Thanks, JP!
"How does this play out if they wait until just prior to the election to hit us? It's conceivable (shudder) that Kerry could win the election. Then what? I see Kerry throwing out the baby with the bathwater."
Most recent presidential campaigns involve some type of "October surprise" (or the threat thereof). It would be as difficult to predict the political effects of an attack in the days before an election as it is to predict last minute allegations/revelations/smears. (In 2000, it was the DWI story that broke over the weekend). If people initially believe that "no one could have seen it coming", then they may rally around the flag. If it is something that has been widely discussed, or worse, attempted before (planes into buildings; OKC truck bomb; etc) then they would be less understanding. If one side tries to play it for political points (like the 2002 Wellstone funeral), then the first to appear to do that is toast. That is what happened in Madrid.
Madrid is more complicated than it is made out to be. The Spanish were against the Iraq War before 3/11. It is not as if they turned on a dime. And Aznar's party was holding a bare lead going into the final days despite the antiwar sentiment.
The problem was mainly that the ruling party tried to pass the attack off on ETA. It was perceived as a clumsy last-minute "cover-up" designed to keep the war off the table as an issue. It began to leak out it was probably al Qaeda, and then they did what all electorates do when you lie to them, they throw you out.
They "played" the story or spun it to make it seem they were more interested in winning the election (by deflecting public attention from al Qaeda to ETA) than finding the real culprits and protecting the Spanish people. The right people lost because they did wrong things.
What happens if Kerry wins?
It will be impossible for Kerry to cut and run. He may be the most liberal Senator in DC, but he is not Dean or Kucinich. Getting us out of Iraq was not the premise of his campaign. He would take the war in a different (and misguided) direction perhaps. He is not committed to democratic transformation in the Mideast, so I think he has missed the boat from the start. If we don't change the rules of the game, we cannot win. So this President has changed the rules (regime change and democratic transformation). If Kerry thinks we can go back to the failed "multilateralism" of the previous administration and try to deal with the threat on the margins, then we will face even more attacks in coming years than we already face now.
There is a difference between carping from the sidelines and actually having to do the job. If he wins, he may find that he may not control events so much as events control him. But I am not sure we can afford "on the job training".
The thing that has concerned me for months is that Kerry may run to the right of the President on defense and homeland security. That is how JFK beat Nixon with the "missile gap". I see signs this is happening already.