On Tuesday, my colleague Trish wrote about the possibility that Cheney and Bush might invade Iran as a last, desperate act in order to change the political playing field this fall and tip the race to John McCain. She rightly pointed out that the current occupants cannot afford to allow the Democrats to occupy the White House because “there are too many bodies in shallow graves under the lawn and in the rose garden, too fresh and ready for discovery.”
What has changed recently is that Osama bin Laden has become even more unpopular in Pakistan than George Bush is in the United States, though not by much.
But under the Cheney-Bush layer of secrets in the White House lawn lies another, perhaps equally damaging trove of scandals that, if revealed, could drive the stake deeper into the undead corpse of the Republican brand.

One of George W. Bush’s first acts as president was to seal indefinitely 68,000 documents from the Reagan-Bush administration that, by law, were required to have been released after January 2001. (Bush-Quayle administration records were supposed to have been released in January 2004.) If the next president is a Democrat, Bush’s suppression of these public records will likely be lifted, and nasty secrets could be revealed that destroy the reputations of both Bush’s father and the Republicans’ saint, Ronald Reagan.

In particular, releasing the documents could shed light on two mysteries surrounding dealings between Reagan-Bush officials and Iran: 1) the precise involvement of senior officials, including then Vice President Bush, in the Iran-Contra affair and 2) the truth about the “October surprise” conspiracy theory that Bush Sr. negotiated with Iran to release its 52 American hostages at the precise moment Reagan was being sworn into office.

But here’s another scenario that could be effective in boosting support for Bush, and thus McCain, that would be less costly and risky than an invasion: Capturing Osama bin Laden.

Consensus has it that bin Laden has been hiding out for years in the Northwest Frontier, an impassable region of high terrain along the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. He is said to have been living on the Pakistani side under the protection of local conservative factions.

What has changed recently, however, is that bin Laden has become even more unpopular in Pakistan than George Bush is in the United States, though not by much:

Bin Laden’s personal approval rating in Pakistan, as measured by a number of international polls, is plummeting. Beginning last year, al Qaeda began to support an unprecedented wave of suicide bombings on Pakistani soil; the campaign culminated in the murder of two-time former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in December.

Before, when Bin Laden targeted the United States and Europe, many Pakistanis saw him as an Islamic folk hero. But although Pakistanis remain deeply skeptical about the United States, they have changed their thinking about Al Qaeda as hundreds of their own innocent civilians have become its victims.

In a poll released in February, Terror Free Tomorrow, a Washington-based nonprofit group, found that Bin Laden’s popularity had fallen by half over just six months, to about 24 percent. In the Northwest Frontier Province, along the Afghan borderlands where he is most likely to be hiding, it fell into single digits.

Recent British polling in the most radicalized border areas is less encouraging, but there is no doubt that the general picture in the Northwest Frontier is one of increasing anxiety and resentment toward Al Qaeda.

Bush’s approval rating was 28 percent in a round of recent polls, 4 points higher than bin Laden’s in Pakistan.

The fact that bin Laden is in such bad odor with rank and file Pakistanis — combined with the recent changes in the government led by Pres. Pervez Musharraf — may have rendered the terror cult leader more vulnerable than he has since his U.S. attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

The New York Times reported last summer that a U.S. raid into the Northwest Frontier to capture bin Laden in 2005 was called off at the last minute — Navy Seals were in the planes in Afghanistan, ready to take off — by then Defense Sec. Donald Rumsfeld, in part because the raid into Pakistani territory had not been cleared with Pres. Musharraf.

With all that hangs in the balance for the Republican Party — and the Bush family, in particular — it is likely that even if Musharraf refused permission again Cheney and Bush would proceed anyway. They have everything to gain and virtually nothing to lose.

The political benefit of invading Iran for Bush would theoretically come from the “rally ’round the flag” effect — a burst of patriotism during military actions that usually boosts the president’s approval rating. But on the flip side, Bush’s credibility is so low that while his popularity might rise among his base and the rightwing fringes, the doubts about his motives among independents might actually depress votes for McCain.

The political dividends of capturing bin Laden would be a much smaller, along the line of bragging rights. For Bush, it might bump him up closer to a 50 percent approval on his way out, and it would upgrade his squib in the history books to include the line that both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were captured on his watch.

For McCain, the capture of the villain of the Sept. 11th attacks could be a real game-changer. It would be a coup for the U.S. military, with which McCain is closely associated, and it would reinforce the idea that Republicans are better at security than Democrats.

The question then is timing. An ideal time would be around the end of August, so that the news steps on coverage of the Democratic Convention in Denver.

Or there’s always the tradition October surprise.