Last week Karl Rove stated the obvious: national security will continue to be a signature issue for Republicans in 2006. E.J. Dionne reacts this morning:

What Democrats should have learned is that they cannot evade the security debate. They must challenge the terms under which Rove and Bush would conduct it. Imagine, for example, directly taking on that 9/11 line. Does having a ``post-9/11 worldview'' mean allowing President Bush to do absolutely anything he wants, any time he wants to, without having to answer to the courts, to Congress or the public? Most Americans -- including a lot of libertarian-leaning Republicans -- reject such an anti-constitutional view of presidential power. If Democrats aren't willing to take on this issue, what's the point of being an opposition party?

Compare this with John's analysis today:

In the post 9/11 world the public expects - in fact, the public demands - that their Commander in Chief do everything in his or her legal power to protect the American people. So when a President gets counsel that he can legally monitor international-domestic communications involving al Qaeda suspects and when he consults with the appropriate leaders in Congress, the only political damage will be to those politicians who demand this type of program be stopped.

Dionne is right about one thing: Democrats can't avoid the national security debate. But McIntyre is right about everything else, for a lot of reasons.

One reason is that Bush occupies the vastly superior political position of strength and motive. In other words, people aren't going to buy the "abuse of power" argument unless Democrats can prove that Bush kept reauthorizing the wiretapping program for some nefarious personal reason unrelated to national security.  Lacking that, the public will give the President the benefit of the doubt because 1) he was acting aggressively against our enemies and 2) he was acting with the best of intentions.

Another reason McIntyre is right and Dionne is wrong is that most people's libertarian streak doesn't run as deep as Dionne thinks. I know mine doesn't, and I've seen plenty of evidence in polls and elsewhere that I'm not the only one who feels this way. At its core, that feeling is derived from a simple but powerful belief: only the bad guys have something to hide. Most people can accept the idea of targeted eavesdropping because they are secure in their own innocence, and they want to know the government is doing what it can to protect them against real threats.

James Carville and Paul Begala were on Meet the Press on Sunday reciting a catchy phrase from their new book. The Democrats' problem, they said, "isn't ideological, it's anatomical: they need to grow a spine." This is new twist on a common refrain among the left for the last few years: if they just stand up taller and speak up louder, people will become more attracted to their cause. 

This may be true on some issues, but it's dead wrong on national security. The problem is ideological. And in all likelihood the hearings on the NSA program are going to prove it again, with Democrats attacking the President for trying to protect the country. The result is going to look very much like a courtroom drama, with Democrats playing the part of zealous prosecutors cross-examining a man who acted in defense of his family.