Proving a negative and hearing what isn't said.

People have noted the seeming irony that President Bush did better on domestic policy in the debates than he did on foreign policy. But domestic policy issues can be discussed in the sunshine, and the administration's actions and proposals can be freely aired. In foreign policy, in an age of terrorism and at a time of war, there is much that cannot be revealed by a sitting President who is Commander-in-Chief. The President cannot, for instance, reveal what he undoubtedly knows about the continuing threat from al Qaeda; cannot reveal what Special Forces and CIA operatives are doing inside Iran or Syria; cannot reveal sub rosa deals that may have been cut with Saudi Arabia or Pakistan to provide information and assistance in countering terrorist networks; cannot reveal contingency plans to take out Iranian or North Korean nuclear facilities; cannot reveal what he may know about corruption at the UN or the top levels of the Chirac government in France, etc., etc. Meanwhile, John Kerry, as the challenger, can say anything (and is obviously willing to say anything). It's not a level playing field, at least in terms of a debate.

This unfairness is clearest in the case of what should be the salient fact in this election. We were hit on 9/11/01 by terrorists in the heart of our economy and the heart of our government. More than three years later... knock on wood hard... we haven't been hit again. Does anyone believe that there haven't been plots to hit us again? But nothing has happened. It's hard to prove a negative -- why something didn't happen. One inference would be that this is sheer luck. Another inference is that this is The Extraordinary Military-Intelligence-Law Enforcement Victory That Dare Not Speak Its Name. I think the second inference is more valid, because the first requires you to believe that the vast expenditures on the military, the intelligence apparatus (including the enormous information collecting of the NSA), and homeland security are useless. Yet President Bush cannot trumpet this success -- and the media obviously won't trumpet it for him -- because to do so would mean to compromise the sources of information that led us to foil the plots. He's the President. He has the responsibility for safeguarding those secrets, even if it means he does poorly in foreign policy debates, and even if it means that he is defeated.

Given the attack in Spain on the eve of the election, given the attacks on Australia before their election, a rational observer has to conclude that al Qaeda and other Islamofascist terrorist groups are actively targeting the U.S. in the run up to November 2nd. If we get to November 2d and nothing has happened, President Bush deserves to win in a landslide. Whether he will or not depends on whether people can think, not about what has happened in the past three years, but about what has happened, and can listen, not to the rhetoric of the candidates, but to what isn't being said.