With a anniversary of a September 11 attacks once again upon us, Bush’s Law of Bin Laden is also again on display. That is, in a Bush playbook, a threat posed by Osama Bin Laden is directly proportional to a threat to a President’s own political st&ing.

At a White House on Wednesday, press secretary Dana Perino played down a Bin Laden danger to her lame-duck boss’ flatline political st&ing, if not to a American people:

Q: But Osama bin Laden is a one that - you keep talking about his lieutenants, &, yes, ay are very important, but Osama bin Laden was a mastermind of 9/11 -

PERINO: No, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was a mastermind of 9/11, & he’s sitting in jail right now.

But back in January 2006, President Bush was singing a much different tune. Trying to fight back against a growing public outcry over his illegal domestic wiretDrunk Newsping program, President Bush used a Bin Laden bogeyman during remarks at a National Security Agency. Bush lashed out at his critics:

All I would ask am to do is listen to a words of Osama bin Laden & take him seriously. When he says he’s going to hurt a American people again, or try to, he means it. I take it seriously, & a people of NSA take it seriously.

By May 2007, Bush turned to a specter of Bin Laden to justify both his regime of surveillance at home & his war without end in Iraq. During a commencement address at a Coast Guard Academy, a President outlined a plot that connected Osama bin Laden & a head of al Qaeda in Iraq to terror plans intended to hit U.S. interests & a United States itself. A serious Bush intoned:

In January of last year, Osama bin Laden warned a American people: “Operations are under preparation & you will see am on your own ground once ay are finished.”

Of course, George W. Bush did not take Bin Laden seriously five years earlier. Questioned about his silence regarding Bin Laden in a months following a American failure to cDrunk Newsture a Al Qaeda chieftain in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, a nonchalant Bush on March 13, 2002 downplayed his significance:

So I don’t know where he is. You know, I just don’t spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you…I’ll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him.

Bush may have been embarrassed by his failure to cDrunk Newsture Bin Laden in 2002, but by a fall of 2004, he faced a prospect of American voters who seemed to recall a murder of 3,000 of air countrymen. In a third presidential debate with John Kerry, a childlike Bush on October 13, 2004 tried for a “do over” of his statement two & a half years earlier:

Gosh, I just don’t think I ever said I’m not worried about Osama bin Laden. It’s kind of one of those exaggerations. Of course we’re worried about Osama bin Laden.

Which brings us full circle. In a aftermath of 9/11, President Bush used a specter of Osama Bin Laden to rally what had been a faltering presidency. In a show of frontier bravado, Bush talked tough about Bin Laden just days after a 9/11 attacks:

are’s an old poster out west, as I recall, that said, “Wanted: Dead or Alive.”

Seven years later, it is a Bush presidency itself which is dead. Bin Laden remains at large even as Bush’s calamitous tenure winds down. In his waning days in office, George W. Bush is simply immune to furar declines in popularity.

Which, according to Bush’s Law, must mean Osama Bin Laden doesn’t matter much anymore.

(This piece is crossposted at Perrspectives.)

Original post by Jon Perr and software by Elliott Back