There isn't much to see.

The void, of course, is the main attraction, a square block whose disappearance is magnified by surrounding skyscrapers, some with ragged roof lines damaged from falling rubble and another under construction, draped entirely in black fabric, as if in mourning.

The towers are gone, but the shadow of what happened here three years ago today stretches longer and in sharper relief across America's political landscape than it did in 2002, the first election following the attacks.

In television ads, speeches and throughout the Republican National Convention last week, President Bush's campaign for re-election has focused on Sept. 11 as the event that defined his decisiveness, leadership and ability to prevent future attacks.

Vice President Dick Cheney put an even sharper point on the claim this week, warning an Iowa audience that if Democrat John Kerry wins the election Nov. 2, America will "fall back into the pre-9-11 mindset" and "the danger is we'll get hit again" by terrorists.

Using the shared national tragedy as a rallying point in a political campaign grates on Monica Gabrielle of Connecticut, whose husband Richard died that day while trying to flee his office in Tower 2.

"Let's not morph the day of 9-11 into something it wasn't," says Gabrielle, a member of the steering committee of victim families that advised the independent 9-11 commission. "It was a day that showed American citizens how absolutely unprepared and vulnerable we were and since then what it has created is not a deterrent to terrorism but a hotbed of new terrorists."

Seated in a restaurant overlooking Ground Zero, Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, contends Sept. 11 changed presidential politics-as-usual by moving national security to a top priority of voters. "It's a fair debate to ask whether or not Bush has done enough on al-Qaida or whether Iraq is a diversion," says Bennett. "But I don't think it's legitimate to say, 'You shouldn't mention 9-11 in this campaign because it was a national trauma and belongs to everyone.' That's like saying, 'Let's have the 1944 election but let's not talk about Pearl Harbor.'

Speakers at the Democratic National Convention in July used Sept. 11 as a benchmark for national unity, arguing Bush has since divided the nation by waging war in Iraq.

While the Kerry campaign last year ran a TV ad in the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries proclaiming he had "sounded the alarm" about terrorists long before Sept. 11, his stump speech references to the attack this year have mainly focused on recommendations of the 9-11 commission.

Some political analysts had warned Republican image-makers of a public backlash from the Bush-Cheney campaign's effort to tie Sept. 11 with the president's re-election, much like a Bush campaign ad featuring Ground Zero imagery that was pulled last spring after widespread complaints it was tacky exploitation.

But that never happened.

"I don't think people turned out to be particularly troubled by it," says George Washington University media and public affairs professor Stephen Hess. "There's nothing subtle about politics anymore and very little civil as well, so even though people may have thought it was inappropriate, there weren't many howls."

Bennett believes part of the public acceptance of the issue in this campaign is recognition that both sides of the political fence shoulder blame for under-estimating the pre-Sept. 11 threat.

"The 9-11 commission says with even-handedness and unanimity that Bush made the same mistakes compared to 9-11 as [Democratic President] Clinton," says Bennett. "So 9-11 becomes the defining moment of the nation when we learned we must pay attention to international issues and to address the complexities of a global war on terrorism."

Don Ruzicka of Highland, a New York City native who walked past Ground Zero daily while serving as a Utah delegate to the Republican National Convention last week, says although he would have liked to hear more about social issues from his leaders during their gathering, he understands the dominant focus on Sept. 11. "9-11 is still the uniting issue for the country," says Ruzicka. "I can't really fault them for doing it because they're using issues where they think they are going to be strong with voters."

From Gabrielle's perspective, as one of those who lost loved ones on Sept. 11, however, all the political rhetoric over the lessons learned from that day have produced few substantive changes to protect against a recurrence.

"If you want to own 9-11, you have to own all of it," she says. "Go beyond the vision of the burning towers and heroes to the failures, the misinformation and twisting of the truth that has been spewed by this administration, to the border security that hasn't been touched, how our ports are still defenseless, how our police officers and fire fighters still can't communicate with each other and how we still don't have comprehensive emergency evacuation plans for tall buildings. This is three years out and we still have the status quo."

csmith@sltrib.com