U.S. national security is too important to be left to foreign policy specialists, the media or politicians. These are the clear lessons of the Post-Underpants Bomber Era. 

Before Christmas and the disturbing revelations of a man setting his balls on fire on a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit (rendering himself only slightly more uncomfortable than those flying economy class), there was at least a feeling that America was regaining her senses following the 8 hysterical years of the so-called War on Terror. 

But within hours of the bungled terror attempt, we saw once again America's true vulnerabilities. And while they are linked to intelligence failures, it is not the ones on which the media and the president's political opponents have focused that are most salient.

Obama's reaction to the junkbomber incident was precisely right and just what you want from a leader: Dispassionate, thoughtful, and calculated. He gave his team the time to assess the threat, the breaches and the right next steps to take. At least one person in the United States, Barack Obama, seemed to recognize that the objective of terrorism is to promote terror and sought to defuse that effort by handling the threat with the proportionality and common sense that has long been missing from U.S. counterterrorism strategy.

But almost immediately, the foreign policy establishment -- acting with the acuity and purity of motives of Tila Tequila squeezing a few extra minutes of undeserved fame out of the untimely death of her "fiancé" Casey Johnson -- whipped itself up into a critical lather. Why? Because it was good for America or because it was in their own self-interest?

I'll leave you to work that out on your own, but here are a few clues:

First, we have seen very few such attempted attacks carried to the stage of that of the underpants bomber in the last decade. Second, we have been successful in foiling many such attacks -- successes for which those responsible get little credit. Third, the attempt revealed as much about the genuine and enduring weaknesses of even terrorists affiliated with major league terror operations like al Qaeda as it did about our own counter-terror efforts. Fourth, terrorism by definition is only successful if it produces "terror" -- the kind of hysterical over-reaction we are once again seeing -- yet this fact does not seem to have resulted in very many critics toning down their hysteria or shrillness. (The Republican Party has the collective cool on these matters of Prissy helping to birth Melanie's baby in Gone With the Wind. As for the media, given that the "news" networks probably devoted more live news coverage to the balloon boy hoax than were devoted to say, the invasion of Normandy, you recognize that they are actually in the business of emotional over-reaction. In fact, their constant refrain that every event is an earth-shattering pinnacle of human experience that could well be the biggest thing they have ever seen suggests they have more in common with folks in say, Ashley Dupre's line of work than that of, say, a journalist.)

Most important, however, is that within days of what may go down on record as the world's first and last attempt at plastic explosive-assisted self-circumcision, news stories kept popping up that underscored the fact that the terror attack paled in significance for those concerned with America's future to other concurrent global developments. To begin with, the intelligence failures involved were not even the biggest problem of the week for the intelligence community given the devastating blow to some of our most senior field operatives in Afghanistan. 

But the biggest threats to U.S. leadership and security ... to our very ability to protect ourselves at home and abroad ... manifested themselves in other stories that have simply not gotten sufficient attention among the accusations and inflammations of the holiday season terror frenzy. Like unemployment staying at 10 percent. Or, over the weekend, like China passing Germany as the world's largest exporter. Or like the fact that our impending health care bill will still not actually fix the financial threats to our system posed by grotesquely under-funded health care liabilities. Or like the fact that the world is far away from solving the biggest security problems it faces from stabilizing Pakistan to stopping Iran's nuclear program (and thus the WMD proliferation that poses the one great terror threat) to reversing climate change or addressing resource disparities that will trigger many of the wars of the century ahead. (It is worth noting that for America today ... the greatest threats to the nation's future well-being don't involve things that explode ... always the favored topic of foreign policy elites ... but rather things that are imploding ... like our economy, about which most big time foreign policy specialists haven't  a clue.)

If one terrorist can in one failed attempt distract America from addressing priorities and will almost certainly lead to further billions and billions being misdirected to the global whackamole game of trying to snuff out the geopolitical pipsqueaks who lead international terror networks it explains more about why terrorists will keep trying than any in-depth analysis of the conditions on the ground in terror-prone regions. 

Thus, what this incident really reminds us is, terrorists only have the power we give them. And that the emotional, the shrill, the over-the-top, the self-promoters, the hyper-political, and the other tummlers responsible for the inside-the-beltway mob mentality are as complicit in the spread of terror as those who are too soft on it. If the president's rhetoric was slightly too weak for some tastes, he erred in the direction that also weakens our enemies rather than, as did his most vocal critics, the direction that turns operational failures like the one on Christmas Day into strategic successes for the bad guys.

P.S. I'd like to add that not only is the over-the-top nature of the terrorism debate of late done damage to U.S. interests, the appropriate response is not only not more spending, more programs, more rules ... but that complimenting the moderate response would actually be improvements to our anti-terror efforts all of which would actually be in the direction of narrowing, focusing and spending less. For example, want to improve Intel sharing? Let's start with getting rid of the Directorate of National Intelligence, a legacy of Bush's big government response to 9/11, that amounts to precisely the opposite of what we need: an additional layer of thousands of bureaucrats who actually do not enhance (apparently) our analytical capacity and undoubtedly reduce communications efficiency. The Central Intelligence Agency was created to do all the coordinating the DNI does and easily could do it again if sufficiently empowered? Want another step to improve our intel sharing? How about reducing and eliminating many of the unnecessary levels of information classification that make it impossible for policy makers to actually have access to all the information they need to make decisions? Want another? Heed the advice of former advisor to Dwight Eisenhower General Andrew Goodpaster, who laughed to me during our last intel "crisis" after 9/11 that Eisenhower would have had no patience with it because he knew -- from bitter experience during World War II -- that intelligence can be useful but expectations must be set at the right level. It was always an imperfect tool and one that could not be perfected. Want another? Let's get out of the unwinnable mess in Afghanistan and focus some of those resources on directly targeting terrorists, some on better tools for early warning and the rest on the domestic needs that are actually essential to maintaining long-term U.S. strength.  I could go on. But it is clear ... when it comes to responding to terror, the lesson of the past decade is that we need to think a lot harder about proportionality and the unintended consequences of our understandable horror and outrage.

New York's former Mayor John Lindsay once reportedly said he "didn't trust air he couldn't see." We're raised to be that way in that part of the world.  As a rule we don't spend much time fretting about the things we can't see unless we're seated with our back to the door in an Italian restaurant.

Washington on the other hand is, for the most part, in the business of intangibles: Empty words, empty promises, speeches in the place of action, "sense of the Senate" resolutions, reading a crowd rather than sticking to principles.

Today for instance, both pundits and real people are spending hours discussing whether Obama was sufficiently "presidential" last night, whether he had regained his campaign "magic" or whether he had changed the "national mood." Most of that stuff gives me a nosebleed.

Of course, in these parts politicians prefer discussing things that can't be measured because measurements tend to be so deflating, suggesting that their jobs are not about leadership or rhetoric but are rather about what and how much they get done. Also the real numbers don't lie (unlike their statistical cousins) and so, if you lie for a living you learn to avoid them early on.

This explains a lot, notably why our national accounts never add up, why budget forecasts are always wrong, why official economic projections are seen as being a substance-less as Georgetown cocktail party conversation. Old Washington hands expect roughly the same thing from "we expect a turnaround in the fourth quarter" as they do from "let's get together for lunch sometime." 

It's even why President Obama can get a lot of credit for a speech that was, to put it mildly, arithmetically challenged. To begin with "fraud, waste, and abuse" is neither a number nor even a measurable thing. It's just a mythical creature that wanders the halls of the Congress year in and year out, much discussed but in reality untouchable and constantly growing. It's certainly not a budget item you can line out to produce a measurable saving. Further, suddenly it was argued that we could provide coverage for the 45 million Americans without healthcare by providing it to only 30 million additional people. (When numbers suffer, so do absolute terms like "universal.") Finally, it's clear we ended up with a $900 billion proposal not because that was the sum total cost of all the reform we need but rather because it was not more than $1 trillion, which was considered a line that could not be crossed politically. It's a sad thing when we start pricing much-needed transformational reforms the same way we do ladies' shoes ($99.99 rather than $100. Which numbers bear as little relation to bills I have seen recently as do most Congressional budget projections to actual results.)

Having said that, I liked the President's speech last night and thought it was very effective. It may have been too vague. It may not have been what you'd call mathematically rigorous. It also was not, to my way of thinking, even sufficiently broad in its proposed reforms. However, it was a serious effort at addressing a critical national concern. It contained a few key principles (extending coverage, combating abuse by insurance companies, seeking savings) and it embraced ideas from both political parties. 

It was not the soaring but empty rhetoric of the campaign trail nor was it delivered by a magical president, the man who the media had made into Lincoln before he had spent a day in office. Rather, for me it was a much more real and appealing Obama, a smart, earnest political leader attempting to produce a meaningful piece of legislation. Oh I understand all about meta-messages and zeitgeists and stature and all that, but what struck me was that we were witnessing an important part of the business of democracy, of struggling over the details, of cajoling even an abusive opposition to come along.

In short, while we can save for elsewhere a debate over the specifics of the health care legislation, he made a solid stand for rationality in the face of irrational opposition, for progress in the face of intransigence. He was a man at work rather than a heroic figure and he made his case both well and far better than any of his opponents have made theirs.

In fact, President Obama was aided in all this by those Republican opponents -- as they have ceased to be the party of Lincoln and have become the party of Seinfeld, a party about nothing.

That may be consistent with the D.C. vacuousness I mentioned at the outset, but it looked callous and irresponsible to me last night. (I am not going to get into the issue of rudeness. It's small potatoes. A kerfuffle in a teacup. These people are grown-ups. Neither party has cornered the market on idiots.)

No to me, Obama last night showed that he is maturing into the kind of workaday president that we need. His rhetoric was not just strong, it was purposeful. He looked to me like a man committed to getting this thing done. One day at a time. I believe he will and I believe when he does it will make it easier to move ahead on other issues like climate and energy. 

That kind of approach counts for a lot where I come from. It's why I think while the Republicans are channeling Jerry and Elaine, Obama seems to be zeroing in on a better model (at least I hope he is) -- the dependable, steady, grace-under-pressure approach that has put another New Yorker, Derek Jeter, center stage this week.

To conclude with an unrelated anecdote that ties Jeter's Yankees to the Mayor Lindsay reference at the outset, and which seems to me to nicely contrast how Obama appeared last night versus how the Republicans did, there is always the famous story about Lindsay's wife. She once remarked to Yogi Berra that he (like Obama) looked cool despite the heat. He responded (as though speaking to the Republican leadership), "You don't look so hot yourself."

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America has been suffering an outbreak of especially virulent and acute stupidity recently. It has been particularly manifest at town hall meetings devoted to "discussions" of health care reform in which incensed Republicans scream at the top of their lungs about provisions that are not actually in any of the legislation under consideration -- for example the so-called "death panels" that would have bureaucrats deciding when to pull the plug on "grandma" (as President Obama characterized it yesterday). 

Scientists are, of course, fascinated by this phenomenon which, given the behavior in question, has a better claim on the term swine flu than the current influenza flavor of choice does. Does it represent something new in the long history of stupidity? Or is it merely the latest manifestation of a time-honored component of the political process -- the cries for help of one of America's most important minority groups: idiots? (At least I hope it is a minority. There is some debate about that. It calls to mind Gore Vidal's famous line when asked about what he felt about studies that showed that only half of Americans read newspapers and only half vote and he said, something to the effect that at least he hoped it was the same half.)

Now, frankly, I don't know what the idiots have to complain about. This country has done more for them than perhaps any other single segment of our society. The constitution is packed with protections for the stupid. Grade inflation was designed especially to make them feel good about themselves. Self-help sections in bookstores and most daytime television talk shows are focused around the idea that morons are entitled to the same self-esteem that is enjoyed by people who actually think before they speak and act. In fact, catering to the nit-wit market has built the American entertainment industry into the world serving behemoth it is today (there are dummies everywhere, in fact globalization threatens a shift in the global balance of stupidity that may give an edge to more populous nations although China and India do have cultural inhibitions against some root causes of American assininity. They for example, as societies, seem to value education more and respect for those members of society that have somewhat more experience.)

Religious idiots are given the right to insert made up fairy tales for which is there is not nor could there be one single scintilla of evidence into "science" books as if they really happened. They demand and are actually accorded respect for ideas that are so preposterous that they wouldn't make it into the cosmology of Sponge Bob Square Pants. Conspiracy idiots have created an industry out of the idea that weather balloons are alien spacecraft and that those of us who are Jewish, who have been getting our asses kicked for all of human history, are actually in control of global affairs. Special-interest idiots are given the right to plead the case that if their children fail at math, can't spell or speak English badly enough then rather than being taught how to correct it, tests ought to be adjusted to ignore their shortcomings or, alternatively, their linguistic "innovations" ought to simply be treated as creativity or even as new forms of language. (You wonder why the math idiots have not managed to get algebra and calculus revised or just dropped from the curriculum for similar reasons. But then again... they are idiots.)

The financial industry caters to the idiot market and depends on the idiocy of congressional overseers to enable the embrace of techniques that anyone sound of reasoning would instantly reject. Congressional idiots are allowed to stand up and say that when legislation becomes too long it shouldn't even be read. We even several years ago elected and then re-elected an idiot president of the United States.

Last week, I spent a couple days -- after a beautiful trip of whitewater rafting in Colorado and hiking through the amazing Utah desert -- in the idiot capital of America: Las Vegas, Nevada. While many decry Las Vegas as a fleshpot, a blight on civilization or just the tackiest place on the planet Earth, first and foremost it is the Capistrano of idiots, the place to which nature draws them all (or at least the ones who could not get full-time work in Washington or Hollywood). You can tell because even at the airport, they have games of chance that guarantee that whoever plays them will lose their money... and long lines of people waiting to play. And the airport is just the tip of the iceberg of an entire industry built on the notion that people can't count or won't, that they believe in magical outcomes (see earlier offensive religious reference) or are just too damn dumb to breathe.

The city offers shows that cater to idiot tastes (how else can one explain the long and flourishing career of Carrot Top or the fact that every other person in town seems to have a tattoo that they are certain to regret in a matter of months if not minutes?). The city even seems to think that if it doesn't build windows into casinos that the idiots will lose track of the time and stay in them forever (much as horses will reputedly continue to eat until their stomachs explode or as right wing conservatives will continue incessantly to hammer the policies of the '80s regardless of how outdated or discredited they have become).

In fact, it is telling that Las Vegas is so dependent on stupidity that it is one of the few cities in America where alcohol (read: stupid juice) is sold on every street corner and practically handed out free on casino floors. There is really nothing that gives you a clearer picture of what the city and much of America is about than watching a cluster of bloated conventioneers, recent excess testing the very limits of their pants' sans-a-belt technology, weaving down the sidewalk along Las Vegas Boulevard while sucking on the twisting plastic straws in their two foot tall day-glo margherita containers. 

This past weekend, despite the recession, Las Vegas was choked with people mouth-breathing their way from all-you-can-eat buffets to one opportunity after another to fritter away their kids college funds. Which just goes to show: There really is one recession proof market in the United States, a market that flourishes in good times and bad, and one that canny politicos everywhere are depending on as the last line of defense against common sense and the big fixes America urgently needs in health care, energy, climate and fiscal policy. Powerful people in America have come to depend on our idiots precisely because they know that when it comes to stupidity, they will never let us down.

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One of the big issues swirling around the current health care debate is whether or not Congress will be able to take action (on what specific legislation no one is sure) before the August congressional recess. Which got me to thinking. Which, as usual, can only lead to trouble.

Just why is it that in the middle of the greatest economic crisis since before Alan Greenspan learned to count that the honorable men and women of the United States Congress think that they should be taking time off? It's a crisis, people! Times like these call for extraordinary measures. We know because that's what the members of Congress keep telling us. The times are so extraordinary that they justify spending trillions of dollars, of casting fiscal responsibility to the wind, of taking over major chunks of American industry, of rethinking the regulatory structure of all of global finance...but apparently not extraordinary enough to motivate members of Congress to keep working a couple extra weeks a year.

Americans have fewer days of paid leave or paid vacation than the citizens of any other OECD country. In fact, we get about a third of what they get in France. What's more Americans tend to be so committed to work (or possibly feel they need to work so hard) that they leave something like a million and a half years worth of unused vacation time on the table every year. 

But Congress has schedule breaks in their annual calendar totaling around 10 weeks. Depending on the year, four to five weeks alone at the end of the summer. This might work just fine for the Asemblee nationale but we are quite a distance from the Palais Bourbon...and from the time when part time work did the trick in Washington.

While there's a case to be made that representatives should spend time with the people they are representing, the reality is that given modern technology and modern congressional agendas, most of the time they are with people they are talking not listening and most of the feedback they get comes via email, phone messages or snail mail. And again, these are unusual times, I'm not saying that they shouldn't get to be back in the districts more when they have taken care of the people's business in Washington. But they haven't done that yet, have they?

The 50 million Americans without healthcare can't put their medical needs on hold. The economy needs fixes now, not later. Congress should spend this August getting reacquainted with one of America's top tourist destinations: Washington, DC.

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Like any new president, Barack Obama has stumbled as he grappled with the learning curve associated with the world's most demanding job. Given the range of issues with which he was confronted from his first day in office, it has only been fair that he should be not be judged too quickly and that his ideas and his team had time to take root and grow. In some areas, he has achieved notable success, such as his efforts to improve America's image in the world and his effort to move quickly to respond to the economic crisis.  In others, such as the efforts to restart the auto industry or make meaningful changes in the regulation of the financial sector, the jury is out. As for real health care reform and meaningful steps to combat climate change, the key legislation is still being shaped, the key votes months away.

But as this week comes to an end, I think it is fair to say that Obama's foreign policy has suffered its first major failure, one that may haunt it for a long time to come. As those of you who have been reading this blog for the past few days know, I've been grappling with the issue of the administration's response...or lack thereof...to Iran's stolen election and the opposition's efforts to contest the results in the streets. Because I see the merits in stopping and evaluating a situation before responding. And I understand the reasons to maintain an open dialogue with the regime in Tehran. 

But as each day of the week has gone by, America's silence seems less defensible. Do we really intend to engage the current regime as if nothing had happened? Do we really believe it is useful to send a message that America doesn't care any longer, won't act, won't speak out, won't penalize or criticize or seek to pressure those who compromise or crush democracy? 

The administration seems to be saying that we can't afford ill will from anyone, even countries whose regimes denounce us and our allies. They seem to be worried that by supporting the opposition they will be tainted by association with us rather than empowered by it. And they seem to be saying that they can't think of any approaches better than their silence to advance our interests.

Why? Because multilateral diplomacy is so difficult? Britain, France, and Germany have all made stronger statements, we could have made one together? Why? Because the Chinas of this world would never go along with our statements because it puts them in a difficult light? The statement could have come from western powers alone. We don't need unanimity in matters like this. We need a forceful message that countries that violate the basic rights of their citizens should expect to pay a price for such behavior in the international community. Those who rise up in those countries should also know that the international community or a substantial portion of it will work tirelessly to support them to make the risks they are taking worthwhile.

We can seek engagement without checking our values at the door.   Indeed, to do otherwise is to make engagement pointless. Why engage if it is not to advance our interests? How naïve it is to think that won't involve challenging, offending, even battling those with whom we are engaged.  That doesn't mean our battles must be wars or produce the needless rifts of the Bush years. 

But we must ask, in our silence did we send a message to Ayatollah Khamenei that might make he and his cronies feel more comfortable in using violence to suppress the pro-Democracy protestors? In our weak response to Kim Jong Il do we send a message that he may proceed with his nuclear and missile provocations effectively unchecked? In our desire to undo the damage of the Bush years by reaching out to former enemies, do we strengthen those who we should seek to weaken, tolerate the intolerable, fail to take action where action is called for?

I'm afraid the answer is yes. We are back on our heels. This does not make the world safer or conflict any less likely. Quite the contrary. Bush debased American leadership with his actions. Obama should remember that it is just as possible to do so through inaction.

There are many things this administration could have and should have said that would not undercut that which is sound in their foreign policy. They could have said… ideally in chorus with our allies… that the international community was disturbed by apparent irregularities, that any recount or investigation should be made by objective observers, that the suppression of peaceful protests would be viewed with great concern, that Iran would jeopardize its talks with the international community if it undertook violence or condoned voter fraud, that nuclear weapons agreements depend on trust and that countries that seek such trust must act accordingly, that while we seek to maintain engagement, there are limits to what we will tolerate and that we reserve all our options to advance our interests. They could have convened a meeting among like-minded countries to discuss options, sent an envoy, formally postponed further discussions of the nuclear issue until this situation was clarified. They could have raised a doubt in the minds of the leaders in Tehran about how we would react in the face of a crackdown, that there might be consequences.

If all this would make the Chinese uncomfortable because they might fear they could be accused of similar indifference to the rights of their citizens, well, that's too bad. It's a message they too need to hear. Capitulation to them on every issue simply because they are big (and yes, I am talking to you, Google management) creates terrible precedents and invites further bad acts. 

Is the vision a world in which engagement becomes the ultimate objective of all foreign relations? Just as critics once rightly reminded the Bush administration that terror was not an enemy it was a tactic, so is it worth remembering that engagement is also just a tactic and not a goal in and of itself? While we should sacrifice to preserve our core values and interests, we should not sacrifice those values and interests to preserve our tactics.

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