piece from the LATimes forwarded by Beverly Veltman

[Michael Eisenstadt]

BUSH ADMINISTRATION
Cheney: The Man in the Bubble

* Others mingled and exchanged views; Cheney arrived, spoke--and
vanished.

By Orville Schell

Orville Schell is the author, most recently, of "Virtual Tibet" and is
dean
of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley. A longer version of
this piece appears on www.tomdispatch.com

DAVOS, Switzerland — Each January, I take a narrow-gauge Swiss railway
up
through the snowy Alps to Davos to attend the World Economic Forum. Just
as
in the days when tubercular patients went to the community's sanitariums
(made famous by Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain") "for the air," this
outpost still has the rare feeling in our global vortex of a
self-contained
place, a world unto itself.

During the five days of the forum, this feeling is enhanced by the steel
fence erected around the conference area, the thousands of Swiss police
who
guard the perimeter against demonstrators and the bunkerlike Congress
Centre, where many of the speeches, panels, discussions and much of the
endless networking that characterize Davos take place. Here, undisturbed
by
the chaotic world, the 2,000-plus participants from corporations,
government, politics, academia, the media and civil society mingle in a
bubble, a rarefied bubble, occupied largely by people who rank near the
top
of the periodic tables of wealth, power and fame.

Davos is a modern agora, the forum-marketplace in Periclean Athens where
those with citizenship — as distinguished from the lower castes and
slaves
— gathered to deliberate on the city-state's affairs. One is apt to run
into the International Atomic Energy Agency's director-general, Mohammed
Baradei, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), financier George Soros,
Playboy Enterprises Chief Executive Christie Hefner, Warsaw Stock
Exchange
President Wieslaw Rozlucki, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger
or
Kazakhstan Foreign Minister Kassymzhomart Tokayev engaged in
conversation.
And it is perfectly within the etiquette of the forum to say hello and
start a conversation oneself.

Almost every prominent figure is in attendance without staff, much less
the
retinue that usually trails the high and the mighty. There is, in fact,
a
curious and unexpected equivalence among the participants as they hoof
back
through the snow, often to quite-modest hotels. Presidents and prime
ministers can be seen wandering narrow streets, and CEOs of mighty
corporations struggle to get e-mail at Internet kiosks alongside lowly
professors or directors of nongovernmental organizations.

This year, though, there was an exception to this momentary democracy of
the elite, a participant who kept himself isolated in a personal bubble
even within the bubble that is Davos. Vice President Dick Cheney did not
so
much attend as descend on Davos, roaring up the narrow valley in his
helicopter, accompanied by a squadron of military choppers. On what was
only his second trip abroad while in office, he brought with him the
bubble
of all bubbles.

Certainly, given our terrorized planet, one expected the vice president
to
be accompanied by a considerable security complement. But the measures
taken for him, even in this new, security-conscious world, outstripped
by a
light-year those taken for any other participant. Also in attendance
were
such world leaders as France's Dominique Galouzeau de Villepin,
Pakistan's
Pervez Musharraf, Bill Clinton, the United Nations' Kofi Annan and U.S.
Commerce Secretary Don Evans, but their security details — even that of
Musharraf, the target of two assassination attempts recently — were
dwarfed
by Cheney's.

Helicopters swooped in, bombproof limousines appeared, caged attack dogs
materialized, elaborate communications systems were set up and scores of
bulky Secret Service agents, sporting American flag lapel pins and
telltale
earpieces, fanned out ahead of Cheney's every movement.

Cheney's arrival at the five-star Steigenberger Belvedere hotel left the
world's elite suddenly experiencing periodic lockdowns, in some cases
confined to their rooms as the vice president entered or left the
building.
And when he arrived at the Congress Centre to give his well-written and
well-delivered speech, the normally relaxed atmosphere of the forum was
suddenly transformed. Officious aides with clipboards bustled around,
security guards fanned out and yellow tape mysteriously blocked off
certain
spaces. It was as if the emperor himself had suddenly appeared among
members of the scholar-official class of ancient China, who saw
themselves
as holding sway not only over the "Middle Kingdom" but the known world.

Cheney alone ignored the Davos ethos. Although he answered a few
unscripted
questions after his speech, there was no schmoozing in the lobbies à la
Bill Clinton, no chance encounters or random cups of coffee and no real
opportunity for him to participate in any of the back-and-forth
interaction
that makes Davos unique. He arrived; he spoke; he vanished behind his
security shield.

Cheney's isolation didn't alter Davos for the rest of us, except for
minor
annoyances. But it provided a disturbing picture of how isolated our
president and vice president have become, how apart from the world their
existence is. I came away from Davos sensing that the leaders of our
country are ever more cut off from the kind of normal feedback and
outside
input crucial to grasping the current state of the world.

An administration little inclined to read the daily press, unmotivated
by
the kind of intellectual curiosity that makes people seek out
discussion,
and so tightly wrapped in fear and insecurity that even Davos seemed
filled
with frightening possibilities presents a worrisome picture.

Hermetically sealed inside his bubble, Cheney for a short moment entered
the larger bubble of the World Economic Forum. But like a missionary in
a
heathen land, his only urge was to deliver a message, to evangelize for
his
faith. Missing was any desire, perhaps even the ability, to learn
something
meaningful about the world he had entered. Indeed, the Bush bubble
reflects
a spirit deeply evangelical, more concerned with justifying and
converting
than questioning and learning. In its embunkered certainty, the
administration's belief system is strangely akin in spirit to the party
discipline of Leninism.

What is most important to men like Cheney is "teaching" in the almost
biblical sense of that word, which means "preaching." Not emphasized is
"learning," in the sense of engaging in constant questioning or
wrestling
with ambiguity. Whatever one may choose to say about Davos as a summit
of
elitist power brokers, it is deeply committed to asking questions in an
informal setting that encourages spontaneous exchange.

It would have been reassuring just once to spot Cheney on a couch
quietly
talking with some European counterpart or having a cup of coffee with an
Arab journalist. But there were too many souls to be saved elsewhere for
Cheney to linger and actually participate. His limousines, security
guards
and helicopters were packed up and he was whisked away from Davos
without,
in a sense, ever having arrived.