Certainly, the president does not want to take questions about a threat he had minimized during the 2012 campaign. But what's striking is that he has not addressed the nation in a formal manner on the potential for a major attack.
Incredibly, the first question Obama might take on the situation could come from a comedian. Obama is scheduled to appear on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno this evening in Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party,, and the topic is sure to come up. He has an event earlier in the day, but it's a campaign-style appearance at a high school in Phoenix, also an odd venue to be discussing potential terrorist attacks.
Not everyone has been excluded from receiving a high-level briefing. Vice President
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has met with members of Congress to discuss the threat, and some of the most specific information about what the United States is faced with has come from politicians.
Briefing news hounds Monday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney did not minimize the problem. "This threat is significant and we are taking it seriously for that reason," he said.
But Carney refused to specifically characterize the extent of the danger to the United States itself.