I am finding myself able to argue both sides of this ports deal. I understand what the administration is trying to do, and I support the President in his drive to engage the Arab Middle East, encourage capitalism and free markets, and promote allies and countries that have been helpful in the post 9/11 fight. And I also have a tremendous amount of faith that this administration and particularly this President takes terrorism and national security issues extremely seriously.

However, there is a common-sense factor here that says should a state-owned company from an Arab/Islamic country be managing U.S. ports? That's a pretty big hurdle in my mind, not insurmountable, but boy I'd want to be awfully sure.

And then there is the political aspect, which is a loser.

Taken all together it seems to me the original decision in committee should have been no. And there is no question that the White House totally blew the PR aspect of this and should have recognized the  political explosiveness of the issue and done a better job of consulting the relevant political leaders.

However, given where we stand right now Charles Krauthammer makes the point that the damage that would be done in the foreign policy arena to our relationship in the Arab world with nations that have been moderate and cooperative in the War, may have shifted the risk/reward analysis over to the side of letting this deal go through. And I think that is a very legitimate point, as I think you can make a credible argument that the original decision was wrong, but a reversal of that decision today would actually hurt our long-term national security.

But that does not take into account the political aspects of this decision and the President is going to have to do a very persuasive job, particularly to many in his base, that this decision will have no negative impact on national security. There is the very real potential that this could have negative consequences for Republican prospects in 2006 and that calculus would also have to be factored in to any macro risk/reward analysis of this decision’s ultimate impact on national security.

Bottom line this issue is not going away, and a deal that I thought was almost certainly dead 48 hours ago is starting to show some signs of life.