WASHINGTON, Dec 7 – President Barack Obama will try to reassure a nervous nation on Sunday that he has a plan to defeat the fast-evolving threat of terrorism, as fears multiply of ISIS attacks on the homeland and public trust in his handling of the threat has dipped to record lows.
Obama’s rare 8 p.m. ET Oval Office address reflects growing anxiety that the global showdown with the extremist group has now spread to U.S. soil following a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, that authorities are treating as terrorism. His appearance comes at a time of public disquiet over terrorism and a political debate over the threat, now consuming the 2016 campaign, raging at levels not seen since the aftermath of theSeptember 11 attacks in 2001.
Obama has also struggled to convince critics he has a viable strategy for destroying ISIS in the Middle East and has been accused of downplaying the threat from the group for political reasons. Obama will use Sunday night’s address to pledge to use of every available tool to keep American people safe and destroy ISIS, senior administration official says.
The gravity of the occasion is underscored by Obama’s decision to use the symbolic power of the Oval Office for only the third time in his presidency, following addresses on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the end of the Iraq war in 2010. He is under intense pressure to strike a rhetorical note equal to the moment, following a string of comments about ISIS that left him vulnerable to claims by opponents that he had not take the group’s rise seriously.
Once, the president’s handling of terrorism was a political asset and helped him win re-election, following the killing of Osama bin Laden. But now it looks more like a liability with ISIS plotting or inspiring attacks from California to Paris and on a Russian airliner over Egypt and capturing territory from North Africa to Afghanistan.
