“We have a pat­tern now of mass shoot­ings in this coun­try that has no par­al­lel any­where else in the world.  And there are some steps we could take … to improve the odds that they don’t hap­pen as fre­quent­ly: com­mon-sense gun safe­ty laws, stronger back­ground checks.”  Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, Decem­ber 2, hours after the San Bernardi­no shootings

“It is clear that the two of them had gone down the dark path of rad­i­cal­iza­tion, embrac­ing a per­vert­ed inter­pre­ta­tion of Islam that calls for war against Amer­i­ca and the West. They had stock­piled assault weapons, ammu­ni­tion, and pipe bombs. So this was an act of ter­ror­ism.”  Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, Decem­ber 6, on the San Bernardi­no shootings.

Some­times the coun­try needs a Pres­i­dent, not a partisan.

In the hours after the San Bernardi­no mas­sacre, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma yield­ed to his basest impuls­es, using the hor­rif­ic act to divide, to cast blame, to strike a moral pose and to slan­der his polit­i­cal oppo­nents, sug­gest­ing their resis­tance to his restric­tive gun law pro­pos­als impli­cat­ed them in the atrocities.

Four days lat­er, a chas­tened Pres­i­dent at last acknowl­edged that San Bernardi­no didn’t fit the “pat­tern of mass shoot­ings” he had sought to politi­cize. The U.S. had suf­fered the dead­liest ter­ror­ist attack since 9/11, the fourth on its soil dur­ing his tenure.  Instead of shift­ing blame, he tac­it­ly con­ced­ed failure.

He was, in a word, presidential.

His state­ment large­ly shunned divi­sive­ness, say­ing Amer­i­cans togeth­er are “at war with ter­ror­ists,” a for­mu­la­tion favored by his pre­de­ces­sor but one he has typ­i­cal­ly avoid­ed. Indeed, he used the term “ter­ror” or its cog­nates 21 times in the 13-minute address, almost cer­tain­ly a record for him.

He said this “ter­ror­ist threat has evolved into a new phase,” cit­ing dead­ly attacks in Boston, Chat­tanooga, San Bernardi­no and Fort Hood (which he had pre­vi­ous­ly termed work­place vio­lence) as man­i­fes­ta­tions of jihadism’s new template.

He declared that he has “no greater respon­si­bil­i­ty than the secu­ri­ty of the Amer­i­can peo­ple” and sought to assure the coun­try that he is up to that respon­si­bil­i­ty.  On that point, he stumbled.

“Many Amer­i­cans are ask­ing whether we are con­front­ed by a can­cer that has no imme­di­ate cure,” he said, pos­ing a ques­tion he should have left unasked, since he had no good answer. He offered up only bro­mides, say­ing “we will over­come” the ter­ror­ist threat even­tu­al­ly by being “strong and smart, resilient and relentless.”

For him, that means more of the same old, same old – “hunt down ter­ror­ist plot­ters,” train and equip mul­ti­ple war­ring fac­tions in Syr­ia and Iraq, work with allies, and urge the “inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty” to work toward “cease­fires and a polit­i­cal res­o­lu­tion to the Syr­i­an war.” All cours­es he has been pur­su­ing, to lit­tle effect.

He wants Con­gress to pass laws to pre­vent peo­ple on no-fly lists from buy­ing guns (which would not have pre­vent­ed any of the ter­ror attacks on U.S. soil), make it hard­er for peo­ple “to buy pow­er­ful assault weapons” (the assault weapons used in San Bernardi­no are banned under Cal­i­for­nia law), tough­en screen­ings for peo­ple who come to the U.S. with­out visas, and autho­rize the unau­tho­rized war he has been wag­ing in Syr­ia and Iraq since August of last year.

The Pres­i­dent, in short, has no “imme­di­ate cure” for the “can­cer” of Islam­ic terrorism.

Like his pre­de­ces­sors, he will leave the strug­gle unfin­ished.  Clin­ton large­ly ignored it, stand­ing by as al Qae­da took root in Afghanistan and con­duct­ed an esca­lat­ing series of attacks on U.S. over­seas assets, cul­mi­nat­ing in 9/11.  Bush respond­ed mil­i­tar­i­ly, ulti­mate­ly achiev­ing a suc­cess­ful coun­terin­sur­gency in Iraq, but incur­ring a human toll that soured the pub­lic on dis­patch­ing ground troops to bat­tle fanat­i­cal Muslims.

Oba­ma squan­dered the gains from that coun­terin­sur­gency by pulling all U.S. troops out of Iraq, pur­sued regime change – suc­cess­ful­ly in Libya, less so in Syr­ia – that unleashed chaos, blood­shed and refugee crises on two con­ti­nents, and foment­ed anti‑U.S. sen­ti­ment among Mus­lims by using drone strikes to take out jihadist lead­ers, assas­si­na­tions that have not hob­bled, much less destroyed, al Qae­da and the Islam­ic State or deterred ter­ror­ists from attack­ing the U.S. and Europe.

The Pres­i­dent is nev­er­the­less “con­fi­dent” of our even­tu­al suc­cess “because we are on the right side of his­to­ry.”  But his­to­ry has no right or wrong sides.  It is an unblink­ing chron­i­cle of recur­ring night­mares.  Repres­sion and war, hatred and bar­barism are durable com­po­nents of the human con­di­tion, occur­ring in every age and afflict­ing every cul­ture. The world view of the devout Mus­lims of the Islam­ic State would be very much at home in the sev­enth cen­tu­ry.  Four­teen cen­turies of his­to­ry have not erased their apoc­a­lyp­tic bent and ter­ri­to­r­i­al ambi­tions or curbed their appetite for brutality.

The invis­i­ble force of his­to­ry will not win the war against Islam­ic ter­ror­ism.  That is up to us.  The Pres­i­dent – like his crit­ics – lacks a win­ning strat­e­gy.  But he has at least come to appre­ci­ate the seri­ous­ness of the moment.

In that respect, he has become more presidential.