So the Wall Street Journal gave the chairman of each political party equal time in today's paper, and this is what we got (Dean | Mehlman). Honestly, Ken Mehlman is probably still doing backflips in his office even as I write, because Howard Dean did him a tremendous favor by helping clarify the choice for voters in the coming election.

Here's what I mean: Republicans want this election to be all about national security. Duh. It's quite obviously the most important, most salient issue Republicans have to run on and if you believe the polls it's darn near the only issue on which the public still prefers the GOP to the Democrats.

Ken Mehlman knows this, which is why he spent the first 642 words of his op-ed this morning talking about national security and the global war on terror. Given the venue, one might have reasonably expected Mehlman to spend a good deal of time touting the unheralded virtues of the Bush economy. He didn't.

In the eighth paragraph Mehlman finally got around to providing a cursory 200-word description of the GOP's domestic agenda (tax cuts, promoting small business, school choice), but that was it. The message was all about national security.

Now read Dean's article. He begins with this: "We need a Democratic Congress to fight the war on terror -- and to end the war on America's families." But if you were looking for an explanation in the 1,056 words that followed as to why we need a Democratic Congress to fight the war on terror, you came away disappointed - because Dean never really offered one.

Instead, he launched into a litany of detailed complaints against the Bush economy (falling incomes, stagnant wages, rising heathcare costs, and falling retirement coverage) led off by a muted but obvious piece of populist class warfare right out of Bob Shrum's faded playbook: "An economy that favors the top 1% at the expense of everyone else might be good for President Bush's politics, but a shrinking middle class is bad for capitalism, democracy and America."

Ten paragraphs and 736 words into the article, Dean made mention that Iraq has hurt the economy and that Democrats would spend more on homeland security. Then, finally, in the second to last paragraph, Dean wrote this:

"We will have a defense policy that is tough and smart, starting with phased redeployment of our troops in Iraq, and shore up our efforts to attack al Qaeda and fight the war on terror. We also will close the gaps in our security here at home by implementing the 9/11 Commission recommendations."

That's it. Fifty-three words. As a proportion of his overall message, Dean spent 5% of his time talking about national security (13.5% if you include the graf about homeland security). Mehlman spent 65% of his time drawing a fairly vivid picture of the global war on terror.

If Democrats want to take back control of Congress this November, one thing they cannot do is to let Republicans draw a clear line between the two parties on national security and to present voters with a distinct choice between who is more serious, more attentive, and more committed to protecting the country. They need to try and blur the line and muddy the choice by talking about national security (and Iraq) every chance they get.

That's why Ken Mehlman must have been so happy to see his op-ed running alongside Howard Dean's this morning in one of the largest papers in the country. By essentially ignoring the issue of national security and the war on terror, Howard Dean helped draw exactly the contrast Republicans want (and need) most this year.