Excerpts from Wall Street Journal article:

In the 2002 midterm congressional campaigns, after Sept. 11 and before the Iraq invasion, Mr. Bush used Senate Democrats' opposition to legislation creating the Homeland Security Department to question his foes' credentials on national security...Republicans defied the traditional pattern of midterm losses for the president's party, restoring their Senate majority to an enlarged 55-45 margin.

This year looks to be different. Recent polls and maneuverings in close congressional contests suggest some reasons the security issue may not help Republicans as much this year.

Most simply put, time has worn the public's patience on Iraq -- and with it the Republicans' edge on security issues. With Democrats noting that the war soon will exceed the length of U.S. involvement in World War II, and with Iraq on the verge of sectarian civil war, the unpopularity of the war has become the year's central issue. Not since March 2004 has a Journal/NBC poll shown that a majority believed the Iraq invasion was worth the cost and casualties. Now polls consistently show a majority thinking the war was a mistake. Majorities favor troop reductions, though not immediate withdrawal. Two-thirds of Americans disapprove of Mr. Bush's handling of foreign policy, and of Iraq specifically...

Linkage has political benefits for the president. Polls show Americans still rate his handling of the broader war on terror higher than his handling of anything else -- Iraq, the economy, foreign policy and his job in general. Even so, Republicans' edge on the question of dealing with terrorism has been slipping for four years, according to Journal/NBC polls -- from a 36-point advantage over Democrats in October 2002, to 18 points in December 2004, to six points in June...

In both 2002 and 2004, Democrats, in league with top party consultants, made a strategic decision -- "a terrible mistake" -- not to engage Mr. Bush on national security, says former Clinton White House Chief of Staff John Podesta. "You just cannot concede the question; he is vulnerable on it," Mr. Podesta says. "Our D.C. leaders get it now, and the candidates in the states aren't shrinking from it."

In New Mexico, for example, Democratic Attorney General Patsy Madrid has aired TV ads in her campaign to unseat Rep. Heather Wilson, lambasting the Republican for claiming to be independent but failing to question Mr. Bush on the war and its costs even though she sits on the House Intelligence Committee.

On Capitol Hill, House and Senate Democrats have their own plans to try to score points on national security, starting next week and running through the fifth anniversary commemorations of 9/11. They will step up the past months' calls for Mr. Rumsfeld's ouster, while highlighting Republicans' failure to implement many of the recommendations of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission.

As House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California likes to say, referring to Republicans' successful campaign against Mr. Kerry, "We're not going to let them Swift Boat us again." Evidence of that was Wednesday's orchestrated condemnation of Mr. Rumsfeld by an array of Democratic leaders, with statements, media conference calls and TV bookings...http://tinyurl.com/ezzsd
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