Charlie Black, John McCain's campaign advisor, had to apologize when he suggested in late June that a terrorist attack on U.S. interests would serve McCain come November. Many commentators made the case that Black's real mistake was saying the truth aloud because, as journalist Gwynne Dyer, put it dryly, "a great many people assume that ex-fighter pilots are just better than first term senators at dealing with that sort of thing."
The more enduring fact about American politics in the last quarter of a century is that the Republican party image says "fighter pilot," and is more closely associated with military and security. In a country traditionally oriented, as the United States is, toward the value of decisive action to resolve challenges, the military and its symbols (missiles, soldiers, acting, not talking,being more like frontier cowboys and less like wimpy Europeans in a crumbling empire ), resonate in a positive way. Black's comment meant that: McCain's campaign could more easily mobilize these symbols with an added dollop of fear that an attack on U.S. soil would surely provide. These symbols would help create the idea of McCain as a better leader.
A look at the historical record since the 1980 contest between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, tends to bear this out. Carter was trounced by his inability to rescue Americans held hostage in Iran for over a year. The Reagan campaign, by all accounts, was fearful throughout the campaign season that Carter might, though. The Reagan campaign pre-emptively degraded Carter's ability to win symbolic leverage by pointing out in advance that an "October surprise" –a rescue at the last moment before the election—should be read as a campaign ploy, rather than on its own terms.
Later campaigns in which an act of international terrorism was at issue provoked efforts by candidates to exploit its symbolic power. In 1983, President Reagan chose not to respond militarily to attacks on the U.S. embassy, and on the U.S. marine barracks, in Beirut. The latter attack killed 241 American servicemen. When the topic came up during the campaign against democratic candidate Walter Mondale, Reagan would explain that there was no clear culprit and that he would not attack purely for retaliatory purposes. Mondale attempted to paint this decision as a form of wishy-washiness, but was unsuccessful. Indeed, Reagan successfully turned this bit of 'softness' into a symbol of his rational and humane decision-making.
The Reagan-Mondale example underscores a second point to be made about how candidates can gain advantage by sounding 'tough' on terrorism. They have some leverage as individuals. But their statements don't emerge from or into a vacuum. In large part, what candidates say reverberates inside existing an existing symbolic framework connected to each of the two political parties. What Mondale tried to paint as Reagan's mushy indecisiveness didn't stick, to a degree, because he couldn't overturn the association of Republicans with national security.
As the definition and scope of terrorism expanded, in the 1990s, candidates attempted to frame the issue itself. The 1996 election competition between Democrat Bill Clinton and Republican Bob Dole followed the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, as well as several lethal attacks on U.S. troops stationed in Saudi Arabia. Clinton framed terrorism as an element of his foreign policy platform, and as a law enforcement issue, which was one way of evading the legacy of the Republican association with strong defense. Dole, in contrast, framed terrorism as a defense and security issue. In a way that was not historically typical of Republican platforms, he also promised an interventionist stance, when he claimed at the Republican national convention that,"America will pursue [terrorists] to the ends of the earth," he also promoted a more interventionist Republican.
The 2000 contest between Al Gore and George W. Bush offers a recent example of a terrorist attack late in a campaign season. Terrorism was not a particularly important issue in the 2000 election; Gore mentioned it with greater frequency as a one of several threats likely to increase in a globalizing world.
When the guided missile destroyer the USS Cole was attacked on October 12, 2000, Bush aligned himself with the Clinton administration (of which Gore, as vice president, was a member). Bush repeatedly noted that it was important for Americans to 'speak with one voice' at moments of tragedy. And he not use the event as an opportunity to flex his muscle. Indeed, his Democratic opponent made the more forceful statement of the two, noting that, "Whoever is responsible for something like this will be met with a full and forceful and effective retaliatory response…".
Despite Gore's decisive statement, he did not use rhetoric with symbolic resonance that would accrue associations with security, defense, action, or power. That gesture was made by Bush's running mate, Dick Cheney, who responded to the USS Cole attack by saying that, "Any would-be terrorist out there needs to know that if you're going to attack, you'll be hit very hard and very quick. It's not the time for diplomacy and debate. It's time for action."