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'Portgate': The implacable incompetence of a Bush Administration
NSNBC
Bob Shrum
February 23, 2006

Everyone's missing the essential point about "Portgate." What's dubious about the Dubai deal isn't the possibility of an Arab-owned company running American ports – you can't automatically profile it into the outer darkness, or rather the outer harbor, but the implacable incompetence of a Bush Administration that no longer seems to get anything right –from Hurricane Katrina to Iraq to Social Security to Homeland Security. Why didn't the Administration subject Dubai's takeover of port management to the 45-day review in cases that could impact national security? Why wasn't the President told, or the Secretary of Defense – and why didn't they get their ducks in a row with Congress? They now say "trust us" – which is hard to do when they've dissembled on weapons of mass destruction, miscalculated the likelihood of an insurgency after invading Iraq, and distorted or suppressed scientific facts on global warming, stem-cell research, and Terri Schiavo. They couldn't even tell a straight story about a Vice President who didn't shoot straight. They can't ask for trust because they haven't earned it; after five seemingly eternal years in office, they don't have a credibility gap; they have a credibility chasm.

The port issue is the latest symbol of the collapsing Presidency of George Bush. Once the process begins, it doesn't stop – unless, like Ronald Reagan after Iran-Contra, you own up to your mistakes. That seems as likely with George W. Bush as, say, Dubai deciding to recognize Israel. What is not only likely, but already underway, is a headlong Republican flight from Bush, who now has a classic case of reverse coat-tails. To be non-partisan about it, think Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election, when Democrats lost 12 Senate seats. Remarkably, the Republican break with Bush is coming over the issue of security, the trump card that saved him from folding in 2004 in what was essentially a 9/11 election. He never deserved the credit he claimed; imagine how much safer from terrorism we'd  be if the $1 trillion cost of the Iraq war had been spent on strengthening homeland security?

But the image was different: Bush was the tough guy, the man with the bullhorn; he might be wrong on other issues, but not security. Now he looks like the uninformed, indifferent place-holder whose press secretary says the Dubai takeover and the implications for port security don't rise to a "presidential level." Then what does – and how can you claim to be the terror-fighter if you're not even looking at the frontlines of the battle?

As Bush sinks toward Cheney's 29 percent approval rating, Republicans don't want to run with him; fearful of losing the House or the Senate in November, they're rushing to run away from him, boasting that if he does veto a bill to stop or delay the Dubai deal, they'll override it. Imagine, the first veto of Bush's tenure could be construed as facilitating a possible threat to national security. We have now entered the long goodbye of the Bush Presidency, which will be marked by failure in Iraq and futility on most other issues except maybe packing the U.S. Supreme Court. (And smart Republicans know they should be careful what they wish for: A Republican-engineered reversal of Roe v. Wade would bring down terrible electoral retribution.)

Bush can't even play the old Nixon trick of packing up his troubles in Air Force One and flying off to a foreign trip – to say, Egypt, where Nixon was cheered by millions just before he was forced to resign. Where could Bush go? Unless they put an isolating bubble over his motorcade and kept the crowds off the streets, he'd be engulfed by protests. Because of him, America's standing in the rest of the world has fallen to an all-time low. Maybe he could try Dubai – or maybe not given that some of the 9/11 hijackers came from there or laundered money there and it was one of only three nations that recognized the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. If Dubai isn't a safe destination for a Bush visit, then maybe America's ports aren't safe in Dubai's hands. Let's at least find out by postponing the decision and conducting the 45-day review that already should have happened.

Bush is waist deep in New York Harbor; you just know there's another wave, another mistake, heading his way. And the Republicans, try as they might to escape the ineluctable tides of Bush's incompetence, are likely to be hit full force in the 2006 election.

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