Slow this train down.

Byline: The Register-Guard

You know it's an election year when a president endorses the main recommendations of a commission that he resisted from the outset - and when his Democratic opponent embraces all 40 of the panel's recommendations without a single reservation.

Faced with a heightened terror alert - and, yes, that ever-looming fall election - President Bush announced Monday that he supports, with major modifications, the panel's recommendations for the creation of a national intelligence director and a new counter-terrorism center.

Bush's announcement came a week after his Democratic opponent, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass, called for every last one of the commission's recommendations to be adopted "with great haste." On Monday the senator criticized the president for not calling Congress back from recess to immediately begin turning the panel's suggested reforms into law.

It's time to slow this freight train down. While it is indeed important to get intelligence reform moving and to capitalize on the excellent work of the Sept. 11 commission, it's more important to make sure that the job is done right. Congress should ignore the election-year politics and posturing by the candidates and begin thoughtful and thorough deliberations on the commission's recommendations.

Bush's plan looks like the rush job that it is. He supports the commission's recommendation for a national intelligence director and a counter-terrorism center, but his proposal would strip them of the very authority and influence that are the reasons for their creation.

Under Bush's plan, the new intelligence chief would lack the clout necessary to take full and decisive control over the nation's 15 intelligence agencies. The director would not have Cabinet status (and the direct, regular access to the president that goes with it). The director would also would lack final authority over intelligence agency budgets - the only authority that really matters in government.

Meanwhile, Bush's plan for a new intelligence center falls short of the commission's robust vision of an operational planning center that combines currently separate analytical and intelligence gathering functions.

With an intelligence director who would lack real authority and direct access to the president, and an intelligence center that would be little different from the current Terrorism Threat Integration Center, Bush's proposals would do little more than create another layer of bureaucracy in an intelligence system that already has too many.

Kerry, meanwhile, has taken the blunderbuss approach to intelligence reform, endorsing without any reservations all of the commission's varied and diverse suggestions. While the bipartisan panel has done an extraordinary job of analyzing the nation's intelligence system and identifying its shortcomings, it would be irresponsible for Kerry or any other member of Congress to approve the commission's recommendations without carefully considering their many ramifications and making necessary changes.

As a senator for nearly two decades, Kerry knows this, of course. Yet he continues to hammer Bush for not endorsing all of the commission's recommendations and to demand immediate action. Kerry and his fellow lawmakers need only remember the post-Sept. 11 rush job that resulted in their approval of the deeply flawed USA Patriot Act, which many Democrats and Republicans have since come to regret.

The complex reforms recommended by the Sept. 11 commission would have many and far-reaching impacts - from immigration to civil liberties to transportation. Lawmakers should balance their sense of urgency with a commitment to making sure that the changes get the full consideration they deserve.

Congress should begin the hard, deliberate work of considering the commission's recommendations as soon as possible. Bush has said he does not intend to call Congress back into a special session this summer, but he should reconsider. Sunday's announcement that authorities have uncovered an al-Qaeda plot to attack prominent financial institutions in the East underscores the need for lawmakers to start the hard work of making America a safer place. But they should do so with great care, setting aside the election-year pressures that should have no role in the critically important job of reforming this nation's intelligence system.