Suppose American troops or our allies in the war against Islamic terrorism capture Osama bin Laden. The reaction you’d expect from Americans would be satisfaction, maybe even relief. But among a certain subset of highly partisan Democrats, the reaction engendered by even the mere possibility of the capture of Osama bin Laden is quite a different one. It might be described as panic.

Their fear is grounded in the notion that the capture of the Qaeda kingpin might help President Bush win re-election by giving the American people a sense of progress in the war and by distracting attention from Senator Kerry. It is a strangely narrow mind that would react to the prospect of the capture of a terrorist responsible for killing 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001, by expressing concern about the potential partisan political fallout.

Yet in a dispatch for the New Republic, three writers — Spencer Ackerman, Massoud Ansari, and John B. Judis — describe as “unseemly” what they say is the administration’s effort to get the government of Pakistan to deliver “high-value targets” like Osama bin Laden before Americans vote in November or even, perhaps, during the Democratic national convention at the end of July.

The writers rely on anonymous Pakistani sources whose credibility is hard to judge. If they are telling the truth, through, it’s hard for us to see just what’s so unseemly about using just about any deadline or reason to press for the capture of the many who launched the attacks of 9/11. One could almost mistake them as rooting for Osama bin Laden to stay outside of American clutches, at least until Senator Kerry can be elected.

Others are hedging the situation differently. Albert Hunt’s column last week in the Wall Street Journal ran under the headline “Bagging Bin Laden.” Mr. Hunt quoted a former White House counterterrorism official, Richard Clarke, as saying that catching Mr. bin Laden “won’t make a hell of a lot of difference at this point.”

Yet in his book, “Against All Enemies,” released in March of this year, Mr. Clarke faulted the Bush administration for having failed to capture the Qaeda kingpin.”Two years after the U.S. began military operations against Afghanistan, U.S. forces, CIA officers and pro-U.S. Afghans had still not found Usama bin Laden,”Mr. Clarke complained in the book. Apparently, catching the top Al-Qaeda terrorist mattered then. It’s hard to imagine what, other than the possibility that Mr. Bush might succeed, led Mr. Clarke to reconsider.

If Mr. Bush doesn’t capture Osama bin Laden, he’s accused of failing to accomplish a key mission in the war on terror. If he does capture him, he’s accused of a stunt aimed at influencing the election, even though capturing him “won’t make a hell of a lot of difference.” It’s enough to suggest that the criticisms on this front aren’t so much really about Osama bin Laden or the war on terror as they are part of a spin campaign to criticize the president regardless of what happens.