The Terror Comeback

Part of the dynamics of the primary campaign has been a certain tendency of foreign policy issues to go into eclipse as the leading contenders from each side compete with one another for the affections of base voters who tend to be motivated by each coalition's core economic and cultural interests. But Tom Edsall wisely points out that even if the economic situation worsens, a general election campaign is bound to have a hefty focus on terrorism and security if for no other reason than that the GOP doesn't really have any other good options. Brian Katulis says some smart things about this deeper into the piece:

The most nuanced analysis of the politics of terror was provided by Brian Katulis, a less well known figure in the Democratic foreign policy establishment who is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress where he is a Senior Advisor to the Center's Middle East Progress project.

"I wouldn't say that Democrats have avoided national security as much as they have not yet developed a coherent narrative that simply goes beyond 'Bush screwed things up.'....Conservatives have an overarching story when it comes to talking about national security - it's not dissimilar to Bush's narrative: there are bad people out there, we need to go out there and try to kill them ourselves before they get us. Simplistic, and applied to many different threats, but it's kind of an easy story line....

"It's those political consulting classes on the Democratic side who are particularly wounded and still operating on the defensive when it comes to national security - which is truly a stunning thing when you think about it, given all of the strategic errors conservatism is responsible for on the national security front the last seven years.

"So I think there's a sweet spot for Democrats to actually say something that connects the dots on the national security and terrorism front - one that actually responds to a need from the American people to hear a viable alternative - but we're just not hearing it yet at that political communications level. We're seeing and hearing tick lists that make the broader public's eyes glaze over. On the conservative side, we hear a story line - a batshit crazy one for the most part that got us in the predicament that we're in now, but hey, it's a story. Most people would rather go to a movie that has a plot."

I would add that one thing I still don't see from Democrats on these issues is the correct atmospherics of confidence. When the candidates talk about most things, they talk about them with an apparent air that they believe everything they're saying. But when they talk about terrorism or Iraq they have a tendency, in my view, to often sound like they're stuck in 2002 -- nervous, defensive, cautious. They don't sound like a political party that believes that the evident failures of Bush's policies throughout 2005 and 2006 played a major role in boosting their party's political fortunes. And they don't sound to me as if they're eager to engage with these issues. But while confidence alone is no guarantee of success, going into a fight believing your going to lose is a recipe for trouble.