Eight years ago, Bush and his minions touted the fact that there hadn't been any successful terrorist attacks since 9/11. This was their way of absolving Bush and his administration from any responsibility for 9/11 itself. So let's take that claim and apply it to President Obama's first term in office.
There hasn't been a single successful terrorist attack since Barack Obama took office. The previous administration had a catastrophic attack happen on its watch, and yet somehow got itself reelected. They suggested, time and again, that a vote for John Kerry was tantamount to allowing another attack to take place. They played politics with national security, and were rewarded with four more years in office.
If a terrorist attack had been successful during President Obama's term, do you really think the Republicans would "rally 'round the president"? to the contrary, I think they would have impeached Obama for dereliction of duty, without any regard to what the facts really were, or the aggravation to any national suffering it would cause. This is a bare-knuckle blood sport for them, and a terrorist attack would be Issue 1 in this year's election season.
With that in mind, why not turn the Republican argument of 2004 back around on them? Not only has President Obama kept us safe after 9/11, he's also kept us safe every single day he's been in office. If that was enough for some voters to award George W. Bush a second term in office, how can an even superior performance by Obama then warrant his removal?
I realize that reason and logic don't work with Republican voters. I also know that they'll deny ever considering Bush's record in this regard, when every last one of us can recall what they did just eight short years ago. Like Dick Cheney and the "reconstituted nuclear weapons" and Colin Powell and his mobile death labs speech at the United Nations, Republicans will deny things that they plainly said, and alter any part of the past that doesn't fit with the Fox News narrative. But reminding them of this old chestnut from the previous administration would force them to admit that Obama has has been an unqualified success on this front.