The View From Here . . .

Last week's column railed at the excessive media coverage given to Dick Cheney's unfortunate hunting accident. However, after this week's flap about the transfer of certain operations at United States ports, to Dubai Ports World, Inc., an entity owned by the government of Dubai, the White House may wish that the niceties of quail hunting remained the hot topic of the day.

Basically, the proposed deal, under which Dubai Port would be the successor to a British company currently performing the same operational functions, allows the company to manage six United States ports. The workers would generally remain unionized American citizens. However, security would continue to be the responsibility of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Coast Guard. The transaction was approved by a working group of midlevel official of 12 agencies within the Administration conducted through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

Of course, as critics of the deal were quick to point out, there is a considerable difference, at least optically, between the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates, the confederation of which Dubai is a part. Two of the 9/11 hijackers were citizens of the UAE and money used to fund the attacks was apparently laundered through the UAE banking system, although significant steps have been taken since to tighten loopholes in the system. The UAE recognized the Taliban government and does not recognize Israel.

The Bush Administration, however, emphasized the other side of the argument concerning Dubai and pictured the UAE as a valuable and key ally in the war on terror and in Iraq, which had repeatedly cooperated with the United States. Portraying the opposition to the Dubai Ports deal as anti-Arab bias, the President vowed to veto any bill blocking the transaction.

While the White House may ultimately prove right on the merits, it earns very low grades for the political response to this matter. Both talk radio and numerous blogs, and not just the anti-Bush ones in either case, raised serious questions and strong opposition to the project, with little initial response from the Administration. One would think that the President and his political strategists would have addressed these understandable concerns before things got out of hand. Disclosures that Mr. Bush had not learned about the ports deal until shortly before its announcement and that cabinet secretaries had been left out of the loop certainly did not help either.

According to a Rasmussen poll, Democrats actually now have a lead among those polled on the national security issue, a sharp turnaround from the usual situation and numerous polls have shown a decline in the President's approval rating of five to seven points during the last week, which also saw some escalated violence in Iraq.

As this is written, it appear that a respectable compromise may be in the offing, in the way of an enhanced 45-day review of the transaction. This probably makes sense, both in itself and in light of the overheated state of the discussion. It also may lead to measures to improve security at our ports, which raises significant concerns completely unrelated to the identity of the operator.

Still, this has not been a good two weeks for the Bush Administration. We have gone from a Vice President who couldn't shoot straight on a hunting trip to a whole administration seemingly not able to shoot straight politically.