Democrats 1, Electorate 0

Dubai Ports World finally succumbed to the political scrutiny surrounding their purchase of British company P&O which would have left them in charge of several US docks. Their top executive announced Thursday that “DP World will transfer fully the US operations…to a United States entity.” But DP World’s somewhat ambiguous declaration has done little to dampen the political hysteria around the issue. As we noted before, the ports controversy has nothing to do with any actually existing security threat (DP World would not even have been in charge of security, which would have remained in the control of the U.S. Coast Guard) and everything to do with the Democrats' efforts to out-tough the Bush Administration. Yet the fate of DP World was really sealed when Republicans, equally eager to distinguish themselves from a flagging presidency, jumped on the bandwagon.

Craven opportunist, Senator Charles Schumer has been the most dogged in pursuing the issue, and is in no mood to let it die, writing in response to the news: “I am very concerned that the legal structure of the U.S. entity will not have a sufficient wall between the company and the Dubai government.” As campaign head in the Senate, Schumer believes that he is making a real connection with voters by playing up perceived incompetence of the Bush Administration on homeland security. Indeed, so keen is Schumer to push an anti-Bush line, that he has worked to postpone release of the Democratic legislative manifesto (for the upcoming mid-term elections), which was originally slated for completion last November.

It is hard to believe that after the debacle of 2004 the Democrats still believe they can or should outflank the Republicans on the question of security. During that election, all major Democratic candidates attempted to point out the failings of the Republican security strategy. Even the liberal darling, Howard Dean, proposed tripling international spending against WMD proliferation, strengthening armed forces and homeland security and establishing a global partnership against terrorism. Kerry himself stated, “When the threat of terrorism is increasing I’ll do more than simply issue an Orange Alert. I will create an ‘Orange Alert Fund’ that pays for police overtime and other security enhancements.” Even back then, Kerry was attempting to make political capital out of port security, both in his campaign literature and during his presidential debates with Bush.

In the meantime, the ports hysteria usefully fills in for the gaping chasm where a Democratic platform should be. As Jacob Weisberg amusingly points out in a Slate article on the failures of House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate minority leader Harry Reid, and DNC chair, Howard Dean, “more important than what the three stooges do wrong is what they can't seem to do at all, namely articulate a positive agenda for reform and change…For a sweep big enough to recover both houses of Congress, the party will almost certainly need an affirmative message as well as a negative one.” Unfortunately, Weisberg's idea of a positive message is that "Democrats need to demonstrate they won't just cut and run from Iraq, that they see security as more than a civil liberties issue, and that their alternative to tax cuts isn't just more spending on flawed social programs and unchallenged growth in entitlements." That is, he counsels that they not waver from any of the major policy commitments of the Bush Administration.

This is not good enough. We have already had one election too many where the electorate has been offered no alternative to the war on terror. Homeland security is not a positive agenda. The only way it can connect with voters is by appealing to their sense of anxiety and atomization. Indeed, it is a negative agenda in every sense of the word.