THE PRESIDENT TAKES RESPONSIBILITY – AT 5:40 P.M. ET:  President Obama spoke to the American people today, summarizing reports, which he'd ordered, focusing on how a terrorist boarded a plane on Christmas day and tried to blow it up, even though our government had been warned about him. 

We all know that the president is a superb speaker – as long as you don't look too carefully at the substance, or don't expect any great use of language.  He's an impact speaker.  Fine voice, clear delivery, someone who can move an audience by his presence.  Those traits were on display today.  Mr. Obama went through all the failings in our system that allowed the Christmas bomber to come close to success, stopped only because the bomb he carried malfunctioned.  And the president took personal responsibility.  You know, "the buck stops here" kind of statement.

The statement lacked the grace of President Kennedy's after the Bay of Pigs.  When asked by a reporter whose fault it was, Mr. Kennedy replied simply, "I am the responsible officer of the government."  Kennedy had a great understanding of how to use the right phrase at the right moment.  Obama speaks in a kind of modified legalese, taking ten words where three would do.  But, in his own way, the president did acknowledge that he bore ultimate responsibility, or something like that.

Obama said that a number of new steps would be taken to tighten security.  Then, sadly, his speech degenerated into the usual stuff about not giving up our values – as if anyone has suggested that – and avoiding partisanship, as if it's somehow unpatriotic to criticize an administration performance that he'd just admitted was pathetic. 

He did say that we are "at war" with Al Qaeda.  Good.  But if we are at war, the Christmas bomber is a soldier in that war, a combatant.  And yet, the president avoided the obvious question that follows logically from our being "at war":  Why was the bomber read Miranda rights, and told that he had a right to remain silent, as if he were a shoplifter?  No enemy soldier is read Miranda rights, and no enemy soldier, in the grown-up world, is allowed to get lawyered up. 

So the president's statement, in part eloquent, ultimately failed to satisfy those demanding a mature view of the war against terror.  It's apparent that Mr. Obama still has a pre 9-11 mentality, and regards this "war" as, essentially, a law-enforcement problem.

President Harry S. Truman sought originally to apply a similar standard to the Korean War, calling it a "police action."  That phrase enraged the American people, who knew a shooting war when they saw one.  Our soldiers were being killed just as dead in Korea as in World War II.  Mr. Obama might do well to recall the Truman case, and challenge his own lawyer's mentality.

January 7, 2009