There certainly is an unseemly eagerness on the part of the White House to canvass ideas (embodied in legislation) for a possible delay of the November election in the event of a terrorist attack, as this and other articles explain. The rationale is that we need to have some policy in place for a possible election postponement before some precipitating event actually occurs. But my understanding is that we already have a policy in place on postponements: i.e., we don't do them.

Added to my suspicion is the increasingly common refrain from the White House that the Madrid bombing was responsible for Spanish 'appeasement' in Iraq and the obvious subtext that the answer to any future terrorist attack would be to 'not give in', i.e. reelect President Bush.