Recent bickering among Democrats about Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold's motion to censure President Bush over illegal, warrantless National Security Agency wiretaps of American citizens reminded me of one of my favorite "The Far Side" cartoons.

In it, a nuclear mushroom cloud looms above a city skyline. Motorists flee, bug-eyed with terror. In the foreground, a dog widdles on a fire hydrant as a second dog barks furiously from a car window. The caption reads something like: "Suddenly, Fred spotted something that caught his attention."

Civil war looms in Iraq, where Bush memorably declared victory during his 2003 "Mission Accomplished" aircraft carrier photo-op. Rendered wary by three years of triumphal rhetoric and bad predictions, six in 10 Americans now say invading Iraq was never worth the effort. A recent poll of U.S. soldiers in Iraq showed that 72 percent think they should be withdrawn within the year.

Bush responded with yet another speech vowing to make Iraq "a strong democracy that will be an inspiration throughout the Middle East" and a "partner in the global war against the terrorists."

Everyone who believes in Tinkerbell, clap your hands.

All that stuff about Saddam Hussein being involved in the Sept. 11 attacks? Bush now says he was careful never to say that. He can't imagine where you got the idea.

Besides praising its own steely resolve, the administration's other tactic has been to initiate a propaganda campaign against neighboring Iran -- a nation also uninvolved in Sept. 11, hostile to Sunni Arabs, and several times larger than Iraq. Playing to his own political "base," Iran's president appears eager to assist the charade. This scenario may have been what Gen. William E. Odom, the former NSA director under President Reagan, had in mind when he warned invading Iraq could bring about "the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history."

Domestically, there are signs of schism among Republicans. No less infatuated a Bush cultist than Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan recently called the president a "liberal" due to ruinous budget deficits. Conservative dogma, understand, can't be wrong; it can only be betrayed.

Also rediscovering arithmetic was Bruce Bartlett, a former Reagan White House official and formerly a fellow at the Scrooge McDuck Center for Plutocratic Tax Relief, a Dallas-based "think tank." (Not its real name.) Bartlett, alas, did some actual thinking and wrote a book titled "Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy." (Real title.) The think tank fired him.

During a recent forum at the Cato Institute in Washington, Bartlett variously described the Bush administration as "unconscionable," "irresponsible," "vindictive" and "inept." He then wrote a very odd column in The New York Times making alibis for his intellectual cowardice. See, it had been easy for Times columnist (and Princeton economist) Paul Krugman -- whom Bartlett once compared unfavorably to Uncle Scrooge's irascible nephew, Donald Duck -- to tell the truth about Bush's fantastical budget numbers. As a tenured academic, Krugman enjoyed job security.

In Washington, that's what passes for an apology. You might want to keep it in mind when evaluating the pronouncements of the resident intellectuals at the McDuck Foundation for Godly Journalism, and the McDuck Institute of Strategic Studies.

Meanwhile, a recent survey by the Pew Center for the People and the Press found that only 33 percent of Americans approve of President Bush's performance in office. The commonest one-word descriptions of the commander in chief were "incompetent," "idiot" and "liar."

Amid all this bad news for Republicans, it was only natural for Democrats to begin barking furiously at one another. That's how you know they're Democrats. The proximate cause was Feingold's censure resolution, a purely symbolic gesture. Many Senate Democrats seriously considered censuring Bill Clinton's sexual antics after the GOP's impeachment effort failed, but they hesitate to chastise Bush for declaring monarchical powers in defiance of the Constitution.

Almost no Democrats agree with Bush's brazen defiance of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires a secret court's approval to spy on American citizens. If the law's cumbersome, amend it. Most suspect the administration is up to no good, a suspicion enhanced by U.S. News & World Report's revelation that the White House also claims the president can order secret physical searches the Fourth Amendment specifically forbids.

No one thinks the constitutional clause making the president "commander in chief of the Army and Navy" makes him a wartime dictator. Apart from savants at the McDuck School of Law, few Republicans think so, either.

But few want to vote on Bush's power grab in an election year. They resent Feingold's going off half-cocked, and they're fearful of demagogic attacks on their patriotism. Unless FBI agents get caught searching Jennifer Anniston's underwear drawer, they suspect the constitutional argument's too abstract for many voters.

Yes, it's pitiful to see Democrats (and Republicans) too timid to defend the Bill of Rights. But the Bush administration's political fate won't be determined by symbolic gestures.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Gene Lyons is a national magazine award winner and co-author of "The Hunting of the President" (St. Martin's Press, 2000). You can e-mail Lyons at genelyons2@sbcglobal.net.