Is It Smart Politics To Exaggerate Terrorist Threats?

Photos captured from office building above Boston Marathon finish line moments bomb when off. Includes possible suspect fleeing the scene. Benjamin Thorndike

It's Smart Politics To Exaggerate Terrorist Threats -- Bruce Schneier, Special to CNN

(CNN) -- Terrorism causes fear, and we overreact to that fear. Our brains aren't very good at probability and risk analysis. We tend to exaggerate spectacular, strange and rare events, and downplay ordinary, familiar and common ones. We think rare risks are more common than they are, and we fear them more than probability indicates we should.

Our leaders are just as prone to this overreaction as we are. But aside from basic psychology, there are other reasons that it's smart politics to exaggerate terrorist threats, and security threats in general.

The first is that we respond to a strong leader. Bill Clinton famously said: "When people feel uncertain, they'd rather have somebody that's strong and wrong than somebody who's weak and right." He's right.

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My Comment: I am old enough to remember what the world was like pre-9/11 world .... alas .... that world is gone, and with the poltiical class being what it is .... something that I will probably never see again.