In this year’s election campaign, what’s past may not be prologue.

This week’s commemoration of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and the controversy over President Bush’s intentions toward Iraq are threatening to minimize issues that once dominated the campaign.

That adds further uncertainty to what already is looking like a close and unpredictable election.

For much of this week, many candidates have removed their advertising from television in a bow to a renewal of the bipartisan patriotic fervor that blossomed after last year’s attacks.

Ad moratoriums, according to the National Journal’s daily political Hotline, ranged from a single day by some major party committees to 11 days. In Texas, all of the major statewide candidates took some time off the air, though one, Democratic Senate nominee Ron Kirk, has yet to start any TV advertising.

But the surcease won’t last long. And when the partisanship resumes, a two-month sprint toward the Nov. 5 election will determine which party controls the House, the Senate and a majority of governorships and legislatures.

Democratic strategists may have to work hard to renew the issues stressed by their candidates in the months before the hiatus. One that seemed especially important in the spring and summer is the degree to which government deserved political blame for the corporate misdeeds exemplified by the spectacular failures of Enron and other big corporations.

Democrats have sought to connect the corporate responsibility issue to the problems of the national economy, which they link to the size of the tax cut Bush pushed through Congress. They are accusing him of the same shoddy accounting that plagued those firms.

Though the rising deficit bolsters their case, Democrats could have trouble stressing these issues if the stock market can avoid a repetition of the sharp downturns suffered in the spring and summer. And that could help Republicans avoid damage from rising domestic economic concerns.

But if the October unemployment figures show a spurt and the third-quarter domestic production figures signal a decline, renewed fears of a double-dip recession could damage the GOP’s hopes of retaining the House and regaining the Senate.

The war on terrorism and the related issue of homeland security seem even more distant as major voter concerns. That could remain the case on Nov. 5, unless some dramatic new incident underscores the threat so vividly illustrated by last year’s attacks.

Despite Wednesday’s commemorations, the war on terrorism lately has been overshadowed by the debate over Bush’s vow to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

A U.S. attack doesn’t appear likely during the campaign. But the president’s decision to seek international and congressional backing for an eventual attack has forced the issue to the top of the agenda.

Still, the politics of this remain unclear. Though the White House disdains any political motives, some Republicans see Iraq as a way to ensure that the campaign debate is dominated by national security issues, on which the GOP gets higher ratings than on many domestic issues.

But while the American public overwhelmingly favors removing Saddam, the numbers are less one-sided on whether the United States should launch a pre-emptive strike of the sort Bush has said might be necessary.

That reluctance could mean that any move by Senate Democratic leaders to delay action until after the election might fit the public mood better than the administration’s determination to press ahead with a resolution to authorize an attack.

In any case, the campaign that resumes this weekend will be a lot different from the one that existed before this week.

Carl P. Leubsdorf is Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News.