The Yosemite Sam School of National Politics

Daniel Henninger writes that when it comes to politics, it’s Tex Avery’s world, we just live in it:

Witnessing the political reaction this week to the administration’s Dubai ports-management decision, the phrase that insistently called out from memory was the title of a famous essay by the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “Defining Deviancy Down.” One would not have thought it possible, but Washington’s political class is defining our politics down.

After nearly seven days of elevating the Cheney bird-hunting accident to the level of a national crisis, now comes this week’s flap over managing the ports. To be sure, the matter of secure U.S. ports trumps the hunting of quail as an affaire d’