How do you build up democracy in Iraq when it’s falling apart in the United States? Well, that is perhaps an overstatement, but the appearance is father to the fact on most of this planet. Our own prime minister seemed utterly secure until the Auditor General’s report landed on Tuesday. The American President was in fairly good shape until David Kay reported back on Iraqi WMD. John Kerry was a shoe-in for the Democrat leadership until the Drudge Report got its scoop on Thursday.

And at a deeper level, the most basic questions about our political and constitutional orders are now going before the courts, as the "culture wars" between left and right, libertarian and conservative, pull apart what remains of the social consensus that makes parliamentary democracy possible. One cannot help but sense this in the tone of recrimination between Clintonian Democrats and Bushite Republicans south of our border: each viscerally hates almost everything the other stands for, and may be prepared to forget their most fundamental common interests in pursuit of each other’s demise.

But to stay on topic, President Bush’s bold, and so far remarkably successful essay in changing the whole Middle Eastern order, so that it ceases to offer an external threat, has depended upon his own relative political security. He has been able to rely until recently on solid domestic support and trust, and on that was built the world’s perception that American power is irresistible. But now the world sees a President Bush whom it thinks may be, in political terms, mortally wounded.

One of the many immediate repercussions is in Iraq, where the prestige the U.S. requires to force various Iraqi factions into agreement on a way to conduct elections, or even a way to avoid a terrorist-triggered civil war, is ebbing quickly.

The transience of political power in a democratic order is what makes it so attractive in every situation except that of mortal external danger. Faced with a huge post-9/11 threat, and shocked by the events which announced it, the U.S. responded boldly; but with a consensus that is now wearing off. The long-term strategy on which Mr. Bush embarked -- to deal with terrorism’s "root causes" in the ideological turmoil of the Middle East -- is being reviewed in the light of short-term political exigencies, with babies and bathwater swirling about.

Mr. Bush’s sudden decline in support may be more apparent than real. A look into the numbers reveals that while John Kerry may be ahead of him for the moment in polls, the Bush support is more solid and certain. And the Internet convulsion over Mr. Kerry’s alleged sex life this week has undermined his own candidacy. But the primaries have shown one trend clearly: that whoever emerges atop the Democrat ticket, he will be trying to ride the very American pendulum that is now swinging back from internationalism to isolationism, as Americans ask themselves, "What have we got into?"

It is because the Bush administration has succeeded (whether through luck, or action, or some lucky action) in preventing a repeat of the 9/11 massacres, that the American public is beginning to forget why it is fighting abroad. The danger in forgetting is very large -- for as a direct result of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, they may not have found huge stockpiles of "WMD" on location, but have a much better idea of the extent of proliferation elsewhere. Only a very tough-minded and assertive, internationalist U.S. can continue to make progress.

Perhaps the good news in the war on terror is that the other side has no idea how to exploit the chaos of an election year: you have to be familiar with democracy yourself to grasp the possibilities. The bad news is that the first priority of "terror international" through November will be to get rid of Bush -- their most lethal single enemy.

This means the security of the United States and the West depends in the interim on the responsibility of the U.S. Democrat Party. It must have the wisdom to allow domestic politics to end at America’s shores; and it must make clear to the world beyond those shores that, if it wins power, it will be every bit as stalwart and, when necessary, unilateral in defending U.S. interests as the Bush administration has been. If, as in Vietnam, they think they can win, by making sure that the United States loses, then Iraq won’t prove another Vietnam. It will be much worse.