E.J. Dionne tries to justify Bill Clinton's childish blow up at Chris Wallace last Sunday by claiming that the Bush administration and its surrogates have long been shrewdly and disingenuously attacking Mr. Clinton's failure to deal with the growing terrorist threat during the 1990s. Therefore, according to Dionne, Clinton was justified in finally pushing back against attacks from the right.

The problem is that Mr. Dionne cannot cite one single, solitary instance of an administration official attacking Bill Clinton explicitly on his handling of the terror threat. All that Dionne has is Rush Limbaugh attacking Clinton just three weeks after 9/11. Last time I checked Rush Limbaugh is not an official spokesman for the administration, nor does he consult with the administration before he makes arguments or assertions.

A new tactic of the left in this country, that is becoming more pronounced during just this last week, is to try and rewrite the history of the period beginning approximately in the mid-1990s all the way up to the attacks of 9/11. Bill Clinton, the left would have you believe, was oh so concerned and consumed with bin Laden and Al Qaeda, but George W. Bush and his administration, upon taking office, had little or no interest in developing a plan to fight Al Qaeda or in following the so-called "recommendations" and "strategy" for fighting bin Laden that Bill Clinton claims that he left for Mr. Bush.

This revisionism by the left is as absurd as it is hilarious. If the left and the Democrat party really wish to stake their claim to a return to power in November on Bill Clinton's record of fighting terrorism versus that of the Bush administration, than they have no chance at returning to a majority in either house of Congress.

The fact is that from 1993 onward Bill Clinton never had Al Qaeda at the forefront of his mind, he never developed a comprehensive plan fight the growth of that terror organization, and there is no evidence that he ever intended to take any action which would lead to the destruction of those terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, or to the hunting down and actual killing of bin Laden himself. Yet Mr. Clinton's surrogates have been all over the talkshow circuit this last week arguing that he took the threat of Al Qaeda seriously, while Mr. Bush did nothing for eight months.

Leaving aside the fact that Mr. Bush's administration couldn't start its transition until late December of 2000, because of Al Gore's attempt to steal the election of 2000, one has to only do the simple math to realize that Mr. Clinton was in office for eight years, while Mr. Bush was in office for less than eight months. Any person with a reasonable amount of common sense can only look upon Mr. Clinton's and his surrogates claims of great determination against Al Qaeda with nothing less than abundant skepticism.

Eight years versus less than eight months.

That is what the left and the Democrat party wish to stake their claim to a victory in November on. Very few in the Republican Party have wished to look back and gratuitously cast stones against Mr. Clinton for his great failure. But he and his party bring this on by ceaselessly attempting to morph the problems that the U.S. is experiencing in Iraq into an overall criticism of Mr. Bush's handling of the fight against terror, while simultaneously attempting to massively and disingenuously exaggerate Mr. Clinton's efforts at fighting al Qaeda prior to January 20, 2001.

E.J. Dionne is simply the latest pundit on the left to try his hand at this revisionism. My view is that if the left and the Democrat party continue to remind America, as Mr. Clinton has just done with his defensive outburst at Wallace, of their great failure to fight al Qaeda during its infancy and adolescence then they will not and should not even come close to regaining any majority this November.