As noted earlier, the Dubai Ports World controversy has again exposed the Bush team's all too often poor handling of things political. Jim Hoagland is mad because the ineptness is undermining some good diplomacy.
[W]here was White House chief of staff Andrew Card as the ports contract moved through the bureaucracy? Or Karl Rove, who is paid to be Bush's political early warning system? From Katrina on, they have let Bush down. No, let's be more precise: They have melted the Bush presidency down to a nub.Posted by Alan at February 28, 2006 12:21 PMThis incredibly sustained oblivious staff work — and Bush's incredibly sustained enabling of it — carries a high price, for Bush and the nation.
The president embarks this week on a journey to India that should be a foreign policy high point for his second term. The visit has been meticulously and imaginatively prepared. Instead, it may well be eclipsed in national attention by the guffaws, sneers and blatant disrespect this White House has both allowed and encouraged to flourish with its bumbling responses to controversies big and small.