I'm not so sure of that, however I had similar criticsm with a different take on it.
The message to destroy Keery is in the quote, the full quote. It's how it is used that matters.
The Bush campaign has used it poorly, and as I said, by not focusing it, they may lose it as an issue. It may already be too late.
The substance of it is that Kerry want to "get back to" a September 10th mentality. His use of "nuisance" dovetails nicely with Bush's description of Clinton's approach to terrorism, which was "swatting at flies."
If they get on this, they can get a lot out of it. But the ad they are running is overly parsed when parsing is not needed. The more of the entire quote they use, the more damaging it is to Kerry, so long as they frame it in the September 10th "swatting at flies" mentality, and the idea that terrorism is something we will just have to get used to living with.
I think you're wrong. It sounds to me like you are relying on the media to tell you what the Bush team is doing....big mistake! I heard Cheney use this yesterday and the initial response was stunned silence followed by huge boos. Not everyone reads the NYT. Cheney made it clear that we cannot go back to pre 9/11. Bush/Cheney are getting the message out...the media just doesn't report it!