Dubai: The Dems hit the bottom, and Bush finds a graceful exit strategy

It was refreshing to hear of a graceful leadership move on the part of the Bush Administration this morning, as the Dubai-based company seeking management of six U.S. ports voluntarily (nudge-nudge, wink-wink, as reported in yesterday's NYT) asked for a full review of the deal. Everyone's interest is served: Congress, who gets to say they were tough on security; Bush, who gets to say he was right all along; and Dubai, which will get the contract at the end of the day.

There are two frustrating elements to this story: One is that Bush brought this upon himself by not doing the review process publicly to begin with. Yes, this kind of thing goes on all the time in the running of the U.S. government, but as Daniel Shor said last week on NPR, these days, when the word 'Arab' is involved, you have to be careful. Sad but true. It was Bush's stupidity or hubris (take your pick) that led to this situation.

But I could expect secrecy from the president. What else is new? What was more disturbing was the scaremongering of the Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Exclude a company from a contract simply because they're Arab-owned? Jews have a special role to play here in being sensitive to this kind of thing: The issue should be one of merit, not ethnicity. If you can do the job--which includes making sure security isn't breached--at the lowest price, you get the job, case closed. Good for Congress that it spoke up, but shame for the way much of it was done.