GOP cannot win fight with Clinton over blame for terrorism.

There is a disturbingly strong willingness on the part of many Bush supporters to refuse to recognize even indisputable facts if those facts undermine their desire to believe that something is true. That is how, to cite just a few examples, they continue to believe that things are going well in Iraq, that Saddam Hussein really did have WMD, and that their unpopular views on war and terrorism are shared by a majority of Americans. But it is difficult to recall anything that more vividly illustrates this fact-denying dynamic than the reaction of Bush supporters to Bill Clinton's now-famous interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace.

One right-wing pundit after the next has claimed that the prominent reemergence of Bill Clinton into our nation's political debates is somehow harmful to Democrats generally, and to Hillary specifically, because it reminds Americans of Clinton's deficiencies as president. But that view is premised on a belief that is the opposite of reality. In stark contrast to George W. Bush and Republicans generally, Bill Clinton is highly popular among a wide cross section of Americans, without question one of the most admired living political figures in the country.

Republicans appear to have gravely miscalculated in provoking Bill Clinton into the debate over the Bush administration's terrorism policies. Ever since the 9/11 attacks, most Democrats have refrained from aggressively blaming the administration for the attacks, blame that could easily be assigned by exploiting two simple facts -- 1) the 9/11 attacks happened while Bush, not Clinton, was president and 2) Bush received the Aug. 6 presidential daily briefing embarrassingly titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" and apparently did nothing in response. With some scattered exceptions, both parties seemed content more or less to maintain a truce with regard to casting blame for the 9/11 attacks by agreeing that few people in either party recognized the magnitude of this threat until those attacks happened.

But ABC's broadcast of the right-wing propaganda film "Path to 9/11" forced into the public discourse a comparison of Bush vs. Clinton on the question of terrorism. And the subsequent attempts by right-wing pundits and "journalists" to heap the blame for terrorism on the Clinton administration left Clinton with no choice but defending himself aggressively. Following the Wallace interview, Condoleezza Rice accused Clinton of making statements about the Bush administration's pre-9/11 anti-terrorism efforts (or lack thereof), which Rice said were "flatly false," comments that in turn prompted an aggressive response from Hillary Clinton.

Frankly I have been a little frustrated at Clinton's desire to stay on the sidelines while Bush makes one boneheaded move after another. If the Republicans want to yank his chain until he takes the gloves off then more power to them. Let Clinton use his natural ability to comunicate and his southern charm to answer the Republican charges that he did not do enough before 9-11. And then let him point how horrible Bush's response was by attacking the wrong country and wasting the good will that America received after the 9-11 attack.

This argument will do much to remind voters of the difference between the Clinton and Bush presidency. And that is just fine with me.