Our daddy has spoken to us.  He cannot tell us everything will be all right---since nobody can and unlike his predecessor he has decided that pretending to have the ability to cloud men's minds (or whatever other fictional character the prior president fancied himself to be) was not what a President does.  

Hence all he could say was what you ought to have already believed:

that we are doing everything in our power to keep you and your family safe and secure during this busy holiday season

and, presumably, thereafter.

From the Washington Post's review of Suskind's One Per Cent Solution:  

Tenet and his loyalists also settle a few scores with the White House here. The book's opening anecdote tells of an unnamed CIA briefer who flew to Bush's Texas ranch during the scary summer of 2001, amid a flurry of reports of a pending al-Qaeda attack, to call the president's attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US." Bush reportedly heard the briefer out and replied: "All right. You've covered your ass, now."

So, yeh, from the perspective of one who wants my government to do as much as it can do to protect me, my family, and my fellow humans trying to live on this earth from those who want to kill us, I think we have progressed.

I did not need to be told (though I guess others did) that

Those plotting against us seek not only to undermine our security, but also the open society and the values that we cherish as Americans. This incident, like several that have preceded it, demonstrates that an alert and courageous citizenry are far more resilient than an isolated extremist.

I knew that.