Guardian Unlimited | US elections 2004 | Electoral arithmetic that binds Bush to bin Laden: "All this - liberal outrage, swing voters, gun clubs, the economy even - counts for nothing in the face of the country's Number One Foe - Osama bin Laden.

In a very real sense, he is Bush's greatest electoral asset. If he is captured or killed in the next nine months, Bush is probably a shoo-in. If he remains at large, Bush doesn't really need to present a case other than the one he made on Meet the Press last Sunday, when he said: 'I'm a war President. I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign policy matters with war on my mind.'

The rather chilling thing is to consider how bin Laden and his al-Qaeda lieutenants view the election. Would they rather have a President Kerry or Edwards, who would make overtures to Islam, embrace the UN and heed world opinion, or would they prefer four more years of a man who had done so much to isolate America from the rest of the world?

Osama needs George, and to a degree George needs the mystical fear that Osama evokes. And it is this fear that will see this second-rate, isolationist, spendthrift President re-elected to the White House.
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