As the memory of the attacks faded, it was inevitable that counterterrorism measures would draw more scrutiny — and voter priorities would shift.
As the memory of the attacks faded, it was inevitable that counterterrorism measures would draw more scrutiny — and voter priorities would shift.
S eptember 11 changed American politics — and then the way it changed politics changed politics again.
When a group of hijackers slammed planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and another plane crashed in a Pennsylvania field after passengers staged a heroic struggle, the threat of terrorism immediately vaulted to the top concern for Americans.
In the days before the attacks, when Gallup asked American adults to identify what they saw as the top problem facing the United States, a fraction of a percent identified terrorism. Within a few weeks, that number shot up to 46 percent. In perhaps the last truly unifying moment in our nation’s history, George W. Bush, who entered office as a divisive figure after the Florida recount in 2000, saw his approval rating soar to 90 percent.
Most Americans embraced the view that the nation had become too complacent as the threat of terrorism in general, and al-Qaeda specifically, had gained traction. Americans were on board with increased security at home and with the idea of taking the fight to terrorists and their state sponsors abroad. While less universal than support for the war in Afghanistan, 72 percent of Americans backed the Iraq War at its start, Gallup found.
From its inception, the War on Terror had a fundamental challenge. If major terrorist attacks were averted, concerns about terrorism would recede, while the costs of fighting terrorism would not. Over time, as the memory of September 11 faded, it was inevitable that counterterrorism measures would draw more scrutiny as the threat became more abstract.
And this is more or less how politics in the past quarter-century has played out. While there have been terrorist attacks since September 11, the nation has not experienced anything close to the scale of such an attack again. There are two ways to view this. One way of looking at it is to say that despite the criticism, the War on Terror has been extraordinarily effective at keeping Americans safe. Another way of viewing it is that September 11 was a spectacular, perfect-storm event that was unlikely to ever be repeated, and that after the event, we overreacted — as demonstrated, also, by the fact that there hasn’t been anything like it since.
Whatever the actual answer to that debate, over time, a majority of Americans clearly migrated from the first view to the second.
In the 2002 midterm elections, the first following the 9/11 attacks, Republicans actually added seats in the House and Senate — the first time that the incumbent party had made gains in both chambers since 1934. In 2004, even as criticism of the Iraq War started to build, Bush won reelection primarily on the fact that he was seen as somebody who would keep the nation safe — as opposed to John Kerry, whose flip-flopping undermined his attempts to offer the same assurances.
By 2006 and 2008, the Iraq War had become increasingly unpopular, and the backlash made it possible for Democrats to make historic gains. Barack Obama, as a freshman senator, would have had no chance of vaulting over Hillary Clinton were it not for the one speech he gave opposing that war from the beginning. As much as Obama’s victory represented a break with the post-9/11 political environment, that break was not total. A large part of the way the anti–Iraq War message was framed was that the conflict was a distraction from the broader fight against terrorism. In his acceptance speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Obama said, “While Senator McCain was turning his sights to Iraq just days after 9/11, I stood up and opposed [the Iraq War], knowing that it would distract us from the real threats we face.” As president, he stepped up drone warfare and ordered the raid that killed Osama bin Laden — an accomplishment that featured in his 2012 election campaign.
While anti-war sentiment had some constituency among Republicans during the Obama era (see: Ron Paul’s runs in 2008 and 2012), it wasn’t until Donald Trump came along that somebody who ran as an opponent of the Iraq War was able to win the nomination. However, Trump didn’t win on a dovish platform — he vowed to “bomb the s*** out of” ISIS and called Senator Ted Cruz a “pussy” for being equivocal about waterboarding. Trump essentially played into two competing sentiments among Republicans. On the one side, there was the feeling that Obama was weak and that he was allowing the United States to become the doormat of the world; on the other side, there was an allergy to foreign adventurism.
September 11 changed American politics in the sense that the event put us onto a completely different timeline than would have existed had those attacks never happened. Absent Bush’s response to the attacks, America never would have elected Obama. Had Obama never been president, Trump would not have been, either. And now, we see that among Republicans, support for his Iran policy is heavily correlated with age — the under-30 population being the most skeptical.
Once Trump leaves the scene, the battle for the future of the Republican Party will be ideological, sure, but it will also be generational — pitting those who vividly remember September 11 against those who have no such recollection.