It has become increasingly clear that George W. Bush got himself re-elected by systematically, deliberately (and cynically) frightening voters with talk of terrorism, and by convincing a bare majority of voters that they would be safer in a country governed by his administration than by his opponent. This was done with impressive skill and with transparent political intent The president, acting in a drama orchestrated by political impresario Karl Rove, set out to rescue his floundering administration with a torrent of ?terrortalk.? With the assistance of a compliant press, it worked. Have you noticed the almost complete absence of ?terrortalk? since the election? No pending election; no need to scare people with ?Orange Alerts.?

Behind it all was the horrific event of September 11, 2001, an incident of stunning frightfulness that occurred in our greatest city like a stroke of lightning on a clear day, and that was replayed time and again by our omnipresent media to a public most of whom had no idea what was behind it or what its purpose might have been.

The President might have taken an approach to this event quite different from the one he actually adopted, an approach designed to quieting our fears, exploring how this could have been allowed to happen, educating the citizenry to its complex meaning, moving to tighten the country?s defenses against a repetition , and taking decisive action to seeking out and dealing with the perpetrators of this dramatic act.

Of these alternatives, the President undertook to do only the latter, and this in a kind of slipshod, indecisive, and ultimately only partially-successful way. He sent troops to Afghanistan to search out Osama Bin Laden and destroy the infrastructure of al Qaida. This, of course, was only a limited success. Osama escaped, and the Taliban was removed from power, but has now come back in much of the country outside of the capital, Kabul. So far as we know (and hard information about the progress, or lack of it, of the vaunted War on Terror is very hard to come by) Al Qaida remains alive and well in small cells throughout the world. A few of its leaders have apparently been captured, but anti-Western Muslim radicalism remains. Just how this will manifest itself in the decades ahead remains as mysterious as the exact whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.

Then there was (and remains) the Iraq war, which is increasingly presented as par of an anti-terrorist strategy, although it seems clear to all but committed neocon ideologues that it has served to provoke more terrorism, not less.

So where does that leave us? Well, terrorism is real and it does represent a threat to someone, somewhere, sometime, and it is not a phenomenon associated only with religious fanatics from the Middle East. Remember that the second most devastating terrorism event in our history occurred only 600 miles from here, in Oklahoma City.

Yet for most us, the threat of terrorism is certainly no greater than the threat of a hurricane, a flood or an earthquake?possible, but certainly not likely, indeed only remotely so, far less probable than an automobile accident or any one of a number of categories of domestic mishap.

A rational conclusion might be that those terrorism ?experts? who tell us that a domestic terrorist act is certain are full of it, as are those who say it will never occur. It is certainly not worth the widespread fear and apprehension that the Bush administration has worked so assiduously to instill in the American people. But then they don?t need to do that anymore, do they? At least not for the time being.

So relax ... and drive safely.