Obama in Copenhagen--Hickory, Dickory, Dock.

Hickory, Dickory, Dock—the mouse run up the clock. The clock struck one and down he run. Hickory, Dickory, Dock! And so the captains and the kings (and the mice) depart from Copenhagen today. Hickory, Dickory, Dock.
I remember the first time I ever applied that nursery rhyme to an American political situation—in 1967, immediately after the first anti-war march on the Pentagon in Washington. Thousands of Vietnam War protestors were expected in Washington for the march.
Word went out that homes were needed to put up marchers. My first wife volunteered our house just north of Georgetown. About a dozen Canadians from New Brunswick showed up, led by two expatriate American professors to sleep on my living room floor.
In the morning I decided to go along with them “to the demonstration to get my fair share of abuse.” Thousands strong, on a beautiful, sunny autumn Washington day we gathered around the reflecting pool to hear speeches. (Get your hands on Norman Mailer’s fictionalized account of that day in “Armies of the Night”. It’s good; it’s accurate. A few months later I spent an entire trans-Atlantic flight reading it and comparing it to my own experience.)
Then we got up to cross the bridge behind the Lincoln Memorial and march to the Pentagon. Helicopters cross-crossed the skies above us—someone said the F.B.I. was photographing all of us. There were anti-war posters and banners everywhere. My favorite screamed, “Pull out Johnson, like your father should have!”
I followed my guests into a larger group of Canadians marching under the flag of Quebec (I still tell people I am the only American I know to have stormed the American Pentagon under a foreign flag). We got to the Pentagon and my guests rushed up the stairs toward the doors.
I held back. I worked for the “Office of the President”, and it didn’t seem sensible for me to be found duking it out with American troops at a military installation. Sure enough, paratroops poured out of those doors and all of my guests got tear gassed.
We backed up, stood around for a few moments and very, very slowly began to walk back to the bridge. I walked back more quickly than most of the marchers. As I passed group after group, I sensed a universal mood among the retreating demonstrators.
At first I couldn’t identify it clearly—then the words of that old nursery rhyme came to mind. As I recited, “Hickory, Dickory, Dock—the mouse run up the clock … and down he run” to each group, I got unhappy nods from them all. We had gone up; we were coming down.
I should have loved the opportunity to walk out behind the Copenhagen delegates today and recite the rhyme again. I might well have gotten a lot of nods. The conference was billed as a New Christmas, a Second Coming, a birth of hope for all mankind.
Didn’t quite live up to that. By noon of the last day, it looked like there’d be no agreement at all. Then President Obama got busy (the way he should have about health care months and months ago) and conducted the most frantic bout of personal diplomacy since Henry Kissinger helped prevent WWIII in 1973-4 by stopping the Israeli’s from capturing all of the Soviet Union’s military secrets from the trapped Egyptian Third Army on the Sinai.
(Henry got his Nobel Peace Prize for that—he earned it. We’re all still alive.) All Obama got was a paper that everyone agreed to sign while clearly understanding it was in no way legally enforceable. It is comparable to having Tiger Woods sign a non-binding statement that suggests that fidelity to one’s wife would in most cases be a nice thing.
Now he gets to fly back to Washington in time to watch Democrats, Republicans and independents sink his health care bill in the Senate—or will he pull out another meaningless declaration? While he watches the blizzard that’s churning toward Washington—he can count the Congressional mice as down they run.