Spencer Ackerman covers a speech given by National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter:
Ultimately, Leiter said, it'll be the “quiet, confident resilience” of Americans after a terrorist attack that will “illustrate ultimately the futility of terrorism.” That doesn't mean not to hit back: Leiter quickly added that “we will hold those accountable [and] we will be ready to respond to those attacks.” But it does mean recognizing, he said, that “we help define the success of an attack by our reaction to that attack.”
It's hard for Americans to display "quiet, confident resilience" when Republicans are invested in causing panic as a way to discredit the current administration. When the president suggested that Americans would react to even a large-scale terror attack with that kind of resilience, Republicans attacked him for being "complacent." Because resilience is really the last thing they'd like to see. It doesn't win as many scared votes at the ballot box.
