W IS A GOOD ENOUGH POLITICIAN...:

The Art of Political Distraction (SHERYL GAY STOLBERG, 3/22/09, NY Times)

Mr. Obama is hardly the first American president to grapple with a distraction, a diversion — an outright red herring, some might call it — that grew bigger than itself. Ronald Reagan had the Air Force’s $7,622 coffeepot and the Navy’s $435 claw hammer, as well as an ill-fated effort to save money by classifying ketchup as a school lunch vegetable. Bill Clinton had midnight basketball and a high-priced haircut from a Beverly Hills stylist aboard Air Force One. George W. Bush was blindsided by an executive branch decision to contract with Dubai Ports World, an Arab-owned company, to manage terminals in six American ports. [...]

Some distractions are cynical political maneuvers, manufactured by one political party to throw a wrench into the agenda of another. But the ones that pose the greatest political danger are those that seem to erupt spontaneously, crossing political boundaries by putting a president at odds with his own party.

That was the case in 2006, when the Bush administration was caught flat-footed by news of its own Dubai ports deal. Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat, picked up on it, accusing Mr. Bush of outsourcing port security. But the issue really took off when Republicans, fed up with the administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina and the war in Iraq, turned on the president.

“It matched the meta-narrative that this administration can’t handle Iraq and the Middle East,” said Eric Ueland, who was chief of staff to one Republican critic, the former Senate majority leader Bill Frist. “A lot of elements combined, so that when somebody said, quite simply, ‘The Bush administration is turning ports over to a Middle Eastern government,’ you got a lot of resonance.”

...that he shouldn't have underestimated the bigotry of the congressional GOP.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 22, 2009 6:23 AM