Let's talk about replacing GWBush in 2004.

If you look at the TV ads the president just unveiled today, you quickly see a main -- probably the main -- theme of his reelection campaign: it's not my fault.

"Yes, there are all sort of bad things going on. The economy's been rough. The deficit is deepening. Job growth is barely registering. There's all sorts of chaos on the international stage. But it's not my fault. When I got here there was a recession already, which I didn't have anything to do with. That was Clinton's fault. And the same with all the corporate scandals. And then Osama bin Laden got involved and that wasn't my fault either. And that Iraq thing didn't completely work out. But that's the CIA's fault. So if there's anything that's bad now it's not because of anything I did. It's because of 9/11. And if it's not because of 9/11 then it was already broken when I got here. So don't blame me."

Now, I think that pretty much sums up what the president and the White House are telling the public. But it's important to draw back and recognize that up until this point that argument has largely worked. Now, however, I think people are beginning to question the argument.

By most objective measures, economic and international indicators of national well-being have been fair to bad for most of George Bush's term of office. But for much of that time we were in either the immediate aftermath of 9/11, building up to war, or in the aftermath of war.

If you were to plop down in late 1943, for instance, you could point to all sorts of negative signs -- rising deficits, crises abroad, etc. But Franklin Roosevelt would have said, quite plausibly, that we'd been attacked at Pearl Harbor, we were fighting a two front war across two oceans, and that things might well get worse before they got better.

Now, I don't think that's a remotely reasonably analogy. But it is the argument the Bush White House has been making for some two years. And it's had a lot of success with it. Everything that's bad has been framed as fallout from 9/11 or our response to 9/11.

What we're seeing now is that these two things -- 9/11 and the current state of the country -- are coming unhinged in the public mind. If they stay unhinged, President Bush looks less like a 'war president' than a president who just won't take responsibility for anything that happens on his watch.

Thus the new ads, the message of which might fairly be summed up as "It's midnight in America. But if the Democrats were in, the sun might never come up!"

KING: This going to be a very rough election, do you think, very tough? I mean, close and hard-fought and all the rest?

MAHER: I've never known one that wasn't, but especially when the Bush family is involved -- I know they're all about the honor and integrity, Larry, but somehow, when it comes down to election time, I've never known a family that got more into the gutter, whether it was what they did to John McCain in the year 2000, accusing him of everything from being pro-breast cancer to fathering a black baby, or obviously, the campaign that George Bush's father ran in '88 against Dukakis, which was all about Willie Horton and the Pledge of Allegiance. You already see some of the wedge issues that they're trying to get up on the board for their team -- gay marriage...

...because all of the love that Democrats have for John Kerry is really hate for George Bush. I hate to put it that way, but it's true. I mean, Kerry love is Bush hate. I don't think the American public is terribly quick, but I will give them credit for this: It took them about three years to catch up to George Bush, but they finally did. About half of this country really has caught on that this is not a president who really should be defined by honor and integrity. I'm not saying he's a lot worse than other people we've had. But honor and integrity? I don't think so. Honesty? I don't think so. I think he's an extremely selfish president who's using every bit of the treasury to get re-elected.

I laugh when people say he's got a $200 million war chest. Are you kidding? He's got a $2 trillion war chest. He's using every penny in the treasury to get elected, to hand out money to farm subsidies, to buy off votes with any kind of pork he can think of, the Medicare entitlement bill. That's selfish. People are kind of onto that, and I think they think he's way too bought off by corporations. And I think they realize that he tells a bigger lie than Bill Clinton did about things that were important. Iraq -- perfect example. I'm not really against the whole idea, as we have discussed, but if he had just been honest about Iraq, if he had just said, Look, it's a Texas thing.

KING: Well, but maybe he had the wrong information.

MAHER: It's a Texas thing. They tried to get my daddy, and I got to get them. Has nothing to do with 9/11.

The nine-eleven survivors are very upset with Bush's ad showing the police and firemen at the twin towers site. It's a "good" beginning for the Bush campaign.

...quit responding to my posts.

Scrat
Is it your contention that the widows and others involved in the 9/11 disaster that are speaking out are all partisan individuals?You my friend are as sick and demented as the creep in the White House. Shame on both of you.