Telephone monitoring could help the President

When the news about the secret NSA program to use data mining to keep a log of millions of phone calls in an attempt to find out patterns of terrorist activity broke there was uproar in congress from both sides of the aisle. The conventional wisdom is that its going to be another blow to the administration already beset by approval ratings as low as 31 percent in many polls. This may not, however, be the case as polling done after the story broke indicates most Americans support the domestic surveilance program as necessary for national security. Really this is more of an issue to rile up the Democrats base than something appealing to swing voters.

Generally with criticism that Bush is doing too much to protect the country from terrorism there is a natural blowback effect caused by the fact that such criticism implies that he is doing enough to protect the country. It is difficult to argue he is failing at homeland security and also argue that he is doing too much to protect the nation without sounding incoherent. Terrorism, is the, albiet diminshed area, where the President is the strongest with voters and any focus on the issue could both build up his rating as well improving his standing on other issues. It is not likely for the midterm elections that the President will make a complete political recovery, but if his ratings improve from 31 percent to about 38 or even maybe 35 percent it makes it that much harder for the Democrats to win control of either chamber this November.

Another danger for Democrats is their ranking minority member of the Judiciary Committee, John Conyers, who has been known as an advocate of Bush's impeachment for some time. If the investigations into the administration (which the Democrats would conduct if they win control of the House or the Senate are about Iraq intelligence it could do political damage, but to investigate the domestic intelligence program plays right into the administration's hands and could lead to a political comeback of sorts in time to deprive the Democrats of the White House in 2008.

Is Bush going to rise from the ashes like a phoenix and improve his approval rating to above the 50 percent mark? Unlikely. But it doesn't mean the Democrats aren't making a bad mistake by urging censure and investigations of the domestic intelligence program.