By JACK NEWFIELD

Michael Moore’s Bush-bashing film, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” became the biggest grossing documentary in history in just two weeks — a positive omen for the November election. Nobody can watch this film and go home thinking that George Bush is smart or even competent. And no viewer can leave thinking that the Iraq war is a good idea, or well planned, or morally justified.

There are many unforgettable scenes in “Fahrenheit 9/11.” The most effective, mind-changing sequence in the film is the seven minutes right after Bush is told that terrorists have hit the Twin Towers.

He has just read to Florida second graders from the book “My Pet Goat.” A local TV news crew recorded these first seven minutes of the age of terrorism. Bush does not call the FBI, the CIA or the FAA. He does not find a secure phone or race to the airport. He doesn’t even call Dick Cheney. He does nothing. He is a mummy, a statue, as the world changes and a new era dawns. The president just sits there, like a baffled, catatonic zombie.

Hemmingway defined courage as “grace under pressure.” Bush is displaying its opposite — panic under pressure. Seeing Bush as a befuddled frat boy, unable to act or think for seven crucial minutes, will make voters think twice. These were the minutes when jets should have scrambled, when the FAA and the CIA needed to be linked up. But Bush was a zero instead of a hero.

The powerful final 40 minutes of the film tell the story of Lila Libscomb of working class Flint, Mich. — Moore’s hometown. Lila is a patriot and a person of religious faith. She also calls herself a “conservative Democrat” in an early interview. But then we see her read a letter from her son, who has just been killed in combat in Iraq. It is his last letter before he became a statistic because of a lie.

Lila’s son wrote that Bush “got us here for nothing.” And then he was dead.