have seen--situations which led to their deaths. Bill Mitchell's son, Mike, a tank mechanic, had turned in all his equipment on April 3, 2004. He was one week away from going to Kuwait; two weeks from Germany; four months from his wedding day. The next day, when a group of soldiers was ambushed in Sadr City, Mike was called back to help rescue them. "Sergeant Deaton, the tank commander, said, 'Mitch, I need you to ride loader on the tank today,'" says Bill, holding the cross around his neck, in which he keeps some of Mike's ashes. "He said, 'Sarge, I'm with you.' So my son went into Sadr City that day manning a machine gun," something that was not emphasized in his training to be a mechanic.

Nadia McCaffrey, from Sunnyvale, California, never even thought her son, Patrick, who joined the National Guard after 9/11 as a way of serving his country, would have to leave the U.S. "He asked if there's a war would he be deployed, because he has two children, and they told him no, you will be sent to Utah to watch a nuclear plant," recalls McCaffrey. But like about 37,000 other National Guard troops, her son was sent to Iraq, in March 2004, after just two months of boot camp. On June 22, out on a mission that likely involved a search for W.M.D., he was shot and killed by a group of Iraqi men he'd been training. "Patrick didn't have a chance, because he was carrying the radio," says McCaffrey. "The radio was 75 pounds. It was 125 degrees. People were dropping. Patrick was a combat lifesaver. He had evacuated two people that day by administering a saline IV. He should have been evacuated himself as well. That mission should have been called off, period." McCaffrey has repeatedly requested of the Pentagon that an autopsy of her son's body be done. None has been forthcoming.

On the anti-Sheehan side, made up of locals and people from the Sacramento-based group Move America Forward, the rage is equally palpable. Among the BUSH COUNTRY and SUPPORT THE TROOPS signs are those that read, HOW TO WRECK YOUR FAMILY IN 30 DAYS BY "BITCH IN THE DITCH" CINDY SHEEHAN. A group of teenage boys in the street yells, "Cindy, the fucking whore, get out!" Some of the pro-war group have chosen a spot across the road from the original site of Sheehan's protest, which is still being maintained by a group of her supporters. As state troopers prevent them from crossing the street into each other's camp, the two groups hurl slogans across the road:

"George Bush!"

"War criminal!"

"The Rapture is coming!"

"Love your brother!"

At the end of Sunday morning's interfaith service at Camp Casey, in which clergy from Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, and Unitarian groups have taken part, Rabbi Hillel Gamoran from Seattle tells the crowd that he will now lead them in Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for mourners. Just moments into it, a ferocious-looking local teenager, there with his buddy, rushes the group. "You're doing the work of Osama!" he yells, getting up in the faces of the clergy. His fists are about to fly when he is subdued by a couple of local cops.

Headquarters for the anti-Sheehan group is just outside the Yellow Rose gift shop. "We're making ground," says Bill Johnson, as he wanders rapturously around his tent, which is decorated with pictures of a muzzled Cindy Sheehan and happy Iraqi children. As at Camp Casey, small white crosses have been planted in the ground. "We got 30 crosses in one bunch and another 40 coming down." Country musicians have been brought in for the day, but the music is drowned out each time a Bush supporter yanks the rope of the Yellow Rose's enormous Liberty Bell, which makes a sound that reverberates for blocks and shakes the pavement. "If you don't support George Bush, you're not supporting the troops!" yells one Waco woman over the din.

This side, too, has its share of parents in profound pain. Gregg Garvey, whose son Justin, an army sergeant with the 101st Airborne Division, was killed in July 2003 in Iraq, believes that Sheehan is trying to dishonor the troops, and he came to Crawford to set her straight. "I went up there and retrieved my son's cross from a ditch," says Garvey. " made the comment that 'this country is not worth fighting or dying for.' Then why in the hell doesn't she take her protest thing and join her freedom fighters in Iraq and see how long it lasts over there?" In fact, what Sheehan said was that Iraq was not worth fighting for. The twisted words have been beaming from one right-wing media outlet to another.

By the end of the summer, Bush had driven past Sheehan only to go to and from a Republican fund-raising barbecue. He left Crawford on Monday, August 29--not to go to Louisiana and Mississippi, where a state of emergency had been declared three days earlier, but to Arizona, where he posed with John McCain and his birthday cake and tried to sell senior citizens on his Medicare proposal. On Tuesday, as New Orleans filled up with water, he went to Naval Air Station North Island, outside San Diego, where he messed around on a guitar with country singer Mark Wills. While conditions for about 25,000 citizens trapped in the New Orleans Superdome deteriorated into unimaginable filth, starvation, and death, and one million Gulf Coast residents found themselves homeless, Bush returned to Crawford for one more night.

It remains to be seen whether even the true believers will get all they want from Bush. Waco will likely not get its presidential library, as insiders say the president has all but decided to build his library at Southern Methodist University, in Dallas. He has been to Waco a total of six times, twice for summits at Baylor, twice to play golf, once to throw a pitch in the regional Little League game, and once for a photo op with Habitat for Humanity, which ended when Bush pinched his thumb between two boards and bled on the homeowner's new floor. As one local newspaper editor points out, "The name 'Waco' has never come out of his mouth."

What about Bill Johnson and his souvenir shop? Bush has never set foot in the Yellow Rose. But, like a doormat girlfriend, Johnson doesn't complain. Rather, he makes up lame excuses for Bush's absence. "He was going to come in here about three or four months ago, and it rained, so they couldn't get in the back door." He adds, weakly, that "the daughters have been in. And Arnie Schwartz." (That's Ari Fleischer.)

After his presidency, Bush will likely leave Shirley Westerfield and friends and buy a place in Dallas, which Laura has admitted she prefers. When Bush hangs up his cowboy hat, all that the Crawford residents will have left Of him will be those souvenirs, photos, and cardboard cutouts--which, if you really think about it, was all they had in the first place.

http://www.vanityfair.com/commentary/content/articles/051024roco01
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