As of this writing, no one knows whether the dumpster bomb in the Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea, the nearby possible pressure cooker bomb, or the pipe bomb set at a Marine charity run in New Jersey are terrorist acts. However, the three possibly related events are likely to redound to the political benefit of Donald Trump, if for nothing else for reminding people how dangerous the world has gotten under President Obama and how much more dangerous it is likely to get under Hillary Clinton should she become president.
The media, for its part, reacted with fury when Trump announced, accurately, that a bombing had occurred in New York.
The mainstream press was not quite so irate when Hillary Clinton did the same thing. The dichotomy says as much of how the media has chosen sides in the current presidential election as it does about the quality of the two candidates.
Obama largely ignored the incidents, decided instead to rail against Trump at a campaign event. The current president has tried to tamp down on terrorism fears brought on by such atrocities as San Bernardino and Orlando, actually suggesting that one is more likely to be killed in the bath tub than at the hands of a terrorist. The fact is objectively true but irrelevant. The bath tub is not actively trying to kill you.
When the world seems unsettled and sliding into chaos, the outsider presidential candidate tends to win if it is an election year.
This principle proved correct when Richard Nixon beat then Vice President Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and when Ronald Reagan beat then-President Jimmy Carter in 1980. It may hold true again with a newly steady Donald Trump surging against a sickly, corrupt Hillary Clinton.
What Trump proposes to do about terrorism, aside from “bombing the hell” out of ISIS, is unclear at this time.
He has promised to be more circumspect about using military power abroad while at the same time building up the strength of the American armed forces to make them a more reliable deterrent, returning in effect to the strategy of Ronald Reagan, not a bad model to follow that.
