National Security Becomes Top Issue

Gerald Seib notes “two factors — the rapid rise of Islamic State as a broad threat to the international order and the likelihood of a highly controversial nuclear deal with Iran — are driving national security higher on the agenda than seemed likely just a few months ago. And that, in turn, scrambles the political calculus in both parties.”

“This change doesn’t mean foreign policy will trump economic concerns as a 2016 area of emphasis, merely that it won’t take the back seat that seemed likely not long ago. The broadest issue atop the agenda still figures to be the widespread sense of middle-class stagnation: the sense that even as the economy improves on a macro level, on the micro level many families aren’t seeing commensurate improvement in wages, job security or economic confidence.”

“But that sense of domestic unease now will share more of the stage with a sense of global uncertainty.”