He and researcher Brian Faler looked at the 9/11 ad bluster, compared to FDR and Pearl Harbor. Broder found: “Bush is a piker compared with FDR when it comes to wrapping himself in the mantle of commander in chief….If you accept President Bush’s premise that this nation is at war with terrorism, then you have to applaud the restraint his campaign has shown so far in exploiting the attack that began that war.”
By contrast, Democrats in 1944 were proclaiming, “How many battleships would a Democratic defeat be worth to Tojo? How many Nazi legions would it be worth to Hitler? . . . We must not allow the American ballot box to be made Hitler’s secret weapon.”