Newt: Another 9/11 Would Have Concentrated Minds

There are many, many, many reasons why Newt Gingrich will not be the 45th President of the United States (assuming, as I do not and actually think pretty unlikely, he wins the GOP nomination) but among them is his habit of saying stuff like this:

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That’s from 2008. Here’s my transcription of what he says in this clip:

Why have we not been hit since 9/11? Good question. My first answer is I honestly don’t know. I would have expected another attack, and I particularly thought, I was very, very worried and I talked to the administration when we had the sniper attacks because the sniper attacks were psychologically so frightening to the average person because of their randomness that I was amazed the bad guys didn’t figure out how to send 10 or 12 sniper teams.

I think there are a couple of things, though – this is, by the way, one of the great tragedies of the Bush administration – the more successful they’ve been at intercepting and stopping bad guys the less proof there is that we’re in danger and therefore the better they’ve done at making sure there isn’t an attack the easier it is to say there was never going to be an attack anyway and it’s almost like they should every once in a while have allowed an attack to get through just to remind us.