Exploiting events for political gain

The blogosphere is all atwitter today with charges and countercharges about exploiting the foiling of a terrorist plot for political purposes. All the cool kids are doing it so I thought I’d join in too.

As best as I can tell the argument is about this statement of the President’s made yesterday:

This country is safer than it was prior to 9/11. We’ve taken a lot of measures to protect the American people. But obviously, we’re still not completely safe, because there are people that still plot and people who want to harm us for what we believe in. It is a mistake to believe there is no threat to the United States of America. And that is why we have given our officials the tools they need to protect our people.

The highlighting is mine.

I happen not to agree with Mr. Bush that the country is safer now than it was five years ago (quite the contrary). But I also think it’s hypersensitive to consider the highlighted portion as a virulent and vicious partisan attack.

It’s not a strawman argument. There are plenty of Bush’s political opponents who have said exactly that in exactly those words, Michael Moore for example. It is not difficult to find them.

While mildly political it is not, strictly speaking, a partisan dig. Nowhere in that statement does Mr. Bush say that it’s Democrats that hold that position. If you believe there is no terrorist threat, I see no reason that you should be offended that Mr. Bush thinks it’s a mistake. If you don’t hold that position, how is he attacking you?

Count me in with McQ of QandO Blog on this one: this is what politicians do i.e. exploit events that seem to support their views for political gain. It goes with the territory.

I suspect that what’s really galling is that presidents are uniquely positioned to do this. Events have a way of thrusting presidents into the center of the stage (no one who doesn’t relish that position can conceivably be a sensible candidate for the presidency). That is what is meant by “the bully pulpit”. Not the president grabbing the microphone every so often and mumbling a few pious inanities or a heartfelt apology. The inevitability of the president stepping to center stage when events warrant.

Just for the record. I think there’s a threat. I don’t think we’re safer than we were five years ago. I think that relegating the War on Terror to solely a matter of law enforcement and diplomacy places us in a reactive mode to terrorist attacks which, in the long run, will result in unacceptable levels of loss and a politically impossible position. I think the idea that Iraq could be turned into a liberal democracy friendly to the United States before other events rendered that strategy irrelevant was visionary but feckless. I think the idea that we could apprehend Osama bin Laden by invading Afghanistan with a massive, Desert Storm-style force could only occur to someone who’d never looked at a map or read any history. I think Republicans have erred in being too willing to use force. I think Democrats have erred in being too willing to rule out the use of force (at least when it is in America’s interest to do so). I blame both political parties for lacking the will and courage to risk political loss by standing behind the policies they advocate with more than just words.

People are lining up on one side or another in fairly expected ways.

Ed Morrissey supports the president.

Glenn Greenwald doesn’t.

Count Joe Gandelman among those who see political opportunism:

I heard President George Bush sound less like a President and Commander In Chief of a country under a perpetual terrorist threat than a politician running for re-election and suggesting that certain Americans (which party could THEY belong to?) somehow forgot about 911 and who did it.

It’s not so much that I don’t think there was political opportunism involved as that I can’t imagine how anyone could think it might be otherwise.

UPDATE

James Joyner’s riposte to some of the criticism seems relevant here:

The idea that because police-intelligence operations are effective in one case means military action is never effective is nonsensical. It’s like arguing that, because defense wins championships, a team doesn’t need an offense. Whatever one thinks of the war in Iraq, surely we can agree that toppling the Taliban regime and destroying al Qaeda’s base of operations in Afghanistan was a useful step?

While we may disagree on some of the details, I agree completely with James that the requirements of the threat that we face are such that we should be employing all of the resources at our command.