Looking for an object lesson on how to bungle an issue and let your opponents beat you over the head with it?

Consider how the Senate Democrats mishandled the now-resolved dispute about the creation of a new Department of Homeland Security. And what their prolonged opposition cost them in terms of power.

The idea of forming the department actually started out last year as a Democratic one. In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks, Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut was the first to propose its creation.

And for months, the Bush administration opposed the idea as cumbersome, unnecessary and overly bureaucratic – before embracing it last spring after a number of embarrassing reports about pre-Sept. 11 security foul-ups.

At the time, congressional leaders in both parties praised the plan, which called for the new department to encompass 170,000 workers from 22 agencies.

But the proposal got stalled over the summer in the Democratic Senate. At issue were questions related to civil services and workers’ rights.

The president said he needed the ability to bypass civil-service rules to transfer employees, speed up hiring and firing, and create performance incentives. In addition, he wanted to retain his power to remove some workers from labor unions on national security grounds.

Union leaders, who represent about 43,000 of the 170,000 employees in question, objected strenuously, raising the specter that the bill would herald the erosion of workers’ protections throughout the government. The Democratic Senate leadership rallied to their cause.

As both sides dug in for a prolonged battle, Lieberman made some remarks that turned out to be eerily prescient: “I’m disappointed with the emerging partisan tone.”

By September, Republican strategists realized what a political bonanza their stubborn opponents had unwittingly bestowed upon them. The longer the impasse continued, the more the Democrats looked like obstructionists, reducing a matter of national security to interest-group politics-as-usual.

Wanting to make sure everyone noticed what was going on, Bush alleged at one point that the Senate was “not interested in the security of the American people.”

The body’s majority leader, Tom Daschle, D-S.D., furiously demanded an apology, which he never got. Daschle would have been better off had he channeled his anger into breaking the deadlock instead.

In the fall, the Democrats tried to pass their own version of the bill, even though they knew it wouldn’t be to Bush’s liking. Had they succeeded, they could have said at least that they’d done something on homeland security.

But Senate Republicans, sensing the value of the issue in the looming election, weren’t about to let that happen. They used a series of parliamentary maneuvers to prevent the Democrats from even holding a vote.

Eventually, a compromise of sorts emerged, albeit one that gave Bush most of what he wanted. The Democrats rejected it, and were made to look more inflexible still.

The result of this drawn-out battle was a potent political message that was central to the GOP’s campaign pitch: The president is for homeland security. The Democrats are for the labor unions.

When Bush and his party’s Senate candidates hammered home that message in campaign speeches and commercials, most Democrats had little to say in response. A few, like Walter Mondale in Minnesota, stood up for workers’ protections. Either way, the Democrats were in trouble.

The issue was used to devastating effect by Republican challengers in other key states, including Missouri and Georgia, where Democratic incumbents Jean Carnahan and Max Cleland wound up losing their seats.

This week, when Congress returned to Washington for its lame-duck session, the impasse was resolved with little fuss. Plenty of hard feelings and hours of speech-making remained. But final passage was no longer in doubt.

“We had an election,” explained Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, “and the American people spoke clearly on this issue.”

So now Bush will have his Department of Homeland Security with almost all of the managerial flexibility he’d sought – and a Republican Senate to boot. For that, he can thank his bumbling friends on the other side of the aisle.

– Larry Eichel is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer. His e-mail address is leichel@phillynews.com.