A Tire Iron to a Duck's Knees

Bush has decided to play an odd game of chicken on the Port Authority issue. Public opinion is overwhelmingly opposed to this take over of New York's ports, along with Baltimore "Sum of All Fears" Harbor and four other major US ports. Of course, we are less than 9 months away from Congressional elections, and Republicans can read the polls as well as anyone else. The Democrats are giving Bush a taste of his "Pre-9/11" medicine. The Republicans are running for cover, with Bill Frist sounding more like Harry Reid when discussing overriding Bush's threat of veto. Bush has decided to see who will blink first on this one. If you saw the 2004 debates, you know that Bush can blink pretty fast.

The deal sounds bad from the get go. I'm not thrilled with government outsourcing. I believe competition is the key to economic success, but there are some places, like running the city's port, where you can't have competition. Far better for a public monopoly that is answerable to the people than a private monopoly that is answerable only to shareholders to run the public infrastructure. In this case, the company is a publicly owned one, but owned by the United Arab Emirates government. You don't have to be an anti-Muslim bigot to worry about a state that supported the Taliban running our nation's harbors.

There must be something more to this than meets the eye. Why is Bush willing to risk his Presidency over this issue? Perhaps he doesn't see the possible backlash, but his advisors can't be that blind. Does the UAE have something over Bush? Are they calling in their chips on this one? Does this have more to do with backdoor deals than what we are seeing?

This story has a lot more traction before it fades into Washington scandal history. Bush has precious little left of that political capital he bragged about a year ago. Is he going to squander it to enrich the UAE?

I will make one prediction: If Bush vetoes the bill overturning this, and his veto is overridden--the votes are already there to do it--then he might as well spend the rest of his presidency quail hunting in Crawford with Dick Cheney.