Flight 253: A "baffling, unforced error in presidential symbolism"

And yet the 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 Obama’ 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…

The muted response, allies said, was aimed at denying al Qaeda a propaganda victory, and at demonstrating how little the terrorists can now disrupt Americans’ lives. “The president and his team have done a good job at handling the situation given the competing interests at play. He’s been forceful without the bellicose chest bumping of the last administration,” said Jim Manley, the chief spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “One thing he’s got going for him is Republicans have no credibility on this issue when their sending out former Vice President Cheney you know they’ve hit the bottom of the barrel.”

Still, the response failed to reckon with the intense public interest in a story of repeated government failures and a near-fatal attack. Not to mention that Americans and flight crews were on edge – as evidenced in the detainment of a man who was in an airplane bathroom for too long and who authorities released once they learned he was just a businessman who’d gotten ill. The White House, already feeling heat for its Christmas Day response, had a spokesman quickly issue a statement when the man was taken into custody.