George Bush will be busy as president until 2009, but he will also be running for governor of Maine this year, a decision state Democrats have made for him and may later regret. Maine voters generally do not like Bush – some sizable minority loathes him – but the voters Democrats need may be even more likely to reject those who moan about the president.

A Democratic plan to tie state Republicans to Bush became informally evident last February when Reps. Michael Michaud and Tom Allen joined Gov. John Baldacci and other Democratic leaders in Augusta to denounce the president’s lack of support for Maine. Throughout the legislative session, if there were a revenue problem, one Democrat or another would chirp about how the Bush administration’s stinginess in funding was to blame. School funding shortages, absent heating subsidies, health-care underpayments: Bush’s fault. Baldacci himself blamed Bush for reducing drug-enforcement aid – after the governor had eliminated the Bureau of Liquor Enforcement.

The Blame Bush strategy was announced officially the day after state Sen. Chandler Woodcock was chosen in the Republican primary for governor last week. Ben Dudley, chairman of the Maine Democratic Party, had a press release ready with the title, “Is Chandler Woodcock a Bush ‘Yes Man’?” and said, “If you like George Bush, you are going to love Chandler Woodcock.”

But that was nothing, because this week, former Democrat-turned-independent, slightly left-of-center gubernatorial candidate Barbara Merrill criticized the governor on some of his budget proposals. Dudley set an early campaign season mark for nonsense with this response: “For all the candidates out there readying their ‘doom and gloom’ message, criticizing John Baldacci and Democrats, either you can stand with George W. Bush or with the people of Maine and Democrats who reject the harmful Bush agenda.”

The remark echoes the memorable comment by the president in September 2001 – “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

If that was intentional, the Dems got the parallelism backwards, which is, I don’t know, telling.

Either way, an anti-Bush campaign presents several difficulties. For one thing, Democrats make up only 31 percent of registered voters while those registered but not enrolled in any party make up 38 percent. It’s true that multiple polls show unenrolled voters by a large margin do not look favorably upon the president. (Swing voters swinging their way has Democrats giddy about winning back at least one house of Congress.) But for the party to describe the governor as being at the mercy of even an unpopular president identifies a kind of victimhood that is not attractive. For casual voters or those unhappy with both parties, it doesn’t sound like a reason to go to the polls.

Second, the strategy has such an off-the-shelf feel that it sounds as if it came from some Washington consultant whose idea of Maine is a lobster dinner in Kittery. I doubt any voter appreciates being treated generically.

Third, it assumes that Maine voters won’t mind being persuaded by a smear. One Democratic consultant told me that not only would linking Woodcock to Bush work well here, but that it wouldn’t hurt to let the public subtly know the Republican is just “a hick teacher” too.

You can be a lot of things in Maine, but arrogant isn’t one of them.

More important than any of these reasons, however, is that a broad anti-Bush campaign denies there are more important issues at hand. Maine has had some governing successes over the last decade, but it has also had long, unsatisfying referenda fights over trees and taxes, frustration over the loss of manufacturing and a drain of people from its rural interior and Down East.

Its low-wage jobs have gotten lower; a divide, often along educational lines, between economic classes has become more deeply defined. Don’t even ask about tax burden and health-care costs compared with other states. Whether George Bush is unfriendly to Maine – and on some issues, he is – seems a minor point.

For his part, Woodcock, according to his campaign, says he “would work with our congressional delegation to try to ensure that the federal government does a better job of keeping its commitments to the state, as any governor would do.”

As for his relationship with Bush, he’s never met him “but he would be honored to meet him, or any president regardless of party.”

Maine Democrats may not have met Bush either, but they have learned from him. Just as the president has defended too many decisions by responding “9/11” – and been ridiculed for it – Democrats are responding to whatever they don’t like about opposing candidates by responding “Bush” as an epithet.

Perhaps that will work for them. Certainly it will worsen the campaign.

Todd Benoit is the editorial page editor of the Bangor Daily News.