The big story in Washington is the burst of bipartisanship in the passing of legislation by Congress to expand the National Security Agency’s wiretap powers. It would be too much to call it a new consensus, but it would not be too much to note that the direction of the mood is changing. A poll of USA Today and Gallup, taken between Friday and Sunday, found that the proportion of those who said the additional troops involved in the surge are “making the situation better” soared to 31% from 22%, while the percentage who reckoned it wasn’t making much difference shrank to 41% from 51%.

The Washington Post, which disagreed with the act of the Congress controlled by the party it endorsed (the Times fell, no doubt momentarily, mute), characterized the decision to hand the president expanded wiretapping powers this way: “nervous about being blamed for any terrorist attack and eager to get out of town, they accepted the unacceptable.” Is it so all-fired unacceptable? Our Eli Lake reported Monday that intelligence out of London hints that an Al Qaeda cell is on the loose in America. It’s a moment when it would be apt to observe that, as Samuel Johnson had it, “There is nothing like a hanging to concentrate the mind.”

On Friday, as lawmakers and administration officials were negotiating the precise formula that would allow the Democrats to sign on to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the director of national intelligence, Admiral McConnell, made what amounts to a successful plea for bipartisanship. He said he required “certainty in order to protect the nation from attacks that are being planned today to inflict mass casualties on the United States.” That was a bit more forceful than Secretary Chertoff’s “gut feeling” that terrorists were closer to reprising 9/11. It is becoming more evident by the day that it is more than a gut feeling.

There are those who advance the idea that “war on terror” is a bumper sticker and that Karl Rove and Mr. Chertoff raise the danger levels to frighten the American people into surrendering their liberties. They argue that a) President Bush has failed to combat the terrorists effectively (Mr. bin Laden is still at large) and that b) Mr. Bush has inadvertently aided and abetted Al Qaeda by toppling the Saddam Hussein regime. Even if one assumes the argument has merit, what seems to have happened is that Washington has gained a dose of what Senator Obama calls “actionable intelligence.”

Although it is only early August, it’s not too early to start asking whether September has come and gone. That’s when General Petraeus will go to Capital Hill with his report. There are indications that it has become increasingly difficult to accept the presumption that the war is irretrievably lost. The latest wave of optimism came in the op-ed column in the New York Times by Brookings Institution analysts Michael O’Hanlon and Ken Pollack. The analysts, who had initially supported the war, had evolved into sharp critics of what they call “the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq.” Then they went back to Iraq and glimpsed the changing reality on the ground.

The way they formulated it is: “There is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.” Then the majority whip in the House, Congressman Clyburn, of South Carolina, told the Washington Post that if the Petraeus report proves positive, the moderate Blue Dog Democrat caucus’ 47 members would find it near impossible to support a call for withdrawal. So get set for at least the possibility of a new phase in the Iraq debate: a FISA-like burst of bipartisanship that begins with recognition of the dangers facing America.