Politico's Josh Gerstein makes a very sensible and welcome comparison:
Eight years ago, a terrorist bomber’s attempt to blow up a transatlantic airliner was thwarted by a group of passengers, an incident that revealed some gaping holes in airline security just a few months after the attacks of September 11. But it was six days before President George W. Bush, then on vacation, made any public remarks about the so-called “shoe bomber,” Richard Reid, and there were virtually no complaints from the press or any opposition Democrats that his response was sluggish or inadequate.
That stands in sharp contrast to the withering criticism President Barack Obama has received from Republicans and some in the press for his reaction to Friday’s incident on a Northwest Airlines flight heading for Detroit.
Perhaps the news cycle has speeded up somewhat since then. Also, perhaps Bush had earned himself such "credit" in the arena of taking-terrorism-seriously after 9/11/01 that he didn't need to react to the next incident so quickly, whereas (apparently) Obama has yet to gain his war-on-terror stripes. What's missing from that perspective, however, is something Obama is trying to re-introduce - an awareness of AQ and their (potential) followers as a target audience. The bigger fuss the president makes over a failed terrorist attempt, the bigger they look.
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