POLITICO’s Ben Smith & Carol Lee analyze President Obama’s lackluster response to the attempted Christmas Day bombing, writing that “Obama’s characteristic caution has appeared tentative, and the vacuum he left was filled by a political food fight between Congressional Republicans and Democrats and, ultimately, his staff.”

Smith and Lee attribute the President’s response to “the characteristic caution of a president who resists jumping to conclusions and being pushed to action…. the White House’s belief – disproven repeatedly in 2009 – that it can evade the clichéd rules of politics. … [And] that Obama does not like to interrupt his vacations, and that this isn’t the first time his preference for staying in Hawaii…”. (Kudos to Ben & Carol for recalling the anecdote about Obama’s 1999 vacation in Hawaii – I had completely forgotten about that.)

One telling anecdote that Carol and Ben omitted from there story is then-Senator Obama’s shaky answer during a 2007 Democratic debate about what he would do if terrorists struck the U.S. on his watch. As Dan Balz reported on April 28, 2007:

The moment at issue came in the second half of Thursday’s debate at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg. The moderator, NBC News anchor Brian Williams, asked how Obama would change the military posture of the United States if the terrorist network al-Qaeda hit two U.S. cities.
Obama said he first would assure there was an effective emergency response and not a repeat of what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
He then turned his attention to the issue of intelligence. “The second thing is to make sure that we’ve got good intelligence, A) to find out that we don’t have other threats and attacks potentially out there, and, B) to find out, do we have any intelligence on who might have carried it out so that we can take potentially some action to dismantle that network.”
He went on to say that what the United States must avoid at such a moment is alienating the world community “based on faulty intelligence, based on bluster and bombast,” adding that “we’re not going to defeat terrorists on our own.”

Interestingly President Obama’s initial response to a real terrorist attack was pretty much as promised in 2007. His top priority was making sure the emergency response was effective – i.e., “The system worked”. Then he set about reviewing the intelligence, and making sure to do nothing that could possibly give al Qaeda a propaganda win.

In 2007, he was lambasted by opponents – including the now-Secretary of State – for that answer; just as he is now, it lacked the show of resolve, seriousness of purpose, and promise of justice that voters expect from their Commander-in-Chief.