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www.cumberlink.com/articles/2006/02/23/editorial/rich_lewis/lewis01.txt
Symbol virtuosos strike sour note
By Rich Lewis, Feb 23, 2005
Omigod, have you heard?
Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Ted Kennedy and the rest of the liberal gang want to sell America’s seaport terminals to the United Arab Emirates, a country just down the Persian Gulf from Iraq and a short swim to Iran!
Oh, wait.
It’s not Hillary, Chuck and Ted who are pushing to sell the terminals in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Newark, Miami and New Orleans to the UAE.
It’s President Bush.
What in the world has gone wrong at the White House?
The great frustration for Democrats during the Bush Administration — and really since 1972 — has been that Republicans have controlled the symbolism on almost every key public issue. Mom (feminism/abortion), the flag (patriotism/terrorism) and apple pie (tradition/family values) — all owned and operated by the GOP.
Republicans have parlayed this advantage into total control of the government — the presidency, the House and Senate, and now the Supreme Court.
The Bush team has effectively pounded Democrats into dust with these tokens of Americanism, especially the flag. In the wake of 9/11 and concerns over terrorism, it has successfully painted most Democrats as wobbly at best and traitors at worst.
Then, out of the blue, this gigantic mistake.
To summarize the situation: The Bush administration recently approved the sale of a British company that manages terminals at the six American cities to state-controlled Dubai Ports World, in Dubai, one of the seven emirates that make up the UAE. Among those signing off on the deal was the Homeland Security Department, which considers ports as potential terrorist targets.
Over the last week, politicians from both parties have condemned the deal, including key Republicans at the federal and state levels.
As the Washington Post reported, House Speaker Dennis Hastert and other GOP leaders “sent word to the White House that conservative lawmakers and voters are furious over the notion that a country with terrorism links... would be managing U.S. seaports.”
Those “terrorism links” are a bit weak on substance, but very powerful on symbolism. As the New York Times reported, two of the 9/11 hijackers came from the UAE and laundered money through its banks. A Pakistani ran a “nuclear proliferation ring” from warehouses near Dubai and met Iranians there.
How hard would it be for Democrats to forge that information into a killer 30-second campaign commercial during a crucial House or Senate race next fall? Or the next presidential election?
Not very hard. And that’s why Republican politicians from coast to coast are, as the Post puts it, criticizing Bush “with an intensity rarely seen.”
The right-wing press has joined the chorus of angry voices. For example, Frank Gaffney wrote in the conservative Washington Times: “Entrusting information about key U.S. ports — including, presumably, government-approved plans for securing them — to say nothing of responsibility for controlling physical access to these facilities, to a country known to have been penetrated by terrorists is not just irresponsible. It is recklessly so.”
He called it “a lunatic idea.”
Majority Leader Bill Frist, the Republicans’ top gun in the Senate, threatened to introduce legislation to block the sale.
Astoundingly, the president held a press conference on Tuesday saying he would veto any such legislation. You have to remember that Bush has not vetoed a single bill in his entire five years in office — not one. Imagine a deep-voiced narrator intoning this little message on your TV: “The only bill President Bush saw fit to veto was the one trying to stop him from surrendering America’s seaports to Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum....”
For all I know, the sheikh, the prime minister of Dubai, is a good guy. But it would take an hour to explain that and undo the damage of the 30-second spot. It’s exactly that kind of rhetorical advantage the Republicans have enjoyed for years — but suddenly the shoe is on the other foot.
The president says the UAE is a close ally of the United States, and insists it’s a mistake to discriminate against Middle Eastern countries. He wants to know “why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard” than a British company?
Imagine if John Kerry made those remarks. Frenchified, flip-flopping, terrorist sympathizer. Just like a liberal to whine about playing fair when our lives are at stake.
Even worse, the White House admitted yesterday that Bush was unaware of the pending sale of the seaports until the deal already had been approved by his administration.
Hey, Ed, whip up a 30-second thing on this theme: “Why was the president asleep while his friends were selling our seaports to terrorists?”
I don’t know whether we should let the UAE have some management responsibilities for our seaports. Perhaps they are an important and reliable ally. Experts say that seaports have been globalized for over a decade, and, the Times reports, “foreign-based firms already control more than 30 percent of the port terminals in the United States.”
The president might well be on the right side of the argument — but he is totally on the wrong side of the symbolism.
And that is a shocking turnabout at a time when symbolism rules the roost.
Rich Lewis' e-mail address is rlcolumn@comcast.net
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