Outmaneuvering - It looks like

Outmaneuvering - It looks like the Homeland Security Bill - originally a Dem creation, which Bush has rechristened under his own imprimatur - may pass as early as this week. David Frum's Diary on National Review Online talks about how completely Bush outmaneuvered the Dems on this issue:

After 9/11, Democrats demanded that the federal government take over airport security. Republicans objected, but the Dems prevailed. In order to win, though, the Democrats had to rebut the GOP’s best argument: the fear that civil service rules would prevent the government from ever firing an inept screener. No problem!-said the Dems at the time. Obviously people in vital front-line positions like this have to be disciplinable.

Then the Dems proposed the creation of a vast new Homeland Security department. Many Republicans doubted the wisdom of regrouping departments rather than reforming them. Surely it matters less whether the Coast Guard reports to the Secretary of the Treasury or the Secretary of Homeland Security than whether it is fit and ready for its new role? But again Republicans gave away – with one proviso. Those promises that the Democrats had made in October about the importance of accountability for front-line security personnel – they would be not be forgotten, right? Well, wrong. The opportunity to enlarge their unionized political base was just too tempting.

So that unnamed official was right. It was the Dems who built and loaded the Homeland Security political trap – and then stepped on it themselves.

And Bush is, according to Ivins and Dowd, "the dumb one"...

Posted by Mitch at November 13, 2002 08:43 AM