So, the critical second-to-the-last paragraph...
It's hard to write that off as an offhand comment. If Mr. Ridge is to continue in this role, he must stay out of the election; using him as a campaign surrogate would be disastrous for public confidence. The administration should also stop dropping dark hints about Al Qaeda's having election-related motives to attack, as if a vote against the current president were appeasement.
The first sentence properly belongs in the previous paragraph, but it is necessary to break it out to accomodate the NYTimes Editorial drip-drip-drip argument style. It does not belong in the critical second-to-the-last, but to have it all by itself looks too high school.
You know what I mean...
The second statement, that the Director of Homeland Security should not be a campaign surrogate, is obvious. Everybody would agree with that. The problem is, he has not been in the past and will almost certainly not be so in the future. Tom Ridge has a job to do, and I am sure he is doing it, full time.
The last statement, however, is the critical bit. Al Qaeda obviously has plans to hit us before the election. One thing you can count on with these terrorist SOB's is that they have only a few pages in their play-book. The pre-election bombing worked in Spain, so you can bet your bottom dollar they will try the same trick in the United States in the run-up to November 2.
This leads to two questions. First, what do you do about it? And second, what will be the political fallout if and when it occurs?
The President is deadly serious about preventing this bombing. He will do all that he can to prevent it, but he will not lie and say that he absolutely can prevent it. Part of prevention is a heightened state of awareness of the people. If the President ignored the obvious, he would be derelict in his duty. Which brings us to the aftermath.
One of the reasons the Spanish bombing had such a dramatic effect is that the Spanish people thought they were safe, and were rudely shown that the government could not protect them. The government had been issuing statements that there was nothing to fear and that the elections would not be attacked. When the bombings happened, they looked like fools, and their defeat was inevitable.
If the President follows the NYTimes Editorial Board's advice, and minimized any public warnings in order to make sure there is no political impact of the heightened state of awareness, he will put himself in the exact same position as the Spanish government was before those bombings. When the attack comes, he will look like a fool, and his defeat will be assured.
Which would suit the New York Times Editorial Board just fine, of course...
Actually, the Spanish bombings were so effective only because the Socialist party and the "peace groups" (very influential among university students) capitalized on them immediately, and even used them as a platform for launching cell-phone coordinated street mini-riots in various cities on election eve and even election day, including harrassment of people perceived to be probable PP voters. That's exactly what would happen here.
Ironically, I think that if the Times keeps scoffing at the possibility of election day attacks, this would really do a lot to keep the left from capitalizing on them, if they should occur. The element of surprise was crucial in Spain, and I think that's been taken away in this case.