Here's the beginning of today's front-page Washington Post article headlined “Republicans see political opportunity in Obama response to failed airplane bomb”:

Republicans are jumping on President Obama's response to the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a U.S. airliner as the latest evidence that Democrats do not aggressively fight terrorism to protect the country, returning to a campaign theme that the GOP has employed successfully over the past decade.

Well, OK, but it's also a campaign theme that the GOP has employed unsuccessfully over the past decade. Why does the lede pretend otherwise? A more accurate and honest lede would describe it as “a campaign theme that the GOP has employed with mixed success over the past decade.” Or, even better, “a campaign theme that the GOP employed successfully in 2002 and 2004, but that has since been unsuccessful.”

Buried deep in the article, we see this passage:

Obama's approval rating on national security has remained relatively steady since he took office. In a mid-November Washington Post-ABC News poll, 53 percent of Americans said they approved of the way Obama was handling the threat of terrorism, while 41 percent said they disapproved.

But pollsters warned that the president's standing is tenuous ...

The “pollsters” in question turn out to be one pollster, Republican strategist Neil Newhouse.

Now take a look at the very end of the article -- literally the last sentences, after more nearly 1,100 words:

The Republican strategy is further complicated by the fact that the nation's counterterrorism intelligence and security procedures were created after Sept. 11, 2001, by Bush and congressional Republicans. Current watch-list systems were put in place years ago and have not changed. In addition, the former Guantanamo Bay detainees who showed up in the al-Qaeda leadership in Yemen were released by Bush two years ago.

Two paragraphs earlier, the Post had finally gotten around to telling readers that Republican Senator Jim DeMint has blocked President Obama's nominee to lead the TSA.

So the Post hypes the efficacy of Republican attacks on Democrats over national security despite the fact that in the past two elections those attacks have been spectacularly unsuccessful, buries poll data that shows that President Obama's approval rating on national security has remained steady despite months of Republican attacks, and tacks on at the very end an acknowledgement that the Republican attacks are undermined by their own actions. They must think this is how you win a Pulitzer now that Politico has a spot on the prize committee's board.