Everything's Political

And -- while this is more speculative -- his comment about making the relatives whole could be the first sign of a White House PR campaign to use select Sept. 11 families to cast opponents of Bush's controversial anti-terror tactics as delaying justice for the victims.

What's also telling, as usual, is what Bush didn't say yesterday, and doesn't say, period.

He doesn't say we won't allow ourselves to be terrorized, and we won't be afraid. (That would run counter to the central Republican game plan for the mid-term election.) He doesn't say that in our zeal to fight the terrorists, we won't give up the qualities that make America great. He acknowledges no mistakes, he calls for no sacrifice, he refuses to reach out to those who disagree with him.

The Current Game Plan

David E. Sanger and Sheryl Gay Stolberg write in Saturday's New York Times: "When President Bush and his top aides gathered in July to sketch out a strategy for the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, it was clear to all that they had to try to reset the clock -- back to a time, before Iraq, when portraying Mr. Bush as a steely commander in chief was a far simpler task, and before Hurricane Katrina, when questions about the administration's competence did not weigh so heavily . . . .

"'You can never turn back the clock,' Dan Bartlett, the counselor to the president, said on Friday when asked about the strategy. 'But we knew that news organizations and everyone else would be using this moment to define where we were five years later, and the president wanted to articulate his view, too.' . . .

"Mr. Bartlett, like Mr. Bush two weeks ago, said this was a moment of remembrance and a reminder of national resolve, not a moment for politics. But nine weeks before a midterm election that many Republicans fear they may lose, it is impossible to separate remembrance and politics."

The Next Game Plan?

Andrew Sullivan blogs for Time: "Next week, I'm informed via troubled White House sources, will see the full unveiling of Karl Rove's fall election strategy. He's intending to line up 9/11 families to accuse [dissenting Republican Senators John] McCain, [John] Warner and [Lindsey] Graham of delaying justice for the perpetrators of that atrocity, because they want to uphold the ancient judicial traditions of the U.S. military and abide by the Constitution. He will use the families as an argument for legalizing torture, setting up kangaroo courts for military prisoners, and giving war crime impunity for his own aides and cronies. This is his 'Hail Mary' move for November; it's brutally exploitative of Sept. 11; it's pure partisanship; and it's designed to enable an untrammeled executive."

Opinion Watch: What Was Lost

Frank Rich writes in his New York Times opinion column (subscription required) about Bush quoting Franklin Roosevelt at the National Cathedral prayer service on Sept. 14, 2001.

Said Bush : "Today, we feel what Franklin Roosevelt called the warm courage of national unity. This is a unity of every faith, and every background. It has joined together political parties in both houses of Congress . . . . And this unity against terror is now extending across the world."

Writes Rich: "The destruction of that unity, both in this nation and in the world, is as much a cause for mourning on the fifth anniversary as the attack itself. As we can't forget the dead of 9/11, we can't forget how the only good thing that came out of that horror, that unity, was smothered in its cradle . . . .

"When F.D.R. used the phrase 'the warm courage of national unity,' it was at his first inaugural, in 1933, as the country reeled from the Great Depression. It is deeply moving to read that speech today. In its most famous line, Roosevelt asserted his 'firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.' . . .

"What followed under Roosevelt's leadership is one of history's most salutary stories. Americans responded to his twin entreaties -- to renounce fear and to sacrifice for the common good -- with a force that turned back economic calamity and ultimately an axis of brutal enemies abroad. What followed Mr. Bush's speech at the National Cathedral, we know all too well, is another story."