They're a Reach or Two

Two recent stories for which the Bushites have taken excessive pasting are the Dick Cheney shooting and the U.A.E. port brouhaha.

I don’t like to defend the Bushites for anything; in fact, I won’t defend them here, either: It is oh-so-typical of Cheney that his first reaction is to cover up the whole thing, and of course the port business is just typical Bushite arrogance and incompetence.

Neither is worthy of the attention given, though; it almost makes me suspect Rove is trying a homeopathic approach—give little driblets of fake problems to the press in order to try and distract from the serious screw-ups. Like Iraq, domestic spying, torture, not finding Bin Laden, nuclear proliferation, deficit expansion, the continued presence in the Bush Administration of people involved in the outing of covert CIA agents, the Medicare prescription drug scam, to give a few examples of real issues these phony ones are forcing off the front pages.

On the port thing, it’s clear that the U.A.E. is not the issue, or even the fact that “Muslims” will be watching the ports. Since we can’t put any government effort behind port security, it’s going to be some company that’s going to do it, and companies everywhere are much the same. This is the new big, useless government approach in which the Bushites specialize. All we need to do is put some effort behind the security investigations of the personnel the company will employ.