Washington: The brouhaha over the now-squelched Dubai ports deal is subsiding, but the issue lives on politically and substantively.
Both Republicans and Democrats in Congress, all with an eye trained on the November mid-term elections, aren't finished making their points on the deal that would have turned management of terminals in six major US ports over to a firm owned by Dubai.
As early as this week, House Republican leaders will put forth legislation that would require congressional oversight of the foreign acquisition of US businesses.
In addition, House leaders are still planning a vote this week by the full House to reject the deal even though Dubai Ports World has already announced that it will sell those assets to a "US entity".
Republican members remain eager to air their views in the congressional record.
This represents a noteworthy rebuke by fellow Republicans of President Bush, who continues to defend the original deal and praise the UAE as "a committed ally in the war on terror", as he told newspaper editors on Friday.
Democrats, for their part, remain sceptical that Dubai will indeed fully divest itself of any role in the operation of the six ports, and they plan to keep pushing the issue. They are also demanding that the White House release documents on the defunct deal.
Politically, Democrats hope the Dubai ports issue will have legs until November, reminding voters in congressional races that the leader of the Republicans Bush defended a deal that most Americans opposed as threatening to national security.
But in the political fallout from Dubai Ports World, most striking was the breach it caused in Bush's relations with congressional Republicans.
"It demonstrated to the public for the first time that Bush no longer controls his own party in Congress," says Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia at Charlottes-ville. "That's a mark of leadership that people do pay attention to."
Ultimately, analysts say, the Dubai ports flap presented a teachable moment for Republicans in Washington that they need to be alert for issues that can catch fire in the grass roots.
Bush also faces the political reality of a president who has watched his political capital from reelection draw down as his job-approval ratings remain at best in the low 40s or, in some polls, well down in the 30s.
