Hanging Tough

President Bush's Wednesday press conference calls to mind a pair of political truisms.

The first is sports-related: Until the other team demonstrates that they can hit your fastball, you should stick with it.

The second is Ben Franklin's admonition: We must all hang together or we shall all hang separately.

The GOP's problem is that - take your pick - they have forgotten Franklin's adage or know it too well. Either way Bush's fastball - a determined optimism/confidence on Iraq specifically and focus on national security broadly -- suddenly looks very flat.

But he is sticking to it.

As the New York Times' John Broder noted on Thursday:

With less than two weeks until Election Day, Mr. Bush's decision to address the war and its problems so prominently carries the risk that he will strengthen the Democrats' case that the midterm election is primarily a referendum on his own handling of the war.

Republican candidates around the country have been trying for months to de-emphasize the war as an issue, and to distance themselves from Mr. Bush more generally. In an interview with The Concord Monitor in New Hampshire on Tuesday, the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, said his party's challenge "is to get Americans to focus on pocketbook issues, and not on the Iraq and terror issue."

Nevertheless the Democrats have not beaten Bush yet, so he is, err, staying the course, sticking to the stance that has borne him and his party successfully through three straight national elections: Look ahead, admit no mistakes, focus on national security, hang together. But they think they can catch up with the fastball now and are dumbfounded that he's continuing to throw it.

If his party's candidates want to change the subject, Mr. Bush surely did not help them on Wednesday. While the deteriorating situation in Iraq and the tumult over the war has already thrust the issue to the center of the political stage, Mr. Bush spent more than an hour discussing Iraq with reporters at the White House, acknowledging the overriding importance of the issue and stating flatly that he should ultimately be held accountable.

But it's easy to take stands and accept accountability when one is not on a ballot, and those GOPers actually running next month want no part of the stand tall strategy. You can see them receding behind Bush, hoping to reach high ground before the coming wave crashes over them.