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Well put - "Democrats' version of a suicide bombing".

It is a desperate move, not without risk or reward. The risk is fallout from challenging the character and leadership of a popular president.
The reward is damaging Bush in regard to his post-9/11 image. The Dems know that a lot of the support for Bush emanates from public approval of his handling of the terrorist attacks. If they can get people to think negatively of Bush when they think of 9/11, no matter how erroneous the charge, the Dems will have at last found a significant chink in Bush's armor.

Risky, desperate, vicious, hypocritical - Yes. But the Democrats are neither stupid nor disorganized. This entire scheme was thought out and planned well in advance - from the timing of the "leaks"; to the pious statements of Gephardt, Daschle, and Hillary; to the outraged cries of WTC widows; to the exhaustive coverage by the press.

The Democrats play dirty and they play to win. No Bush "new tone" - with its policy compromises and its fawning public displays of bipartisanship - is going to cause them to silently shrink away in submission.

But will it work? Will the public be permanently swayed by the implication that Bush fiddled while New York burned? Will the Dems succeed in dragging out Congressional investigations to keep this issue alive throughout the current election cycle?

Too soon to tell, but the early returns from polls and word-on-the-street eavesdropping seem to hint that this latest Democrat attack may fall short of the mark and fade away from mainstream public consciousness, perhaps to be relegated to history's heap of unproven conspiracies and foiled character assassinations.