Why Obama's Not Talking

President Obama doesn’t want to be filmed, as his predecessor was, momentarily interrupting a casual golf game to talk about a terrorist attack, The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder writes. Obama has been on vacation in Hawaii, and though he’s been videoconferencing regularly on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s failed attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day, he has not made a public statement because that could elevate the importance of the deed and cause panic among the public. The president is willing to risk looking “soft” on terror “to advance what he believes is the proper collective response to a failed act of terrorism,” Ambinder says. It’s a conscious move to calm the country, since his advisers feel “the Bush administration projected their panic and anger” onto the public.