With some Democrats fretting about North Korea's nuke test derailing our message and sending it back to Republican's perceived strength, in a recent story, MSNBC offers a perfect frame for the issue from a former Clinton Defense official:
"James B. Steinberg, President Bill Clinton's deputy national security adviser and now dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, said the North Korea test will raise a larger question that echoes Ronald Reagan's most famous 1980 campaign line -- "With respect to the axis of evil," Steinberg said, "are you better off today than you were four years ago? . . . It's clear that the answer is we're worse off with respect to the nuclear proliferation problem in both North Korea and Iran than four to six years ago, and I would argue we're worse off in our overall security because of the situation in Iraq."
This is it,folks. The perfect rejoinder to the supposed shift to GOP safe ground in the "security" argument. Use Bush's words against him and make the comparison.