But why was he concerned? It wasn't because of bloodshed, destruction, a hemorrhaging budget or a slide toward disaster. He was fearful that the morass in Iraq would cause the Republican Party to take a beating in the approaching mid-term elections. And what was his advice? He urged the president to “bring some troops home from Iraq” to lessen the political risks, Mr. Bush writes.

This incident, which Sen. McConnell's office has not denied, shines brightly on the contemptible hypocrisy and obsessive partisanship that have come to mark the senator's time in office.

At the time that Sen. McConnell was privately advising Mr. Bush to reduce troop levels in Iraq, he was elsewhere excoriating congressional Democrats who had urged the same thing. “The Democrat[ic] leadership finally agrees on something — unfortunately it's retreat,” Sen. McConnell had said in a statement on Sept. 5, 2006, about a Democratic letter to Mr. Bush appealing for cuts in troop levels. Sen. McConnell, who publicly was a stout defender of the war and Mr. Bush's conduct of the conflict, accused the Democrats of advocating a position that would endanger Americans and leave Iraqis at the mercy of al-Qaida.

Unless he is prepared to call a former president of his own party a liar, Mr. McConnell has a choice. He can admit that he did not actually believe the Iraq mission was vital to American security, regardless of what he said at the time. Or he can explain why the fortunes of the Republican Party are of greater importance than the safety of the United States.

Mr. Bush did not take Sen. McConnell's advice. Indeed, after the election he increased American troop strength in the so-called “surge.” The former president presumably recounts the 2006 meeting to show that he placed a higher priority on success in Iraq than on political victory.

As usual, Sen. McConnell's political instincts were right. The Republicans did lose control of both houses of Congress to the Democrats in the November 2006 election. In Louisville, the war's unpopularity helped John Yarmuth unseat five-term Republican Rep. Anne Northup in the 3rd Congressional District.

But the public has a right to expect its leaders to pursue loftier goals than partisan success. When voters hear Sen. McConnell these days — at a time of continuing economic hardship — say that Republicans' top priority must be to limit President Obama to a single term, they should ask themselves: Why does he place greater value on that purely political goal than on American citizens' well-being?