WE HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR BUT ANOTHER FOUR YEARS OF BUSH

Listening to the news, you'd think it's "all terror all the time." So I got to thinking: just what are the odds of an American being killed in a terrorist attack? Guess what -- they're less than they are for getting struck by lightning. So why is that all we seem to think about these days? Could it be that fear and uncertainty are BushCo's best -- and only -- campaign techniques? Fear paralyzes us, making us unwilling to challenge our "fearless" leaders, making us loathe to take on other problems and solve them. We can stand here and shake in our boots, knowing we've got a tough hombre who doesn't fear anything and will fight to protect us so we don't have to.

Don't pro-Bush voters realize what the pResident is doing? One minute he scares us to death, the next minute he pats us on the back for being fearless Amer'cuns who'll never give in and never give up. Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 made this point brilliantly -- Rove and Bush are deliberately keeping us unsettled because it's their one great advantage.

But it's starting to backfire. Bush campaign is crying wolf. Political analyst sees Kerry victory.

UPDATE: More on the subject here:

For George W. Bush's reign of fear, it was a fitting declaration. With his narcissistic strut, he tries to project strength. But how does a president project anything but weakness in having the world's greatest power tremble over evidence of file-updating by an enemy with a tiny fraction of his military capacity?

It's probably the response that Osama bin Laden and his network of savages would have desired. It's as if they're toying with the United States. They can be pictured in their caves or Saudi palaces, feet up, chuckling. "What American city should we petrify with a leaked document today? Chicago? Miami? Or need we even bother? It's been three years since 9/11, and they're still paranoid. They're right where we want 'em -- in an eternal state of fear."

Having handed the enemy its first gift by attacking a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, Mr. Bush now bestows on them a second: victory on the battlefield of psychological warfare. The President's terror alerts, whatever their motivation, are enough to do it. Osama bin Laden is like David, slingshot at the ready, in the center of the ring. His Goliath, George Bush, cowers in the corner, repeatedly sending out warnings to his people to run for cover.

Ernest Hemingway defined courage, rather incompletely, as grace under pressure. Mr. Bush demonstrates something approaching the opposite. History tells us that the last thing strong leaders do is send a signal that their side is frightened. Can anyone imagine a Churchill or Napoleon demonstrating this kind of fear over documents that spell out no plot but that -- O heavens! -- have been updated?