The candidates for president—Republican and Democratic alike—have spent the last few days folding sheets of paper in half, pressing the unbearable Paris tragedy between the two sides, and then describing to the country what they see in the resulting blot.
Their interpretations tell us more than we could ever have expected to learn from their reality-show posturing in the debates, or from their playful speeches, or from their preening tweets.
The difference between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, for example, has never been more stark than it was at the Democratic debate following the attacks. When the moderator asked the candidates for an example of a crisis they'd faced, Clinton talked about her contributions to the hunt that killed Osama bin Laden. Sanders, on the other hand, described a fight—that he lost—over a veterans' bill. And Martin O'Malley came off as a pleasant man clearing his throat at a dinner party.
Sanders is in his element when he's talking about economic gamesmanship, income inequality, and the rich getting richer. He's standing firmly by his assessment that climate change is the greatest threat to national security—and he's right to do so. But in the days after a terrorist attack, it seems like a crazy claim.
More than 120 innocent people were just killed. In reconstructing the crime scene, it's a lot easier to draw a line from their bodies to the gunmen than from their bodies to a refugee crisis, then to a civil war, then to a prolonged drought, then to carbon emissions, and then to the tailpipe of your minivan.
Clinton, on the other hand, is completely comfortable describing the labyrinth of political factions in the Middle East, identifying the appropriate roles of American allies, and differentiating between our various enemies.
In the context of international terrorist attacks, how could Sanders possibly hope to stand up to a former secretary of state in the race to be commander in chief? Does Sanders perhaps already occupy the office in which he could do the most good? Or is the focus on foreign policy a red herring, and the world would be better off with the United States avoiding world conflict in favor of repairing our domestic economic policy?
Whatever the case, we'll see far tougher conflict once the dust of the primaries settle and Clinton or Sanders face a Republican opponent.
In the aftermath of the terror, the Republican candidates have landed on a particularly tender issue to whip up their bases: the resettlement of refugees. An estimated three million Syrians fled the country and are temporarily settled in neighboring countries; 6.5 million more are displaced and still in Syria. The Obama administration had begun work on a plan to resettle just 10,000 of those people in the United States, which means that now Republicans can turn around to their base and accuse the Democrats of importing terrorists.
"President Obama and Hillary Clinton's idea that we should bring tens of thousands of Syrian Muslim refugees to America—it is nothing less than lunacy," Ted Cruz told Fox News. He said this while at a campaign stop entitled "Rally for Religious Liberty."
"Our president wants to take in 250,000 from Syria," said Donald Trump, which is not actually true, but what else is new. "We cannot let them into this country, period. Our country has tremendous problems. We can't have another problem."
He added, "You're going to have to watch and study the mosques."
Ben Carson's response to the attacks was unsurprisingly vague. The Republican front-runner-for-the-moment struggled to articulate a specific reaction on Fox News, even with coaching from host Chris Wallace. "Extending, you know, our support to the French," Carson guessed his response to the attacks would be as president, as well as asking for help from "all of the Arab states." He added, "Boots on the ground would probably be important." Probably!
Cruz took a horrifying stance last weekend. "Those who are fleeing persecution should be resettled in the Middle East and majority Muslim countries," he said. "Christians who are being targeted for genocide or persecution, Christians who are being beheaded or crucified, we should be providing safe haven to them."
Rand Paul used the opportunity to remind supporters that he introduced a bill that would have heightened security screening of immigrants, but he refused to talk about what he'd do in Syria or Iraq. Marco Rubio accused an entire "civilization" of attacking Paris and compared Islam to the Nazi Party.
Oddly enough, Jeb Bush was one of the only candidates talking at least some shred of sense. He at least addressed the necessity of confronting ISIS, rather than just babbling about domestic immigration policy. And he said he's "prepared to take a tiny fraction of the people that are coming, and they should be thoroughly screened, for sure."
As of this writing, Bush is hovering at fifth place in the polls, right behind Cruz, the guy who says we should impose a religious test on all incoming refugees. Bush's poll numbers have been sinking steadily since the summer.
The attacks aren't just a Rorschach test for the candidates, they're a test for all Americans: Do you see an advancing mob of terrorists, or an obligation to help those in need, or an armed conflict, or an environmental catastrophe? A war we must fight, or a war we can only watch?
We use inkblots to make sense of feelings so intense that we cannot articulate them. A year from now, we won't simply be electing our next president—we'll be issuing our collective consensus on the meaning of the tragedy in Paris.