From The NY Times
Editorial

Voters in the 2008 elections need to hear in detail how the presidential candidates intend to wrestle the sprawling homeland security apparatus into sync with the true state of the terrorist threat. That critical connection has become befogged in years of hyperbolic alarms, official ineptitude, enormous spending and political sleight of hand.

So far, terrorism and homeland security have been treated as a melodramatic premise for campaign commercials about atrocities past rather than a way for contenders to plainly say what they’ve learned since 9/11 — and what needs to be changed.

While intelligence specialists dispute where the next likely threats might originate, the government is awash in tens of billions of dollars being spent annually on programs that still fail to deal adequately with such obvious shortcomings as port and chemical plant security. On the stump, the candidates so far offer short shrift. There’s no hint, for example, of what sorts of talent they have mind for the next administration to replace the serial blunderers and patronage hacks that riddle the vast homeland security bureaucracy. Such basic questions are lost in the diversionary din of outsize warnings from Republican candidates about the threat that illegal immigrants supposedly present to domestic security.

There’s no dearth of amorphous position papers on the Republican candidates’ Web sites, but they barely hint at what’s needed. Mike Huckabee’s “Secure America Plan” invests chapter and verse on immigration control and only a subliminal reference to President Bush’s record. He promises “renewed diplomacy and inclusion” — i.e., an end to the administration’s brushing off the views of the rest of the world.

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