"As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939," Bush told Israeli lawmakers (in a speech Thursday to the Israeli Knesset), "an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is ­ the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

Since we have no way of knowing what U.S. Sen. William Borah, the author of the quote, would have said to Hitler we cannot make a blanket statement as to its positive failure. That aside, all Democrats have to do (if they had any quick wittedness) would be to agree, but remind Bush that Mr. Borah was a Republican. A Democrat then, and now, might have better luck.