The Bush administration did nothing wrong in how it first handled the ports issue. The deal was announced in November 2005 and caused nary a ripple for three months (until 2/13/06, via WSJ). So processing the deal through normal channels was the correct thing to do — vetting it with the appropriate Homeland Security authorities, etc. What were they supposed to do, raise a fuss when they thought the security issues have been appropriately dealt with, and there was no opposition to the deal voiced anywhere? We even understand the initial reaction of President Bush to say he would veto any law prohibiting the deal from going through. After all, he had seen such tempests in teapots — not exactly on point, but the NSA “scandal” and the “killing” of the Patriot Act had showed the intemperate nature of Congress, as had the hysterical calls by Democrats for immediate withdrawal from Iraq a few months ago. We further understand why there may be very important reasons for the Bush administration to do all it can to maximize America’s relationship and trust with the UAE. We have said we ourselves do not oppose the ports deal.

We do fault the administration a bit for its seemingly slow response to the volcanic emotional eruption of the American people at the ports deal — a response that we have explained at length was powered by revulsion at the cartoon riots and similar Islamist provocations. On the other hand, there was really not much the administration could say without looking weak or appear to be overtly pandering to the sentiments produced by the Cartoon Riots.

The key thing all along has been to resolve the matter quickly, to make it go away faster than you can say “Harriet Miers.” Here’s the scenario we would have suggested. Someone (Dick Cheney, John Snow, Bush pere, someone outside the administration?) should place a discreet call to a financier like Pete Peterson, former Secretary of Commerce in the Nixon administration, former CEO of Lehman Brothers, and Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations — and current Senior Chairman of the Blackstone Group, to arrange a quick LBO of the US operations to have been purchased by Dubai Ports World. Blackstone would have been our first choice because of the financial and political pedigree of Pete Peterson, among other factors. Carlyle Group would have also been an excellent choice, except for Michael Moore and Fahrenheit 911.

Now that Dubai has pulled out and it’s all over but the shouting, we will learn soon who the new purchaser is for the US operations of the P&O assets. If it is Blackstone, you heard it here first.

UPDATE

We enjoyed this piece on the ports from Combs spouts off.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 9th, 2006 at 4:26 pm and is filed under Democrats, General, Religion, Republicans, War, business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.