Category Archives: Civility

Lindsey, fill yer hands; I’m a-callin’ you out

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Did you get the “True Grit” reference? I do try to be topical (although I have no idea whether that line is in the remake)…

Back on this post, Doug Ross said, “So will Brad call out Lindsey for wasting resources?”

That kind of stuff makes me tired. You know why bloggers and sure-enough journalists avoid ever saying anything nice about anybody in public life? Because they never hear the end of it. They’re constantly getting this Well I hope now you see what a jerk your buddy is, and see the error of your ways stuff.

Let’s be clear. There is no one I respect in the U.S. Senate more than Lindsey Graham, so stuff that in your pipe and smoke it, you cynics. There are good men in public life, and Graham is highly intelligent, principled and hard-working. He has proved this time and time again. He is good for South Carolina, and good for the country. I am proud that he is our senior senator. Now that John Spratt is gone, I think Lindsey is clearly the best member of the SC congressional delegation.

But you know what? Sometimes, even on an important issue, he’s dead wrong. That happens. It happens with the best of men. (Women, too, probably, but far be it from me as a gentleman to reflect negatively upon the ladies.) And there’s one that he and two of my other favorites in the Senate, John McCain and Joe Lieberman, and that’s the one Doug and I were talking about — national health care policy.

He’s really, really wrong on it. I mean, Jim DeMint just wants it to be Obama’s Waterloo, but I get the feeling that Lindsey Graham really means it. He really wants to gut Obamacare. And he doesn’t just want to vote on a purely symbolic “repeal;” he want to hang it, draw it and quarter it, slice and dice it, by passing legislation that deprives it of its central elements, the only things that give it any chance of having a good effect on the health care crisis in this country.

Here’s the release he put out today:

Barrasso, Graham Introduce Legislation Allowing States to ‘Opt-Out’ of Obamacare

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) today introduced S.244, The State Health Care Choice Act, to repeal and replace Obamacare by allowing states to ‘Opt-Out’ of its major provisions.  Under the legislation, states could choose to ‘Opt-Out’ of:

  • Individual mandate – the requirement to buy government-approved health insurance coupled with a financial penalty for not doing so.
  • Employer mandate – the requirement for businesses to provide government-approved health insurance coupled with financial penalties for not doing so.
  • Medicaid mandate – the forced expansion of state Medicaid programs.
  • Benefit mandates – defines what qualifies as a health plan as well as new federal requirements for regulating health insurance.

“As a doctor in Wyoming, I witnessed regularly how Washington simply didn’t understand the needs of the people of our state,” said Barrasso.  “After Obamacare, Washington is more out of touch than ever.  Instead of requiring states to follow Obamacare’s one-size-fits-all health care policy, our bill lets states decide what works best for them.  We will fight to repeal the President’s bad health spending law and provide states with flexibility, freedom and choice.”
“Our legislation opens up a third front in the fight against Obama health care,” said Graham, noting the other ‘fronts’ include legal challenges moving through the courts and the House-passed repeal.  “Our bill takes the fight out of Washington and puts it back in the states.  I would hope every Senator, regardless of party, would give the people of their home state a chance to be heard.  I’m confident that if given the chance, a large number of states would opt-out of the provisions regarding the individual mandate, employer mandate, and expansion of Medicaid.  As more states opt-out, it will have the effect of repealing and replacing Obamacare.”

“Medicaid expansion under Obama health care will be devastating to many states, including South Carolina,” continued Graham.  “We are already facing a severe budget shortfall this year.  The future expansion of Medicaid – which adds an additional one billion dollars of state matching funding requirements and will result in nearly 30 percent of South Carolinians being eligible for Medicaid – only adds to our budget problems.  This combination of Medicaid expansion and increased state funding makes it virtually impossible for South Carolina to pull out of her economic woes.”

The Senators noted the Obama Administration has already issued 733 waivers to businesses allowing them to continue offering insurance to their employees and questioned why states should not have the same ability to obtain relief.

#####

To read the text of the bill, click here.

Note that this masquerades as a substitute for Obama care — not mere repeal, but replacement. What a mockery. It is most certainly nothing of the kind.

The absolute worst thing you could do to last year’s health-care bill — which is deeply flawed, but would at least take a step or two in the direction of real reform — would be to let anyone opt out of it, much less entire states.

Either we’re all in it, or it will not work. It may not work anyway. I still firmly believe that simple, straightforward single-payer is the way to go. But hey, critics of Obamacare say it’s a back-door way to get us there, and maybe they’re right. One thing I know for sure is that there isn’t a plan in the wings to replace it. I mean, if this is the best that a smart guy like Lindsey Graham can come up with, we’d better cling to Obamacare as though it were our last chance to avoid drowning.

And this fantasy that states can in any way affect this mega-economic hole that we are in — or that they would (especially if they are South Carolina). Again, either we come up with a national solution and we’re all in it — a risk pool of 300-plus million people — or there’s not much use talking, because you really don’t get the problem. Sen. Barrasso says Washington doesn’t get it. He may be right; I can certainly point to one guy in Washington who doesn’t get it. No, make that two. (And for that matter, the Dems don’t either, or they’d have gone for single-payer. So I guess he’s right; it’s a majority.)

This is just sad. So sad, that I marvel at it.

I’m going to issue another invitation to Sen. Graham to join me on “The Brad Show” and explain this. He always has good explanations for what he does, and I’d love to hear this one.

In the meantime, satisfy yourselves with this video of him and Barrasso talking about this abomination…

Joe’s alternative to the alternative to the GOP response

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I got bushed and went to bed last night before getting this video, which is Joe Wilson’s response to the State of the Union.

So… since some guy named Paul Ryan gave the “official” Republican response, and Michele Bachman (another nonentity to me, but I’ve vaguely aware she’s one of those fringe people the shouting heads on TV go on and on about, like Sarah Palin) delivered a sort of self-appointed alternative response as a way of playing directly to the Tea Party, that means Joe’s clip is sort of the alternative to the alternative. Or maybe, since the “official” GOP response is in itself offered as an alternative to the actual State of the Union, Joe’s is an alternative-alternative-alternative. Which sounds way more avant-garde than the way I think of Joe Wilson.

Speaking of Joe… I ran into his guy Butch Wallace this morning at breakfast and told him — sort of joshing, sort of serious — that I appreciated that Joe had behaved himself last night, adding that I suppose it was hard to do otherwise sitting with those Democratic ladies. Butch smiled politely. Then I added, quite seriously, that I appreciated that Joe had wanted to make that gesture — which others in our delegation refused to do, even though it would have taken them so little trouble. Butch said Joe wanted to work with all kinds of people, regardless of party, and I said that’s good — because the more folks you’re willing to work with, the more you’re likely to get done.

As for Joe’s message — it sure beats “You Lie!” (which, if you’ll recall, was NOT during a SOTU), although in his hurry, he sort of flubbed a couple of the lines. And the overall message is rather thin and lacking in substance. But these things always tend to be that way. There’s a formula: 1.) Due respect to the president (no name-calling); 2) A brief reference to something that was in the president’s speech, a cursory effort to give the impression that the responder actually read or heard it and thought about it before responding; 3) A rather trite and general statement of ideological difference with the president that may or may not bear relevance to the president’s points; 4) Some sort of statement of civic piety such as asking the deity to bless the troops, or America, or the taxpayers, or whatever.

So much for Joe and his message. Now to the larger issue: This nonsense of opposition-party “responses” to the State of the Union, which I have always found offensive. I thought this writer put it well: “The very idea of a rebuttal is asinine.”

Or at least, the idea of some sort of formal response with an “official” status is asinine. Of course, we’re all entitled and encouraged in this free country to share what we think of the president’s speech. But over the years, something really weird and insidious has happened, and like so many other media/political phenomena in the modern age, it has done much to solidify in the average voter’s mind the nasty notion that there is something good and right and natural about everything in our politics being couched in partisan terms.

First, just to give the broadest possible perspective, the State of the Union is a constitutional responsibility of the president of the United States — not of a party, or of an individual, but of the chief executive. It’s right there in black and white in Article II, Section 3:

He shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.

Note that it doesn’t say he has to do it every year, much less in January just before the Super Bowl. Nor is he even required to give a speech of any kind: Before Woodrow Wilson, presidents took care of this requirement in writing.

So, no one has to give a speech. But the president is required to make a report (including recommendations, if he judges such to be necessary and expedient, which you know he always will). It’s his job. It’s not a campaign speech (even though no politician yet born would pass up such an intro once it’s handed to him). It’s not something that he does on behalf of his execrable party. It’s something he is required to do.

In other words, the “equal time” requirement placed on purely political TV face time doesn’t apply. No member of the opposite party is in any way obliged to offer a “response,” and no broadcast outlet is obliged to run it — not by law, and not by any sense of journalistic obligation. Sure, you might cover it — you ought to cover it, and any other politically relevant response. (Just as you ought to cover the SOTU itself, if you know what’s news.) But the idea of a formal, ritualistic response is completely unnecessary.

And harmful. Because it instills in the public’s mind the notion that this is just some guy giving a political speech, rather than the president of the United States fulfilling the requirements of his job. And it inflates the ceremonial, institutional importance of parties to our system of government, putting the prerogatives of a party on the same level as the most fundamental requirements of our Constitution.

My reaction to the GOP response last night — that is to say, my reaction to the idea of a GOP response, because as usual, I didn’t watch it (when the pres was done, I ran upstairs to plug in my laptop because the battery was nearly dead and giving me warning messages) — was exactly the same as to Democratic responses to a Republican president: You want to give a free-media speech to the whole nation on this particular night, you go out and get elected president. We don’t have a president of one party and a “shadow” president as in a parliamentary system — we have one person elected to that position, and in delivering the SOTU (whether aloud or in writing), he’s fulfilling a specific responsibility that we elected HIM (and not some eager up-and-comer in the opposition party) to perform.

So share your thoughts all you want, folks. But spare me the “official” responses.

Rotten, stinking attitudes in the SC delegation

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Here’s what Mick Mulvaney had to say about the laudable decision of Joe Wilson and others to sit with members of the opposite party during the State of the State:

“If you’re looking for empty symbolism, where one sits at the State of the Union (address) might be at the top of the list.”

Translation:

If you’re looking for obvious examples of giving the people of this country the finger, the refusal to do such a simple thing as sit without regard to party might be at the top of the list.

Of course it’s a small thing. Just like, say, taking down the Confederate Flag from the Statehouse grounds — which you will also hear state lawmakers dismissed because they have so many more important things to do and think about.

And of course, they DO have many more important (or at least, less embarrassing) things to deal with. The problem is that they’ll never make progress on the things that really matter when they have such a powerful mental block against doing something so small as taking the flag down. Or, in the case of Congress, ending the egregious practice of sitting by party during the presidential address.

Simple, yes. But there is no one thing lawmakers could do that would be as easy, but say so much, as taking this action.

I’ll get back to the flag, but about this seating arrangements thing: The problem is that these guys are to entirely stuck in the rut of this abominable practice of sitting by party that it doesn’t occur to them, ever, that it is an abomination. You and I may think they were elected to represent us and to serve the nation. But THEY obviously think that they are there to serve their respective parties. They say this in the most obvious of ways — by only sitting with members of their party, by only caring what their party wants them to do or say, by thinking party first, last and always. Serving the party is SO automatic with them, that it doesn’t even occur to them that it’s a problem. They are even offended by the suggestion that it might be. Which tells you an awful lot about these guys.

This is, as I say, an abomination, and inexcusable. And so easy to address.

Which brings me back to the flag. What do these two issues have in common? The fact that they would be so easy to accomplish. Yes, I know state lawmakers think it would be really hard. But all that is needed to accomplish it is the same, simple thing it would take to end the execrable practice of sitting by party in Congress (and not only on the night of the State of the Union, but every day): All that have to do is GROW UP, and gain a sense of perspective. And then it’s easy.

Joe Wilson’s bipartisan seatmates: Davis, Bordallo

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Sort of facetiously, I asked yesterday on Twitter:

Who sits with Joe Wilson? RT @PoliticalTicker: Legislators pairing off for bipartisan seating at Obama speech – http://bit.ly/eHQkvc

It didn’t occur to me until today to ask the questions seriously, which I did after I read this at The Fix:

When the Democratic centrist group Third Way proposed the idea of members of different parties sitting next to one another at tomorrow’s State of the Union speech, there was considerable skepticism that it would happen.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), for one, said that people are “more interested in actual accomplishments on a bipartisan basis here in the next six to nine months than they are with the seating arrangement at the State of the Union.”

And yet a number of members have signed up — including Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), whose “You lie!” outburst during a speech by President Obama last fall is frequently cited as a sign of partisan incivility in Congress.

So without reading further in that piece (which would have given me my answer), I e-mailed Neal Patel of Joe’s staff to ask who his bipartisan buddies would be, and immediately got this response:

Susan Davis from California and Madeleine Bordallo from Guam. Both are HASC members.

Rep. Bordallo

Rep. Davis

Then I saw that Joe had Tweeted earlier that he was “Honored to be sitting” with those two ladies. Presumably, they are, too. And they’ve already worked together on some stuff, according to The Fix: “Davis and Wilson teamed up last year on a military pay raise bill. In 2007, Bordallo and Wilson traveled to Afghanistan together.”

This will be interesting. But whatever happens — and I’m thinking it all goes well, with no new outbursts (partly because the first one was uncharacteristic of Joe, but also because, well, we Southern boys tend to act better in the presence of ladies) — I appreciate that Joe was up for this. As I heard someone saying on the radio over the weekend, this sitting-together thing won’t likely change the world, but it couldn’t hurt.

There's just so much more temptation to get rowdy when you're sitting with your boys.

The president’s speech in Arizona

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Something else I hadn’t been keeping up with the last few days… I was still out of the country when the Arizona shootings happened, and the couple of days I was stuck at home because of the snow, my newspapers either didn’t come or came after I had quit looking for them.

But I know that others among you were paying rapt attention. I know Samuel Tenenbaum was. I saw him at breakfast this morning, and asked him how he did. Well, he said, he had been in mourning Saturday night, but after the president’s speech last night, he felt a lot better. (When I wondered why the shootings — once I realized that was what he was talking about — affected him so deeply, he explained that he knew “Gabby” Giffords. He said he met her at one of the Laders’ Renaissance Weekends, and that she and Inez had been on a panel together.)

Since that encounter, a couple of other folks have mentioned how awesome the president’s speech was last night. So now, as I type this, I’m listening to it. I’m going to pause now and listen to the rest of it… In the meantime, y’all can start leaving comments…

… the part I’m listening to right now, when he’s just finished his well-researched eulogy for the dead and is applauding the heroes of the day, demonstrates a superb job of connecting emotionally with his audience, with the nation. That’s impressive, and appropriate. But here’s the bit I’m waiting for:

The president directly confronted the political debate that erupted after the rampage, urging people of all beliefs not to use the tragedy to turn on one another. He did not cast blame on Republicans or Democrats, but asked people to “sharpen our instincts for empathy.”

It was one of the more powerful addresses that Mr. Obama has delivered as president, harnessing the emotion generated by the shock and loss from Saturday’s shootings to urge Americans “to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully” and to “remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together.”

“At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized, at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do,” he said, “it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”…

That, of course, is a topic near and deal to me, and few speak more eloquently about the need for civility than Barack Obama. (It’s one of the reasons we enthusiastically endorsed him in the primary in 2008.)

I’m listening to that part now… as I hear it, I’m a bit lost because I missed the back-and-forth of the last few days that prompted the president to feel like he had to urge us not to claw at each other over this. But I’ve caught snatches of it, and I can extrapolate the rest. I know how the 24/7 spin cycle, and the parties, and Twitter, and all of that work. So without fully knowing the background, I fully appreciate the message…

I particularly like his urging the nation “to rise above ugly political debates and see civic life ‘through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism or vitriol” of adults,” and his exhortation that any debate engendered by this horror be worthy of the victims. Of 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green, he said:

“I want us to live up to her expectations… I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it.”

He urged us to make sure “that our nation lives up to our children’s expectations.” Amen to that, Mr. President. Amen to that.

The world is even more with us

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The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.–Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
— William Wordsworth, 1802

Yeah, what Wordsworth said.

I am saddened by something that just happened in my home county of Lexington — or rather, the way it happened. Doug Ross already alluded to it — approvingly, of course. Therefore it is my duty to demur. Here’s the lowdown:

By Mike Fitts
mfitts@scbiznews.com
Published Dec. 8, 2010

Amazon is coming into Lexington County — and the county’s blue laws are going out.

Part of the deal that landed Amazon, announced Tuesday, includes a requirement that the county end the blue laws, which generally restrict shopping before 1:30 p.m. on a Sunday.

Amazon’s distribution center is likely to operate at all hours, seven days per week. According to Lexington County Council Chairman Jim Kinard, to ensure there is no problem with its operations, the company asked that the law be changed.

“These guys apparently had never heard of blue laws,” Kinard said.

Amazon’s request for the deal was one part of the big investment that it is making in Lexington County. The company plans to build a $100 million distribution center in the county’s Saxe Gotha Industrial Park alongside Interstate 26. It is expected to employ 1,249 full-time workers and 2,500 part-time staffers during holiday rush seasons….

First, that’s awesome that the community is getting 1,000 jobs.

It’s not so awesome that something that culturally set the community apart from other, more hurried, communities was set aside willy-nilly, without any sort of community conversation.

Yep, I’ve heard all the arguments against blue laws, and I haven’t heard a good one yet. Count me among those who remembers (way, way long ago, like in the 60s) and misses the times when we truly got a day off on Sunday, a day when no one expected us to engage in the hustle-bustle of the other six days because we couldn’t. (And the biggest canard spread by those who advocated modernity on this is the one about how we can CHOOSE not to run around like headless chickens on Sunday. No, we can’t. If you can do something, the world — the expectations of your family, your neighbors, your employer, everyone — will crowd you into participating on some level. Ours is an interconnected universe. Don’t make me quote John Donne, too.)

Again, I’m glad that the community is getting this shot in the arm. And if I had been in the position of those officials needing to act quickly to make it happen, I might have done the same thing. And I certainly understand Amazon’s unwillingness to get caught in a legal bind.

But I just hate that it had to happen this way, so that the community didn’t get to have a conversation about what it was trading away.

A pre-session legislative discussion

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CRBR Publisher Bob Bouyea, Chamber President Otis Rawl, Rep. James Smith, Sen. Joel Lourie, Rep. Nathan Ballentine. In the foreground is former Rep. Elsie Rast Stuart, now chairwoman of the the Richland-Lexington Airport Commission. / grainy phone photo by Brad Warthen

I meant to post about this yesterday, when it happened, but better late than never.

ADCO had a table at the Columbia Regional Business Report‘s (that’s the outfit Mike Fitts is with) “Legislative Lowdown” breakfast at Embassy Suites. It was a good table. Lanier and I were joined by Alan Kahn, Jay Moskowitz, Bob Coble, Butch Bowers, Cameron Runyan and Grant Jackson.

We were there to hear a discussion by a panel featuring Otis Rawl from the state Chamber, Rep. James Smith, Sen. Joel Lourie, Rep. Nathan Ballentine and Rep. Chip Huggins. Joel was a few minutes late, and Chip had to leave just as Joel arrived, but it was still a good discussion.

Here’s Mike’s description of the event, in part (I’d quote the whole thing, but I don’t know how Mike’s cohorts feel about that Fair Use thing):

By Mike Fitts
mfitts@scbiznews.com
Published Dec. 2, 2010

Lawmakers speaking at the Business Report’s Power Breakfast this morning said they see major difficulties ahead in the new budget year, but they also said there are new opportunities for bipartisanship.

The event, hosted at the Embassy Suites, featured Reps. Nathan Ballentine, R-Chapin, Chip Huggins, R-Columbia, and James Smith, D-Columbia; Sen. Joel Laurie, D-Columbia; and Otis Rawl, president and CEO of the S.C. Chamber of Commerce.

With a new Legislature and new governor coming to Columbia in January, much of the discussion focused on the budget crisis that will greet them.

Ballentine, a member of Gov.-elect Nikki Haley’s fiscal crisis task force, drew a stark picture of the challenges facing lawmakers. Ballentine compared the situation to a lifeboat with a limited number of seats. There won’t be enough dollars to take care of students, the elderly, the disabled and law enforcement, Ballentine said.

“Somebody’s going to get left out, and that’s going to hurt,” he said…

To Mike’s focused report I will add the following random observations:

  • I don’t know if this would have been the case if Chip Huggins had stayed, but the general consensus, or at least lack of overt conflict, between James, Joel and Nathan on issue after issue was quite noticeable. Nathan alluded to it, saying he was sure that the business people in the room were probably wondering why a pair of Democrats and a close ally of Nikki Haley were agreeing about issue after issue. (And some of the agreements were remarkable, going beyond mere civility, such as when Nathan volunteered his acknowledgement of the problems with Act 388.) Nathan further speculated that the audience might reasonably wonder why, in light of what they were hearing, the General Assembly had so much trouble getting anything done. He explained that the reason was that there were these 167 other people in the Legislature… And he was completely right. If we filled the Assembly with Jameses, Joels and Nathans, South Carolina would see a Golden Age of enlightened governance. These are reasonable young men who, despite their disagreements on some points are reasonable, deal with others in good faith, and truly want what’s best for South Carolina, and want it more than their own advancement or the good or their respective parties. If only their attitude were catching.
  • I’ll add to that point the observation that if all discourse about issues were on the intellectual level of this one, we’d see a very different, and much better, South Carolina. The conversation was wonderfully devoid of partisan, ideological, bumper-sticker cliches. For instance, I never heard anyone mention “growing government” or “taking back our state.” Observations were relevant, practical, and free of cant. I used to hear discussions like that regularly when I sat on the editorial board, because intelligent politicians did us the courtesy of leaving the meaningless catch-phrases behind. It was good to hear that kind of talk again. (It occurs to me that the fact that over the years I’ve been privileged to hear politicians at their best, trying to sound as smart as possible, may help to explain why I don’t have as jaded a view of officeholders as Doug and others do.) I’d be inclined to say that the discussion was on this level because the lawmakers were paying this assembly the same compliment of respect — but these particular lawmakers pay everyone that sort of respect. Which is why we need more like them.
  • Otis Rawl, incidentally, was slightly more confrontational — something you don’t usually see in a Chamber leader. He exuded the air at times of being impatient with the air of civil agreement in the room. When Nathan said that he had not realized when he voted for it the harm that Act 388 would cause — Otie challenged him directly, saying he knew good and well that his group had informed lawmakers ahead of time, and there was no excuse for anyone to claim innocence (I think he’s right in the aggregate — the body as a whole knew better, but ignored what they knew it order to scratch a political itch — but if Nathan says he didn’t understand, I believe him; he was a relatively inexperienced lawmaker at the time; and I appreciate greatly that he’s learned from experience). Awhile back, I chided Otie for not being more frank about what he thought on an issue. The Otis Rawl I saw Thursday morning could not be chided for the same thing. I suspect this reflects a growing dissatisfaction with Sanford-era fecklessness in the State House, which helped lead to the Chamber’s endorsement of Vincent over Nikki.
  • Speaking of Vincent, Nikki, Otie, James, Nathan and Joel … It struck me as interesting, just because language and civility interest me, that everyone speaking of Nikki Haley referred to her carefully as “Governor-Elect Haley.” It was notable partly because it was stilted coming from people who know her quite well as “Nikki,” but also because (and this might have been my imagination) there was a slight change of tone when the speakers said it, a shift to a formality mode. It seemed natural enough that the Democrats present would use that highly formal construction — it’s important to them (particularly since the two Democrats in question are Vincent Sheheen’s two best friends in the General Assembly) to sound scrupulously neutral and respectful in this post-election period. It’s a way of papering over their feelings about her election, and perfectly proper. It was also perfectly appropriate for Nathan to refer to her that way; it just sounded odder coming from him. They were seatmates, and allies in her fights with the leadership. But being a gentleman, he wasn’t going to top it the nob in a public setting by assuming excessive familiarity. Bottom line, just over a month ago ALL of them would have called her “Nikki.” But now they are the very pictures of proper Southern gentleman. Which I like. But then I’d like to see a return of the sort of manners I read about in Patrick O’Brian and Jane Austen. We just don’t see that very often nowadays.
  • As civil and intelligent as this discussion was (in fact, probably because it was so intelligent), it offered little hope for the General Assembly effectively dealing with any of the important issues facing our state in the foreseeable future. Everyone spoke with (cautious, on the part of the Democrats) optimism about Nikki — excuse me, Gov.-elect Haley — being able to work better with the Legislature than Mark Sanford has (a pitifully low bar). But I heard little hope offered that this, or anything else, would likely lead to the reforms that are needed. The institutional and ideological resistance to, say, comprehensive tax reform is just too powerful. The most hope Joel Lourie would offer is that steady pressure over a long period of time might yield some small progress. He cited as an example his and James’ long (eight-year) battle to get a sadly inadequate cigarette tax increase. The terrible truth, though, is that the cigarette tax was such a no-brainer — it shouldn’t have taken two days, much less eight years — that if IT took that long, much less simple and obvious reform seems unlikely in our lifetimes. But perhaps I’m not being as optimistic as I should be. It’s just that I’ve been fighting these battles, and hearing these same issues discussed, for so very long…

What IF China had a WikiLeaks?

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Earlier this week, Tom Friedman had a column in which he “couldn’t help but wonder: What if China had a WikiLeaker…?”

It was a good column as far as it went, because it highlighted the way self-destructive American partisan gridlock prevents us as a nation from facing the future wisely and pragmatically — unlike the Chinese. So it was that he imagined a leaked Chinese diplomatic message that said in part:

Things are going well here for China. America remains a deeply politically polarized country, which is certainly helpful for our goal of overtaking the U.S. as the world’s most powerful economy and nation. But we’re particularly optimistic because the Americans are polarized over all the wrong things.

There is a willful self-destructiveness in the air here as if America has all the time and money in the world for petty politics. They fight over things like — we are not making this up — how and where an airport security officer can touch them….

Americans just had what they call an “election.” Best we could tell it involved one congressman trying to raise more money than the other (all from businesses they are supposed to be regulating) so he could tell bigger lies on TV more often about the other guy before the other guy could do it to him. This leaves us relieved. It means America will do nothing serious to fix its structural problems: a ballooning deficit, declining educational performance, crumbling infrastructure and diminished immigration of new talent.

The ambassador recently took what the Americans call a fast train — the Acela — from Washington to New York City. Our bullet train from Beijing to Tianjin would have made the trip in 90 minutes. His took three hours — and it was on time! Along the way the ambassador used his cellphone to call his embassy office, and in one hour he experienced 12 dropped calls — again, we are not making this up. We have a joke in the embassy: “When someone calls you from China today it sounds like they are next door. And when someone calls you from next door in America, it sounds like they are calling from China!” Those of us who worked in China’s embassy in Zambia often note that Africa’s cellphone service was better than America’s.

But the Americans are oblivious. They travel abroad so rarely that they don’t see how far they are falling behind. Which is why we at the embassy find it funny that Americans are now fighting over how “exceptional” they are. Once again, we are not making this up…

Very good points — the kinds of smart points that you expect Tom Friedman to make, which is why he’s one of my favorite columnists. But I was still disappointed on a gut level, because I had expected the column to answer the rhetorical question with an even blunter, simpler, more obvious truth.

As it happened, WSJ columnist Daniel Henninger today provided the straightforward three-word answer that Friedman did not (the boldfacing is mine):

China’s security solution is to suppress the flow of information, let creativity be damned, and steal from us. (The New York Times’s Thomas Friedman yesterday asked: “What if China had a WikiLeaker?” The three-word answer: They’d execute him.)

Henninger is not usually one of my faves, but this was a pretty decent column about how tough it is, bordering on futility, to prevent such leaks in the Internet age.

And my disappointment aside, Mr. Friedman’s column was excellent as well, because it, too, said things that need to be said over and over.

But it occurred to me that, whether you’re concerned that our nation isn’t pursuing the right priorities for our future competitiveness, or just outraged that the U.S. government hasn’t taken serious action to find, apprehend and lock up that sleazebag Julian Assange for the rest of his life and then some, the roots of the problem are the same.

I’ll put it this simply: The lack of national consensus. Or another way, a perverse refusal to acknowledge that we’re all in this together, and act accordingly.

I try to imagine someone like Julian Assange wandering free anywhere in the world controlled by allies of this country back, say, in the 1940s. And I can’t. There would have been such a powerful sense of a shared national interest, and instantaneous consensus that someone leaking classified military data and confidential diplomatic communications was the enemy of this country that effective action would have been taken to stop him.

Today, a creep like Assange exploits the HUGE division in our country over our role in the world. (We can’t even decide whether we’re fighting one or two wars.) Now before my antiwar friends loudly protest that I’m blaming them for not getting with the program, note that I am NOT. I’m not blaming either doves or hawks. It’s the GAP between us itself that I blame. That’s the No Man’s Land in which Assange walks with impunity. Only after diplomatic communications were compromised this week did we achieve anything like a consensus of outrage between left and right, and thus far even that is too tepid to lead to effective action. (Oh, and by the way, I’m not suggesting we be as ruthless as the Chinese. But somewhere between the harshness of that system and the utterly helpless fecklessness of ours today lies a rational medium, an effective course of action for liberal democracies that hope to survive.)

As for Mr. Friedman’s concerns… go back to that same time — the war years, and just after — and look at the way we formed consensus to do profoundly bold and intelligent things to provide for a better future for our own country and the rest of the world that we suddenly dominated: the GI Bill, the Marshall Plan, the interstate highway system, the policies that boosted homeownership, and on and on.

Today, we find it impossible to come up with a coherent, rational energy policy or keep our infrastructure up to date or deal with the deficit or accomplish anything else requiring bold action because ANY bold action envisioned by the right or the left will be fought, vilified, trashed and frustrated to the utmost of the opposition’s ability (and they’ll do so not because of any merit or lack of merit in the idea, but because the other side came up with it). And again, I’m not blaming either the right or the left, but the GAP, and the insane tit-for-tat game that BOTH sides think is more important than the real needs of the nation.

So whatever you think about the implications of a hypothetical Chinese WikiLeaker, the problem is the same.

It’s a problem that has so integrated itself into our public life that it’s hard even to think of a way out. It’s like a tumor with tentacles slithering to wrap themselves around every fold of the victim’s brain — very tough to remove. I don’t really know how to get to where we need to be. Except, of course, to vote UnParty (if ever given the chance).

NPR still having a problem with e-mail

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NPR is still having a trouble with e-mail. It doesn’t want to give out its journalists’ addresses.

I know. So last century. My kids don’t even DO e-mail, and haven’t for many years, because it’s so slow and indirect and retro. Or something (I confess I don’t fully understand the problem). It’s as though a film studio were still debating whether to take the plunge into VHS.

Don’t know about you, but a pet peeve of mine is going to anyone’s Web page — a business, a nonprofit, any kind of organization or even a personal endeavor such as a blog — and looking for a way to contact the key individuals, only to hit a wall. No e-mail address. Not even a phone number (for those just a step past smoke signals).

I’m not the only one this bugs. In fact, one of our neighbors right here in Colatown made it into an essay on the subject:

NPR does not publish staff email addresses.

It should.

About once a month someone writes to say they find it arrogant and standoffish for a news organization —that demands access to others — to not offer a common form of communication to its audience.

And it’s not always that a listener wants an email address to write a nasty note.

Sometimes they want to share information. Sometimes they want to ask a question, or even provide information to correct an error. Sometimes, they simply want to say “Nice job” directly to a reporter.

“Today I just wanted to tell the ‘A Blog Supreme’ producers-writers how important the blog has been to me,” wrote George Mack, of Columbia, SC., a listener for 20 years.

“However, there is no way to contact them except to post a public comment or to come to a black hole dialog box like the one I’m using this very moment,” he continued. “I’ve always thought this stand-offish concept was just plain arrogant and it gives rise to negative feelings.”

Right now if someone wants to get in touch with NPR via e-mail, they have to go to the “Contact Us” link and fill out a form. It will go to a news show, my office or an office called “listener services.”…

Amen to that, brother. I hate those forms. Whenever I click “contact us” and get a form to fill out, instead of an actual person’s e-mail address, I feel like the message is “Bug off.” Only with a different word in place of “Bug.” Even if that’s not intended, that’s what I receive.

Yes, I know e-mail is a hassle. It consumes too much time, and if you’re a reporter with a national medium, the flood will be Noahesque. But hey, figure out something. If that impersonal box “works” for managing the flood, it’s only because it discourages people from trying to make contact at all, thus reducing the volume.

Nowadays, public radio doesn’t need to be ticking off the listening, voting public. NPR shows great resourcefulness, thoughtfulness and creativity in presenting the news. Apply some of that to basic communcations, please.

And oh, yes. You can reach me at brad@bradwarthen.com. And I’ll get to it as soon as I can (usually same day). And there’s just me.

What sort of person SAYS things like that?

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Gina reported a minute ago that Speaker Harrell was “overwhelmingly re-elected, 112 to 5, over Ralph Norman.”

As we expected.

But that’s not what interests me today. What interests me is the sort of rhetoric Norman was using going into this vote:

Norman

“In 2011, if (House members) give lip service to conservative values but don’t follow through, I’m going to be part of pointing it out and recruiting candidates to run against them,” said Norman,who defines conservative values as funding core services like law enforcement and education while making cuts elsewhere and dismissing “feel good” legislation.

“I’m planting the seeds and willing to put my name on the line with it,” he said.

What sort of person says things like that? Particularly when everyone knows he has no support. Has he no sense of irony? Has he no decency? Does he really think he sounds like anybody any sensible person would want to follow, talking about how he’s going to make the General Assembly — the same General Assembly that is rejecting him and his “leadership” — conform to his almighty Will?

This takes me back to that Nikki Haley/Sarah Palin rally that depressed me so. Nikki gets away with saying such obnoxious things because she has a pleasant voice and pleasing face and because, let’s face it, she’s a dame. Put enough sugar on it and it doesn’t sound so bad (unless you actually listen). But that doesn’t mean the things she says — such as the fact that established politicians are “scared” is “a beautiful thing,” or that she will “burn” lawmakers if they don’t obey her — are any less ugly. (As I said at the time, “What’s the difference between ugly good ol’ boy populism and Palin/Haley populism? Lipstick.”)

This mode of expression, this obnoxious, chip-on-the-shoulder attitude toward other human beings, is a distinguishing characteristic of this political trend with which Mrs. Haley, and Mr. Norman, identify.

And you know what? It is probably the one thing that bugs me the most about them.

Couldn’t they advocate the things they advocate without this hostile attitude? Is it really essential to who they are and what they stand for?

WSJ: How DeMint betrayed his friend Bob Inglis

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Jim DeMint in 2007./photo by Brad Warthen

The best newspaper story on South Carolina politics that I’ve read in some time was on the front page of The Wall Street Journal this morning. Headlined “As U.S. Political Divide Widened, a Friendship Fell Into the Rift,” it is the story of how Jim DeMint betrayed and abandoned his friend Bob Inglis for the sake of DeMint’s all-consuming ideology. It’s written by Louise Radnofsky and Michael M. Phillips.

It’s pretty powerful, and it tells a story with which I am partly unfamiliar. First, since I’ve never had much occasion to track inside

Bob Inglis

baseball in Upstate congressional districts, I didn’t realize how close Inglis and DeMint once were. (DeMint was Inglis’ consultant when he miraculously won election to the House in 1992; they belonged to the same church that Inglis helped found, and on and on.) I even had forgotten that DeMint was Inglis’ immediate successor in the House when Inglis ran for the Senate against Fritz Hollings, although I did recall that Inglis succeeded DeMint when the latter went to the Senate.

But the main thing I just plain didn’t realize was that Inglis, facing an ultimately successful primary challenge this year from another former ally, Trey Gowdy, asked DeMint to help him back in January — and DeMint refused. Apparently the senator wasn’t going to let his perfect record as a kingmaker to extremists be sullied by backing a friend who, while indisputably conservative, dares to think for himself.

I hope you can read the story; you may be prevented by the WSJ‘s pay wall. But at the very least, read these excerpts:

The unraveling of the DeMint-Inglis friendship is emblematic of the balkanized state of American politics after last week’s historic midterm election. The two men fell out over disagreements that to outsiders might appear less significant than the many things on which they agree. That phenomenon now marks the political landscape: Both parties, largely shorn of centrists, are feuding within their ranks in addition to fighting the other side…

In the leafy cul-de-sacs of Greenville, two Republican conservatives—members of the same church and campaign allies since 1991—are no longer friends because of the schisms that have emerged between them…

Mr. Inglis, a real-estate attorney, began toying with the idea of running for Congress in 1991. For a campaign logo, he turned to a local marketing firm whose work he admired. It was run by Jim DeMint. It was at Mr. DeMint’s office where Mr. Inglis made his final decision to enter the 4th District race. Election Day went badly for Republicans, but Mr. Inglis overcame a late deficit to squeeze by a sitting Democrat and into Congress.

“It was a miracle that we won in 1992; Jim was one of the material means of that miracle,” says Mr. Inglis.

Once in Washington, Mr. Inglis established himself as a conservative stalwart, pushing for term limits, tighter abortion restrictions and an end to congressional mailing privileges.

Soon after Mr. Inglis took office, he and his wife began hosting a monthly Bible study group that included Mr. DeMint and his wife, and Dave Woodard, a Clemson University political scientist who had become Mr. Inglis’s pollster, and his wife. Group members shared lists of sins they had committed in the previous week, and discussed the concept of grace: Nobody is above reproach, or beyond salvation, if they accept God.

The inner circle that set Mr. Inglis on the path to Congress reconvened in Mr. DeMint’s office in 1997. Mr. Inglis was gearing up for a Senate bid, staying true to his self-imposed three-term limit for the House, and the group was eager to keep Mr. Inglis’s seat in conservative hands, someone to “carry the torch,” Mr. Inglis told the others. Top on his list was Mr. DeMint, who agreed to run.

Mr. Woodard did polling work for both men. Mr. DeMint dropped Mr. Inglis’s name in fundraising letters.

The night of the 1998 Republican primary, the first congratulatory call to DeMint HQ came from Mr. Inglis. “This is from Bob, this is from Bob,” Mr. DeMint said to hush the crowd, says attendee Brent Nelsen, a Furman University political scientist and friend of both men…

That’s probably as much as I can quote without running afoul of Fair Use. But I hope I can go away with quoting this brief description of Inglis’ moment of epiphany:

In 2001, Mr. Inglis passed out from dehydration at his home in Greenville, and banged his mouth on a bathroom vanity. As he recovered, he says he thought about his own failings. He vowed, if he returned to politics, to be “less inclined to label the other side as Satan incarnate.”…

Note that Inglis didn’t change his mind about issues. He was as conservative as ever. He simply decided to stop regarding people who disagreed with him as the enemy.

And that, tragically, seems to have made him DeMint’s enemy. DeMint’s continuing attitude toward politics was captured in this paragraph:

The day after the vote, Mr. DeMint urged the newly elected senators to stick to their principles. “Tea-party Republicans were elected to go to Washington and save the country—not be co-opted by the club,” Mr. DeMint wrote in an op-ed in this newspaper. “So put on your boxing gloves. The fight begins today.”

Worse for Inglis, worse even than his new distaste for demonizing the opposition, was that he wasn’t always on board with the GOP team. He had always gone his own way, which was apparently fine with DeMint when it meant being more conservative than anyone else. But now, he occasionally broke with the right. He criticized the use of Culture War issues such as gay marriage to divide the electorate. He voted against the Surge in Iraq (something that I strongly disagreed with him on, but respected for the courage it took). He voted with Democrats to censure Joe Wilson for shouting “You lie!” (Why? Because Joe deserved censure for such a breach of civility.)

And so when Inglis asked DeMint to help him this year, DeMint refused, giving the excuse that he wasn’t getting involved with House races.

You really need to read this story. If you can’t read it online, run out over lunch and buy a copy while they’re still available. It’s really something.

Another stand-alone governor? Let’s hope not

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Photo by Gerry Melendez/The State

In the newspaper biz, a “stand-alone” is a picture that has no story with it. I’m still looking back at Tuesday night, and pondering a photo that embodies another sense of “stand-alone”…

As we were waiting… and waiting, and waiting… for Nikki Haley’s victory speech that night, someone in the WIS studio wondered aloud why Henry McMaster was the one killing time at the podium (actually, he was introducing her, but we didn’t realize that at first). Well, who else would it have been? said I. He was the only member of the GOP establishment to have embraced her — her only primary opponent to play a positive, prominent role in her campaign. That’s Henry; he’s Old School. If it’s his party’s nominee, he’s behind her, 100 percent.

So who else would introduce her?

And then I thought no more about it. My mind turned to how low-energy and off-key her subsequent speech was. (Something Cindi Scoppe apparently disagrees with, since she wrote, “She made a good start with her victory speech.“)

It was only when I looked at the photos later (and these photos are from The State, where you can find both a Nikki victory gallery and a Sheheen concession gallery) that I thought about the extreme contrast. There was Vincent, with a broad array of people loyally, warmly supporter him in his hour of defeat — while aside from Henry, Nikki stood alone (I’m not counting family; both candidates had that).

First the delay. Then she comes out alone, without political allies, then she delivers that less-than-enthusiastic speech. What was going on?

I don’t know, but I hope it doesn’t stay like this. We’ve had 8 years of a stand-alone governor, and a governor standing alone can’t accomplish anything in this state, for good or for ill.

We’d all be better off if more people were willing to stand with our governor. Of course, it would help if she acted like she wanted them to. And that’s the thing, isn’t it? The sort of person with whom more people are willing to stand, and who is willing to stand with more people, is the sort of person that, well, more people want to stand with. That made me dizzy. Let me read it again — yep, that’s what I meant to say…

Photo by C. Aluka Berry/The State

I would discuss this, but I don’t have time

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The Juan Williams mess led to a long and provocative thread about normal fears and irrational prejudices, and what we should feel free to express about certain situations in modern life without getting fired for it.

And at some point, I posted the following in that thread, and it was so long I decided to make it into a separate post, even though, once I post it, I really need to move on to other stuff… Anyway, what I said was”

You know, there’s a whole conversation I’d be interested to have here about the way a healthy human brain works that takes this out of the realm of political correctness-vs.-Angry White Males, which is about as deep as we usually go.

But in the last week of an election, when I’m having trouble blogging at all, much less keeping up with all the election-related things I need to be writing about… I don’t have time to set out all my thoughts on the subject.

But to sort of give a hint…

What I’m thinking is this: There are certain things that we decry today, in the name of being a pluralistic society under the rule of law, that are really just commonsense survival strategies, things programmed into us by eons of evolution.

For instance, we sneer at people for being uneasy in certain situations — say, among a group of young males of a different culture or subculture. And we are right to sneer, to a certain extent, because we are enlightened modern people.

But, if our ancestors weren’t uneasy and ready to fight or flee in such a situation, they wouldn’t have lived to reproduce, and we wouldn’t be here. Thousands of years ago, people who felt all warm and fuzzy and wanted to celebrate multiculturalism when in the company of a bunch of guys from the rival tribe got eaten for dinner, and as a result, those people are NOT our ancestors. We inherited our genes from the edgy, suspicious, cranky people — the racists and nativists of their day.

Take that to the next level, and we recognize that such tendencies are atavistic, and that it’s actually advantageous in our modern market economy governed by liberal democracies to be at ease with folks from the other “tribes.” In fact, the more you can work constructively with people who are different, the more successful you will be at trade, etc.

So quite rightly we sneer at those who haven’t made the socio-evolutionary adjustment. They are not going to get the best mates, etc., because chicks don’t dig a guy who’s always itching for a fight. So they’re on the way out, right?

However… the world hasn’t entirely changed as much as we think it has. There are still certain dangers, and the key is to have the right senses to know when you need to be all cool and open and relaxed, and when you need to be suspicious as hell, and ready to take evasive or combative action.

This requires an even higher state of sophistication. Someone who is always suspicious of people who are different is one kind of fool. Someone who is NEVER suspicious of people who are different (and I’m thinking more of people with radically different world views — not Democrats vs. Republicans, but REALLY different — more than I am people wearing funny robes) is another kind of fool.

The key, ultimately, is not to be any kind of fool. The key is to be a thoughtful, flexible survivor who gets along great with the Middle-eastern-looking guy in the airport queue or the Spanish-speakers in the cereals aisle at Walmart, but who is ready to spring into action to deal with the Middle-eastern-looking guy in seat 13A who’s doing something weird with the smoking sole of his shoe (or the Aryan guy doing the same, but my point is that you don’t give the Arab pass in such a situation just to prove how broad-minded you are), or the Spanish-speaking guy wielding an AK-47 over a drug deal…

This may seem common sense, but there are areas in which we will see conflicts between sound common sense and our notions of rigid fairness in a liberal democracy. For instance, I submit that an intelligent person who deals with the world as it is will engage in a certain amount of profiling. I mean, what is profiling, anyway, but a gestalten summation of what you’ve learned about the world in your life, applied to present and future situations? The ability to generalize, and act upon generalizations — without overdoing it — are key life skills.

There are certain traits that put you on guard and make you particularly vigilant under particular circumstances, or you are a fool. If you’re in an airport and you see a group of 20-something Mediterranean-looking males (and young males from ANY culture always bear more watching than anyone else — sorry, guys, but y’all have a long rap sheet) unaccompanied by women or children or old men, and they’re muttering and fidgeting with something in their bags… you’re not very bright if you don’t think, “This bears watching.”

Now of course, knowing this, if I’m a terrorist organization, I’m going to break up that pattern as much as I can. (I’ll have them travel separately, wear western clothes, coach them not to seem furtive, etc. I’ll recruit middle-aged women if I can, although they generally have far too much sense.) So if you’re watching this scene, and you are intelligent, you’re bound to think, “These guys look SO suspicious that they must be innocent, because terrorists aren’t that stupid…” Well, yeah, they can be. Let me submit the evidence of the guy who set his underpants on fire… So there’s such a thing as overthinking the situation. I mean, how bright is a guy who wants to blow himself up to make a point? People who do that ALSO don’t reproduce, so evolution militates against it…

Anyway, I’d go on and on about this, and examine all the implications, and endeavor to challenge the assumptions of people of all political persuasions… but I don’t have time this week.

Burn, Baby, Burn

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The things you miss when you leave town a couple of days:

She also drew a comparison between working with lawmakers and raising children.

“That’s what it’s all about — letting them know what would happen,” she said, adding most lawmakers, like kids, will do the right thing if the consequences are clear. “If they mess up, I will burn them.” [Emphasis mine.]

Remember what I said about how Nikki, being female and petite and couching things as a “Mom,” gets away with saying things that coming from a man would sound incredibly presumptuous, megalomaniacal and bullying? This is another of those things…

She’s trying to sound fair and reasonable, but the rabble-rousing, storm-the-Bastille rhetoric that won the hearts of the Tea Party keeps coming out…

Mrs. William Michael Haley, and all the ladies of the House

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Just noticed something on the S.C. legislative website. On the page with links to House members’ bios, there is an interesting difference in the way distaff members are listed:

Jeff D. Duncan
Tracy R. Edge
Shannon S. Erickson (Mrs. Kendall F.)
P. Michael “Mike” Forrester
Marion B. Frye
Laurie Slade Funderburk (Mrs. Harold Williams)
Michael W. “Mike” Gambrell
Wendell G. Gilliard
Jerry N. Govan, Jr.
Anton J. Gunn
Nikki Randhawa Haley (Mrs. William Michael)
Daniel P. “Dan” Hamilton
Nelson L. Hardwick

I never noticed that before, and I wonder why. Is it because they didn’t DO it that way before, or because I just never looked up any female members, or I just wasn’t being observant?

Anyway, it jumped out at me just now, when I went to try to answer the question raised by a reader back here (but I did not find the answer).

I wonder what y’all think of it.

Me, I like it. I think it’s genteel. But then, I would have been at home in the England that Patrick O’Brian and Jane Austen wrote about, when ladies were ladies and gentlemen were gentlemen. As long as I got to be a gentleman. (I think if I took an aptitude test that tested for all occupations throughout history, I would test as perfectly suited to being an English gentleman who did nothing but ride to the hounds and collect his rents — that is, let his man of business collect them for him, of course. I feel it in my bones. And you know what? In that whole year I was looking, I never saw a job like that.)

At lunch today, when I said something about how Vincent Sheheen has to be careful not to seem to be TOO aggressive with Nikki Haley, my ADCO colleague Lora Prill gently suggested that my sensibility with regard to matters of chivalry is a relic of a bygone era, which means of course that I’m way old. Which I’m not; I’m just quixotic.

At any rate, say what else you may say about it, it’s very South Carolina.

“The Assassination of Nikki Haley by the Coward Will Folks”

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Sound a bit over-the-top — even disturbing, with the figurative suggestion of violence? (I almost didn’t post this because of the violent metaphor — held it for several hours before posting — and might still take it down if enough of you recoil from it the way I did. But the fact that it WAS so extreme was what I wanted to comment on…)

Yeah, well, that’s kind of what I thought when I read this overheated blog post, which you can see pictured below. I don’t know who The Garnet Spy is, but it must be one of those white guys I hear about who do not question the Official Nikki Haley Narrative, which can fit on a postcard:

Nikki Haley is a triple threat to powerful people in South Carolina.  She’s (1) a woman of (2) minority heritage and (3) a political reformer.

I had thought only the national media believed that that narrative was true, and it was all you needed to know about Nikki Haley. I thought everybody in South Carolina knew enough to know better. But apparently not.

(By the way, did y’all see the movie that I’m taking off on above, in that badly-Photoshopped image? It was pretty good. Really evoked a mood.)

“The Brad Show,” Episode 3: Vincent Sheheen

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Well, here it is: The third installment of “The Brad Show.” Our guest Wednesday afternoon was Sen. Vincent Sheheen, the Democratic nominee for governor of South Carolina.

We sort of did this one on the run. We found out on Wednesday that he would be in our neighborhood, and were told we could catch him over at Rep. James Smith‘s law office at 4 p.m. So Jay and Julia grabbed the equipment, and we ran over there. James and his staff hastily cleaned off a conference table that was covered with stacks of documents and other debris while Jay and Julia set up the camera and wired us for sound, and we were off. Twenty-five minutes later, we were packed up and ready to leave, the interview in the proverbial can. It all went so smoothly — no thanks to me; all I did was show up — that would you have thought we had done this 100 times before.

So thanks, Jay and Julia, and thanks, Capt. Smith, for accommodating us so generously.

I hope you can find something of value in this conversation. I’m sure you’ll tell me if you don’t…

The comic stylings of Vincent Sheheen

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You can tell a lot about a candidate by the way he delivers a joke. And what I can tell from this is that we really need to elect this guy governor, to distract him from any plans he may have to pursue a standup career.

But seriously, folks…

You do see some of Vincent’s character on display here in the beginning of his speech to the Columbia Rotary Club — his casual, self-deprecating manner. And there’s a certain contrast to be drawn to Nikki Haley (who will speak to Rotary next Monday).

Whereas the joke is at the expense of a theoretical “South Carolina politician,” the gentle, warmly mocking way that Vincent makes a serious point stands in contrast to the angrier, grab-the-torches-and-pitchforks approach to “South Carolina politicians” that one might encounter at a Haley event. How Nikki manages to fool her supporters into believing that the South Carolina politician is “the Other,” that she is not herself one, is beyond me…

Ultimately, the issue of who will replace Mark Sanford is rightly a question of character. So I thought it worth sharing a tidbit from which you can infer something along those lines.

If anything, Vincent takes the whole lollygaggin’, easygoin’ thing to the point of being a fault. It’s why, I expect, Dick Harpootlian wanted Dwight Drake to run — Vincent is perceived as such a nice guy, and Dick wanted someone who would GO AFTER the Republicans. (One problem with that is that Dwight’s a pretty nice guy, too. But nevermind.)

And yes, I DO plan to post something more substantive about his speech yesterday. It’s just that I’m running out of time today, and this short clip was right at hand…

A thought-provoking note from SC Citizens for Life

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Still catching up with my e-mail…

I got this message from Holly Gatling in response to this post:

Dear Brad,

Do you have a marriage license?  A piece of paper you were willing to sign your name to as a statement of commitment?

That’s the difference between Sheheen and Haley.  Haley put her name on a statement of the agenda of South Carolina Citizens for Life and Sheheen declined.  How sad.

And why is there such hatred across this land for conservative, pro-life, Republican women?  The misogyny is grossly apparent.  Conservative, pro-life women are the greatest threat in politics today to the abortion industry, the greatest destroyer of human life on the planet.

We’re in this economic crisis because 50 million members of the human family have been wiped out by abortion.  That’s 50 million members of a tax-paying workforce and ALL their progeny.

I urge and encourage you to THINK with the body part men and women share equally — the brain.

Committed candidate v. undecided. The choice is clear.

Your friend,

Holly Gatling, Executive Director
South Carolina Citizens for Life

I appreciate my friend Holly — we worked together at the paper years ago — taking the time to respond. Here are some thoughts that her note generates for me:

  • Regarding the marriage license analogy: It makes the very good point that Vincent does not want to be married to S.C. Citizens for Life — a fact that has nothing to do with his own convictions as a Catholic. Vincent wants to work with everybody — Republicans, pro-choice Democrats, Zoroastrians should any show up at the State House — on issues having nothing to do with abortion. So why should he want to draw a bright line that says I’m one of these good people over here, and you’re one of those bad people over there? Which is the purpose of such endorsements, from the perspective of a Nikki Haley. Nikki wants to make sure everyone knows she’s on THIS side and therefore against THOSE people. And as long as she accomplishes that, she’s happy. As someone who presided for years over an editorial board that was sharply divided on abortion, I never tried to force us to take a position on it, for two reasons: It did not bear upon the issues that were important to moving South Carolina forward (which is what we were about), and it would have been foolish to create ill will on the board that would have spilled over into areas where, if we could achieve consensus, we might be able to make a difference. I wrote a column on the subject once. So I understand Vincent’s position, even if Holly doesn’t.
  • Who has “hatred” toward “conservative, pro-life, Republican women?” Certainly not I, and I would challenge anyone to demonstrate the opposite. And if they go looking for such women whom I “hate,” they’ll definitely have to look for someone other than Nikki Haley. Yeah, I’ve been pretty appalled at some of the things I’ve learned about her the last few months, but my one big beef is that she’d be disastrous for South Carolina as governor. That could be said about a lot of women — and men — against who I hold no malice. I really don’t know where that statement in the note comes from.
  • Finally, THINK is exactly what I’m urging people to do in this election. That, in fact, was all I was saying back before the primary in this post (“Don’t vote with your emotions, people. THINK!,” June 6), which some thought was way harsh on Nikki. But all I was saying was, THINK before you vote. Don’t base your vote on such emotional nonsense as being excited that she’s an Indian-American woman (or that she’s a “conservative, pro-life, Republican woman”), any more than you should be excited that Vincent is the first Catholic, and the first Lebanese-American, to win a major-party nomination for governor in this state. Still less should you vote because of the ENTIRELY irrelevant fact that you don’t like Barack Obama, which has absolutely zero to do with who should govern this state. THINK. Please, it’s all I want.

Mind you, in the past I have praised SC Citizens for Life for THINKing rather than going with the emotional flow, such as in this column on Feb. 7, 1996:

The endorsement of Jean Toal by S.C. Citizens for Life last week constituted one of those little epiphanies that have the potential to enlighten public life, if only we would pay attention.

In this case, the lesson to be learned was this:
The terms “liberal” and “conservative,” as they are popularly used today, serve virtually no useful purpose. They help not at all in the increasingly onerous task of meeting the challenges that face us in the political sphere. In fact, they often get in the way.
The Toal endorsement, while making perfect sense to the objective observer, momentarily demolished the world view of self-described “liberals” and “conservatives” as surely as Galileo messed with the heads of the geocentric crowd. “Conservatives” lost their cozy view of there being two kinds of people — Christians and “liberals.” Meanwhile, “liberals” couldn’t quite bring themselves to celebrate the endorsement because having common cause with those “conservative” right-to-lifers makes them queasy.
It’s nice to see nonsense knocked on its rear end.

My purpose at the time was to contrast the good sense demonstrated by Holly’s organization, as opposed to the mindlessness of her frequent allies among “conservative” Republicans who wanted to boot Justice Toal for the sin of being a Democrat (and therefore, in their small minds, a “liberal,” a word they use with all the thoughtfulness, subtlety and understanding of the mob crying “Witch!” in Monty Python’s “Holy Grail”).

My point then, as now: THINK.