Democrats and the media, instead of condemning recalcitrant European nations for not joining the coalition against Iraq despite endless diplomatic overtures by President Bush, falsely indicted the Bush administration for its "unilateral" action against Iraq.

They colluded to publish the slander that the Bush administration sponsored abuses at Abu Ghraib, created inhumane conditions at Gitmo, and routinely tortured enemy prisoners. Democratic presidential candidates Al Gore, John Kerry and Barack Obama have all blithely and falsely accused our troops of atrocities, from systematic torture and prisoner abuse to raping Iraqi civilians to air raiding Afghan villages. They have mischaracterized our essential National Security Agency monitoring of international terrorist communications as domestic spying on little old ladies.

They have portrayed the Bush administration's phenomenal accomplishment of preventing further attacks on our soil since 9/11 not as an administration success but as proof that we no longer face a serious threat.

All of these factors could coalesce to give Obama a mandate to fundamentally move our economy toward socialism in the name of economic fairness and emasculate our war on terrorists in the name of restoring our international image.

Would Obama win if people believed he might well nationalize health care, unilaterally disarm our nuclear weapons, push the Global Poverty Act, appoint judges to the left of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, pass legislation banning handguns, greatly increase federal spending by euphemistically disguising it as a stimulus package, increase taxes on producers and expand "redistribution," impose limitations on private executive salaries, empower labor unions, further nationalize public education with the leftist indoctrination agenda of the National Education Association, further open our borders, ratify the Kyoto climate change treaty, abandon Israel, retreat and surrender in Iraq, dramatically reduce the defense budget, possibly reinstate the draft in the name of racial equity, nationalize our private 401(k) funds, abuse governmental power to target and investigate dissent from ordinary "Joes," and implement the Fairness Doctrine to shut down political dissent from his talk radio critics?