The controversy over letting a company owned by an Arab government control the management of six American ports is one of those rare issues that put Bush at odds in an emotional and visceral way with his conservative base. It’s like Harriet Miers on steroids with right-wing talk radio aflame and grassroots activists radiating outrage.
On Capitol Hill there was an odd sense of exhilaration as Republicans and Democrats came together to bash Bush for letting the deal get this far. The debate is so explosive, touching on everything from the excesses of globalism to accusations of racism that Bush is fortunate that Dubai Ports World has given him at least a temporary out: the announcement that while it will go ahead with closing the deal, it will “not exercise control” over its new U.S. operations for the time being. This could give the White House time to win congressional support or find a face-saving exit. It’s certainly not in President Bush’s interest to let this come to a veto and have the only veto of his presidency overridden by a rebellious Congress.
An issue that divides Bush from his conservative base on national security is manna from heaven for the Democrats. Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow with the Democratic Leadership Council and a former advisor to John McCain, calls the flap over port management the national security equivalent of the crime bill that set the stage for the Republican sweep of Congress in 1994. President Clinton’s crime bill was ridiculed by Republicans for advocating “midnight basketball,” a program that symbolized the administration’s emphasis on prevention over punishment. The phrase became a laugh line on the campaign trail for Republicans to mock Democrats.
This is blowback for the way the Bush administration exploited Homeland Security in the ’02 midterm elections, Wittmann says. Democrats got morphed into Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden in campaign ads for pushing labor protections for Homeland Security bureaucrats, which the Bushies characterized as putting special interests over national security interests. “That’s the way Democrats will use this in ’06,” says Wittmann. Any downside for Democrats? “This is a freebie,” he says. “It’s one of the rare moments where God smiles on Democrats.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11546540/site/newsweek/