Phil Pageau, 62, a vice president at a local marketing firm and a solid Bush supporter, sums up the feelings of many folks I talked to: "The situation in Iraq needs a clearly defined end point," he says. "We need to get out of Iraq as fast as we can." While maintaining that the Bush administration is "doing what I expect them to do," he admits, "I hate it when I pick up the paper and see kids getting killed over there. If there is an endgame," he continues, "the administration isn't sharing it with us."

His co-worker Steve Atkinson, 47, an account executive, agrees. "My concern is, there's no exit plan. I don't know how we'll get out of Iraq. What's the program? I wish Bush would do a better job explaining that."

"I'm a wave-the-flag type guy," says Tom Joyce, 52, the president of TCC Laser Eye Surgery. "But not a social conservative," he adds quickly. This is a caveat I would hear fairly often. People in O.C. were eager to stress their patriotism, particularly in light of 9/11. Yet they were equally anxious to establish their credentials as nontroglodytes. They have no problem with Darwin. Gay folks don't need to be rounded up and incarcerated in the desert. Dana Rohrabacher, by anyone's reckoning a pretty conservative guy, made the same point. O.C. Republicans, he told me, are "a combination of surfers, young Asian and Hispanic entrepreneurs, people who go to church but aren't uptight." O.C., while still home to some "kooky right-wingers," he says, is no longer the fiefdom of hard cases like Bob Dornan and Bill Dannemeyer. Off the record, people in the local party hierarchy told me that the real political battle in O.C. was between moderates and the dregs of the hard right. My impression on the ground was that O.C. Republicans fell into two broad categories: those who had drunk deeply from the Kool-Aid and simply refused to entertain any notion at odds with their preconceptions; and, on the other hand, critical thinkers who, whatever their specific political bent, were inclined to observe events as they unfolded and ask relevant questions.

The aforementioned Tom Joyce appears to be the latter sort. He voted for Bush in 2000 and, as we began our conversation, there was nothing to indicate he wasn't eager to do so again in '04. He pronounces himself "fully comfortable with the [Bush] package." "Bush seems like a stand-up guy" who "appears to be a strong proponent of family values," Tom tells me. "He's been consistent in setting a moral high ground."

Tom goes on to talk about what a "great country" we live in, his "strong sense of nationalism," and how, in light of the terrorist threat, we have to "defend our country and all that stuff." So far, this is entirely typical of what I've been hearing ever since arriving in O.C. But then -- carefully, because my role isn't meant to be that of advocate -- I begin pushing a little harder. I suggest to Tom: Bush sold the nation (or some of it anyway) on the need for war in Iraq by citing firm evidence of massive stocks of chemical and biological weapons, at one point even invoking the specter of unmanned Iraqi drone planes spraying botulinum toxins over American cities. Saddam, we were told, was on the verge of unleashing nuclear conflagration. Iraq posed an imminent threat to America and the world. Apparently, hundreds of Americans -- not to mention thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and children -- needed to sacrifice their lives to forestall such catastrophe. So how does the now transparent falsity of these assertions square with Tom's impression of Bush as a "stand-up guy"?

"That's a tough question," he admits, and his eyes begin moving about the room as if searching for a convincing rationale lurking behind the potted plants.

Others I spoke with assured me (or themselves) that the weapons would surely be found. One woman told me, "I consider Saddam's sons weapons of mass destruction." Bush himself had insisted months ago that WMD had already been located; they turned out to be a couple of trailers containing equipment used to inflate weather balloons. Tom, to his credit, refuses to resort to such baloney. After a long pause, he quietly says, "The underlying tenets for our incursion in Iraq have proved to be untrue. You have to ask yourself, 'What's going on here?' Do I have trust? I don't know. Is it a good thing the Iraqi regime was deposed?" he asks rhetorically. "Yes. But the rationale is becoming increasingly tenuous."

Now we're getting somewhere. To put Tom more at ease, I set down my pad and pen. "OK, official interview over," I tell him. "Let's just have a conversation." For nearly an hour, we discuss the role of money in politics and its relevance to Bush's "Clear Skies" and "Healthy Forests" initiatives. We agree on the importance of being honest with citizens whose children are being asked to fight and die, and we delve into the possible reasons -- real reasons -- why our military was sent to Iraq. I ask him to consider the possibility that the massive tax cuts that have jacked up our deficit to mammoth proportions are less a demonstration of fiscal ineptness than part of a deliberate plan to bankrupt entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare (a thesis advanced by economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, among others). By the end of our talk, Tom has the look of a man who will very carefully weigh his options in '04. "You've given me a lot to think about," he says. "And that's a good thing."

Good for Tom; potential trouble for George W. Bush and Co.

O.C. "is changing, but not as fast as I'd like," says Rep. Loretta Sanchez. "Out of six representatives from Orange County, I'm the only woman, the only Democrat, the only Hispanic. The others are five white men." She is somewhat taken aback to hear that her district has been described as an "armpit" but recovers quickly. "Latino communities are no different than others," she tells me. "There are a lot of libertarians, a lot of undecideds and liberals." She feels many people in her district are "upset about Bush, upset about the war."

I had driven inland to Santa Ana -- Sanchez territory - the day after my conversation with Tom Joyce, expecting to find open animosity toward George W. One afternoon spent walking the streets of the old downtown area with its bodegas, bridal boutiques and Tabernaculo Cristiano, talking mostly with busy shopkeepers, is hardly enough to draw firm conclusions. But the impression I got was that, politically speaking, this area was more similar to the rest of O.C. than Sanchez would like. Raoul Yanez, purveyor of cowboy boots and hand-tooled leather belts, seemed to speak for most. While admitting that "business has gotten worse" and that Bush may have "screwed up the economics," he will nevertheless "stick with him." Bush, he feels, "did the right thing" going into Iraq. "He has the balls to defend the country." But Sanchez, who struck me as remarkably sanguine about the divergent opinions in her district, had said something else. The folks she represented who back Bush were "good people," she maintained. "They just don't have the right information."

This brought my mind back to Tom Joyce and the potential Tom Joyces scattered throughout the "red states." Truth has a certain weight to it. As time passes, its impression deepens. Some people will remain impervious; many will not. And truth is not on George W. Bush's side. For all the people who may "remember the image of him on the Lincoln" as that of a triumphant warrior-king, others will see his strutting arrogance as an insult to the brave men and women aboard that ship who had actually put themselves in harm's way.

As the months have passed since 9/11 and particularly since our ill-advised, dishonestly promoted venture in Iraq, more and more people, not all of them liberals, have become disenchanted with the direction in which the Bush administration is taking our country. Tom Joyce and Republicans like him, thoughtful and concerned enough to seek out the "right information," may not vote Democratic in '04. But they may find themselves unable, in good conscience, to cast a vote for Bush. And that is a scenario to give Karl Rove nightmares.

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