New York Times this morning: “The looming federal budget crunch, waning predictions of attacks on the United States and bipartisan criticism may mean the end of lavish spending on counterterrorism.”

The looming federal budget crunch, a sense that major attacks on the United States are unlikely and new bipartisan criticism of the sprawling counterterrorism bureaucracy may mean that the open checkbook era is nearing an end.

While the presidential candidates have clashed over security for American diplomats in Libya, their campaigns have barely mentioned domestic security. That is for a reason: fewer than one-half of 1 percent of Americans, in a Gallup poll in September, said that terrorism was the country’s most important problem.        

Below: Trendline of Gallup surveys on terrorism as “most important’ problem