But from a different angle. Read it ALL here.

An excerpt:

I remain unconvinced that the fate of the free world rests on who manages a percentage of our ports, but I think that Bush's handling of the issue reveals something at least as important.

About the controversy, last night on Savage's show a veteran of port operations seemed the opposite of concerned, largely because 1) the unions control practically everything that happens at our ports, regardless of who does the managing, and 2) port security protocols are already a matter of public knowledge so there's not much to steal. I didn't hear the end so I can't say whether Savage ended up changing his position. Kevin Drum has joined the non-outraged coalition of him and, as far as I can tell, Glenn Greenwald. [Update: UAE co-owned BCCI? Jeebus. That'll bump my concern up a few notches.]

What strikes me more than the mortal danger to our republic is the stark way that this highlights the president's deficiencies as a leader. Josh Marshall touches on this, and I would only add that if this deal is as ordinary as some claim then the president should be able to sell it to his country. A majority in both houses would be perfectly happy to get his back politically, as long as he gave them some time for coordination. Instead he basically blindsided them. Savage unsurprisingly took credit for getting this story out about a week and a half ago, but wherever it came from it seems like most Republican politicians heard about it for the first time when livid constituents began clogging their phone lines. Putting your allies in a position of panicked damage-control isn't a great way to build support. Rumsfeld's story is even stranger - he hadn't heard about the deal until this weekend, even though he sat on the board that unanimously approved the decision. Seriously? There's another reason why some have argued that the few who survived the 2005 cabinet axe should have been the first to go.

If this thing really isnt such a big deal, as Drum and Savage's caller allege, then it's possible that the administration simply didn't pay much attention to it themselves until it blew up in their faces. If so the leadership test becomes a question of reassuring freaked-out allies rather than laying the groundwork for a potentially-controversial policy. It seems like that's the case here, considering that damage control didn't set in at the White House until most of Congress already had hordes of seething constituents to deal with. Coburn or Frist might love to get the president's back in normal circumstances, but if they don't make some gesture here home-state editorials, local talk radio and water-cooler chat will paint them as chumps.

Like a shell-shocked quarterback Bush called the same play that got him an easy touchdown on the first possession, a few first downs on the second possession and a series of embarrassing sacks ever since. He dug in his heels, rejected compromise and painted the 'opposition' as morally compromised. At an earlier time the policy was Iraq and the opposition was unpatriotic. Later the policy was Harriet Miers and the opposition hated women. Now it's port security and the opposition isn't serious about protecting America. If this is your first time on the pointed end of the Bush slime machine, welcome to the party. Stretching the football analogy, let me point out that in supervising the Executive branch Congress basically acts as the head coach, and the head coach has spent most of this game drinking at Applebees. There are remedies to a quarterback making a series of retarded calls but they only work when the coach is in the stadium.

And we all know the coach has been absent without leave for sometime now.

Perhaps a bigger issue at hand here, are the polls which show the Republicans having their hat handed to them in the next election. Riding Bush's coat tails has been a bigger sport than "quail hunting," for the last couple of years. With Bush's poll numbers in the basement, scandal after scandal rocking the administration and the Republican controlled Congress, it would be a fair bet that there will be some backlash come election time, and this presents just the kind of, "safe," issue, for the Republicans to "demonstrate," that they are not puppets for the Administration. On the other hand, Bush may blink... At any rate, it will be interesting to see how this all washes out...

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