Also, when the 9/11 attack occurred, we were a long way from an upcoming election, and there was a tremendous need for the country to pull together despite the bitterness over the theft of the election by the Bush team in Florida and the Supreme Court.

An attack on the any country always coalesces public opinion behind the current leaders. That is not only natural, but it is almost always necessary, regardless of how effective or ineffective the leadership is. But that unity and support given in the wake of an attack like 9/11 should never be misconstrued to mean that the electorate will remain behind that leadership at the next election.

Elections aren't about military adventurism, unless the military adventurism has gotten out of hand, as it had in Vietnam, and is in Iraq. The badly managed war, and the fact that the economic recovery is only benefiting the wealthy and the mulit-national corporations they rule, has left people nervous and mistrustful about Bush. His refusal to see the light, as Reagan did when he reversed his own tax cuts by raising taxes in order to get re-elected, is what is going to kill Bush if he ends up losing in Nov.

Just think, if Bush, et al had stopped at Afghanistan and made some serious progress on the intelligence front, hadn't created this horrendously arrogant siege mentalite that is being used to justify civil and human rights abuses at home and abroad, and if Bush had been flexible about reversing some of the tax cuts, he would probably be unbeatable right now in the same way Reagan become unbeatable just in time for the 1984 election campaign.