For the next four years you can take it as an immutable Washington truth that when President Bush is allied with the Senate and most of the mainstream media against the conservative Republican base in the House of Representatives, he is on a quick path to a big mistake.

 And so he finds himself this week on the intelligence "reform" bill. In fact, he is not only down the path, he is almost to the finish line. The current conference report will pass imminently. Its stalwart opponents in the House, Chairmen Duncan Hunter and and Jim Sensenbrenner are going to be outflanked and defeated. So it is not too soon to perform an autopsy on the death of common sense intelligence reform.

 It all started a couple of years ago when the Democrats concocted the idea for an election year Senate Commission investigation of the tragedy of Sept. 11 (now known as the 9/11 Commission). President Bush wisely opposed such a stunt, as it was obviously a device for scapegoating incumbents. And, as the No. 1 incumbent, I assume the president could almost feel little horns and a goatee about to emerge from his head.

 The commission certainly couldn't have been motivated by a sincere interest in strengthening our intelligence capacity -- a topic the Democratic Party has been indifferent toward for the last 40 years.

 But as the Democrats organized appealing weeping widows of 9/11 victims into a Greek Chorus of Madame Defarges pointing accusatory fingers at all who differed with their views by even a jot or tittle, President Bush let temporary political expediency get the better part of his judgment, and he begrudgingly agreed to the process. It would have taken the courage of 10 lions to resist the pressure -- and, in this instance, the president only had the courage of six.

 The commission was shrewdly timed to report its conclusions in July 2004 -- the week of the Democratic Party nominating convention in Boston. Even in the minority, the Democrats are better at investigative politics than are the sometimes well-intentioned but always procedurally inept Republican senators.

 The public hearings were a travesty of proper process, being little more than political and press manipulation. Anti-Bush books, such as Richard Clarke's self-serving screed, would be highlighted on CBS's "60 Minutes" on Sunday night, followed by his testimony before the commission on live television Monday morning.

 The hearings were dominated by two Democratic Party commissioners: Former Clinton Dep. Attorney General Jamie Gorlick, who did her best to cover up for Clinton-era mistakes (including her own); and longtime party lawyer Richard Ben Veniste, who made the prosecutors case against George W. Bush and his appointees.

 The morning the commission's recommendations were released the rush to passage began. Within two hours of its release Sen. John Kerry announced that he supported every provision and that Congress should enact it in the remaining months of the current congressional session. Neither he nor his advisors had a chance to even read, let alone think about, the 500-page report. But his endorsement was politically, not substantively, motivated.

 Virtually every Democrat immediately followed suit. And soon, most Republicans fell in line and called for its unconsidered passage. They were all afraid of an angry electorate come Nov. 2. There were few profiles in courage last summer east of the Potomac.

 Then the co-chairmen and a few of the commissioners -- their swelling egos pulsating with new life -- declared that they would not rest until final passage of a bill that faithfully included every detail of their delivered wisdom. Continued...