Consider - in Phantom Menace Senator Palpatine, a corrupt politician, colludes with the Trade Guild to have his home planet invaded. He uses the sympathy vote to be elected Supreme Chancellor. This came out in 1999.
In Attack of the Clones, Palpatine engineers a new crisis. His new apprentice, Count Dooku, also known as Dark Tyranus, is enticing planets to quit the Republic. Instead they are joining together and building a giant droid army. Again, Palpatine uses the crisis to advance himself, tricking Jar Jar Brinks into moving that he be given extraordinary powers. He then announced the creation of a Grand Army of the Republic (which he had actually ordered a decade before through Count DooKu). There are also several points where Obi-Wan and Anakin express distrust for politicians in general.
Given this background, it is inevitable that the third installment will be anti-politician and that Palpatine's machinations will seem reasonable to the Senate at the time.
Lucas always had strange ideas about republics and titles. Naboo elects its princesses and appoints senators. Even stranger is the idea that the best person to run a country is a teen-age girl. From the exchange between the new queen and Amidala, it appears that you lose wisdom as you age.
Then there is Vader's rank. In the original movie he answered to an admiral. In the second movie, Vader commanded a fleet and had authority to strangle admirals and promote their successors.
In "Return of the Jedi", the rebellion is free with titles. If you command a small expeditionary force you become a general.
Anyway, back to Revenge:
Ok, you can see this as an attack against Bush. It works just as well as an attack against Lincoln. After all, Lincoln's election caused states to succeed from the republic. Lincoln then engineered a shooting war by refusing to let the Confederacy have military bases on their own land. South Carolina had a good claim to a base in the middle of Charleston Harbor and their attempt to take it is justifiable.
"This is how liberty dies - to thunderous applause," Padmé observes as senators, their fears and dreams of glory deftly manipulated by Palpatine, vote to give him sweeping new powers. "Revenge of the Sith" is about how a republic dismantles its own democratic principles, about how politics becomes militarized, about how a Manichaean ideology undermines the rational exercise of power. Mr. Lucas is clearly jabbing his light saber in the direction of some real-world political leaders. At one point, Darth Vader, already deep in the thrall of the dark side and echoing the words of George W. Bush, hisses at Obi-Wan, "If you're not with me, you're my enemy." Obi-Wan's response is likely to surface as a bumper sticker during the next election campaign: "Only a Sith thinks in absolutes." You may applaud this editorializing, or you may find it overwrought, but give Mr. Lucas his due. For decades he has been blamed (unjustly) for helping to lead American movies away from their early-70's engagement with political matters, and he deserves credit for trying to bring them back.
Lincoln took this questionable provocation and turned it into a major war. At the same time, he expanded the powers of the federal government and the presidency far beyond what they had been. For the record, I am a northerner who thinks that the Civil War was a just war, but I can argue the case against Lincoln.
Palpatine's actions are closer to Lincoln's than Bush's, including the creation of the "Grand Army of the Republic". Sedition laws under Lincoln actually had teeth. Civil unrest led to riots and martial law in New York City. "The Gangs of New York" was only a slight exaggeration of the times.
Of course, the real test will come in a decade or two. If the movie sees dated then I am wrong. If it still seems as fresh as the original three then Lucas is simply using eternal themes that modern reviewers see as a reflection of modern politics.
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