The Administration Shoots; Dr. Potomac Scores!

I had a friendly wager with several co-workers today over the ports controversy. (For those who have been working on their fall-out shelters for the past 72 hours, the Administration has been roasting inside a firestorm of its own making by signing off on a deal to have a Middle East-based firm take over management of most of the major ports on the East and Gulf Coasts.) My co-workers took the position that this was one huge mistake; the Department of Homeland Security had put this package together without consulting the White House. It was just another “heckuva job” moment in the sad, short history of DHS.

I demurred from this theory; the story, I argued, was probably much worse. Not only had the White House been briefed it was going to aggressively support the idea of turning the ports over to Arab management. Why? To demonstrate in a tangible way that even in the midst of the global war on terror the U.S. can distinguish between friends and foes. Shortly after we made this wager, the President came out swinging in support of the deal.

Even if this policy was plausible in a theoretical sense, the politics are a disaster. A president with approval ratings in the high 30s, whose strong suit is national security, and whose party is clinging to a narrow majority with a general election strategy built on reminding the public that the opposition has the judgment of turnip on matters relating to keeping the country safe doesn’t walk a plank to put Abu Dhabi in charge of the arties of commerce.

About the only joy to be had in this story is the politically correct bind it has put the doyens of National Public Radio. On the one hand, any mistake by the Administration is a cause for rejoicing. On the other, one has to be careful about appearing to support nativism. It’s really a matter of having to choose between two first principles ("Bush is bad" and “we are not rubes”) and one could hear the tight, confused smiles through my car radio speakers.