Some of the political fireworks between President Bush and Congress over fired U.S. attorneys could well be explained by looking back at when the saga began: the 2004 election.

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Back then, Democrats were trying to register enough new voters to beat Bush while Republicans were issuing dire warnings that the Democrats were out to steal the election by encouraging voter fraud.

It's an issue the White House had fixated on since the Supreme Court ended the 2000 Florida recount and settled the presidential campaign amid charges that if the ballots of the Sunshine State's black voters had been counted, Democrat Al Gore would have won.

Bush's allies were obsessed with ensuring that his reelection couldn't be questioned as well. So, in the fall of 2004, Republican operatives tucked thick folders of newspaper clippings and other fraud tips under their arms and pitched to reporters their claims that the Democrats' registration program would lead to rampant voter fraud. Their passion was clear, but their evidence was slim, consisting mostly of isolated incidents of voter registration irregularities that were handled by local police or election officials.

What wasn't mentioned in those conversations with reporters was a Republican National Committee strategy, already underway, to work with state parties to identify and challenge questionable voters at the polling precincts. Among those working at the RNC was Tim Griffin, the former Karl Rove aide who recently replaced fired U.S. attorney Bud Cummins. Then, with the vast federal law enforcement community acting as the new sheriff, Republicans hoped to pocket the evidence they longed for: a string of high-profile investigations and convictions.

Failure of some U.S. attorneys to pursue the final plank in that strategy now appears to have helped trigger an internal debate over whether to fire all or some of them, administration comments and e-mails suggest.

John McKay, the Washington state U.S. attorney who was fired, said former White House counsel Harriet Miers last year accused him of "mishandling" an investigation into 2004 voter fraud allegations swirling around the state's razor-thin governor's race, which gave the statehouse to the Democrats.

In that case, McKay ultimately decided not to press charges. On NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, he added that Miers last September asked him to explain why state Republicans would be "angry" with him, a question he viewed as at odds with a prosecutor's duty to make decisions based on the evidence, not politics.

The events surrounding the firing of the U.S. attorneys illustrate how deeply the Bush administration has laced political strategies with governing decisions. Rove, the president's political and policy adviser, represents the very embodiment of the Bush approach.

It's a pattern that can be found in varying degrees in other administrations. President Clinton turned the White House into a prime fundraising venue. But Clinton and other modern presidents put some distance between their political wing and the agencies and departments charged with running the federal government, lest they wind up in the same type of scandal now plaguing the White House.

The Bush team also differs from predecessors in its strong ideological bent, aggressive assertion of executive power and the premium it places on loyalty to the president and advancing his agenda. "He's been more focused and has had a more explicit agenda than either Clinton or his dad," former president George H.W. Bush, said Fred Greenstein, a presidential scholar at Princeton University.

In recent days, the White House and Justice Department have offered evolving explanations for firing eight U.S. attorneys in December. But an early chapter in the story begins with the White House admission that President Bush raised concerns about the lack of voter fraud prosecutions after the 2004 campaign.

Voter fraud is an issue that animates many Republican Party activists who have long advocated for voter identification checks and other requirements to ensure the validity of elections, particularly close ones. Civil rights activists counter that fraud investigations are often targeted at poor or minority voters and usually wind up suppressing voter turnout rather than exposing voting crimes.

Before the 2002 midterms, then-attorney general John Ashcroft announced a "Voting Access and Integrity Initiative" that directed FBI agents and U.S. attorneys' offices to investigate allegations of voter fraud. In a letter to Ashcroft, civil rights leaders questioned the objectives of the program and warned that it could intimidate some voters.

Meanwhile, state party officials experimented with programs aimed at identifying and challenging voters they deemed questionable. In Arkansas, some minority voters were photographed as they went to the polls. In Pennsylvania, minority voters say big black Suburban trucks pulled up outside voting precincts while men with earpiece walkie-talkies demanded to see their identification. Democrats couldn't prove those roving crews were Republicans, but party activists took note and vowed not to let it happen again without a fight.

Two years later, the Republican anti-fraud operation was ready for the big time, a presidential campaign.

In June, then-RNC chairman Ed Gillespie sent a letter to then-Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe saying they should work together to prevent voter fraud and ensure access to legitimate voters. But his letter's assertion that Republicans "believe Democrats engineer voter fraud" through aggressive voter registration programs set off howls of protest, and both sides prepared for battle.

Behind the scenes, court records show, the RNC worked with state parties to send letters to newly registered voters in some states, including hotly contested Ohio. Letters returned as undeliverable were then used to create a list of voters' names to challenge at the polls on Election Day. In Wisconsin, Republicans conducted background checks on roughly 100,000 newly registered voters and trained more than 50,000 volunteers to monitor precincts or lodge challenges against voters.

At the Justice Department, Ashcroft instructed U.S. attorneys to meet with top election officials and make themselves available for fraud investigations on Election Day, if necessary.

On the election's eve, the legal battle between civil rights activists and the RNC was still raging inside a New Jersey federal courthouse, but the air was quickly going out of the effort. Media disclosures of the Ohio and Wisconsin projects had upset and embarrassed local Republican leaders, who publicly urged an end to the program.

Lawyers for both sides were stationed at voting precincts on Election Day, but relatively few voter challenges were raised amid the record number of ballots cast. Even so, e-mails released by Congress in recent weeks show that, within two months, the White House was debating whether to fire all or some of the U.S. attorneys. One reason: They didn't pursue voter fraud cases.

Ironically, one of only two federal attorneys who did look into such allegations -- New Mexico's David C. Iglesias -- was fired. In 2004, Iglesias created a voter fraud task force to investigate more than 100 allegations of voter fraud after the November election. One case seemed to hold promise for prosecution, but Iglesias couldn't overcome evidentiary problems, he said in a New York Times opinion piece. The Justice Department and FBI concurred with his decision.

Iglesias' name wasn't put on the administration's target list until two Republican lawmakers last fall raised questions about the pace of his investigation into state Democrats.

In his opinion piece, Iglesias said he had taken to heart his responsibility to keep politics out of his decision-making. "Little did I know that I could be fired for not being political," he wrote.