Bush's October surprise - it's coming

asiatimes: One hears not an encouraging word about US President George W Bush these days, even from Republican loyalists. Yet I believe that Bush will stage the strongest political comeback of any US politician since Abraham Lincoln won re-election in 1864 in the midst of the American Civil War.

Two years ago I wrote that Bush would win a second term as president but live to regret it. Iraq's internal collapse and the president's poll numbers bear my forecast out. But Bush's Republicans will triumph in next November's congressional elections for the same reason that Bush beat Democratic challenger John Kerry in 2004. Americans rally around a wartime commander-in-chief, and Bush will have bombed Iranian nuclear installations by October.

One factoid encapsulates Bush's opportunity: in a February 14 CNN/Gallup poll, 80% of respondents said they believed that Iran, if it had nuclear weapons, would hand them over to terrorists; 59% said Iran might use nuclear weapons against the United States. A slight majority of those polled, to be sure, did not wish to use military action against Iran, but that should be interpreted as "not yet", for two-thirds said they worried that the US would not do enough to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Read more

db: Americans generally like to flex those muscles - especially when told by authority that the country is threatened. Reagan even got them sweating over Nicaragua:

My fellow Americans:

I'd like to speak to you this afternoon about a grave threat to our country and continent: the Communist regime in Nicaragua, a nation closer to our own southern border than Washington is to Kansas City. When the pro-Soviet regime took power in Nicaragua in 1979, it claimed to embrace the highest ideals of individual liberty and promised to hold free elections. What happened? Well, not democracy, but internal repression, imprisonment, and torture, the buildup of an army and militia of more than 120,000, and subversion throughout Central America.....