The first I heard of the events in on the Detroit bound plane on Christmas was a text message from CNN. “Passenger sets off firecrackers on a Northwest flight as it lands in Detroit.” My initial reaction is “this is not news.” As the story developed, Americans learned that this was not some failed attempt at a holiday prank, but an effort to ignite an explosive on a Christmas flight. Since then, political thinkers have been pontificating as to the implications of these events. Janet Napolitano has made a fool of herself, Ben Stein has called for the TSA to privatize and everybody has wondered why the President is still on vacation.
It’s no mystery. If the attack failed, why terrorize people more? Ideally, this is what would have happened. Not in this world. The opposition has pulled the amateur stunt of acting as if the country is running around with its head cut off because the president had chosen not to publicly comment for a few days. Where is our leader? Why is he in the middle of the Pacific ocean? This is not something that happened to George W. Bush, as Politico pointed out, and I think both Presidents made the proper decision to let the truth of the situation percolate through the media before commenting more. The opposition made the improper choice to politicize this, and it has sort of come back to haunt them.