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Drooling on the Pillow

Friday, February 24, 2006

I Hates Rabbits!! 



Like anyone cares what I think about the U.A.E. managing our ports.

Any-hoo . . .

I'm persuaded that this is another in a string of thunderous non-issues marching across our headlines by two facts:

Management of the ports has little or nothing to do with port security and no one in the world would have more to lose by a port disaster than an Arab nation that has been put in charge of them.

A couple of other points: one third of American ports are managed now by foreign companies. The Dubai firm in question has an excellent record of managing ports all over the world. Senator Clinton's bill to require only American companies to manage our ports would almost certainly hand the job over to Halliburton. I don't think she wants to go there and I'm certain the Administration doesn't.

As Daniel Henninger put it today in the WSJ's OpinionJournal:
What we have here is the dawn of the new Yosemite
Sam school of national politics. Put any news event
in front of our politicians now--Hurricane Katrina,
Terri Schiavo, Dick Cheney's quail or this week the
ports--and like Bugs Bunny's hair-triggered nemesis
they'll start spraying the landscape with wild remarks
and opinions decoupled from what is knowable about
these events. Wait to learn the facts--as almost alone,
Sen. John McCain, suggested? Why bother?
The notion that even if this is a good idea, it's presentation has been bungled by the administration is reminiscent of the instant consensus that Cheney's greatest sin was in waiting a day to put the Washington press corp in the know about his shooting a lawyer. I don't know. Maybe an administration not tied to the idea that everything has to play out according to a script laid out by a largely hostile press corp isn't such a bad thing.

Maybe what has some people so up in arms is the unfamiliar and uncomfortable fact of being treated as adults. It seems that we're not only becoming used to the news being managed for us, we're demanding it.
Posted by: Sluggo / 3:03 PM
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