Why Bush's Security Pitch May Not Work This Time

In the same speech, the President asked Congress to pass an Administration bill allowing the Pentagon to try the 14 before military commissions that would replace the tribunals Bush originally set up, which were struck down by the Supreme Court in June. The bill also spells out specific acts that U.S. interrogators of terrorists are banned from committing--such as torture, murder, rape and infliction of severe physical or mental pain--and by design, some legal scholars say, permits anything else.

If the idea was to dare Democrats to oppose those counterterrorism measures, they were on to the trick. In a private memo to Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid on Jan. 31, his staff laid out the danger in mounting too aggressive a criticism of the freshly disclosed National Security Agency's espionage program: "National security issues are the only issues propping up President Bush. Democrats in general cannot permit themselves to be characterized as being weak on terrorism. We must make it clear that Democrats believe the terrorist threat must be dealt with forcefully and effectively." With that in mind, Democrats were largely quiet about Bush's calls for legislation. Instead, they let Republican Senators argue about it among themselves. "This time we're not taking the bait," declared a Democratic aide.

That took the air out of Bush's premature October surprise. Anyway, an October surprise isn't much use in September. And between now and the November voting, Bush is likely to find that opportunities for spinning news about terrorism, which tends to help the Republicans, will come up less often than bad news about his millstone, Iraq. The day after his East Room talk, at least 45 people died in violence in Iraq. It wasn't even a particularly bad day.