The New York Daily News under the management of Mort Zuckerman is a fairly reliable weathervane of a particular stripe of moderate, Northeastern Democrat opinion, broadly liberal in inclination but more cold-eyed and hawkish when it comes to crime, national security, and in particular the threat of Islamic extremism to the U.S. and Israel – your basic Ed Koch-type Democrat (this is not an exclusively Jewish phenomenon, although in New York that’s who the leading voices are). Typically, the News gave fawning and totally excessive coverage of every historic move of the historic new historic presidency of Barack Obama during the high watermark of his Administration, from November 2008 through late January 2009; at one point either Obama or his wife was on the front page every day for more than three weeks.

So, it’s significant – in the way moderate-conservative outlets’ turning on George W. Bush between mid-2005 and early 2006 was significant – that the News today has a blisteringly harsh assessment of Obama’s sluggish public response to the attempted destruction of a U.S.-bound flight by a fanatic wearing bomb-laden underwear apparently designed by Al Qaeda bomb-makers in Yemen, especially given the revelation that U.S. intelligence had been warned by the Nigerian bomb-wearer’s father that he was in cahoots with Islamist extremists. The News’ assessment, which was featured with the front page headline “Get a Grip”:

The moment demanded inspiring, decisive presidential leadership.

America waited four days for a glimmer.

President Obama’s initial response Monday was too long in coming, too cool in delivery and too removed from the extreme gravity of the plot….

Before his first remarks on Monday, Obama had left a vacuum, and into that 76-hour empty space rushed Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, whose ineptitude made a mockery of her position and threw millions of fliers into continuing states of confusion.

What the public was left with was a never-to-be-repeated case study in crisis mismanagement. It’s time to get a grip, Mr. President.

Napolitano’s “the system worked” comment is perhaps the perfect symbol of this tone-deaf response, given that this particular attack was essentially thwarted by the passengers, not by the government. This is, of course, in contrast to how swift and vivid Obama’s statements can be when he wants to make partisan hay from the news, as with his same-day statement declaring himself “shocked and outraged” at the murder of abortion doctor George Tiller. The News’ assessment of the substance of Obama’s response is no cheerier:

Obama’s description of Abdulmutallab as an “isolated extremist” was remarkable and disturbing. This radicalized young Nigerian is nothing of the sort. He operated, in fact, as an Al Qaeda-recruited, Al Qaeda-supplied, Al Qaeda-directed foot soldier – as, to put it directly, an enemy combatant, and not as the criminal “suspect” of Obama’s description.

In similarly distant fashion, the President ordered up a “review” of how Abdulmutallab smuggled explosives onto the jet and a “review” of how he slipped through the government’s various terror watch lists despite signals of clear and present danger.

The Telegraph has a more detailed rundown of how the intelligence on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab didn’t prevent him from boarding the plane with a bomb in his pants, and how Obama’s response continues a disturbing pattern:

There has been a pattern developing with the Obama administration trying to minimise terrorist attacks. We saw it with Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad, a Muslim convert who murdered a US Army recruit in Little Rock, Arkansas in June. We saw it with Major Nidal Malik Hassan, a Muslim with Palestinian roots who slaughtered 13 at Fort Hood, Texas last month. In both cases, there were Yemen connections. Obama began to take the same approach with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

As the News notes, the security problems that led to this attack include laxity at the TSA and a too-easy hand in releasing Gitmo detainees (such as the Yemeni bomb-makers who were released to a Saudi “art therapy” program), both of which have roots in the Bush Administration’s periodic capitulations to political correctness and (in the TSA’s case) the disastrous “leadership” of Norman Mineta. But the News also notes that Obama can’t well avoid responsibility for Bush policies he inherited and chose to expand, rather than repair. He’s particularly put on the spot by liberal California Democrat Dianne Feinstein’s call for a halt to releases of further GTMO detainees to Yemen.

There will be no B+ for this effort.