With unemployment high, consumer confidence battered and the general outlook as grim as a
Cormac McCarthy
novel,
Barack Obama
may have virtually no chance of victory in 2012. Or so I thought until his Homeland Security chief,
Janet Napolitano
, offered a glimpse of his re-election strategy: Letting us keep our shoes on when we go through airport security.
Is there any change in our ordinary lives since 9/11 that has seemed more ridiculous, annoying and unnecessary? Putting our bags on conveyor belts and submitting to body-imaging scanners manned by TSA agents are a tolerable hassle compared to this one. A nation that can invent the iPhone ought to be able to find a better way of preventing planes from being blown up.
And apparently the administration has. I can see Obama making his pitch at the Democratic convention: “The Republican way of fighting terrorism was making you take off your shoes at the airport and stand around in your socks. My way? Killing
Osama bin Laden
— and letting you keep your shoes on!” (Followed by a thunderous, 15-minute standing ovation.)
It may seem like a small gift. But that’s more than we get from a lot of politicians.
