Harry Potter and the Half-Wit Prince

The book is not even on sale yet and the spinners are at work: Harry Potter = George Bush. Today's Wall Street Journal carries a rumination on the Potter plot line begun in the Order of the Phoenix, a plot line that clearly parallels interwar Britain. There's no explicit mention of Dubya, but the subtext is always clear in these pieces; appeasement = Bill Clinton, confronting the enemy = George Bush:

History According to Harry [by Jonathan Last]
Appeasement fails with warlocks too.

... The parallels between [Phoenix] and Britain's prewar dithering are so great that the book is perhaps best read as a light companion to "Alone," the second volume of William Manchester's biography of Winston Churchill ... Like Neville Chamberlain, Minister Fudge is eager to help his constituents look the other way ... Umbridge--an appeaser if there ever was one--replaces the curriculum of Hogwarts' Defense Against the Dark Arts class with lessons such as "Non-Retaliation and Negotiation" ... Of course, both Churchill and Dumbledore are vindicated by events ... So what's next for Harry Potter? Will Dumbledore replace Fudge as Churchill did Chamberlain? My own theory is that young Harry will come to represent FDR's America: a powerful, immature force that eventually tips the balance of power.

In fact what's interesting about the description of the Potter-Churchill parallels is how much the Chamberlain/Fudge smear campaign sounds like what happens to any critics of Dubya's policies:

Fudge strips Dumbledore of his many honors and has him driven from Hogwarts. He also uses the Daily Prophet--the wizarding version of the London Times--to print nasty stories about Harry and Dumbledore and to suppress reports about the Dark Lord. Fudge even has a toadying adviser--Dolores Umbridge--who, like Lord Halifax, exists to give the cut to Dumbledore and peddle the notion that Voldemort poses no danger.

Kind of like Dubya's appeasement, assisted by toady Karl Rove, of the real threats in the GWOT -- Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and North Korea.