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Both good and bad responses to successful terrorist attacks threaten government credibility, simply because they were successful. The key is for a government to prevent them from being successful in the first place.

Only bad disaster responses make administrations look pretty bad.

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That would imply that it would only be worth trying to prepare for hurricanes, because work there would improve public reception, while terrorist attacks would go badly no matter what you did.

Unless you prevent them from being successful in the first place.

As a side note, I wonder if there's also a bias that human minds are more easily controlled than forces of nature. That may also come into play here.

But FEMA can't prevent attacks, they only show up after something happens so there’a no incentive for the agency to focus on terrorism from that angle.

It’s harder to convince people that your suppressing imaginary hurricanes

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