Sorry, I disagree with you--it was, as I said earlier, a godsend to him. First you had the rally round the flag syndrome. In fact most of the world sympathized with the US directly after 9-11. Look at that capitalist bastion Le Monde:   "We Are All Americans"   Etc.

Then he had the vast majority of the US behind him in attacking toppling the Taliban--and hunting Osama.

If he'd left it at that, he would have been considered a successful wartime president.

But he squandered the whole thing by invading Iraq--though that seemed successful for a time.

And even so he managed to win the 2004 election--by a successful propaganda campaign, and help from the UN, of all unlikely sources of aid to Bush. As I've said before, the UN's willingness to act as honest broker--and help put an Iraqi face on the opposition to the insurgency--put the lie to the Vietnam quagmire theory--at least until after November 2004. And that's all Bush needed. Unfortunately.