LISTING TO PORT

The administration of George Bush the Elder was notorious for its thoroughgoing political tone-deafness. The best remembered incident is the tax cave-in to Congressional Democrats which, on one melancholy afternoon in August of 1990, irreparably split the Reagan coalition and delivered the '92 presidential election to the Democrats.

Justice Souter is another example -- perhaps more of political negligence than a political tin ear. And many remember repeated episodes of the White House making a policy announcement pleasing to conservatives, only to withdraw it later the same day. After the first few times you could practically form an office pool to guess by what hour of the afternoon the Official Retraction would come out.

Memories of this era and its unhappy consequences made many Republicans shy away from the current President Bush when he sought the party's nomination in 2000. Such reluctance has turned out to be unjustified. Whatever mistakes the incumbent President Bush has made, errors in the nature of Dad's politically tone-deaf decisions have not been among them. Except once in a while.

First there was Harriet Meirs. But the President atoned for this so shiningly that it doesn't count.

Now there's the sale of port operating rights to Dubai Ports World, owned by the United Arab Emirates.

How could an administration so politically savvy get something so basic so wrong?

Forget about the merits. In the post-9/11 political environment, you just don't let America's most important eastern ports be run by United Arab Anything. As the administration recently accused some of its Democratic critics, that's pre-9/11 thinking. Its also a welcome gift to those very Democrats, now doing a creditable job of mitigating their weakness on defense by posturing mightily on this one. Hillary Clinton could have written the script for the whole episode and she may be the chief beneficiary. In this way the port sale fiasco looks a lot more like Papa Bush's tax capitulation than the Meirs nomination. The Meirs episode outraged conservatives without really helping Democrats much. The port sale is a gift on the doorstep of Democratic Headquarters, wrapped in a pretty ribbon.

Now the President is busy defending the sale. Tough luck, Mr. P. Even if you're completely right in all your arguments, you still lose on this one. In political life, sometimes being right, without more, is insufficient.

This is one of those times.