Which 2016 Contender Has an Answer for ISIS?

The carnage in France on Friday immediately reverberated through the 2016 presidential race, sending campaigns scrambling to explain how they would react to a critical commander-in-chief test: the ‘3 a.m. call.”

For Hillary Clinton, there’s never been a better – or riskier – time to show how she’d answer.

About 24 hours after the terrorist attacks rocked Paris, Clinton, Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley will take to the stage in Iowa for a debate that was retooled at the last minute in order to focus on terrorism and foreign policy.

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“Hillary is probably advantaged because people are going to more comfortable with her on national security than Sanders. It could hurt Hillary, but that would require Sanders to create a causal story [that links her policies to the attacks] that politicians have trouble making,” said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “The question is whether it will resonate.”

For both political parties, the Paris crisis is a moment in the campaign where they have to demonstrate whether they have the character, experience and maturity to respond adequately in a moment of crisis and will force candidates to be more specific about how to address a complex threat in Iraq and Syria.

“The typical arguments of 'let's get tougher' won't work — because these are not simple questions,” said Gartenstein-Ross. “So far the debate has been about: 'let's get more hawkish in Syria,' but that doesn't address the fundamental question: who do you get more hawkish with? Do you get more hawkish with Assad? Do you go after ISIS and maintain the view that Assad can stay? Do you go after them both of them simultaneously?”

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