We can’t pretend anymore. The Bush White House is dysfunctional. I know organizations like moveon.org like to pretend there’s some great conspiracy going on in the White House, but there isn’t. There just isn’t. Maybe it would be more comforting if there were because at least we’d know our leaders are smart. But there is only amazing ineptitude. This is not only the Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, this is the gang that couldn’t figure out where they put their guns in the first place. Bush isn’t Nixon; he’s Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau. How else can you explain the Administration’s plan to turn our port security over to an Arab country with ties to 9/11 and the president thinking these guys are just like the British except they wear turbans? Here’s a president who hasn’t vetoed one piece of legislation in his two terms and he threatens to veto legislation that would enhance port security?
The White House has embarrassed its own Republican Congress with mid-year elections coming up. Putting aside for the moment whether the Dubai deal turns out to be more smoke than fire, no one in the White House – not even Karl Rove – realized the potential firestorm from the public inherent in their little surprise? Rove is known as Bush’s Brain from the documentary of the same name. Well, coming on top of Katrina, the president’s new drug program that has seniors needing a Rosetta Stone to figure out, and even the ineptness with how it dealt with the vice president’s hunting accident, the Dubai deal makes it official – Bush’s Brain is brain dead.
Fox News is even confused. How do you blame liberals for this one? Can we expect another sit down with Brit Hume? The president’s own congressional leaders can’t distance themselves quickly enough from him. Bush has become politically radioactive. You are forewarned that when Republican candidates next appear with the president, they will be wearing chemical protective suits.
We are told the president wasn’t really involved in the Dubai decision and was presumably watching "Dancing with the Stars" or maybe reading from "My Pet Goat" when Dubai was discussed. He also was a little late to find out about Katrina and no one bothered to wake him when his vice president shot his hunting partner. Based on Bush’s marvelous ability to sleep while nations crumble, he may well be remembered as The Lunesta President.
Media whipping boy Scott McClelland is already telling us perhaps the White House should have consulted with Congress before turning our port security over to Dubai. You think? The scrambling to recover from another bungle goes on. Dubai is pressured to say it agrees to a delay. Members of Congress will be briefed after the fact to try and get them on board – lots of luck with polls showing their constituents 90 percent against (Bush did say he would unite us). But there is no good way out of this latest White House mess anymore than there is a good way out of the chaos it has wrought in Iraq (civil war anyone?)
If it turns out the deal is a bad one for port security, how do you avoid the further political damage it does to us in the Arab world? Oh, you say you don’t care about what the Arabs think? Well, if we don’t win their hearts and minds, we don’t get their oil (that’s where 60 percent of the crude comes from, baby). You planning to turn in your SUV for a hybrid? I didn’t think so. And on top of the torture photo shoot at Abu Ghraib and our failure to restore even the basics like water and electricity to much of Iraq, we’re about as popular as bird flu in the Arab world and much of Europe right now. But this scare about our ports has uncovered a fact far more serious than who manages our port security.
Only 5 percent of the cargo coming into our ports is checked for things like nuclear bombs and anthrax. That’s because most of the money earmarked for security has been channeled into airline safety. And even airline security is pretty much relegated to a spot check of your luggage and having you take off your loafers when you check in. A normal reaction would be, hey, the president says we’re in a war for our survival, how about spending more money to protect the ports? But, you see, that’s where the Bush tax cuts come in. There isn’t any money left over after the president rewards his golfing buddies and Cheney’s hunting chums. The president brags there hasn’t been another attack in this country since 9/11. Hey, maybe it’s not what we’re doing; maybe Al Qaeda isn’t very good at what it does either – but that’s a different column for a different day.
In the end, it isn’t turning our ports over to Dubai that’s really the problem, it’s that we turned the White House over to the Bushies. They’re brain dead. And it will be another couple of years before we can turn off the respirator.
