Media can't get its brains around Trump's waterboarding statements

One of the reasons for the rise of ISIS is that America has no consensus on the matter of how we deal with terrorism, and I'm not even talking about specific tactics here. I'm talking about what exactly are our broader priorities, and the exchange at last Thursday night's debate over waterboarding between Donald Trump and Bret Baier - along with the subsequent media coverage of the story - is a perfect case in point. The issue is not so much waterboarding per se. It's the much broader question of how we want to present ourselves to the terrorists. The priority of the political class and the media is to make sure candidates promise they will never do certain icky things to terrorists, because these icky things are not who we are! But the priority of a president - by which I mean a serious president, not Obama - is to put fear and doubt in the minds of enemies. The best way to do that is, at least rhetorically, not to concede your right to use any option. Waterboard? Hey, why not? Something worse? Could be. Kill the terrorists' families? Boy, you never know. Order the military to do something illegal? Hey, they won't tell me no.