Comment: Last Thursday, on almost the very hour of the anniversary of September 11th, the star guest on NBC's Today Show was Hillary Rodham Clinton. And what her hostess Katie Couric, America's favourite wake-up gal, wanted to know about the terrorist attacks on the senator's home state was this: Did the White House "mislead" the American people about the air quality at Ground Zero?
Come again? We all know Bush "misled" (Katie was being coy) the American people on Niger and British intelligence and weapons of mass destruction and what he knew in advance and a gazillion other things, blah blah blah.
But Katie and Hillary seemed to think he'd also misled the world about whether the post-9/11 air quality at the World Trade Centre was "safe".
Who'd have thought, with all the other things he had to mislead people about, he'd have had time to mislead them also on vital environmental regulatory information?
Just for the record, a half-dozen agencies - federal, state and local - tested the air at Ground Zero, and they were all within a sliver of each other. So if Bush misled the American people, so did everyone else.
But that's not the point. The point is almost anyone who isn't a hardcore Democratic partisan and switched on NBC would have thought: "What the hell's wrong with these gals? That's what they reckon the biggest issue of 9/11 is? Federal air quality regulations?"
What's the President supposed to do anyway? Even supposing the World Trade Centre site is a smidgeonette short of the arbitrarily selected EPA regulatory standard, does Senator Clinton want him to shut down the neighbourhood? Quarantine Manhattan? Move Wall Street to a strip mall round the back of Newark Airport?
Aware that the environmental stuff was making her and Katie look like a couple of very literal airheads, Hillary gamely tried to deflect her host's obsession. "Well, you know, I'd be happy to talk to you about that at another time. I think today I want to keep the focus on . . . ." - but the opportunity to allege another Bush cover-up was just too tempting.
Meanwhile, in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, the "centrist" candidates hoped to make their stand on the intriguingly nuanced distinction that Bush was far too slow to act on doubtful intelligence re 9/11 but far too quick to act on doubtful intelligence re Iraq.
It doesn't make much sense but its very lack of consistency is what passes for "moderation" in the modern Democratic Party. Unfortunately, the more the moderates attack Bush for his handling of the war, the more the livelier lads on their left attack the moderates for the feebleness of their attacks on Bush.
Most of the senators running for the nomination have been tugged so far to the left by the anti-war frontrunner Howard Dean that they're now running against their own voting records as much as against the President.
Senator John Edwards of North Carolina voted for the "Patriot Act" (all the homeland security rubbish) but is now opposed to it. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts voted to authorise war with Iraq, but now says that in voting for war he wasn't actually voting for war. Perish the thought. It never occurred to him that, after getting Kerry's vote in favour of a war, the President would be dumb enough to take him at his word. No, sir. In voting to authorise war, the senator says he was really voting to get weapons inspectors back into Iraq.
So, when he votes to whack your taxes up, he's really only trying to encourage you to comply with the tax rates that already exist?
With the President spending August back at the ranch, the Dems and their media chums have had the run of the playpen. And, with a bit of offshore assistance from Fleet Street and just about every European Foreign Minister, their big routine for the last six weeks has been: Iraq's a quagmire! The war on terror's a failure! We need to surrender now before things get any worse!
And the net result of this media onslaught? According to a poll in the Washington Post, 69 per cent of Americans think Saddam was involved in 9/11.
According to all the experts, that's the one thing that absolutely isn't true: oh, no, they've assured us, there's absolutely no connection between Saddam and terrorism; why, he's "secular", they're "fundamentalist", and ne'er the twain shall meet, etc.
Some 69 per cent of Americans beg to differ. You may say that just shows what morons they are, which is fine and dandy if you're a Fleet Street hack or an EU Foreign Minister. But it's not a viable position for a Democratic Party candidate. Unfortunately, the Dems need a good third of that moron vote if they're not to be humiliated at the polls next November.
Besides, who are the real morons here? According to another poll in the last week 70 per cent of Iraqis are optimistic about the future.
Egged on by their media pals, the Democrats have somehow managed to wind up on the wrong side of 70 per cent of both the US and Iraqi electorates, cut off in the corner reserved for wimps, defeatists, and Michael Meacher conspirazoids.
Look at it this way: What do you think that 69 per cent of Americans make of Katie and Hillary marking the anniversary of 9/11 with a discussion on environmental regulatory compliance? Or previously sensible Democratic senators twisting themselves into pretzels to explain why their vote for war was a principled vote against war? How many of them want to trust their national security to these fellows?
I happen to think George W Bush is vulnerable in 2004. But not on the war. As long as Democrats go on bleating and whining that it's all going horribly wrong, that 69 per cent will dismiss them.
It would make more sense to argue that Bush has done such a fabulous job on the war - Afghanistan and Iraq liberated, the Taliban gone, al-Qaeda gutted, Saddam on the run, etc - that the whole anti-terror thing has been pretty much wrapped up, and we urgently need to get back to focusing on new federal standards for mandatory bicycling helmets, or whatever Democrats consider important these days.
I see the party's new darling Howard Dean now wants to launch a major mental health initiative. Given that he's turned a handful of hitherto dull but sane senators into gibbering, frothing lunatics, he's hardly the man for the job.