Quotes of the day

“Complacency, faux moralising and partisan shots at Republicans. It was a neat summary of where Obama is going wrong after the Christmas Day debacle when the Nigerian knicker bomber managed to waltz onto a Detroit-bound flight.

“For a man who campaigned denouncing the politicisation of national security under President George W Bush, it is worth noting how intensely political Obama’s treatment of what might henceforth be known as Underpantsgate has been…

“It’s a sure sign that you’re losing the argument when you have to research quotes from your boss’s speeches to prove that he gets it that America is at war. The problem for Obama is that people are now judging him by his actions as well as his words.”

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“[T]he White House’s response to last week’s attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit could rank as one of the low points of the new president’s first year. Over the course of five days, Obama’s reaction ranged from low-keyed to reassuring to, finally, a vow to find out what went wrong. The episode was a baffling, unforced error in presidential symbolism, hardly a small part of the presidency, and the moment at which yet another of the old political maxims that Obama had sought to transcend – the Democrats’ vulnerability on national security – reasserted itself…

“[T]he listlessness of an initial response remains a puzzle, coming as it did during the same week Obama rushed off of the golf course in the middle of a game, his presidential motorcade screaming down a Hawaii highway at top speed to deliver one of his golf partners to the house where the friend’s son had cut his chin on a surfboard.

“Explanations of Obama’s low-key reaction in the face of a terror attack include the characteristic caution of a president who resists jumping to conclusions and being pushed to action. They also include the White House’s belief – disproven repeatedly in 2009 – that it can evade the clichéd rules of politics, which include a suspicion of Democratic leadership on national security. Only Sunday night, when criticism of the system ‘worked’ comment was not going away, did White House aides realize their approach was not working and that they needed to shift course.”

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“If Republican policies are now to be judged by Democrats as ‘too restrictive’ due to a single instance of someone slipping through the cracks, or conversely, if a Democratic administration is now to be judged by Republicans as ‘soft on terror’ due to those same circumstances, and if Obama has joined the chorus arguing that any failure to connect the dots is, in his words, ‘totally unacceptable’ (a stance which David Brooks mocks here), Obama can satisfy the demand for after-the-fact action only by sticking his finger in the eye of the left. The cries of betrayal could be louder than after the Afghanistan surge decision.”