White House and Cheney Clash After Detroit Plot

WASHINGTON (Dec. 30) – Is Arthur Vandenberg spinning in his grave?

The Republican senator who famously said in 1947 that "politics stops at the water's edge" in describing his bipartisan approach to foreign policy might wonder about the partisan fireworks set off by the fizzled Christmas Day bomb plot.

From the right to the left, from Congress to the blogosphere, the Obama administration's handling of the most serious terrorist plot in the United States since 2001 has been denounced as sorely lacking. Pundits ask if we have learned nothing since the 9/11 Commission urged intelligence agencies to do a better job of connecting the dots.

A former vice president who may have had more than a little to do with setting the stage for what transpired near Detroit continues to criticize Obama for not living up to Bush administration standards.

And members of both parties, mindful that 2010 is just hours away, use Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's skivvies scheme to unleash a political furor.

So much for that Hawaiian vacation.

Rep. Peter King of New York, the senior Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, criticized President Obama for taking 72 hours to speak publicly about the incident and urged him to "treat this in a bipartisan way, acknowledge that mistakes were made and promise we'll do all we can to make sure it doesn't happen again."

Despite such barbs, Politico checked the reaction in late 2001 after the so-called shoe bomber incident. It noted that President George W. Bush, who was also on vacation when Richard Reid's attack failed, took longer to respond than Obama yet faced far less criticism from the media or political opponents. "Democrats have seized on the disparity and are making it a centerpiece of their efforts to counter GOP attacks on the White House," it said.

Leading the attacks was former Vice President Dick Cheney who once again served as one of Obama's most prominent detractors. "As I've watched the events of the last few days," he said today, "it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war."

That prompted a sharp response from Steve Benen, the lead blogger at Washington Monthly's Web site. In a post titled "Dick the Coward," he blamed the Bush administration for releasing the terrorists who now lead the al-Qaida offshoot that allegedly provided Abdulmutallab with "a visa to enter the United States in the first place."

The White House took a more genteel approach but pulled no punches in taking on critics – especially the former vice president – who "have been coming out of the woodwork since the incident on Christmas Day."

In a post on the White House blog, Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer accused Cheney of making "the clearly untrue claim" that Obama isn't on a war footing. Quoting the president in his inaugural address, at West Point and in Oslo when he said, "We are at war" as he picked up the Nobel Peace Prize, Pfeiffer didn't hold back:

"President Obama doesn't need to beat his chest to prove it, and – unlike the last Administration – we are not at war with a tactic ("terrorism"), we (sic) at war with something that is tangible: al Qaeda and its violent extremist allies. And we will prosecute that war as long as the American people are endangered."

While Pfeiffer scolded Cheney for his administration's preoccupation with Iraq even as al-Qaida rebuilt along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, House Democrats blamed him and his boss for the current pickle.

"We are facing the consequences of the Bush administration's failures to deal with al-Qaida," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Before today's back-and-forth, it was Sen. Jim DeMint's turn. He came under withering attack this week from Democrats for holding up the confirmation of counterterrorism expert Erroll Southers as head of the Transportation Security Administration. The South Carolina Republican put a hold on the nomination because he suspects Southers would allow TSA employees to unionize.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid responded by vowing to force a vote on the nomination next month even as his chief spokesman called DeMint "petty and vindictive."

Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House intelligence committee who is running for governor of Michigan, invoked the terror plot in a fundraising letter in which he accused Obama of "making decisions that should frighten us all." Washington Monthly called it "the height of cravenness," while Democratic National Committee spokesman Hari Sevugan accused the congressman of using the incident "as an opportunity to fan partisan flames and raise money for political campaigns."

Meanwhile, conservative bloggers blamed liberals for pushing to release detainees from Guantanamo, only to see them help mastermind the Christmas Day plot.

Michelle Malkin depicted Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano as a clown for initially saying the "system worked" and wondered why Obama was still in Hawaii.

The administration didn't get much love from pundits who are normally more sympathetic

"Heck of a job, Barry," sneered New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, comparing Obama's handling of the terrorist plot to the previous administration – and not in a favorable way.

Ruth Marcus in The Washington Post wrote incredulously about "the Obama administration's initial, everything's-fine-everybody-move-right-along reaction."

Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism official who made a splash in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks by blaming the Bush administration for ignoring warnings about al-Qaida, gave Obama's Homeland Security chief some cover. He said it wasn't Napolitano's fault that no one told her about concerns the alleged bomber's father shared with U.S. officials in Nigeria. The blame, he said, belongs with the CIA and other intelligence agencies which, as in the lead-up to 9/11, didn't connect the dots.

"It's exactly the stuff we were talking about for a decade before 9/11 and the public became aware of during the 9/11 Commission," he told ABC News. "It hasn't been fixed. There's a business-as-usual attitude in many of the agencies, particularly in the CIA."

The partisan bickering isn't likely to end soon. Congress plans to hold hearings next month on what went wrong.

When it does, expect more of the same, says political analyst Charlie Cook.

"Over the last five years or so we've entered a perpetual cycle of attack," he said. "The party out of power attacks the party in power for anything and everything, justified or not, large or small. Democrats did it, Republicans do it now. In my mind, criticism by politicians and parties are becoming devalued. All they do is attack. It loses all meaning; the public becomes numb to it."