There once was a time, in our politics and culture, when we routinely hewed to the cliche that "9/11 has changed everything." Conventional wisdom decreed that irony was dead, that comedy was dead, that even dissent was dead. Partisan fighting was out, patriotic unity was in. As Oprah announced in her magazine at the tail end of 2001, "We realize that we are all part of the family of America."
Today, those sentiments seem as remote as artifacts in a time capsule.
We have long since returned to our partisan habits, to the point where we risk democratic dysfunction. Yet in a sense this is good news. The psychic sting of 9/11 has blessedly worn off. Osama bin Laden sleeps with the fishes, and the war on terror abroad has gone well enough to make us feel more secure at home. This leaves us free to focus on the rotten economy, to caricature those with whom we disagree, and to lash out at the politicians we deem most culpable.
Seventy-six percent of Americans currently praise the Obama administration's efforts at reducing the threat of terrorism - the highest approval rating recorded by the Pew Research Center on that issue since the rally-'round-the-flag phase in autumn '01 - and Gallup said last year that barely 1 percent of Americans cite fear of terrorism as their top concern. The irony is inescapable. Apparently, we trust our national security institutions even as we distrust the other governmental realms. We now feel safe enough to overdose on domestic disunity.
That's bad news for President Obama. It's rare that a Democratic president is rated so highly on national security - during a Republican debate the other night, even candidate Rick Perry praised Obama for the hit on bin Laden - yet it doesn't appear that Obama will reap any political rewards on that front. A mere decade after 9/11, an event that shattered our sense of domestic invulnerability, national security is figuring to be a blip on the radar when the 2012 campaign is fully engaged. Indeed, Americans now tell pollsters that the recession easily tops 9/11 as the event during the last decade that had the greatest impact on their lives.
