It required what one observer called “relentless advocacy” by Sen. Susan Collins to persuade the Trump administration to restore the rescinded funding for Maine Sea Grant, one of our most prominent fishery entities and the recipient of $4.5 million in valuable and deserved federal grant funding annually.

The U-turn on the abrupt decision by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to pull the venerable program’s funding — announced to considerable shock and disgust last Saturday — was welcomed last week by the lobstermen, fishers, aquaculture researchers and most everyone with a relationship to Maine’s singular working waterfront.

Conversations between Sen. Susan Collins and U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnik succeeded in turning the tide on the fate of the program (and its 20 employees, to say nothing of the potential domino effects of its snap abandonment) by Wednesday. That’s extremely good going, these days, with federal chains of command in tatters and the rationale for any move or decision by the weeks-old administration obscured to all but a few people.

We can’t express our sincere thanks to Sen. Collins, though, or join in the collective sigh of relief at the news of renegotiation without stating the obvious, concerning and very irritating: It simply should not have come to this.

In the original letter heralding the Sea Grant’s inclusion in the Trump administration’s unsettling campaign of slash-and-burn, a NOAA official offered, by apparent way of explanation, that the vital program was “no longer relevant to the Administration’s priorities and program objectives.”

Never mind that Maine’s was the only Sea Grant program (there are 34) to get kicked to the curb.

The real explanation, already well understood by most interested parties and helpfully entered into the record by two other members of Maine’s congressional delegation last week, is pathetic. We’ll get it down here for posterity. It’s that Maine recently and publicly, during a brief altercation between the state governor and the U.S. president, fell foul of the administration’s priorities and program objectives.

The altercation was brief, but remarkable because it never really happens. Brief, but energizing enough to a deflated portion of the electorate to wind up in a cascade of delighted memes and on novelty T-shirts and the subject of at least one sprawling open letter. Brief, but effective enough to exact swift and obvious revenge from D.C.

Maine has been put on notice. Sen. Collins could be worked to the bone if this babyish style of governing keeps up. Sadly, we see no evidence at all to suggest it won’t.