If that phrase sounds familiar, it’s because Joe Biden uttered it on Wednesday about the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). He said it, I suspect, in part because he recognizes that over the last two weeks, America’s foreign-policy debate has turned Jacksonian in a way that could cause the Obama administration a great deal of trouble.

I’m not talking about the elite debate. Foreign-policy elites began growing more hawkish almost a year ago, after Barack Obama abandoned his plans to bomb Syria for using chemical weapons and Russia swallowed Crimea. But until recently, those elite criticisms enjoyed little public traction. That’s because, in Mead’s terminology, they were largely Wilsonian and Hamiltonian. Wilsonians were upset about Bashar al-Assad’s human-rights violations and Russia’s offenses against international law. Hamiltonians feared that unless America acted forcefully, our declining credibility would undermine world order.

But Wilsonianism and Hamiltonianism are largely elite traditions, and the public was unmoved. When Obama asked Congress to support military strikes against Assad last fall, the public overwhelmingly said no. For all the denunciations of Obama’s Ukraine policy this summer by Beltway hawks, Republican congressional candidates barely mentioned it. Up until very recently, public opinion was strongly “Jeffersonian.” Americans generally told pollsters that their government was too militarily entangled overseas already.

The beheadings of James Foley and Steven Sotloff have changed that. Republican Senate candidates in Alaska, Georgia, and New Hampshire are now tying their Democratic opponents to Obama’s supposed lack of a strategy against ISIS. Democratic Senators Bill Nelson and Tim Kaine are urging Congress to authorize the president to bomb the Sunni extremist group in Syria and Iraq. Last September, when YouGov.com asked Americans whether they supported air strikes “against Syria,” only 20 percent said yes. Last week, by contrast, when it asked whether Americans supported strikes “against ISIS militants in Syria,” 63 percent said yes.

In narrow policy terms, the arguments for military intervention have not improved over the last two weeks. It’s still not clear if Iraq’s government is inclusive enough to take advantage of American attacks and wean Sunnis from ISIS. It’s even less clear if the U.S. can bomb ISIS in Syria without either empowering Assad or other Sunni jihadist rebel groups.

But politically, that doesn’t matter. What’s causing this Jacksonian eruption is the sight of two terrified Americans, on their knees, about to be beheaded by masked fanatics. Few images could more powerfully stoke Jacksonian rage. The politicians denouncing Obama for lacking a “strategy” against ISIS may not have one either, but they have a gut-level revulsion that they can leverage for political gain. “Bomb the hell out of them!” exclaimed Illinois Senator Mark Kirk on Tuesday. “We ought to bomb them back to the Stone Age,” added Texas Senator Ted Cruz. These aren’t policy prescriptions. They are cries for revenge.