Thirteen months and counting.

There's no dispute among historical scholars, as I've written before, that one characteristic common to all great politicians is a lucky streak. Luck comes and goes, but when it really matters, a leader makes the most of it.

Imagine, for example, if the midterm elections were held this fall rather than a year ago. Is there any doubt that George W. Bush, despite bundles of cash and clever strategists, would see his party suffer severe defeats to the Democrats at both the Congressional and statewide levels? As it is, the president will begin his reelection campaign in earnest next summer with (barring another terrorist attack) a stronger economy and the beginning of Iraq's democratic structure more stabilized and assured. The latest Gallup poll, released on Monday, shows Bush's "favorable" rating has jumped over five points (56 percent) in early October from mid-September.

Bush could help his own cause as early as this Thanksgiving, for example, if he took the advice of National Review contributor Frank Gaffney Jr. (10/3) and traveled to Baghdad. A dramatic, if possibly dangerous, trip like this would achieve a number of objectives. One, the national media would be forced to accompany the president's entourage and possibly report what Democratic Reps. Norman Dicks and Jim Marshall found out on a recent fact-finding mission: There is no "quagmire" in Iraq.

Marshall, upon his return, wrote in the Washington Post: "Our news coverage disproportionately dwells on the deaths, mistakes and setbacks suffered by the coalition forces... Democrats should carefully avoid using the language of failure [ahem, Dick Gephardt]. It is false. It endangers our troops and our effort."

A week-long visit from Bush, accompanied, perhaps, by a few cabinet members, entertainers and skeptical Democrats, would undoubtedly cheer the vast number of Iraqis who?surprise!?welcomed the toppling of Saddam Hussein's brutal regime and are eager to accelerate the pace of increased electricity, commerce, free speech and safety that's occurred already since last spring. It would also raise the morale of the American and British troops stationed in Iraq, dodging the last-gasp remnants of Hussein's loyalists and imported terrorists, while being condescended to by the reflexive protesters in the U.S.

Obviously there's a political equation as well. Bush hasn't yet summoned the rhetorical skill to explain to Americans what exactly is happening in Iraq. A live address from Baghdad would give those who supported the war the assurance that his decision to take action was the correct one.

In addition, I'd bet 50 bucks that Howard Dean, the ballsy, if at times incoherent, Democratic presidential candidate, is making plans for his own visit to "buck up the troops" in the near future. If he goes, who can doubt that his challengers, who, like sheep, embarrassed themselves by appearing with California's dead duck Gray Davis when it was all but apparent that voters there had no intention of retaining him as governor.

Bush is also lucky that the field of potential challengers is so anemic. Sen. John Kerry, who must be baffled that Democratic voters are not simply rolling over for him, is running one of the worst presidential campaigns in recent memory. He can't leave Dean alone, even questioning the former Vermont governor's claim that he's a Red Sox fan. According to an Oct. 8 Associated Press story, Kerry, pinching a 2003 Sox rallying cry, plans to launch a "Cowboy Up for Kerry" pitch to voters. The reporter, Ken Maguire, noted that the Massachusetts junior senator is "better known for sailboarding and ice hockey than for baseball banter."

At last Thursday's Phoenix debate, Kerry delivered the most tasteless one-liner of the evening, although Democratic partisans like Slate's William Saletan though it was boffo. Kerry said: "There are two ways for you to have lower prescription drug costs. You could hire Rush Limbaugh's housekeeper? or you can elect me president."

I carry no water for Limbaugh. I stopped listening to his self-aggrandizing, and often hypocritical, show years ago. His career is probably finished: You can't get caught in a drug scandal, one with possible legal ramifications, after hammering Democrats for ethical lapses for well over a decade. Kerry, however, is tone-deaf. Sure, making fun of an adversary who's a drug addict plays well to party activists, but to the electorate at large, many of whom are quite familiar with substance abuse, whether it's alcohol, pills, cocaine or heroin, this is a cheap shot.

Back at home, can anyone argue that Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe, Bill Clinton's cash bagman when it was easier to legally (or not) obtain huge sums from contributors, is acting as if he were a double agent for the Republicans? McAuliffe's naivete is astonishing: One need only remember a year ago when he promised that Florida's Gov. Jeb Bush would go down to an ignominious defeat. McAuliffe, who apparently ignored the polls and diverted money to that race instead of closer ones, so insistent that the humiliation of President Bush's brother was crucial to the Democratic cause, looked pretty silly when the younger Bush was reelected handily.

McAuliffe was the laughingstock of cable television on the night of Oct. 7, appearing on different shows and expressing confidence that Davis would defeat the recall election. At this point, everyone but Don Zimmer knew that Arnold Schwarzenegger would become California's next governor, and it was a sight watching the pundits attempting to conceal what they already knew from exit polls. Late that night, 20 minutes before the results were in, McAuliffe said: "It's clearly not good news for George Bush. I'm telling you, the message across this country is that [people] have had it with George Bush's economic plans? George Bush should be very nervous."

Who knows? If Bush's approval ratings are in the mid-20s, like Davis' these past several months, next September, McAuliffe will be right. Anyone willing to make a wager on that?

James Bowman, in the October issue of the New Criterion, had a different take on McAuliffe, portraying him as a fool, but at least an honest one. Recalling Terry the Pirate's recent appearance on Meet the Press, in which he predicted major Democratic gains in 2004, Bowman wonders why the man ought to be believed. Host Tim Russert pointed out that McAuliffe was wrong on almost every national election in 2002 and asked the DNC frontman for a response.

It's a classic: "I am the national party chairman. I am not going to go on television, you know, three days before an election, and say, 'Oh, no, Tim. No, Mr. Russert, we're not going to win these elections.' My job is the chief cheerleader of the party. We're going to win everything. That's my job."

The smartest first move of the eventual Democratic nominee would be to fire McAuliffe. Don't count on it, not if he wants even nominal support from Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Mayor Mike Goes Nuts

Yankee coach Don Zimmer's an imbecile, a man so stupid that when his day is done and finds himself in hell he'll probably think it's heaven. What Zimmer, as manager, did to the late-70s Red Sox in general, and pitcher Bill Lee in particular, will never be forgotten by any Sox fan. But Mike Bloomberg topped the Gerbil by exploiting the surreal third game of the ALCS by saying that had Pedro Martinez pushed Zimmer (after George Steinbrenner's new favorite Yankee tried to punch Boston's ace) in New York he'd have been arrested.

Sure thing, Mike. What's next on your pander docket, taxing Yankee Stadium spectators who wear Red Sox caps?

Defiant Nolita

Two Sundays ago, Steve Kurutz wrote a long New York Times piece about the ongoing gentrification of East Soho (pretentiously spelled "NoLIta," which is just as bad as "TriBeCa"), an area that has defied New York's continuing recession. A longtime friend of mine, Scott Menchin, a fine illustrator, was quoted as saying, "This neighborhood was happening two years ago, but nothing like this. The foot traffic that's here now, I can't believe it."

Who can? Hats off to the proprietors of Rice to Riches, a Spring St. storefront that sells only rice pudding, at either $5 or $15 a shot. Twenty-three years ago, when one of my brothers took up residence at 268 Elizabeth St., could he have imagined such an immense change? Perhaps if he were aboard one of Gen. Wesley Clark's time machines it would have been possible, but absent that, stepping over a pile of human excrement on his doorstep on a weekly basis on the way to one of the few bodegas in the area, he felt lucky just to find an apartment in Manhattan.

I remember visiting Gar and his wife at their five-floor walk-up, a tiny space that did have a splendid view of the Bowery?but no door to the one bathroom. When our normally unflappable mother visited and saw the Mexican blanket that provided a semblance of privacy in the john, she was taken aback. But that was nothing compared to the hoops my brother had to jump through just to sign a lease there. Housing was in such demand in 1980 that he not only borrowed $8000 for "key money," after working a connection to beat the other 50 renters who wanted the place, but on the first day in the neighborhood?which had no name, at least not one that'd be fit for print in the Times?their pick-up truck was busted up in broad daylight while the couple was having a beer at the nearby Spring Street Lounge.

Whenever I was in the city, we'd get lunch at Buffa's, meet up with Peter Koper, who lived on Prince St., and then, late at night, have a nightcap at a bar on the Bowery. One time, in '81, when I stopped in before going on to New Haven for a newspaper conference, Gar and I not only closed one of those joints, but bribed the bartender to stay open past the 4 a.m. curfew. The guy was glad to take five bucks for an extra hour's work. Needless to say, we weren't drinking $10 cocktails with fancy names.

Most people have a "Welcome to New York" moment; that's not really my point here. In the last few years of New York Press' tenancy at the Puck Bldg., you could see, almost month-by-month, the transformation of what was at one time a no-man's land. Expensive boutiques (but not as pricey as those in still-thriving Soho) cropped up, as did cafes and art galleries. The Bowery's remaining dives were finally closed. Ray's Pizza got some competition and the Lafayette Smoke Shop was sold to new owners. Milano's, the old man's bar on E. Houston St., became trendy.

All for the good, I say. A thriving commercial district in Lower Manhattan after more than two years of economic duress is a success story worthy of a Times write-up. God, or Mayor Mike, only knows what the apartments at 268 Elizabeth St. fetch now in rent, but they must be fairly astronomical. My brother and his family, who now live abroad, would be shocked, and I guess he'd be called a Nolita Pioneer, even if that location was the only place he could find.

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