Okay y’all time to talk some Politics!
The Politics of Attack of the Clones are pretty convoluted in the Vanilla Cut. My theory is that George was working from two or three different ideas for the political landscape and never landed on one, so we ended up with several of these conflicting visions fighting each other.
To me the way to fix it is incredible simple: Padme doesn’t want a war, The Jedi don’t have an opinion, The Trade Federation wants a war, and Count Dooku/Palpatine are working together to engineer a war from both sides.
The war might start because a pacifist Senator (Padme) is assassinated (since she can no longer lead the opposition), or the war might start because the pacifist Senator is removed from the capital for her own safety, or the war might start because detective Obi-Wan uncovers the Seperatist Plot, or the war might start because Arch Duke Poggle the Lesser decides to execute a group of Republic Political Prisoners, or the war might start because a Gungan Senator hates the Trade Federation because of what they did to his homeworld (This is why you don’t need Palpatine to tempt Jar-Jar, and you can cut the scene where Padme leaves Jar Jar in charge. Once Jar Jar finds out from Obi-Wan that the Trade Federation are building a secret army, OF COURSE he’s gonna argue that the Chancellor from his homeworld should be given the emergency powers necessary to stop them.)
If you think of it this way, Dooku and Palpatine don’t have a set “plan” to start the war, rather they are crafting the specific conditions for a war to break out. To make that work you only have to make two changes: First we have to cut the scene where Dooku interogates Obi-Wan, because it never did, and it never will make any sense. Dooku has so little screen time that he needs to stay a one-dimensional baddie for the sake of this film’s clarity. Secondly, we have to cut the Nute Gunray “Head on my desk” subplot, and restructure that scene so that Dooku is using the Trade Federation’s willingness to join the Separatist cause as a selling point to recruit the Bank Clan, Techno Union, and so on. . . The other benefit of cutting the Gunray subplot, is that now we have no idea who ordered the hit on Padme. It quite possibly could be Palpatine who is growing tired of her efforts to stop the war from starting. If you assume that, the whole argument over the extra security takes on a new meaning, because Padme’s tense look at the Chancellor may now mean, “You may not have ordered the hit, but you sure are benefitting from it. . .”
BUT! Now we have a big problem! The two scenes that make this entire story work were deleted: Padme’s Address to the Senate, and Count Dooku’s Interogation of Anakin and Padme.
BUT THERE’S GOOD NEWS!!! The Wonder from Down Under, Phase3 has managed some upscale wizardry and restored those scenes as far as humanly possible, and now I present to you those two scenes restored and in context (I’ve added the scene before and the scene after both deleted scenes, so y’all can see how they work within the natural flow of the film).
Scene 1 [Padme Addresses the Senate]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wPY5iDlp3LuX9Zfn96XoFDXHWW3BVjtK/view?usp=sharing
Scene 2 [Count Dooku Interogates Padme and Anakin]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bhwsKZK-S643nxx76z4N-ZFgsFmRK8oJ/view?usp=sharing
Everyone give Phase3 a huge round of applause! The lad deserves it!