THE CYNICAL VIEW of President Bush is that he exploited the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, for political gain and now is ardently pursuing war with Iraq for the same reason. Many Democrats, including Senate minority leader Tom Daschle, believe this. It's true that Bush is stronger politically for having national security and not domestic issues as the focus of the nation's attention. But there's a political downside in the prolonged prelude to war, and the president is beginning to experience it. Six months of diplomacy at the United Nations Security Council, with no war resolution in sight, has taken a toll.

That Bush has persisted on Iraq in the face of sinking polls, diplomatic setbacks, and rising criticism argues against the cynical view. Thomas DeFrank of the New York Daily News reported last week that Bush told friends nearly a year ago that he'd concluded Saddam Hussein must be deposed. Since then, the president hasn't flinched. "He's using his political capital to take a reluctant nation to war," says a White House official. It's not the other way around--Bush taking the country to war to build political capital.

Let's not exaggerate. Bush has lost some ground politically, but he's not in freefall. The latest Gallup Poll showed approval of his performance dipped from 63 percent to 57 percent over the past two months. This brings Bush roughly back to where he was prior to September 11. The rally-around-the-president phenomenon usually vanishes in seven or eight months. With Bush, it took 18 months to disappear, and it's likely to return when war with Iraq begins.

The long road to war has created uncertainty about the future, and this is partly responsible for the weak economic recovery. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, among others, says so. The vote by Turkey not to join the war, the opposition of France, Russia, and Germany, the troubles at the U.N.--all have shown the president as less than dominant. And not only have Bush's political opponents been emboldened, an antiwar movement has had time to mobilize, though less effectively in America than in Europe.

Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute has a theory that winners win. That sounds tautological, but it means that winners create confidence in their ability to keep winning and thus improve their chances of doing just that. But lose or hit a roadblock, and the opposite occurs. "If you're not winning, you look vulnerable," Ornstein says. Rebuffs by allies and the U.N. "make Bush look less formidable. He looks not impotent but weaker."

There's something to this. Certainly Daschle and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and Democratic presidential candidates act as though they believe it. Their criticism of Bush has become frequent and harsh. They're encouraged by polls. Only 36 percent of Americans now say things are getting better in America, down from 46 percent in December. And the number of people who think the economy is in poor shape has nearly doubled (from 16 percent to 32 percent) over the past year.

Bush's political situation would no doubt be better today if he hadn't taken on Iraq, assuming Saddam hadn't used any of those weapons of mass destruction he claims he doesn't have. The president would be concentrating on a limited war on terrorism, aimed at al Qaeda. With two of the top five al Qaeda operatives captured or dead and Osama bin Laden possibly cornered and with no further terrorist attacks on American soil, "Bush's poll numbers would be sky high," insists a presidential adviser.