This OpinionJournal editorial pretty-well sums up my feelings on the media-manufactured "outrage" surrounding President Bush's campaign ad. I thought they were very good. It never occured to me that there could possibly be anything controversial about them. In fact, I thought, "Great, they certainly can't label these as negative campaigning, that's for sure." Well, "they" couldn't say the ads were negative, so they had to find something else to whine about - in this case, it happens to be a fleeting image of Ground Zero. The horror.

I hate to clue the Bush-haters in, but 9/11 was perhaps the defining moment of the Bush Presidency. It was the watershed moment in American politics that separated the early days of the Administration from the later period - a period that can only be understood in the context of that horrible day. For me, and people like me, George Bush's leadership response to that new reality was the final turn of the screw to make us respect the man. In my case, it made me a "Republican."

In those moments, many of us understood that we were at war. We understood that the chickens had, indeed, come home to roost, but that they were not the chickens of unjust foreign policy and our wickedness afflicted upon the world - no, these chickens were roosters crowing a wake-up call to a sleeping giant. We had deluded ourselves that we could turn the other cheek, go about business as usual, let half-measures be our policy, cooperate with people we knew didn't share our interests and hope that the world would recognize us for the good people we knew, with our oh-so healthy self-esteem, oursleves to be.

It didn't work out that way. That rooster crowed and we woke up, looked around and discovered that, despite our best intentions, we were a target, and a still-groggy one at that. We needed leaders who recognized the sunrise as we did, who could lead us, who could recognize the changing reality and chart a course through rough waters and make difficult decisions.

George Bush, that inarticulate guy who had given the impression that he was more of an isolationist than anything else, was that leader. He became it on 9/12.

It is, therefore, completely legitimate that images of 9/11 appear in the context of George Bush's re-election campaign. I cannot think of a more appropriate image.

It is unsurprising in this context, that the Democrats and anti-Bush forces would want to remove those images from our sight. For John Kerry's base, there is no war. It must be so, for without that absurd belief, the prattle that the invasion of Iraq was for oil would be dismissed out of hand. The idea that Haliburton ("Vice-President Cheney's former company" as the press enjoys reminding us) is the real driving force behind the War on Terror becomes a silly fantasy that gains no traction. The Patriot Act becomes the venom of a poisonous snake that was always poised to strike, rather than the bi-partisan attempt to correct problems in our laws that are, in fact, late in coming. Without the War, we become confused into thinnking that the prisoners at Guantanamo just happened to be school kids run-afoul of John Ashcroft, rather than disarmed soldiers of the enemy.

The Kerry base wants us, needs us, to go back to sleep. They cannot win otherwise. They have made the War on Terror (and yes, Iraq is a piece, a battle, in that greater war) their central, rallying issue. Even if Kerry himself understands the need to keep up the fight, to not doze off again, it speaks to no good for him. If that is so, then he is clearly [mis]leading a large number of people who just don't "get it," and he is absolutely in no way, unlike his defeated opponent Joe Lieberman, providing the leadership necessary to help them wake up. Further, he is encouraging a political wave of irresolution that would have us losing this battle. Shades of the war he fought decades ago.

It would require real leadership not to shift and slide on opportunistic political sands, leadership John Kerry cannot or will not provide. It stands in stark contrast to President Bush's ability to recognize a shifting reality and risk alienating his right-wing isolationist supporters while suffering the slings and arrows of opponents willing to stop at nothing for an extra electoral point or two.

So I say to President Bush, yes please, keep reminding us of the images some would like for us to forget, and never be afraid to speak out on your own behalf about your own strengths. 9/11 was your defining moment, and it is completely legitimate to remind us, tastefully, of the context of your leadership.

Keep it up.

Final side note: This so-called "outrage" is so much media-manufactured piffle. Most of the people being quoted in all of these media stories were already anti-Bush activists. See LGF posts here and here, as well as a good Power Line post here. Also see Power Line's post pointing to Hugh Hewitt's piece on the cognitive differences between the two Americas. This mini-"scandal" is one of the worst examples (that is, best example of bad behavior) of a media-created and guided story I've seen in some time.