When you have a man like Mark Steyn on your side, you know immediately that your detractors lack wit, insight and common sense:

[A]nti-Americanism is the New Universal Theory: It explains everything; it's the prism through which every event is viewed. But it's an unlikely strategy for American electioneering. One anti-Bush Democrat at a protest the other day carried a sign reading ''FRANCE WAS RIGHT!'' That's not a winning slogan, even in Vermont.

What happened this week is a foretaste of what the party can expect in the next 15 months: Reality will keep intruding, and if the Dems keep moving the goalposts ever more frantically, pretty soon they'll be campaigning from Planet Zongo. This week, Tom Daschle insisted that Odai and Qusai were all very well, but where was the Big Guy? Why hadn't that slacker Bush caught him yet?

Well, yes, Saddam's gone the Osama route, releasing audio cassettes every couple of weeks. Why is that? These days, a compact camcorder's as easy to smuggle in as a Walkman, and video would have far more impact. Could it be that Saddam isn't in such great shape for the cameras? Not quite ready for his close-up? Wherever he is, he's dependent on a dwindling band of aides and, after the way his sons were sold out, he's gonna be a bit twitchy if Ahmed's trip to the 7-Eleven seems to be taking a little too long.

Once again - if Saddam turns out to be alive, someone must convey our appreciation for such a fantastically inept defense of his brutal kingship. In a slightly stretched analogy, I doubt that we'd have footnoted the tenacity of, say, Winston Churchill had he spent the days after early 1941 moving from farm to farm in the north of England, occasionally releasing 78 RPM exhortations of British will to fight against "God Save the King."

It's telling of the Democrats' choice for appeal to the American public to deify a dictator whose complete deposition - from free will of life as well as seat of power - is only a matter of time.