Mr. Bush's turnaround is well known by now. What is not so well known is the deep political damage Democratic leaders have done to their party's future viability on the core issue of keeping America safe.
    While Mr. Bush and the Republicans have remained tightly focused on the terrorist threat and the need to maintain a permanent war footing against it, the Democrats' focus has been on setting pullout deadlines and attacking the government's post-September 11, 2001, surveillance operations to keep the bad guys from killing us again.
    But the Democrats' message, aimed at their party's noisy antiwar base, doesn't play well with the rest of the country. Indeed, if their own polls are right -- and I think they are -- the message many voters get is that the Democrats' can't be trusted to defend America. This is the disturbing finding in a survey for the Democratic Leadership Council earlier this month by pollster Mark Penn, who polled for President Clinton.
    While Mr. Bush's newly strengthened polls on Iraq remain just below 50 percent, Mr. Penn's poll found "the Republicans still hold the advantage on every national security issue we tested," according to a DLC memo.
    The poll showed Republicans held "a 40-36 [percent] lead on which party can better keep the country safe; a 45-40 lead on which party can be more trusted on national security; and a 48-38 lead on which party can be more trusted to fight terrorism."
    More ominously in political terms, Mr. Penn found, "Those GOP leads are double digit in each case among married voters with kids, middle-income whites and white women." -- "Attitude trends"