On World News Saturday night, Jake Tapper asked a question I had been wondering: Why has the President not made any statement (either on paper or camera) about the attempted terrorist attack aboard the Northwest flight landing in Detroit on Christmas.
Jake reported that the White House decided not to have the President make a statement because (a) they did not want to panic Americans and (b) they did not want to lend credibility to the threat and/or give satisfaction to the terrorist plotters. (His report is not posted online; I’m paraphrasing his report from memory & will update later.)
Both reasons strike me as either misguided or disingenuous. Regarding the former, Presidential statements that calmly explain facts and give guidance do not panic people — to the contrary, they stop the spread of fear-mongering rumors and misinformation. As for the latter, it’s pretty hard to downplay the threat while senior Administration officials are simultaneously telling reporters the opposite. And how the President taking a victory-lap after the terrorists were foiled would embolden the enemy is beyond me — if it would embolden anybody, it would be the American public, who should be encouraged to stay vigilant.
I’m sure there are some legitimate reasons for the President to not address the foiled attack; and, in fairness, President Bush did not make any statement after the similar, failed attack in December 2001. But I can’t shake the feeling that the White House’s silence was more about not highlighting that the President spent the day golfing in Hawaii than a particular national security strategy.
UPDATE (12/27): Marc Ambinder offers an insightful defense of the President’s silence, arguing that by not saying anything, the President is trying to signal calmness:
In a sense, he is projecting his calm on the American people, just as his advisers are convinced that the Bush administration projected their panic and anger on the self-same public eight years ago.
It’s a tough and novel approach — and not at all (as they say in Britain) party political — because the standard political script would have the president and his attorney general appearing everywhere as soon as possible.
Fair enough, but as I noted above, President Bush did not rush to TV cameras either after the 2001 shoe bomb attack.
