I think it is Michael Ledeen who says that there is no award for getting it wrong first. Unfortunately, he's wrong. The award is the ability to shape public opinion, for good or for ill. Our founders told us that the problem of democracy is seldom that it acts too slowly, but that it acts too quickly. As Hamilton famously put it in Federalist #1:
It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.
This is a problem for democracies as much as for any other type of regime. Daniel Henninger makes much the same point in his column today in the WSJ. Our representatives, with a willing media, are all too eager to jump in front of cameras to say inflammatory and inaccurate things and then turn the public discussion of very serious matters into just another attempt to grandstand. As Henninger points out, we are sure to get congressional hearings on the Dubai/ports issue, and there is almost zero chance that anything useful or informative will come from those hearings. Much like the hearings on Katrina, the purpose of this dog-and-pony-show will not be to educate the public or Congress itself, but simply for congressmen to preen in front of the camera about how much they care about our homeland security. I expect a lot of finger wagging at Bush officials and variations on the theme of "For shame!" Henninger writes:
Yes, there are matters of substance in the ports decision about which serious people could disagree, but there's not much chance of that now, not after the politicos have poisoned the well. On Sunday Rep. Peter King of Long Island, chairman of the homeland security committee, was virtually the first pol to light up the ports issue: "How are they going to guard against things like infiltration by al Qaeda or someone else?" Three days later Mr. King announced: "Lawmakers are responding to incredible local pressure." But it was the remarks of Mr. King and his colleagues that drove the torrent of calls to the talk shows. Hold hearings to learn more? Sure, why not. But what chance is there that the Dubai Ports World hearings, like those just held on the NSA antiterror wiretap program, would result in other than more hyperbolic grandstanding?
What ever happened to the habit of political judiciousness in public life? One expects on occasion that Washington will march en masse through the swamps of overstatement. But it is now the habit to be intemperate. Rep. Sue Myrick in a letter to the President: "Dear Mr. President, not just NO but HELL NO!" This is a member of Congress?
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