You almost have to laugh at the debate over whether President Bush is getting too “political,” as in the gnashing of teeth from Democrats after the president used the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attack to address the nation on television with a re-hashed stump speech defending the war in Iraq.

For starters, this imagined church-and-state separation between “presidential” and “political” behavior disappeared long ago, perhaps on the day George Washington stepped down. Asking whether a president is being political is like asking whether the pope is Catholic — especially during a campaign season like we are in now.

And asking whether this president is being political truly stretches the limits. Bush has never stopped the partisan campaigning since he took office in 2001 under a cloud of suspicion that he had not properly won that contested election. Since those days, this White House instinctively circles the wagons at the first sign of resistance and uses every opportunity to boldly assert seemingly untenable positions that ultimately win the day.

So it was no surprise that Bush would use his remembrance of the terrorist attacks on America as a forum to once again dig in his heels on the subject of Iraq. Forcefully answering naysayers with counterintuitive defiance won the advantage for him all the way back to his first election, and it has worked over and over again ever since.

Bush has found a formula for baiting Democrats into a partisan squabble that fires up his political base and gives his side license to heat up the angry rhetoric — all the while insisting that the other side started it. Last week’s nationally televised address was yet another example of this tactic, one we will likely see many times in this fierce battle for control of Congress.

Call it “bait and pitch.” First you lure your opponent into making a harshly partisan attack against you, and then you hurl a fastball right between their eyes.

The Bush team had to know that Democrats would go bonkers with even a mention of Iraq in the president’s Sept. 11 observance. Hardly anything makes the president’s critics go nuts more than his persistent effort to connect the attacks by the al Qaeda hijackers to Saddam Hussein’s regime. Even though his administration finally acknowledged that Iraq had nothing to do with Sept. 11, the subtle efforts to connect them never stopped.

But just in case a mere mention of Iraq in the televised address would prove inadequate to starting a political brush fire, the White House produced a text replete with references — 19 of them. And as if on cue, the Democrats pounced, wailing at the president for turning the somber occasion into a partisan affair. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts said Bush should be “ashamed” of himself. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada accused the president of being “consumed by staying the course in Iraq and playing election-year politics.”

Democrats, knowing they are often duped into partisan assaults that backfire, had vowed in advance of Bush’s speech not to take the bait. But they could not help themselves in the face of the president’s brazen incantations of Iraq.

There are two predictable results of the bait-and-pitch tactic. First, you get to play the martyr. And sure enough, the president’s supporters jammed the airwaves of conservative talk radio to defend the right of the commander in chief to talk about an ongoing war in a televised address about the fight against terror.

And second, you get to return fire with a vengeance, all the while maintaining the cover story that you are simply defending yourself. The intense Democratic response to Bush’s speech allowed his team to go negative in ways they would not have dared to do in the original address. Republicans on Capitol Hill went further.

Even though the White House publicly distanced itself a bit from House Majority Leader John A. Boehner’s counterattack when the Ohio Republican suggested that Democrats are “more interested in protecting the terrorists than protecting the American people,” it is tough to swallow the Bush team’s claim of being unaware that Boehner would go so far. In the heat of such a critical campaign, it is more likely that the GOP leader’s comment was choreographed — along with the Bush camp’s outward show of backing away from it.

Once the dust settled, the net result was a more fired-up GOP base and probably a sizable number of moderate voters wondering whether Democrats can do anything other than bash Bush.

While it was entertaining to watch this game of political hardball, my guess is that if Democrats cannot find a way to take the high ground and give voters a positive message for their own agenda, the White House will continue to frame the national security debate on its own terms — and seven weeks from now, on Election Day, the Republicans will get the last laugh.

Contributing Editor Craig Crawford is a news analyst for MSNBC, CNBC and “The Early Show” on CBS. He can be reached at ccrawford@cq.com.