Ok, so here's the truth of it: North Korea just sucks.  I don't mean the country itself.  I'm sure it's a lovely place to live.

I'm talking, of course, about the news that North Korea has successfully conducted the explosion of an underground nuclear device.

I'd like to say North Korea sucks because this latest revelation is a threat to our national security.  Not to say that it isn't.  But sadly, no, that's not why I say it sucks.

North Korea sucks because the news of its successful test may pull the "national security" card out of the sleeve of the embattled GOP just when it needs it most.  The GOP doesn't deserve any credit on national security.  Any analysis of its competence in dealing with recent national security crises proves as much.  But they do get the credit, mainly for being the angrier, meaner, stupider party.  Somehow, that works for Americans.

And I hate that I feel this way.  I feel downright unpatriotic that I do.  I hate that I reflexively boil every major event—particularly those affecting national security— down to its impact on our ongoing political slugfest.

But I do, and I think it is a more common reaction—on both the right, and the left—than is ever discussed.  "How will it play" is the essence of it, and it is a reflex that effects almost all political junkies.  When you get deep in the bowels of political warfare, you stop thinking "how can we stop North Korea" and more "how can we stop George W. from using North Korea".

The same feeling was evident in the Republican Party's intense criticism of Bill Clinton's Kosovo intervention.  Tom DeLay, then Majority Whip of the House Republicans, went as far as to accuse the American military of provoking Serbian atrocities on the Kosovars.  Seeing what these people end up supporting now, it is a bit difficult to believe they were speaking on principle, then.  It is easier to believe that they were concerned about the positive effect a national security event might have on Clinton's political fortunes, and wanted to derail that possibility as much as possible.

The question is this: is the national interest harmed or helped by this reflex?  At first glance, the answer would be that it is harmed.  How could our nation be helped by the internal second-guessing of the opposition party every time our country is faced with a sincere external threat?  Are we to go on squawking at George W. Bush, still our American President, while Kim Jong Il gets really creative, and develops a set of intercontinental ballistic missiles?  The kind that can reach California?

In this respect, the Democrats have actually shown much more fidelity to the "united front" theory of national security than have the Republicans.  After 9/11, the Senate voted 99-1 in support of the Patriot Act, despite a much more intense level of concern over the legislation than the final vote reflected  (Russ Feingold, who I will likely be voting for in his quixotic quest for the Democratic presidential nomination, was the only senator to vote no).  The majority of Democratic Senators voted for the Iraq War, with even deeper internal reservations, and on the basis of even far flimsier substantive benefit.

But that begs the question, were they right to do so?  And the answer is a resounding NO.  Would we be better off if they had gone to the political mattresses right away to choke off Bush's power grab?  There is a real case to be made that we would, even if, in the short term, the Democratic Party's image suffered.

There is no amount of goodwill the opposition can offer Bush that will ever aid those providing it.  He takes that good will, waits till you've turned around, stabs you in the back with it, and then makes a plea for unity in this dangerous time.  He is a ruthless, cunning bully, who only lives to win.  He does not care for governing.  It bores him.  What excites him is political victory.

And that means that the only way to defeat him is to think just like him, and act accordingly.  North Korea tests an underground missile.  You say "This president is a wimp who did not have the courage to stand up to Kim Jong Il six years ago.  Instead he pulled the U.S. out of the only negotiations with North Korea that were working.  Six years ago, they didn't have the bomb.  Now they do.  Who's been president the last six years, again?"

In other words, the opposition should treat this, and every other national security incident, as a political matter.  Defeating this reckless hooligan politically is the only way left to truly ensure our national security.