Pity the Bush administration. Having won re-election based in part on the president’s decisiveness in foreign affairs, it is paralyzed by indecision on communications policy.

Yesterday the administration reluctantly sought more time to consider whether to seek Supreme Court review of a ruling by the 3rd Circuit Appeals Court reversing new FCC broadcast ownership rules. These new rules govern the types of assets a broadcaster is allowed to own.

Issued in June 2003, the rules would allow companies to own a newspaper and a broadcast station in the same market.

Also, broadcasters would face fewer restrictions on owning multiple stations in the same market.

The Third Circuit decision reversing them was a defeat for the FCC and the administration. It was also a stunning setback for many firms with broadcast licenses such as the Tribune Company and Sinclair.

These and other businesses have invested in broadcast stations that will be unlawful if the old rules are reinstituted. The businesses incorrectly assumed that the FCC would write ownership rules that would stand up in court and that the FCC and the administration would appeal an adverse court decision.

A decisive administration would have known from the outset that these rules must be appealed and would have taken the intellectual high ground as the defenders of the Constitution and the predictable rule of law. Thus far, the administration has failed to act.

Ironically, taken by themselves, the reversed FCC rules are hardly worth defending. They are mostly kinder, gentler versions of the decades-old ones they replace. The new rules, like the old, have little basis in statute.

But at least the logic underlying the Third Circuit opinion should be appealed. That logic would make it more difficult for the FCC to take a principled approach to revising the old rules. And those rules are crying out to be revised. If the 3rd Circuit ruling stands, the old rules remain in effect while the FCC goes back to the drawing board.

The FCC lost in the 3rd Circuit not to attacks by constitutional scholars or skeptics of regulation. Democrat FCC Commissioner Michael Copps skillfully rallied the anti-consolidation forces to use the changed broadcast-ownership rules as a basis to attack the administration in 2002 and 2003.

An Internet campaign emerged against consolidation of sources of news and information generally, and against the new FCC rules in particular. Opponents of the Bush administration launched ad hominem attacks saying that the new rules promoted “media consolidation” for the benefit of corporate Republican interests such as Rupert Murdoch and Lowery Mays.

Had the FCC opted for a purely principled interpretation of the law, this at tack would have fallen flat. The FCC could have written rules narrowly based on the limited attention given to broadcast ownership actually in statutory language. The FCC and its supporters could have counterattacked the anti-consolidation forces as lacking confidence in the professional staffs of the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission.

So successful were the anti-administration efforts, and so ineffective the administration’s response, that even the Republican Congress reversed the FCC’s new national ownership rules. The remaining local ownership rules were attacked in the 3rd Circuit Court by interest groups that viewed the incremental approach to loosen broadcast ownership rules as going too far too fast. The Third Circuit Court agreed.

The FCC has an unfortunate track record in court. Worse, the administration’s reluctance to defend the FCC reinforces the widely held view both that the FCC’s legal interpretations are difficult to defend and that the FCC’s rules themselves are political liabilities.

The absence of strength and resolve by the administration on communications policy rewards and emboldens its political adversaries. Today, public interest groups and corporations line up to attack the FCC in court.

If the administration refuses to defend the FCC, the big winners will be Michael Copps and others who have consistently attacked the administration. Businesses in desperate need of regulatory clarity – the entire communications sector – will follow the lead of Michael Copps in their quest for certainty.

An administration lacking in either resolve or principle cannot succeed. In the area of communications policy, the Bush administration sometimes lacks both. But it’s not too late. With a second term, it’s time for the administration to begin anew. A 3rd Circuit appeal and a principled rewrite of the broadcast ownership rules are good places to start.

Mr. Furchtgott-Roth was formerly a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission. He can be reached at hfr@furchtgott-roth.com.