While the 9/11 attacks should never been used for political ends, the Republicans have shamelessly done just that. Over and over and over.

This took some chutzpah because the attacks might have not happened in the first place if George Bush didn’t have his head where the sun didn’t shine, Dick Cheney, who was the de facto national security adviser, didn’t ignore warnings that Al Qaeda was preparing to launch attacks on the homeland, and Condi Rice, who was the national security adviser, wasn’t still fighting the Cold War.

Anyhow, the Bush administration seized on the attacks to ram through, or to put in place unilaterally, a series of draconian measures that it said would make us safer. None did, of course, and anyone who opposed them was termed unpatriotic. Even if he wore an American flag lapel pin.

And so we come to the bittersweet moment today when President Obama, whom Republicans have repeatedly excoriated for being weak on defense, laid a wreath at a memorial to the nearly 3,000 victims of the World Trade Center attacks. He later met privately with family members and the first responders that Republicans wanted to deny extended medical benefits until being shamed into doing so.

In a classy move, Obama did not give a speech although the ceremony came four days after the death of the man who ordered the 9/11 attacks, a cathartic moment that united Americans to be sure and a huge opportunity to make political hay.

In another classy move, the president had asked Bush to join him at the ceremony. In an equally classy response, the former president declined, believing that the moment belonged to Obama and the families. Which it did.