Douglas Brinkley, a historian at the University of New Orleans and the author of "Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War," argues that the Clinton years, in retrospect, were an aberration, not the dawn of a new era.

"In 2004, it's the perfect time for that American tradition of waving the bloody shirt to come into our political discourse again," he said. "The soccer moms of the 1990's have become the security moms of 2004."

The conventional wisdom, fed by shrewd Republican operatives and commentators, is that Democrats, so out there in their antipathy for Bush, will push their party into an extremist wonderland and lose white men, security moms and anybody else who does not share their desire for revenge.

To date, the American people only know that Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator who has used weapons of mass destruction against his own people and that he is a man that invaded Kuwait and we expelled him. They are unsure as to whether or not he is an imminent threat; that is, a threat to those security moms, not soccer moms, who are in their living rooms and worried about the health of their children and the safety of their home.