The conventional wisdom on the Dubai Ports World deal seems to have shifted in the last 24 hours.  In the blogosphere the focus has jumped from its initial target -- the agreement itself -- to a new and familiar one: President Bush.  For instance, Glenn Reynolds has decided:

I don't think there's any real security issue here, but I think the Bush Administration needs to launch a full-bore effort to explain what's actually going on, something that they still haven't really mounted...

I will admit that my knee jerked on hearing this story, and that I should have waited to learn more before offering an opinion. In my defense, I'll note that I gathered more information and changed my mind. Still, mea culpa.

But (and this is a separate point from the merits of the decision, or of my take thereon) it wasn't just me -- there were an awful lot of knees jerking on this decision, and the White House, or somebody, should have foreseen that. That doesn't get me off the hook, of course, but it doesn't reflect well on them, either.

James Lileks retreats somewhat as well:

The Bush administration may well be in the right, but they have handled this poorly – the remarks about vetoing any Congressional efforts to block the sale may have been aimed at Congress, but they splashed right in the face of the voters. The crafty response would have been to acknowledge the worries, assure a complete and total review and disclosure, and let the facts speak for themselves.

Meanwhile Tim Cavanaugh offers examples of some points he thinks Bush should have made.  Like Reynolds, he says the DPW deal "doesn't involve port security, and if opponents think there's a security risk they haven't provided any evidence for that."  But according to Cavanaugh, Bush is in trouble because he was caught flat-footed and unprepared to argue such straightforward points.  He asks:

Who could get out of this fix?

I'll tell you who: NAFTA-era Bill Clinton, that's who! Explaining stuff like this is what Bill Clinton lived for. Just think back to that Clintonian love of factoids, that congenial explanation of the benefits that you, the listener, will directly receive, that enthusiastic drive to get you to share the president's love of policy minutiae. Clinton was great at this stuff because, whatever else he was, he was a man of the people. He understood (as Bush does) the benefit of a barrier-free market that might leave, say, Dubai Ports World providing services to American harbors. And he knew that populist panics are stupid and almost always wrong. But unlike Bush, he realized that populist panics come from deep within people's hearts, and that you have to respect that.

Critics have raised some serious concerns over the DPW deal, and it is clear that Bush made a mistake by brushing off these concerns.  To be sure, there is a strong opposition that will not be won over so easily on the merits of the agreement (see Malkin, Hewitt, Huffington).  So far, though, it is the pundits who are doing the backtracking, not the President.