Thursday, March 09, 2006

Call me a cynic

..and you'd be right. I was thinking just yesterday how this dust up over the UAE ownership of port authorities could be a White House maneuver. Wonkette just summed up what I was thinking:
...all we’ve just witnessed is an elaborate Rovian pageant designed to help those who are standing for re-election this year to have a big fat “stood up to the President” line-item on their resume.
The problem with that reasoning is that you'd have to believe that the White House was super competent to pull that off. I don't buy it. They're good at fear mongering, at heterosexism, at flag burning amendments, and at invading people's private lives, but they are not capable of pulling off such an elaborate scheme. Wonkette gets this next part right, though:
the Democrats have once again mistaken a “Bush mistake” for a “Democrat victory.”
Yep, they're going to claim some victory, but it's wrong. It will only strengthen the Republicans case that they are practicing oversight in the Congress when, in fact, they overwhelmingly are not. Instead of making a positive case, the Democrats spent some good opportunities on whining and bashing. Too bad.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The main problem with the whole ports thing is that it comes across to me as racism and fear mongering. A Chinese government owned company had the same job some time ago apparently, and they could be considered just as much an "enemy of democracy". If they seemed like an actual security risk in any way I might have a problem with it, but they don't. It's the current climate in the US to fear anything Arab.

Michael

B.D. said...

I tend to agree. I argued when this flared up that the Democrats should be careful not to let this thing turn into some xenophobic backlash. Some Democrats have done that (Ms. Clinton, for example has treaded these waters) as have several Republicans. A case can be made that the UAE is a security risk based on their assistance to 9-11 attackers, however a stronger case for such a thing could be made against the Saudis.

No, I would have gone after Republicans about A) port security in general - welcome to the party, jane come latelys, B) the process that wasn't followed properly, and C)the money involved as it concerned cabinet members.

Thanks for the comment, Michael!