For President Obama, it could have been worse. But the unsuccessful attempt to bring down a Northwest Airlines passenger plane over Detroit on Christmas Day is still bad enough news. And it became worse when homeland security chief Janet Napolitano announced that the system had worked - a statement that ranks right up there with George W Bush's "Great work Brownie" during the Katrina flood. Nor did Mr. Obama's initial refusal to interrupt his Hawaiian vacation add to the image of strong presidential leadership, especially after Republicans battered away in search of short-term political advantage.
Now links are being drawn between the perpetrator of the near-miss - who is known to have spent time in Yemen - and al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula, which has made a credible claim of responsibility for the attack. Last night, ABC News released shocking photos of the lengths to which that organization will go to perpetrate its attacks on "innocent civilians" - in President Obama's terms, but a description that al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula presumably does not share.
As it happens, the second in command of that organization, Said Ali al-Shihri, was released from the prison at Guantanamo to a special Saudi Arabian rehabilitation program in 2007 -- a program that appears not to have been a total success, to say the least. As a result, there will be further delays in the President's already-delayed commitment to close Guantanamo, where Yemeni nationals still constitute the largest single group of detainees looking for a home, despite the recent release of six of them by Mr. Obama.
All of this may put additional pressure on Parliament's decision to pull out of Afghanistan in 2011 - unless, that is, the Obama administration reverses course in that war beforehand. More immediately, it spells trouble for those seeking Omar Khadr's return to Canada without standing trial for allegedly killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan.
With the lowest approval rating of any elected president since Gallup began polling in the 1950s, already vulnerable on national security issues and facing dim prospects in the 2010 midterm elections, President Obama will now be less likely to accede to any Canadian request to repatriate Mr. Khadr. Were the Supreme Court to order the Harper government to make such a request, the only result would be to further cement in the eyes of some Americans the image of a country that does not take security issues as seriously as they do. And the price for that image would be paid by Canadian travelers - in time and inconvenience - and by Canadian exporters - in jobs.