Politics & Power Quote by Allyson Schwartz

The sentence performs a classic Washington pivot: it rides the heat of a headline, then tries to redirect the audience toward the quieter scandal of neglect. Schwartz nods to the national mood with “good that the Nation is finally focused,” a praise that’s really a reprimand. We needed a controversy to notice an obvious vulnerability. The phrase “our rhetoric and our passion about Dubai” is the tell. She’s not just describing concern; she’s calling out a particular kind of concern: emotional, performative, and—given the era—tinged with post-9/11 suspicion of anything Arab-branded. “Dubai” stands in for a media cycle where fear outruns policy.

The intent is legislative pressure. By framing the debate as a mismatch between talk and money, Schwartz moves the conversation from identity politics (“Can a Dubai company be trusted?”) to capacity politics (“Are we actually paying for security?”). That’s a safer argument in Congress because it’s actionable: budgets, appropriations, oversight.

The subtext is sharper: the outrage is convenient precisely because it’s cheap. Rhetoric costs nothing; hardening ports does. She implies that lawmakers would rather score points on cable news than vote for sustained funding, training, staffing, and inspection infrastructure—unsexy work that doesn’t fit neatly into a sound bite.

Contextually, this reads like the Dubai Ports World firestorm of 2006, when panic over foreign management eclipsed the larger reality that U.S. port security had been underfunded for years. Schwartz’s line tries to convert a xenophobic flashpoint into a durable policy agenda—and quietly dares colleagues to prove their patriotism with a line item, not a talking point.