If the Democrats win it's one more indication that Bush is a significant drag on Republican candidates.

President Bush is stubborn, and he doesn't like change. He likes a stable home environment.

If you look at the polls carefully, they show that Americans are disaffected with the Bush administration policy in Iraq, but have very little confidence in the Democrats on that score either.

But his greatest problem is that it is hard to see him as offering voters anything other than George W. Bush's third term. And even Bush Republicans realize that the American people don't want that.

At this point, nothing President Bush says is going to have much impact. The only thing that is going to change public opinion is an improvement in the situation on the ground in Iraq.

The Bush administration simply cannot let this happen. They have to stop this one way or the other. It would make a mockery of much of what President Bush has about our creation of a new democracy in Afghanistan.