In the home stretch of the presidential campaign, an increasingly worried George W. Bush has come up with a novel pitch to a different category of voters than he usually talks to: Democrats, of all people.

On the stump in Wisconsin yesterday, the president said: "Many Democrats in this country do not recognize their party anymore and today I want to speak to every one of them... I'd be honored to have your support and I'm asking for your vote."

That's the kind of statement you might expect from a politician whose in-house expert on what Democrats think is Zell Miller. And that's the sum and substance of the president's one-way relationship with Democrats -- he wants their vote once every four years, and nothing from them but total surrender in between elections. And if he cannot have their votes, his campaign is perfectly willing to pay lawyers and "volunteers" to go into heavily Democratic precincts and make voting as difficult and as unpleasant as possible.

But it gets worse. In Wisconsin, the president argued that he, not John Kerry, was more in line with "the great tradition of the Democratic Party. The party of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and John Kennedy."

As Democrats, we take our heritage very seriously, and as New Democrats, we are especially solicitous about the memory of these three great and tough-minded innovators in foreign and domestic policy.

Franklin Roosevelt memorably reassured a Depression-stricken nation with the words: "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." "Fear Itself" is probably the best two-word description of the Bush-Cheney campaign message, which constantly seeks to convince Americans that a change of administration in Washington would invite new terrorist attacks.

Harry Truman described the awesome responsibility of the presidency by saying: "The buck stops here." The current incumbent has never admitted a single policy mistake; does not hold himself or his appointees accountable for poor performance; and finds ways to blame somebody -- anybody -- but his own administration for problems ranging from a sluggish economy to a skyrocketing budget deficit to the mess in Iraq.

And John Kennedy's most famous and inspiring moment was his inaugural speech where he pledged that America would "bear any burden and pay any price" for freedom (words Bush quoted in his speech yesterday), and where he challenged Americans to "ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country."

These particular words should curdle in the mouth of George W. Bush. He has not asked the most fortunate Americans to "bear any burden" for freedom; he's relentlessly championed the cause of lowering their taxes while shifting the burden of self-government to the hard-working middle class. He won't "pay any price" even for that regressive agenda, preferring instead to borrow trillions of dollars that future generations will have to pay. And lest we forget, in the dark days after 9/11, when Americans were begging for unity and the opportunity to serve their country, he told them the only contribution they needed to make was to shop and travel.

Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy championed a progressive tax system. They made the prosperity and growth of the middle-class the touchstone of their economic policies. And most of all, they together were the chief architects of the network of international institutions and alliances that ultimately won the Cold War and solidified America's world leadership in peace and in war.

Bush has done everything within the considerable power of his office to violate all three of these basic principles. And the centerpiece of John Kerry's appeal to the country is to restore all three of these basic principles.

We have no way of knowing if the president is going to continue this laughable effort to steal the clothes of great Democrats right up until election day, or if this gambit is as disposable as his 2000 campaign promises to "change the tone in Washington" and serve as a "uniter, not a divider." It is pretty clear that his words in Wisconsin probably didn't reach too many Democrats in real time, since anyone bearing visible Democratic insignia is banned from his campaign appearances. Moreover, he was surrounded on the platform by a host of Republican candidates eagerly seeking to reinforce the GOP's iron partisan control over Congress, a place where Democrats are being treated with a degree of contempt rarely seen since the 19th century.

But we do know that George W. Bush cannot change four years of his record during six days on the campaign trail. Having decisively cast his lot with the most retrograde elements of his own party, he should show a bit of his famous confidence and resolve by staying miles away from the sacred ground of great Democrats of the past.