Europe needs the Democrats’ sympathetic ear in order for Europe to remain as even nominal allies, while the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will react best to Bush when he is seen as the baddest of the bad.

We have two more years for Bush’s policies to bear fruit. He has had five and a half since 9/11. I’m still hopeful that more than seven years of aggressively fighting Islamic terrorism will be sufficient to tamp it down to the level that this can be treated as a law enforcement issue (as Kerry argued during the ’04 campaign.) Right now, however, we’re still at war. And as long as President Bush is commander-in-chief, I don’t think he will be capitulating to the Democrats’ “good cop” overtures or to public opinion on the war.