A Debate About Terror More than Hillary Clinton, the election is about the Democratic Party’s mind-set on terrorism. By Daniel Henninger

Posted By on September 22nd, 2016

http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-debate-about-terror-1474498105

The Commission on Presidential Debates, which is in charge of Monday night’s cage match between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, lists three topics on its website for the 90-minute debate: America’s Direction, Achieving Prosperity and Securing America.

Moderator Lester Holt, a news man, knows that as of last Saturday, this debate is mostly going to be about an Afghan-American named Ahmad Khan Rahami and a Somali-American who stabbed nine people in a Minneapolis mall.

If they can get in a few thoughts on “America’s Direction,” that’ll be nice, but national security—terrorism—has muscled its way to the top of a presidential campaign’s stack of issues. We were there last in 2004, when Americans decided they’d take George W. Bush over John Kerry in the lingering shadows of 9/11.

 Now the choice is these two.

Ahmad Khan Rahami’s pressure-cooker bomb blew up in the Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea, about five blocks from where I live. Within the hour, my phone was buzzing with the same text message from family and friends: “Are you all right?” This is the way it is now. Thousands of identical texts—are you all right?—surely poured into St. Cloud, Minn., Saturday after the stabbing spree.

On whether Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Trump is better able to deal with the mass-murder compulsions of Islamic terrorists, opinion polls before Saturday essentially said Hillary is ahead by a point or two. You might expect that on so grave an issue, a former secretary of state and two-term U.S. senator would be ahead by more than a nose of someone she describes as totally unfit to be on the same stage with her.

But he is, and they’re tied, so the American people must be seeing something the conventional media wisdom can’t or won’t on terrorism. CONTINUE AT SITE

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