Snow Job

In the nine days since I posted about the takeover of six important U.S. ports by UAE-based DP World, the debate has kicked up a few notches, eh? To a limited extent I agree with President Bush on this: if completed, the deal would be highly unlikely to compromise security at our ports. And blocking this would smack of protectionism at a sensitive time for the financial markets.

But this issue is a guaranteed loser for the administration. A one-issue president with a sub-40% approval rating cannot stake his credibility and his legacy on "protecting the American people" and at the same time hand over our ports to a Middle Eastern country our own FBI says was an important operational and financial base for the 9/11 attacks. Nor can the president suddenly find his veto pen for this---as he threatened to do today---when it's been under his desk for every piece of spending since he's been in office. If the debate over this took place in a karaoke bar, President Bush would be hooted off the stage for tone deafness.

But here's what really stinks. The deal for the port takeover was cleared by the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). This group meets in secret and is headed by Treasury Secretary John Snow. As I noted in a previous post, DP World purchased part of the U.S. company CSX for over $1 billion in 2004. Before he became Treasury Secretary, John Snow was Chairman and CEO of CSX. While he had left CSX by the time that deal closed, there is no way Snow should have presided over secret deliberations about any DP World transaction---much less one that involves national security. It's beyond belief that he did not recuse himself from this transaction given the sensitivity of the issues involved.