Backing Down

This was a pleasant surprise on my birthday:

The state-owned Dubai company seeking to manage some terminal operations at six American ports dropped out of the deal on Thursday, bowing to an unrelenting bipartisan attack in Congress that swept aside President Bush's efforts.

That's good. I'm glad that we've taken a step - although it was the company here that took the step, not the Bush administration - towards securing our own ports with our own management.


However, I think the NYT article misses something key:

The action averted a showdown with Congress that Mr. Bush was all but certain to lose, as signaled on Wednesday by a 62-to-2 vote of the House Appropriations Committee to reject the transfer, because it allowed the sale of some terminal operations to an Arab state company.

...

"This was clearly not a business decision made by DP World," a senior administration official said. "It was a strategic decision made by the U.A.E. to avoid further damage."

Well, replace strategic with political and U.A.E. with Bush, and maybe then you have the truth of the matter. Once again we can see that Bush puts the PR in PResident, and the only person he is working for is himself.