Category Archives: Columns

The Party Strikes Back

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I just got this from Katon Dawson. I have no idea why he didn’t send it earlier so we could have published it as a letter to the editor before the election. (As we told readers, the cutoff for primary-related letters was 10 a.m. Friday, and we ran the last of them Sunday. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, Tuesday’s page was gone by the time I saw this message, which was sent at 11:55 a.m. Monday.):

                                       June 12, 2006
To Mr. Brad Warthen,
    You have never hidden your dislike for political parties, but in your column from June 4 your request to voters went over the line. You asked Democrats to vote in the Republican Party.
    This is an affront to both Democrat and Republican voters in South Carolina.
     Now The State newspaper can endorse whomever they like, however for a journalist to call for voters of one party to vote in another party’s primary is irresponsible.
     Primaries are ways voters choose their party’s nominees. I take it very seriously and I know thousands of other Republican voters take it very seriously. My guess is that Democrat voters also take choosing their nominees very seriously.
     As much as you would like to turn elections into meaningless dribble, they are not.
     Deciding who runs our state is a very important task, one for the citizens of South Carolina to decide.
     You ask Democrats to vote in the Republican Primary for a specific Superintendent of Education candidate rather than “wasting your vote” in the Democrat Primary for Governor. What does that say to Tommy Moore, Frank Willis, or Dennis Aughtry? What does that say to their campaign volunteers, many of whom have been working across the state for the past year? And what does that say to Democrat voters who plan to faithfully cast their vote on June 13th?
    I question your ethical judgment when you call for the voters of one party to influence the election of another party.
    Even though you have distain for the electoral process, please do not diminish it for the hundreds of thousands of South Carolinians who wish to do their part in choosing their leaders.
    I just hope the readers of The State pay little attention to your disillusioned view of the electoral process.

Sincerely,
Katon Dawson
Chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party

You know what I take seriously? The future of education in South Carolina. And that is probably going to be determined in the Republican primary tomorrow. Why Katon wouldn’t want anyone and everyone to have a say in that is beyond me.

I just can’t follow partisan thinking. For years, the GOP begs everybody in South Carolina to come vote in their primaries (even inserting irresponsible gimmicks onto their ballots to draw voters, such as the bogus Confederate Flag "referendum" of 1994), holds press conferences to run it in Democrats’ faces when one of their politicians switches sides, and makes a huge deal about how many more people voted in the latest GOP primary than ever before.

Now, all of a sudden, it’s a members-only proposition. Sheesh. I believe, as someone once said, that "Deciding who runs our state is a very important task, one for the citizens of South Carolina to decide." That means all of them, not just the people who identify with the party that happens to have the only contested primary for the office.

 

Also, I curious as to why parties are still relevant at a time when thousands of untrackable dollars are spent by groups such as this one and this one on behalf of some Republicans in an effort to purge the Legislature and other state offices of certain other Republicans?

By the way, "Democrat" is a noun. the adjective form is "Democratic."

Painful choice column

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A painful choice at
the top of the ticket

By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor

THIS IS A tough election season, especially at the very top of the ticket. Here’s the dilemma:
    South Carolina suffers from a leadership deficit in two ways. First, our government is structured to resist change. I’ve been around, and I’ve never seen a system better suited to preserving the status quo. It fragments authority so that no one can bring our limited resources to bear effectively on our challenges. And the voters can’t hold anyone accountable.
    This would be OK if the status quo were good. It isn’t. We trail the rest of the nation by almost any measurement you choose.
    Here’s the second problem: People who have the vision to lead us out of this situation, and the leadership skills to implement the vision, just don’t run for office. Especially not for governor. Why would an exceptional leader run for an office that’s designed to be ineffective?000moore_1
    The governor used to be even weaker. Sen. Tommy Moore helped broker the 1993 deal that at least boosted the scope of the position up to its current inadequate level. Unfortunately, he shows little interest in taking the next steps in reform.
    Still, he’s more inclined in that direction than Florence Mayor Frank Willis. That’s one of the reasons we’ve given Sen. Moore our qualified endorsement in Tuesday’s Democratic primary.
    The choice is more maddening on the Republican side.
0willisfrank    Four years ago, we had high hopes that Mark Sanford would meaningfully address our first leadership problem — the structure. He really seemed to get it.
    He failed terribly. Lawmakers aren’t inclined to give the executive branch more power anyway, and they certainly weren’t going to do it for Mark Sanford. They don’t like him. Why? The list is long, but look no further than at the destructive way the governor has chosen to spend the last couple of weeks of this campaign.
    He has little to show in the way of accomplishments, so he decided to run00sanford against the Legislature. Over the budget. There are better ways lawmakers could spend our money than some of the ways they do. But that’s not his complaint. He just wants them to spend less, period. Never mind that our highways go unpatroled, or our prisons inadequately guarded. Never mind that you can’t get into an emergency room for all the mental patients the state no longer treats. Never mind the neglected rural schools.
    He just believes government should spend less. In general. It’s an arbitrary, ideological thing, and don’t ask me to explain it. You either believe it or not. The governor really, really believes it.00lovelace
Legislators, who are mostly Republicans, believe it, too. That’s why they keep cutting taxes and haven’t raised a general tax since 1987. That’s why so many important functions are underfunded.
    But the governor’s so busy pounding away at them as “big spenders” that he couldn’t pause to debate his primary opponent last week. So Dr. Oscar Lovelace appeared on live television and answered questions alone. Sad.
    I really liked Dr. Lovelace when he came in to talk to our board, for the same reasons I like the Jimmy Stewart character in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” He believes fervently in the right  things, from public schools to the need to raise the Mr_smith cigarette tax to improve health care. But he’s also as politically naive as Mr. Smith.
    Worse, he sees no need to change the way our system is set up. He seems to think he would be able to change things through sheer moral force. He doesn’t understand how things work — or rather, how they don’t work.
    What did Gov. Sanford say when he spent two hours with our editorial board? Well, a lot of things, but here’s the main message I came away with: If re-elected, he’ll get that government restructuring thing done this time.
    Right. Tell me another one.
    That was on May 10. In the weeks since, we’ve gone over and over the options, and it’s time to decide. And we’re left with the fact that in the Republican primary, there’s only one person who’s even interested in changing the system so that it will be possible to change other things.
    There are some races this season to be enthusiastic about. I urge you, without reservation, to get out and vote for Bo
b Staton for superintendent of schools, and House candidates Bill Cotty, Ken Clark, Joe McEachern and Anton Gunn. But for governor? The editorial at left is the best we can say.
South Carolina needs and deserves a better choice. But this is what we’ve got, for now.

Governor’s arrogance tinged with fear?

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You probably saw this item Saturday — along with this one.

I just haven’t had a chance to rant about any of it yet. So here goes.

The governor owes it to three parties to show up for Wednesday night’s debate on S.C. ETV, in ascending order of importance:

  1. His opponent, at the very least.
  2. His party, to a greater extent.
  3. Most of all, to the voters of South Carolina.

As I noted last week, Oscar Lovelace was one of many people who voted for Mark Sanford four years ago, only to become disillusioned. Don’t you think that the governor could have the decency to show up and tell the guy who is disappointed enough in him to run his own campaign for governor why he’s wrong?

Not convinced by that? OK, try this.

Mark Sanford’s greatest detractors tend to be Republicans — the ones who know him and have had to work with him in office, as opposed to the ones who know little about him that they haven’t picked up from his TV ads. (Cindi Scoppe’s column Tuesday documents that further. Be sure to check it out.)

In fact, a lot of his fellow elected Republicans think a whole lot more about Oscar Lovelace than they do the governor, judging by the wild, standing ovation Dr. Lovelace got when he visited the House last week. What do they know that the electorate doesn’t? And why won’t the governor face the man who seems so much more popular than he among the knowledgeable members of his own party?
I certainly don’t care about party unity, in this or any other party. But why doesn’t the state’s chief elected Republican care any more about it than I do?

Finally, while the governor is indeed busier than the Gov Lite — he has an actual full-time job, afterSanfordbudget all — his excuse that he doesn’t have time to debate his GOP opponent is nearly as bogus as Andre’s claim that his schedule is so hectic he has to do three digits on the public highways. As the accompanying story makes clear, he has time to politick. He’s just choosing to use his time bashing his fellow Republicans in the Legislature and playing favorites among GOP candidates for other statewide offices (all of whom showed up for their debates, mind you).

Everyone assumed, when the governor threatened to keep lawmakers after school, that he was doing so in order to be able to bash them (most of whom are Republicans, remember) over his vetoes, few of which they are likely to uphold if the past is a guide. So lawmakers decided overwhelmingly to repudiate that naked political opportunism, and kept him from doing that to them. So how did he respond? By deciding to take to the hustings and bash them anyway. Nothing like sticking to a game plan. That’s much more important than appearing on a statewide televised debate, even though all the other candidates for statewide office have had enough respect for the electorate to do so. Right? Right, sez the gov. So far.

Surely, while he’s busy telling us why Mr. Ryberg is preferable to Messrs. Quinn, Ravenel and Willis, and why we should all back his personal choice for superintendent of education over a better-qualified rival, he could take an hour to tell us why voters should choose him over Oscar Lovelace. Does he not owe that to the voters? Is he so arrogant in his electoral advantage that he doesn’t have to explain why he should get his party’s nod a second time, after a miserable performance over the last four years.

I say he does. What say you?

Personally, I expected better than this from Mark Sanford. He’s always set himself apart from political stereotypes. But what’s he acting like now? The standard arrogant incumbent who knows he’s on his way to victory, so to hell with respecting the opposition.

OK, so he’s arrogant. But I find myself wondering, as I look back over what I’ve written here, is he also scared? Scared of poor little country doctor Oscar, who’s never run for public office before in his life? As absurd as that may seem at first glance, think about it: As long as Joe Average never sees them together, he votes for Sanford. But more savvy Republicans seem to like Dr. Lovelace better. Is the governor actually afraid of the average voter out there having a chance to make a direct comparison and reach a similar conclusion?

Yeah, I’m baiting him. But he deserves to be baited.

Go ahead and blow off your opponent, Governor. And dis your party all you want. But you owe something better than that to the rest of us.

Re Jim Rex, whom we will meet later

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I got this e-mail this morning from Zeke Stokes of Columbia:

Brad:
     While I agree whole-heartedly with your assessment that South Carolina’s schools are improving and that we must continue the progress, I have to take issue with your implication that only one candidate in this race is equipped to do that. I mentioned to you at Galivant’s Ferry that I am running Jim Rex’s race for State Superintendent of Education, and regardless of who the Republican nominee is, South Carolinians will have a qualified, electable alternative in Jim come November, yet you didn’t mention that in your column on Sunday. 
    I ran Inez Tenenbaum’s races for this seat, and she has proven that this is a race in  which South Carolinians will take a strong look at the candidates’ credentials before considering the Party to which they belong, as evidenced by the fact that she carried the ticket in 1998, ahead of strong showings by Fritz Hollings and Jim Hodges, as well as in 2002, when most Democrats lost their races for statewide office. If, before the primary, there is an opportunity to make this point in your coverage of the race, I hope you will do that as well. 
    In addition, I have to take issue with your assertion that Democrats should cross over to help Mr. Staton in his primary. Party primaries are designed to allow each party to select its candidates and to put forth the candidate that it thinks will best represent its views in the general election. Democrats have done that in this race, by choosing to nominate Jim Rex without a primary. In fact, when Jim entered the race, the primary field cleared, in part because his strong education background, coupled with the support of people like Dick Riley and Inez Tenenbaum, made him the obvious choice for Democrats. On June, 13 Republicans have the same opportunity, and Democrats ought to allow that process to unfold without crossing over to "sabotage" the outcome. 
    I hope you will take a fresh look at this race after the primary, regardless of who Republicans choose. As always, Jim and I are available to speak with you should you have a need to do so. The best way to reach me is on my cell at (deleted for blog purposes).

Many thanks,
Zeke

I replied to Zeke as follows:

    My column had nothing to do with your guy; he’s not, last time I looked, seeking the contested nomination. I would have mentioned the three also-rans before I would have mentioned a guy who’s not even in a primary. And I had no space to waste on them.
    Maybe you want to run against Mrs. Floyd (maybe to fire up your base or something), but given the chance that she could well win the whole thing, I’d much rather not see South Carolina take such a risk.
    We’re far better off with a choice between Staton v. Rex.
    Do you disagree?
    You seem to be concerned about parties and their prerogatives; I despise parties, and the sooner voters divest themselves from all partisan identification whatsoever, the better off our state and country will be. I care about what’s good for South Carolina, not what’s good for a party.
    By the way, I plan to post this exchange on my blog (I hate to spend time typing if readers can’t see it). I’ll leave out your cell number. I’ll be glad to put up any responses you have, as well.
    I look forward to talking with you AFTER this mess is over. One hill at a time.
— Brad Warthen

That’s it, for now.

Steak-vs.-Sizzle column

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Choosing the steak over the sizzle

By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor

KAREN FLOYD is the sizzle; Bob Staton is the steak.
    Carve it any way you like, that’s what you end up with in the GOP race for superintendent of education.
    Mr. Staton proposes (yawn) to push ahead on the sweeping, fundamental reforms that he and other business leaders initiated. The ones the education establishment’s defenders fought so hard.Staton The ones that are working.
    They proposed to set some of the highest standards in the state (which South Carolina has done), to test every child to make sure the schools teach those standards (which South Carolina is doing), and to bring the schools where kids aren’t meeting those standards up to snuff (which South Carolina has hardly begun to do).
    Continue pulling the schools up to high standards? Sounds like a lot of hard work, doesn’t it?
    Mrs. Floyd says things people like to hear. She’s a lawyer, but seems born for sales. As was said in the Charleston Post and Courier, she “has polished her presentation to a bright shine.”
    She is very open-minded. One of her best, most sizzling lines goes like this: “Given the state of education in South Carolina, it would be irresponsible to prohibit any reasonable idea, any possible solution from consideration merely out of a fear of change.”
    Sure. But what’s “reasonable”? There’s the rub. Mrs. Floyd is really reluctant to draw that clear line. When she finally does, she draws it in the wrong place.
Floyd_debate_1    Look at last week’s ETV/The State debate. I asked Mrs. Floyd whether her endorsement by Gov. Mark Sanford — whose one big idea with regard to public schools is to pay people to pull their kids out of them — meant that she was “completely in sync” with his education agenda.
    “I am absolutely a free thinker,” she said, noting that “there’s a wide spectrum” of views among her supporters … .
    But would she have voted, given the chance, for the governor’s proposal to give tax credits to private school parents, a plan called “Put Parents in Charge”?
    “You know, I purposefully have never discussed the PPIC legislation.” She would pull together all the stakeholders, and “put together a ‘choice’ program that would fit the needs of the state of South Carolina….”
    “But you didn’t really answer the question,” host Andy Gobeil objected.
    She said PPIC was “a moving target constantly,” with 42 amendments. She hadn’t wanted to “anchor” herself to what “may not be the final position.”
    I tried again: “But in the end, there was an amended — much amended — piece of legislation, and lawmakers did have to vote on it. And they had to say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ So on that one that was finally voted on — this year, let’s say; let’s be specific: Yes or no?”
    She stopped sizzling: “The piece of legislation that was voted on this year, the last piece of legislation, was one that I would have supported, yes.” She had not wanted to answer that.
    “I did not support PPIC,” Mr. Staton answered. He went on to say we have to focus on improvingStaton_debate_1 our public schools, and that the problem with South Carolina is that every time we undertake a reform we abandon it before we’ve fully implemented it, and… I cut him off. I had my answer.
    Why the big deal on this one thing? You might just as well ask Mrs. Floyd that, since she was the one dodging it, but I’ll provide the answer: This is the one substantive point on which Mrs. Floyd and Mr. Staton differ. They both know that. To the extent that this race turns on issues of any kind, that point is the pivot, the fulcrum.
    And the stakes for South Carolina are incalculable.
    This is why the governor — who fundamentally does not believe in public schools — endorsed Mrs. Floyd last year, long before he could have known who else would be competing for his party’s banner. It’s why out-of-state anti-public school interests have pumped loads of money into the campaigns of not only Mrs. Floyd, but of anyone who will run against any Republican lawmaker who has had the guts to stand up and vote “no” to their proposal.
    For them, it’s the end-all and be-all. It is for our schools, too. And it is for you, whatever your political affiliation.
    If you’re a Republican, a vote for Bob Staton is a vote for South Carolina’s right to determine its own future. To vote for Mrs. Floyd is to side with out-of-state extremists who have vowed to take out any Republican who dares disagree with them.
    If you’re a Democrat, and you actually care about improving public schools (as Democrats always say they do), you’d better vote in the Republican primary for Bob Staton, rather than wasting your vote deciding whether Tommy Moore or Frank Willis will lose to the governor in the fall. This is the one that counts.
Floyd    And if you are an independent, this is your chance to step in and say that the public schools belong to you, too — not just the ideologues of various stripes.
    Mrs. Floyd is an intelligent, delightful, charming woman who is open to all sorts of good ideas. But she’s also open to one horrendous idea that undermines all the rest. It takes all the gloss off her “bright shine.”
    Mr. Staton doesn’t glow. He sweats, doing the heavy lifting of making all of our schools better.
    It’s not a very shiny proposition, but it’s a meaty one.

Don’t be coy, Mr. Sanford

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Sanford_laugh
Governor should show up, debate Lovelace

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR

MARK SANFORD has disappointed a lot of people who supported him four years ago. He shouldn’t disappoint us again on June 7.
    So far, the governor hasn’t told the folks at ETV whether he’ll show up to debate GOP challenger Oscar Lovelace that night (and no, I’m not a panelist on this one; I just want to see it happen). He said he’d make up his mind when the Legislature goes home.
    Well, lawmakers are going home today, so it’s time for an answer — past time, really. It needs to be an unequivocal “yes.”
    This coyness is most unbecoming in a guy whom many of us have respected because he supposedly doesn’t like playing political games. And a secure incumbent dodging a debate with a challenger in order to avoid risk is one of the gamiest of such games.
    Of course, that’s not the reason given. It never is, whether with cheesy politicians or with Mark Sanford. The reason given, by Sanford campaign manager Jason Miller, is that “Gov. Sanford takes his day job very seriously.” In other words, he’s just too busy to decide whether he’ll have time to spend a critical hour defending his performance a full six days after lawmakers are gone.
    Yes, I know he takes his vetoes very seriously, and it’s one of the things I admire about him.
    But he promised — as part of his unseemly effort to rush lawmakers (see the editorial at left) — to have his vetoes done by Monday. That leaves him time to prep for the debate, as long as he’s not too busy grandstanding about the Legislature’s failure to follow his schedule. (Lawmakers, you see, understand that they need to go home and justify themselves to the voters. The governor could learn from that attitude.)
    Note that I referred to his being a “secure incumbent.” One of the great ironies here is that a governor who has pleased so few remains secure; that’s a testament to the shameful reluctance of better candidates to challenge him.
    “Better” in terms of political viability — as in, “threatening.” If we’re talking character, intelligence or understanding of the issues facing South Carolina, Oscar Lovelace is a good man. Whether he is a better man by those standards is, ahem, debatable.
    Dr. Lovelace is certainly better at making his case than the governor is — so far. When he talks about being a product of the public schools who actually cares about the public schools, for instance, you find yourself wishing that this guy had a chance. At the very least, he deserves a chance to talk it over with the governor, in front of the rest of us.
    The challenger is one of the 578,841 South Carolinians who voted for the governor in 2002.
    Govbikerim042_1After Mr. Sanford was elected, the family practitioner from Newberry County was proud to be appointed to his task force to recommend health care policy. He was surprised that the governor only showed up for a brief press conference. He was shocked that there was no follow-up.
    Since then, Dr. Lovelace has learned that people who labor in other vineyards — law enforcement, education and the like — have been similarly let down. He has tried to address such matters with the incumbent in ways short of running against him.
    He tried “to get his attention” by riding alongside the governor in one of his celebrated bicycle treks. He tried bringing up substantive topics by running with him in a footrace (not an easy forum, in case you haven’t tried it).
    So now he’s trying this. Here’s hoping he, and TV viewers, can get the governor’s attention without the huffing and puffing.
    It’s not like the governor has all that much to lose, even if he were the sort to value re-election over doing the right thing.
    Shrewd political observer that I am, I believe Mark Sanford is going to be governor for the next four years. And yes, he has done us the honor of sitting down with my colleagues and me to discuss his re-election for a full two hours.
    Surely he can spare half that time for Dr. Lovelace, and for the 578,840 others to whom he owes his office. Many of them will vote for him anyway, but Mark Sanford should not be satisfied with that. He should stand up and give them a reason to do so.

Lovelace_debate

Tune in tonight, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel

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A shameless plug, and another
batch of candidate tidbits

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
SHAMELESS PLUG: Tune in to ETV tonight at 7 to see the five GOP candidates for state education superintendent questioned by Yours Truly. Now, on to our column….
    Our endorsements for the June 13 primary started running last week (see the link below). But candidate interviews continue. Here are some tidbits from last week’s guests:

Monday, 9 a.m. A retired Navy captain and computer whiz, Ken Clark is one of the0clarkken most perceptive, knowledgeable, hard-working, honest and forthright people in the Legislature. He’s facing a candidate who knows virtually nothing about even his own top issue, but is backed by out-of-state money that wants to destroy public education in South Carolina. Rep. Clark should win in a walk. If he doesn’t, we should all worry: “(I)f they succeed in knocking over three or four or five of us, think of the power they will have over the Legislature.”

0brownjoe11 a.m. “Naturally, I am a quiet man, and I think there are advantages to being a quiet man,” said Rep. Joe Brown. “I act like a committee chairman and not like a jackass.” He said he’s all about “constituent service” (using political power to do small favors for individuals), and isn’t interested “in running my mouth a lot in the General Assembly.” Mr. Brown derides the can-do energy of attorney Chris Hart: “My opponent says I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do that, and I’m gonna do the other.” After 21 years in office, Mr. Brown says that’s just inexperience talking.

2 p.m. When our next candidate had left, I had to ask a colleague: “What do you0scottjohn think? Valium?” I hadn’t seen such a meek, mild and deferential candidate in years. And this was John Scott (at least, I think it was), normally Mr. Cocksure. The old John Scott was always right, and other views were smugly dismissed. This new guy is so agreeable that if I had asked him to hand over his wallet, I think he would have done it. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; it was just weird. I hope he’s OK.

5 p.m. But the title for most cautious candidate goes to Harold Driver, running for Richland County0driverharold Council. When we asked questions that applied, he pointed to answers he had written out ahead of time (I think they were responses to questions our newsroom had sent him) rather than take the risk of speaking aloud. When we asked questions not covered on the sheet of paper, he objected. The bus system? “It’s hard to answer questions when you’re not informed.” Homelessness? “I don’t want to answer any questions that are gonna damage my campaign, because I feel like it’s going real good.”

0willisfrankWednesday, 10 a.m. Could we do a better job of channeling limited resources and improving our public universities if we had a board of regents to set priorities? “We probably could,” said Florence Mayor Frank Willis. But “what do you lose?” His community loves Francis Marion University. Other communities love the colleges the Legislature has given them. “Those people will fight you,” he warned. Apparently, if elected governor, Mr. Willis would not fight back. So we would continue to scatter 79 middling campuses across a state that doesn’t have a single one in the nation’s top tier.

0coxkirk11:30 a.m. We have this trick question. Well, it’s a trick question to some. If you paid attention in poli sci class, it’s like Tee Ball. Kirk Cox, candidate for Lexington County Council, knocked it out of the park. Question: “If you know your constituents feel one way on an issue, but after studying the facts you reach a different conclusion, how do you vote?” Mr. Cox was confused at our having to ask. “I’m not going to take a poll,” he said. “We do have a representative form of government, right?” Indeed. Sorry to insult you.

0hammondmark12:30 p.m. Since becoming secretary of state four years ago, Mark Hammond has been working to modernize and streamline the office. But he wants to keep the 1895 model for selecting the officeholder. He thinks voters should still have to pick the secretary of state, even though 95 percent of them probably couldn’t begin to tell you what he does. “This is just a gimmick of my opponent,” he says of letting the governor appoint instead. Never mind that this newspaper has advocated that idea for at least 15 years.

1:30 p.m. Why did Thomas Ravenel, most recently seen running for the U.S. Senate in 2004, enter0ravenelthomas the GOP race for state treasurer at the last minute? “I like (state Sen. Greg) Ryberg,” but “I feel like he can’t win.” Why? “I didn’t think he’d get off his wallet,” he explained. “I felt like (former Rep. Rick) Quinn was gonna win.” And as those who saw Messrs. Ravenel and Quinn go at each other in last Sunday’s debate know, that wouldn’t suit him at all. Sen. Ryberg’s off his wallet now, to the tune of $2 million of his own money, but Mr. Ravenel is spending right back at him. (Asked if he would promise not to quit mid-term to run for the Senate again, he would say only, “I promise not to spend 36 of the next 40 years as treasurer.”)

0ingramvalerieThursday, 11:30 a.m. “I’ll frame it this way,” Valerie Ingram said as to why she’s after Kit Smith’s seat on Richland County Council. Some people complain to her that “they were treated poorly” when they appeared before the council. Which people? “Business people and agencies….” Such as the sheriff’s department? Yes. Ms. Ingram works for the sheriff.

1 p.m. “I’m very straightforward,” said Kit Smith, “and sometimes I’m not that0smithkit tactful.” As for Sheriff Leon Lott, “He’s a good politician… and a good sheriff.” Her differences with him are over management and budget issues. She frets about a conundrum that lies at the core of S.C. politics: You can’t demand justification for a budget increase without it being seen as a personal attack. Many of her comments reflected an idea that she admits sounds odd coming from a Democrat: “I think we rely too much on government in this town.”

AndrecrashmugFriday, 10 a.m. The lieutenant governor couldn’t keep his appointment, for obvious reasons. He has my sympathy, and so do his opponents: It’s awfully hard to run against a man who has to rest in bed the next three months. Let Mike Campbell so much as say “Andre Bauer” and folks will holler, “Stop picking on the man! He’s been in a plane crash!” An interesting situation.
    For our endorsements, go to http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/special_packages/endorsements/.

Vignettes for supper, again

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Sliced, diced and fried
primary candidates,
just for you

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor

‘AW, GEE, PA! Candidate endorsement interview vignettes for Sunday dinner again?”
    Listen, you apathetic little ingrates — this is what I’ve been doing all week, and I’ve been doing it for you, so this is what we have. Shut up, sit down and eat!
    Please.

000malinowski_2Monday, 5:30 p.m. Northwest Richland County needs full-time representation, says William Malinowski, and that’s why he should be chosen over two other Republicans for County Council. He’s retired after 31 years as an FBI agent dealing with “real-life” situations. “I did it. I was out there, I met people face to face in the trenches,” he says. He would exact impact fees from developers to build an infrastructure fund, and tame growth with a “master plan.”

000guerry_1Tuesday, noon. On the Lexington side of Columbiana, Art Guerry wants his old job back. After 12 years on County Council, he was ousted by John Carrigg. Mr. Guerry says he now agrees with his opponent, who said in 1994 that 12 years was long enough.

1:30 p.m. S.C. Sen. Tommy Moore would “make every school in South Carolina the best choice.” As governor, the Democrat000moore_1 would seek to raise the cigarette tax to fund Medicaid. He takes pride in bringing conflicting parties together on divisive issues. But if he has a fire in the belly for this race, I couldn’t see the smoke. Maybe I’m wrong. See the video clip at my blog (be warned that it takes a while to load), and see what you think.

4 p.m. “You can improve education by throwing money at it,” said Moore rival000aughtry_1 Dennis Aughtry. Where will it come from? He insists that casino gambling would do away with all of South Carolina’s problems, from unemployment to property taxes. “I don’t want to sound like it’s the end-all and be-all,” he said. “But frankly, it is.”

5 p.m. “I’m not going to say right now that I’m absolutely going000holcombe_1 to do this, or I’m absolutely not going to do that,” said Jim Holcombe, seeking the same job as Mr. Malinowski. That’s good. A councilman should have an open mind. But he should have something to say about such major issues as how to pay for the regional bus system. He was more interested in school District 5. I agree that it’s “a great system if we don’t let a small group” drag it down. But it doesn’t have much to do with Richland County Council.000wood_2

Wednesday, 10 a.m. “I am, literally, the average person,” said Republican Kerry Wood, who wants to be state schools superintendent. The programmer from Leesville would do away with textbooks and replace them with laptops. Kids would have less to lug around. He also wants smaller classrooms. He said the money for that is already there: “I hear about waste all the time.”000campbell_1

11 a.m. Challenger Mike Campbell, son of the late governor, avoids mentioning incumbent Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer. He will acknowledge this big difference, though: “He is pleased with the office in its current form. I want to see it restructured” so that the lieutenant is on the same team as the governor. “It’s not the lieutenant governor’s job to go up there and fight the governor. That’s crazy.”

12:30 p.m. Having sold his Upstate business and moved to the000mckown_1 beach, Bill McKown is also running for a job that should be appointed by the governor: secretary of state. The Surfside councilman said the big difference between him and incumbent Mark Hammond is that “I don’t need this job.” He said he’s running because the position needs someone with business experience, while Mr. Hammond has “never signed the front of a check; he’s always signed the back…”

1:30 p.m. Folks had told Karen Floyd there was no way we would endorse her. Why? Because the000floyd_1 governor has broken with convention to anoint her, over her four Republican rivals, for superintendent of education, and the governor has only one education “reform” plan — tax credits for private school tuition. But that’s just one of 68 ideas on Mrs. Floyd’s platform, so for more than two hours, she really put her heart into trying to win our support. She was smart, charming, energetic, sincere and sent ideas just chasing each other across the table. Ironically, a bigger problem than “choice” might be her lack of investment in the PACT and the Education Accountability Act, which together constitute the main theme of actual school reform in South Carolina. But she is suspicious of anything presented as a panacea. She prefers “crumbling the cookie piece by piece” to embracing any one, big approach. Because of that, there’s more to her than the two main issues. That makes this one complicated.

000banning_13:30 p.m. This one’s easy. Bill Banning, prime advocate for regional cooperation when he was on Lexington County Council, came in and gave us reasons why he should get the seat back from Joe Owens, who refused to do so.

Thursday, 10 a.m. Republican Ken Clark, one of the most articulate education000spires_1 advocates in the S.C. House, was threatened with strong primary opposition when he fought tax credits. What he got was Kit Spires, who gives confusing answers on the issue. He says he wants to lower property taxes because “that’s what the most of the people are interested in.” But he can’t say which tax plan before the Legislature he favors, because he hasn’t had time to find out about them.000livingston_1

11:30 a.m. Perpetual coroner candidate Alvin Portee is making changes. He’s a Democrat again, and he wants Paul Livingston’s seat on Richland County Council. Mr. Livingston is running on his record: He’s proudest of his advocacy of neighborhood improvement, and his role in bringing civility back to the council.

1:30-ish. “I’m serious about it,” Republican Sen. Greg Ryberg says. Don’t doubt000ryberg_1 him. He’s put $2 million of his own money into his bid to be state treasurer. He says the job requires a business background such as his, which is why it is another office that would be better filled by appointment. “I think getting the most votes doesn’t get you the qualifications,” which is why the state missed out on millions in investment opportunities in the 1990s. “That being said, I certainly want the most votes.” He smiled at that, but believe him — he’s serious.

We regret the inconvenience

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Those who came to the blog today as a result of reading my column in the paper may be disappointed because the footer on the piece promised "much more" than the capsules I gave you from a dozen interviews in the past week.

Well, there is "much more" here — just not on those particular interviews. Except for pictures. (Hey, did you notice one of the candidates I’ve written about responded? I’m hoping to see more of that as I institute this new feature.) Saturday turned out to be a little more hectic than I thought, so I was only able to finish one of them.

Part of my problem is keeping them short. Basically, I get started on them, and I end up writing something more or less column-length. I’ve got so much material I can share, and the blog (unlike the paper) imposes no length discipline. So I go "well, this is long enough, but why not share this… and this… and this was a good quote…" and before you know it, I’ve only completed one, instead of twelve.

So it’s going to take a little longer for me to catch up, as I try to strike that happy medium between giving you more, and keeping it short enough to get them all done.

Meanwhile, browse around and enjoy the rest of the blog. Follow the links. Get lost. Don’t mind the natives; they’re loud but harmless.

Happy Trails.

Fragments from interview marathon

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Highlights and sidelights
from a week of interviews

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
SOME NUGGETS from interviews this past week with candidates in the June 13 primaries:00hart_3

Monday, 8:30 a.m. Surprise: Rep. Joe E. Brown, the retired school administrator who has represented S.C. House District 73 for 20 years, seems to have viable Democratic opposition. Energetic young lawyer Chris Hart calls the incumbent “a true Southern gentleman” who has “become complacent. He’s become ineffective.” Some think that’s why former Speaker David Wilkins found him the one Democrat nonthreatening enough to be a committee chair. Mr. Hart says “every legislator should have to articulate a vision.” Mr. Brown is a quiet man. We’ll see what he has to say in his interview May 22.

00bingham2:30 p.m. Rep. Kenny Bingham, who speaks proudly and often of his service on the Lexington 2 school board, spent a good bit of his interview explaining why he was among the minority who spoke up and voted for the latest attempt to provide subsidies for private schools. He said he didn’t think it would have impact; public schools shouldn’t fear the competition because “they got all the dang money in the world, more than any private school.” He thinks the whole issue is a waste of time, but “when you continue to say ‘no, I’m not going to do it,’” you find you don’t have a “place at the table.”

00mizzell_15:30 p.m. Tony Mizzell, Richland County Council Democrat, belabored a horticultural metaphor in explaining why he wants another term. He’s “planted a lot of seeds” and watered and weeded and so forth, “and things are just starting to grow.” He worked the analogy every which way save one: fertilizer. I wondered at that. Other politicians like to lay on lots of fertilizer.

Tuesday, 1:30 p.m. “This will be a positive 00statoncampaign,” said Columbia businessman Bob Staton, seeking the GOP nomination for S.C. schools superintendent. “I think we’ve beat up public education so much in election cycles” that the electorate is sold on the idea that it’s just bad, and not going to get any better. “If you believe you can do something, you’re going to come a lot closer” to getting it done. “You don’t build up by tearing down.”

2:30 p.m. Oscar Lovelace, quixotic challenger for the GOP nod for governor, is00lovelace more eloquent than the incumbent and knows it: “I just believe strongly that the governor is missing some critical leadership skills” — communication, cooperation and common sense. “Our governor has never been CEO of anything before we made him CEO of South Carolina,” said the family doctor who has built a practice with 38 employees and 15,000 patients. “Our governor has never attended a public school in South Carolina…. I can speak from the bully pulpit. Mark Sanford can’t, because he hasn’t had the real-world experiences.”

00jackson4:30 p.m. Norman Jackson, challenging Mr. Mizzell, was a longtime member of the Richland County planning commission, and has a structural criticism: “I would not want to see more than two members from any one special interest on a commission,” he says. With “two developers, two real estate developers and a lawyer who deals with real estate,” he counts five. “They do a good enough job,” he admits. “I’m just saying….”

00willisWednesday, 10 a.m. “I love the detail,” said Jeff Willis, who describes himself as the only one of four Republicans seeking to be state treasurer with financial experience. “We need a more active, engaged treasurer,” he says, but he thinks the treasurer should continue to be an elective post, and he would keep the unconstitutional Budget and Control Board as is. “If I can do one-tenth what Grady Patterson has done, it would be an honor and a privilege.”
00quinn
12:30 p.m. Rick Quinn, the former House majority leader seeking the same nomination, disagrees. He would ditch the Budget and Control Board and implement a “paradigm change” in the treasurer’s role. “We’ve had Grady so long that people don’t expect the treasurer to weigh in” on critical fiscal issues, such as tax reform. He would.

2 p.m. Two hours with Gov. Mark Sanford covered more than I 00sanfordcan summarize here. The most interesting thing was his emerging advocacy of state funding for education (see editorial above). That came at the very end of the interview, and an aide dragged him away before he could get much into it. More on that later.

5 p.m. Mike Ryan is the only Republican who works in public00ryan education seeking to be education superintendent. After 20 years in the Army (82nd Airborne), he retired as a major. He’s the assistant principal of Wando High School and, unlike many in public education and some in this race, believes in the Education Accountability Act. His is a “no-excuse mentality. Here’s the mission, and how do we get it done?” He corrects those who say we’re just “teaching to the test” with PACT. “We’re teaching to standards, which are on the test.” And in part thanks to those standards, “I honestly believe we’re ready to turn the corner.”

00bushThursday, 11:30 a.m. Retiree Keith Bush wants to be the Republican to take on Billy Derrick, Lexington County Council’s sole Democrat. Mr. Bush says he’s “a great supporter of user fees,” and he isn’t kidding. No checking out books for free at the public library if he had his way. And that’s just the start. “How are colleges funded? Tuition. How are private schools funded? Tuition. How are public schools funded? Taxes.” That makes no sense to him.

00carrigg12:30 p.m. Some interviews range beyond local issues. “For years I’ve driven a Suburban,” said Lexington County Councilman John Carrigg. “The other day I went out and bought a little Saturn Vue.” He gets about twice the 14 miles per gallon that was the best he could do before. “We citizens have a responsibility to stop driving those trucks around.”

Galivants Ferry III: Biden column

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06stump_043Biden hopes even ‘red states’ want ‘competent government’

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
THE AMERICAN people “have written off” the Bush administration, U.S. Sen. Joe Biden told a parking lot full of Democrats Monday at Galivants Ferry.
    “Part of me says ‘good; they figured it out,’” he said. But “In a sense it’s a shame, because we’ve got George W. Bush as our president for the next two and a half years.”
    One woman called out, “No, we don’t!”
    There we have the two-party system, and all it’s done to America, in three words. I don’t know who it was, but I know the voice of a poster child when I hear it.
    It’s obvious, probably even to partisans, that if the guy who’s going to be commander in chief for the next two and a half years is falling apart, it’s probably not a cause for celebration, seeing as how that could be somewhat detrimental to our troops who are laying it on the line overseas. So diehard partisans figure it’s best to deny the situation: No he’s NOT!
    That way there’s no problem.
    But there is a problem, and as Sen. Biden said, “It goes beyond right and wrong…. This administration is not competent.” You can’t just say he’s-wrong-and-we’re-right-so-let’s-applaud-his-failure. The cost of a failed presidency at this moment in our history is too great for us all.
    Some of his speech I had heard — and agreed with — before, such as “History will judge George Bush harshly not for the mistakes he has made… but because of the opportunities that he has squandered.”
    Those include the opportunity to pull the world together on Sept. 12, 2001, to “plan the demise of Islamic fundamentalism,” as FDR or JFK or “even Ronald Reagan” would have done. Or to ask us all to sacrifice and shake off “the grip of foreign oil oligarchs,” instead of giving us tax cuts. “Do you believe anyone in America would have refused?”
    “Rich folks are every bit as patriotic as poor folks,” he said. “They got a tax cut they didn’t ask for.”
    But a lot of what he said was new — he showed me his scribbled notes. And some of what was new, and most welcome, to me was decidedly not the usual fare for a partisan event.
    “Did you think you’d ever live to see the day when we would be defined in terms of red and blue” states? We’re “not that way,” he insisted. He blamed Karl Rove for that false construct, but he also — in a gentler way — bemoaned the fact that “the Democratic Party is different from what I remember.”
    There are Democrats who want to “make our base more angry so that more will turn out.”
    “They may be right; that may be the way to win,” he admitted. But he’s not going that way.
    “The country can be reunited.”
    Later in the week, he confirmed by phone from Florida that he’s decided to pursue “a general-election strategy from the start.”
    “I’m gonna be coming down a lot” to South Carolina, he said. He’s not predicting he could win here, but he’s convinced that to win the White House, a Democrat must “become credible in a dozen or more red states.” By “credible,” he means “45 percent of the vote or more.” He sees opportunities in Mississippi, Arkansas, Colorado, Ohio, Kentucky, Montana and others he rattled off too quickly.
    There’s room for a candidate who believes in America in the 21st century and values doing the job right more than scoring partisan points, he suggested. Across the ideological spectrum, “Americans realize they want and are entitled to competent government.”
    That the Biden message appeals to frustrated independents there can be no doubt. “He talked about sacrifice,” said Paul DeMarco, a Marion physician and thoughtful regular contributor to my blog, at the Monday night event. “I like it when politicians talk that way.” I wondered how many politicians he had heard talk that way since January 1961, but I kept quiet because he was on a roll. “I’m one of the people who got the tax cut,” he said. “And I didn’t really want it.”
    It was a good October 2008 speech. Will Sen. Biden’s fellow Democrats let him get that far? I don’t know. But he got a warm welcome by the banks of the Pee Dee last week. It took him an hour after his speech to tear away from all the well-wishers.
    Of course, these were South Carolina Democrats, and he was the guest of honor, and it was the sweetest weather I’ve yet seen at a Stump, and some of the Styrofoam cups in the hands of Inner Party members contained something that smelled a lot stronger than RC Cola, and I couldn’t head back to Columbia until I’d stood for a moment with hostess Russell Holliday doing nothing more active than frankly admiring the way the razor-cut sliver of moon rose over the piney bottomland in a sky so deep-ocean blue…
    I’ve also been in Iowa in January. It’s different. We’ll see.06stump_040

Whom will we endorse?

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As both a blogger and editorial page editor, and not exactly in that order, I can run into certain conflicts: If I use the blog to share my impressions of candidates as we wade through endorsement interviews, am I not risking giving away whom we are likely to endorse?

And yet if I don’t share such information from day to day, what’s the point in an editorial page editor having a blog? Isn’t that the (admittedly theoretical) value of the Weblog — that by virtue of my job, I have access to this kind of information? Shouldn’t you get something extra for going there to read it?

Last week, it struck me for the first time: Why the big mystery about whom we might endorse? I’ve written over and over that the point in a newspaper’s endorsement is the why, not the who. If you just glance at the picture and the headline, you’ve missed the point of that kind of editorial.

The benefit for the reader lies in pondering the reasons we give for the choice. (This is a fact easily lost on many of those who read my blog, unfortunately. Judging by their comments, many remain trapped in the phony left-right, Democratic-Republican, are-you-for-this-one-or-are-you-for-that-one dichotomy — which closes their minds to reason.)

The idea is that by reading our endorsements, and reading rebuttals, and thinking about whether you agree or disagree, should add depth to your own decision-making as a voter — whether you vote in the end for the candidate we endorsed or not.

Besides, trying to guess the eventual endorsement from what I write after an interview is inadequate on two levels: First, an endorsement consists not just of what I think, but of what a consensus of the editorial board arrives at. Besides, I could change my own mind as we go along. I once pulled back an endorsement that was on the page and headed for the press. (I had last-minute qualms, did a little more digging and consulted with my colleagues. We rewrote it and went with the other candidate. Neither of  them knows that to this day.)

So, that resolved, I put my initial, rough impressions of our first three candidates (out of 55 I’ll be interviewing for the June 13 primary), on the blog last week. In each case, we were interviewing challengers. When it works out, we try to bring them in first because we tend to know less about them, and this gives us more time to get up to speed.

I also put capsules of those blog posts in my column Sunday. Here are those minimal excerpts, but if you are at all interested (and I hope you are; state legislators are more likely to have a direct impact on your life than those folks in Washington that everyone loves to shout about), I highly recommend following the links to the much-longer full blog posts:

Artie White, H89, Republican.
I didn’t ask Mr. White (challenging Rep. Kenny Bingham of Lexington County) his age, but I know the approximate answer: Quite young. The nice thing about talking to a candidate so recently (two years) out of college is that he still remembers more than most politicians have forgotten about representative democracy and how it’s supposed to work.

Mr. White sets less store by party than his former boss, Joe Wilson (which is a good thing). When asked whether he would make a point of regularly voting with the GOP caucus, he said, “I don’t really think it’s important.”

His main issue? Eminent domain. “Property rights in this country… is the basis of a free country,” he pronounced.

Greatest strengths? Sincerely good intentions and good theoretical knowledge of how government is supposed to work. Greatest weaknesses? Youth and inexperience.

Sheri Few, H79, Republican.
Sheri Few of Kershaw County, who is challenging Bill Cotty for the Republican nomination in District 79, was our first challenger armed with money from school-“choice” advocates, going up against a vocal Republican opponent of Gov. Mark Sanford’s “Put Parents in Charge” plan: “I am a proponent of school choice,” she said. “We need to start treating parents as consumers.”

But she objects to being portrayed as some sort of tool of out-of-state ideologues. She notes that she has raised $30,000 for her race, with only $8,000 of it coming from outside South Carolina.
Why should voters choose her over her opponent? “A Republican should vote for me over Bill Cotty for a couple of reasons,” she said. “I am a conservative.”

She said with tax credits, private entities would set up various schools to address special needs, such as learning disabilities. I said I could see how that might happen in Columbia, where there was enough demand. But what would be the motivation for private enterprise to set up such choices in the areas where South Carolina’s greatest educational challenges lie — poor, sparsely populated counties?

“That’s an excellent question,” she said. “I haven’t really thought about that.”

Joe McEachern, H77, Democratic.
Mr. McEachern, a member of Richland County Council who is challenging Rep. John Scott, is a straightforward sort who goes his own way, as fellow council members can attest to their delight or chagrin.

For instance, when we asked how he would get things done in the House, as a minority member of the minority party, he said, “I’m not one of those folks that carry the banner.” He said that the best course for South Carolina is likely to be something that transcends party and race. As a result, at times he will disagree with the Legislative Black Caucus.

He sees no need for voters to elect the “long ballot” of statewide officials — or for that matter, the purely magisterial offices on the county level.

When he says that, “People say, ‘Oh, no …. We’ll never get an African-American elected” to statewide office if they become appointive. “Have we ever gotten an African-American elected?” he answers.

“Elect a governor and hold him accountable” for having a diverse Cabinet, he said. “That is the best way.”

More importantly, thanks to his experience in local government, he understands the crying need to get the state government — including county legislative delegations — out of local affairs. “We need to make a clean break,” he said. “Either you’re going to have Home Rule or you’re not.”

He said Rep. Scott “thinks it’s his seat,” and “takes it very personal that I’m running against him. But it’s not personal.”

He said folks in the district complain that Mr. Scott neglects them. By contrast, he says, Bill Cotty — the Republican who represents a neighboring House district — is “more hands on.” Mr. McEachern is indeed no typical banner-carrier.

Rummy column

199 Replies

A generals’ revolt may be ugly,
but who else has the credibility?
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
SO YOU WANT to impeach President Bush?
    Well, for the first time, I can see one way that ditching him might be helpful, and not hugely destructive, to a nation at war:
    It would put Dick Cheney in charge, and he might have what it takes to fire Donald Rumsfeld.
    Sure, they are old comrades and longtime Bush family retainers, and the family’s loyalty fetish has mutated in this generation to the point that it is valued above the good of the nation. But they are not Bushes by blood, and Mr. Cheney would as soon shoot a pal in the face as look at him.
    OK, yes, I’m being facetious — about the veep and about impeachment. But serious and likely solutions are scarce right now.
    The secretary of defense must go. He should have gone two years ago (as this editorial board said at the time). He went into Iraq with no realistic idea of how to secure the country after the inevitable collapse of the Iraqi army, and hasn’t learned a lesson yet.
    Our troops adapt constantly to their adversary’s changing tactics. But Mr. Rumsfeld is too smartRumsfeldhubris to learn anything. Just ask him; he’ll tell you. If he doesn’t say it out loud, he’ll say it with the set of his stony jaw, the swagger of his shoulders even standing still, the contempt in his aquiline eyes.
    You want to talk hubris? Robert McNamara had an inferiority complex next to this guy.
    His attitude has always alienated at least half the nation, and pretty much all of our allies. His decisions, his actions and his inactions have alienated many others, including those (like me) who believe completely in our nation’s mission in Iraq, and are sick of watching him screw it up.
    His abstract notions of the proper size and shape of the military do not yield to battlefield realities — or to anything else. Sure, he’s right about some things, such as the wisdom of leveraging our exponential advantage in technology and the expansion of Special Forces and other light, flexible elements. But if only he were one-tenth as flexible as a Navy SEAL, or an Army Ranger, or a typical Marine.
    But light and high-tech isn’t a slice of the pizza to him; it’s the whole pie. Special ops, precision-guided weapons and air superiority are critically important. But so is securing the country after the battle — sealing potentially hostile (i.e., Syrian) borders, guarding ammo dumps, placing MPs at every important crossroads and on and on (your know, all those low-tech tasks we performed so well across Europe in 1944-45).
    This administration went into office promising not to engage in any nation-building, and although that policy ostensibly changed after 9/11, “Rummy” still acts as though he aims to keep the promise. That Iraq has come as far as it has is a testament to the dedication of American troops, and the courage of ordinary Iraqis. (Ironic, isn’t it? In Iraq, civilians risk their very lives for democracy; in America, it’s only our heartbreakingly few young people who serve in uniform. The rest of us get tax cuts and whine about fuel prices that are still lower than in most of the world.)
    But isn’t this just more of the ranting from “the anti-war left” that Charles Krauthammer was decrying the other day? He appropriately highlighted the fact that anti-war types who never before trusted anyone wearing stars are suddenly greeting the dissent of six retired generals as wisdom from on high.
    Well, you got me, Charles.
    Except that I have never been “anti-war” by any conventional political application of the term. (I’m ticked that the military isn’t big enough to credibly threaten Iran or protect Darfur.)
    Except that we endorsed George Bush twice. (Although I’m still appalled that the major parties didn’t offer us a better choice.)
    Except that I embrace the outlook of real conservatives (such as Lindsey Graham and John McCain, who had to force this administration to remember how the good guys are supposed to treat prisoners).
    And so forth.
    Look, I’m not any happier than Mr. Krauthammer to see six men who have recently worn the uniform speak against civilian leadership. But in an environment in which civilian criticism is dismissed as coming from the “other side,” ex-military officers may be the only ones with the neutrality to lift us out of the partisan mire. They are credible because they have shunned politics.
    Still, speaking up has to feel to them like breaking the code. It all makes for an unseemly spectacle — their broken silence, the media rush to ask other generals what they think, and the Rumsfeld defenders’ rush to point out commanders who support the official line. Generals shouldn’t have had to do this. But we needed someone with standing to do it.
    You say you like Rummy? Well, early in this war, I enjoyed him, too. I liked his unapologetic, we’re-gonna-do-what-it-takes demeanor. I even took guilty pleasure in the “old Europe” crack, even though I could see it was strategically harmful.
    But over time, it got to where it just wasn’t cute anymore. I didn’t see pride in country; I just saw pride. He’s got to go.

Judas’ ‘good news’ is no news

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So where’s the news in this
alleged ‘good news’ from Judas?

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
AS A CHILD, I used to wonder why we made such a big, happy deal about Easter. Why celebrate the death of Jesus? Didn’t we like him?
    Adults hastened to explain that Easter wasn’t about His death, but about the Resurrection.
    OK, I got that. But didn’t he have to be crucified to rise? And wasn’t that a horrible, undeserved death? Wouldn’t he have been just as alive on Sunday if Pilate had let him go Friday?
    I had a lot of questions. (Don’t even get me started on what the Bunny and the eggs have to do with it.) Maybe my failure to get over the link between Good Friday and Easter helps explain why I became a Catholic. The basis of our faith is the Resurrection, but we never forget to “preach Christ crucified.” Paul said that was “foolishness” to outsiders. It was also pretty confusing to a little Protestant kid, looking at an empty cross and holding a basket full of candy eggs and plastic grass.
    But that’s not what I’m writing about today. I’m writing about the new “Gospel of Judas.” The above was just an excuse to bring it up today. No crucifixion, no resurrection. No Judas, no crucifixion.
    What do we get from this “new” rendition? Why the fuss? Sure, it’s got some freaky stuff — it claims Jesus wasn’t the son of the God we know and love, but of another entity, and that he was pure spirit, and not a man at all. Freaky, but not new. It was all dismissed as heresy long ago.
    Now let’s examine the supposed “insights” into Judas. From what I’ve seen, this piece of papyrus simply restates things we already knew, or guessed, about the man from Kerioth:

  • Rather than being a spoiler who betrayed the divine plan, Judas was a special part of it. So? I just said that. No Judas, no crucifixion. The authorities might have grabbed Jesus without a mole — he was out in public all day — but that presented a political problem. Better to grab him at night. But apparently, he had no local address, and stayed on the move. They needed inside intel, in real time. Well worth 30 pieces of silver.
  • Judas wasn’t all that bad. Well, we already knew (from the real Gospels) that when he found out Jesus had been killed as a result of his actions, he was filled with remorse unto despair. A thoroughly evil man would have taken the money and celebrated. Judas tossed the coins and hanged himself. Sounds like a man with a conscience. Judas wasn’t so much bad as he was weak, faithless and easily duped.
  • Jesus knew what Judas was going to do. Duh. We knew that already, from the Rabbi’s actions and words during the Seder in the upper room. He said someone was going to betray him, then let John know who it was, then told Judas to get it over with. (How did the rest of the apostles miss what was going on? Why did John just sit there? Hush, child.)
  • Jesus wanted him to do it. OK, this one does get confusing. To say he wanted to die on the cross is stretching the point — as evidence, I submit his sweating blood at Gethsemane. It was God’s idea, not his. Of course, he was God as well as man, which makes that whole conversation explicable only as a mystery, and the concept of what Jesus as a human individual wanted is therefore beyond us. He understood the necessity; he explained that to his followers repeatedly, slow as they were to get it. But want to? He wouldn’t have been human to want that, just as he wouldn’t have been God not to.
  • Judas and Jesus were close. I had sort of gathered that. Jesus had let him hold the money. Not that the Lord cared much about money, but it was still a big responsibility. I always wondered why that task wasn’t entrusted to Matthew, given his background. (I suppose an anti-tax activist could explain that to me.)
  • Jesus told Judas things he didn’t tell the others. Take that one with a big grain of the salt of the earth. John’s Gospel makes a similar claim, and more credibly.

    Besides, a lot of us augment our impression of figures in the Bible from traditions and even popular culture. Talk about the closeness of Jesus and Judas, and I think of the relationship depicted in “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Not exactly divine revelation, but it shows that somebody — agnostic composers at that — thought of the two men as close friends more than a generation before National Geographic finished its “Judas” project. And Webber and Rice were not the only dramatizers to have assumed that Judas thought he was helping Jesus — getting him put away for a few days until things cooled down.
    Then there’s the thing about how this is good news for Jews, and a real settler for anti-Semites.     Once again, I don’t see how. If you’re stupid enough to come away from reading the New Testament hating Jews, the “revelation” that Judas wasn’t all that bad isn’t going to stop you. So he was a Jew? So were all the good guys — including the main one. And what’s helpful about a text that absurdly claims Jews worshipped the wrong God?
    This new “Gospel” is a bunch of hype, based partly in the fact that National Geographic paid a fortune for it, and has to play it for all it’s worth. (It’s already available in bookstores, by the way.) True, I’m not qualified to judge, not being fluent in Coptic. I’m pretty content to leave that up to experts. We Catholics are happy (sometimes, too happy) to delegate. To my knowledge, the committee that passes judgment on stuff like that hasn’t met in centuries, and I’m not a member of it anyway.
    Legit or not, it doesn’t do much for me. “Gospel” means “good news.” But where’s the news in this one?

‘Go for it’ column

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Bulb_011_1Energy independence?
We only have to decide to go for it

    “From now on we live in a world where man has walked on the moon. It’s not a miracle. We just decided to go.”
            — Tom Hanks, as Astronaut
            Jim Lovell in “Apollo 13”

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
I REMEMBER when this country would “just decide to go” and do something that had never been done — something so hard that it seemed impossible — and then just go.
    I was not yet 16 when men first stepped into the gray talcum of Tranquillity Base, and I didn’t know that I was living through the last days of the age of heroic national effort. I thought the muscular, confident idealism of World War II veterans such as John Kennedy was the norm. JFK said let’s go to the moon. It didn’t matter that nothing like it had ever been done, or that the technologies had not yet been invented. We just said OK, let’s do it.
    We built rockets. Brave men stepped forward to sit atop them in hissing, flashing, buzzing, wired-up sardine cans. Slide-ruler nerds who feared no challenge designed all the gadgets that went into the rockets and made them fly true. The rest of us paid the astronomical bills, and suspended our lives to watch each launch, in fuzzy black-and-white. We held our breaths together as though we were the ones waiting to be blasted to glory, live or die.
    And in a sense, we were. That was us. We were there.
    Why did we stop doing things like that? Where did we lose the confidence? When did we lose interest in working together? How did we lose the will?
    Was it the bitter end of Vietnam, which caused us to swear off fighting for justice beyond our borders for a generation? Was it Watergate, which ended common trust in leadership? (I watched “All the President’s Men” with my children recently, and to help them fully appreciate the suspense, I had to stop the disc and try to explain a time in which most people could not imagine the president of the United States would really do such a thing.)
    Was it the end of National Service, which gave rise to a generation that had never pulled together in common cause, and couldn’t even imagine doing so? Was it the “I got mine” hypergreed of the ’80s and ’90s, which made shared sacrifice passe?
    I don’t know. Maybe all of the above. I do know I’m tired of it. I miss the country I used to live in.
    That country would have stayed united for more than a few weeks after 9/11. It would have rolled up its sleeves and sacrificed to make itself economically independent of Mideast regimes that currently have no motivation to change the conditions that produce suicide bombers.
    But we don’t volunteer for that today, and “leaders” don’t dare suggest it.
    What got me started on all this? Lonnie Carter, president of Santee Cooper, said several things last week that sent my thoughts down these paths. He got me thinking how easy it would be for this nation to move toward energy independence, reduce greenhouse gases and even save money. It wouldn’t even be hard, or require sacrifice or inventiveness. We have the tools. It’s a matter of attitude.
    Mr. Carter showed us one of those curlicue fluorescent light bulbs. Big deal, I thought. I’ve got a few of those at home; my wife bought them. They look goofy, and don’t fit into some of our smaller fixtures.
    But Mr. Carter said that while such a bulb costs a couple of bucks more, it uses only 30 percent of the energy to produce the same light, and lasts 10 times as long. That one “60-watt” bulb (really only 15) would save you $53 before it gave out.
    Think how much energy we could save if all of us bought them. The things are already on the store shelves, but most of us bypass them for the old unreliables. It’s a “matter of changing our habits,” Mr. Carter said.
    How about renewable energy? Mr. Carter said utilities already offer that option to customers. But while 40 percent say they would pay a little more for such greener, smarter energy, only 1 percent actually do when it comes time to check that box on the bill.
    Attitude again.
    Then there’s nuclear power. “If our country is interested in energy independence and affecting climate change,” said Mr. Carter, “nuclear is the best option.” It’s clean, it’s efficient, and we don’t have to buy the fuel from lunatics.
    The government is even offering incentives to build the new generation of super-safe plants. But there’s still an attitude problem, as evidenced in the approval process. Santee Cooper plans to build two such plants. Just getting approval will take until 2010, so the plants can’t produce power before 2015. We managed to go from rockets that always blew up to “The Eagle has landed” in less time than that. And this time, we already have the technology.
    “We need all due diligence,” said Mr. Carter. “But we don’t need to drag our feet.”
    Still worried about spent fuel? “We know how to handle it safely,” he said. We’ve been doing so for 50 years. We also know how to put it away permanently; it’s “just a policy issue.”
If we could take such obvious steps, maybe we could then start taking the “tough” ones.
    Maybe we could even put the SUVs up on blocks and reduce our gasoline consumption to the point that Big Oil — and maybe even Washington — would see that they ought to invest some real effort in developing hydrogen, or biofuels, or whatever it takes.
    Did you know that Brazil expects to achieve energy independence this year? Maybe it has become the kind of country we used to be — the kind of country we could be again.
It just takes the right attitude.

Columbia election column

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Fisher has given Coble the
kind of race Columbia needed
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
WHEN KEVIN Fisher had left after energetically making his case in an endorsement interview, I said this to fellow editor Warren Bolton: “You see why I wanted him to run?”
    He nodded.
    A few minutes later, we decided to recommend the board endorse Mayor Bob Coble again.
Sound contradictory? Well, it makes sense to me. I’ll explain.
    A week before the filing deadline, I used this space to urge Mr. Fisher to challenge the mayor. After a lunch during which he had passionately expressed one point of disagreement after another with the mayor, I thought it was high time such criticism was actually aired before the voters.
    Bob Coble has some of the world’s most passive-aggressive critics. They gripe and snipe, but not one who had a chance of unseating him had tried in 16 years.
    I knew Mr. Fisher could make up for that.
    After I wrote that column, a lot of people thought I was backing Mr. Fisher. Then I wrote another column in which I said Columbia voters had a clear choice before them: Mr. Fisher, who tries hard to convince everyone he’s right; or Mr. Coble, who is happy to be seen as self-effacing but effective. That muddied the waters. Some thought at that point that I was declaring for the incumbent, but that wasn’t my intent.
    Mr. Fisher is a very effective critic of the present administration. There’s a lot he doesn’t like, and he expresses eloquently why you shouldn’t like it either. He writes a whale of a good op-ed piece; I hope he keeps them coming.
    But he’s too much like me. I’m a professional critic, and sometimes I write a marginally readable piece lambasting this or that. But I haven’t seen any groundswell of people out there demanding that I run for mayor.
    And I think I understand why. When I look at Columbia’s city council, and imagine myself trying to get that bunch of independently elected prima donnas (no offense) to do what I know good and well they ought to do… well, I reflect that I’ve picked the right line of work — one in which it’s more important to be right than to be effective. I’ll just keep on being a voice crying in the wilderness.
    Mr. Fisher should, too. He’s good at it.
    So why did I want him to run? This city is in the middle of rapid, dramatic, multidirectional change, and it would be a travesty not to have a full, lively debate about its course. I didn’t think the city could afford another mayoral election like the ones it has had the last 16 years.
    The mayor needed challenging. He’s far from perfect. Mr. Fisher is right in many ways. He has a point when he says that “Mayor Bob” is perhaps too affable and, as a result, often isn’t forceful enough to overcome the limitations of his office in this form of government.
    Mr. Fisher is plenty forceful. But he is not affable enough to get things done. There’s a delicate balance involved in working with six council members who are each as powerful as you. Mr. Coble doesn’t always strike that balance, but often does. Mr. Fisher seldom would.
    A lot of good things have happened in the last few years in Columbia, and while the mayor isn’t always the loudest voice in the room, he pushes as hard as anyone. The Vista booms; Main Street is revitalized; old enmities are set aside; strategic partnerships envision a dynamic future for the city, and make it happen.
    Mayor Coble doesn’t shout, but he testifies convincingly to his effectiveness in the past, present and future. Mr. Fisher is great at pointing out the mayor’s failings. But he doesn’t make the case for himself nearly as well.
    In the end, the mayor has risen to his first real challenge, and has defended well his claim to four more years.
    While I’m all for saying who should be elected, I stay clear of predicting who will win. But I will say this: On Tuesday, more people will turn out to vote in Columbia than in a decade of mayoral elections. Whether they favor Mr. Fisher or the mayor, they know that this time, their votes are likely to make a difference.
    If that happens, the winner will be the city of Columbia.

Antiwar folks! Please answer this question

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In response to my Friday column, Doug goes off on an odd tangent (as I’ve noticed a lot of antiwar people do) and suggests I’m asking him to "ignore" all sorts of mean, nasty, ugly things that he sees as having happened on the run-up to war, and since then.

What?!?!? I’m not asking anybody to ignore a damn’ thing. I have even specifically brought up some of the things you mention. I insist that everyone be fully cognizant of all the facts, including all the screwups of Bush and company. How much clearer can I make that? Where we seem to jump to separate planets is when I insist that everyone also recognize the two most salient facts: There are good reasons to be in Iraq (whether the president understands them or not), and even if you disagree with that, there is no alternative now but to persevere in that endeavor.

What is it about the English language that I can have so much trouble communicating those thoughts to people?

No, scratch that. Answer this question instead. It is critically important, and maybe if you approach it thoughtfully, we can at least get on the same subject, even if we’re not on the same page:

Whatever you think of what has happened so far, what do you want to see happen NOW?

As you answer, remember that Bush, no matter what anyone says or does, will be president until January 2009. It would also be helpful if you address in your answer this related question: Whatever course we take, do you think the nation will get through it as divided and angry at itself as it now is?

Postscript: A couple of other things, just to Doug… first, this was George Bush’s war — right up until the point the first soldier’s boot hit Iraqi soil in 2003. After that, as I’ve also made clear, it’s belonged to us. And it WILL belong to us long after Mr. Bush is gone from the scene. (That fact is at the crux of what I’ve been trying to communicate.) Second: I don’t even understand why you would ask me whether I would support Mrs. Clinton in the same situation (it must be one of those questions only a partisan mind could concoct). Of course I would, in exactly the way I "support" Mr. Bush: There’s not much at all that he’s done on other issues that I would defend, but I know that my country needs to be united for us to succeed in Iraq. Actually, I might support her on more issues than I do Mr. Bush — it would be hard for anyone to screw up as many things as he has done. A side note, though: You don’t actually think she has any chance of being elected, do you? I certainly hope not. If the two main political parties once again offer us a choice (meaning: no choice) between two polarizing, extremely partisan figures, we all might as well move to another continent, because our national goose will be thoroughly cooked.

Another Iraq column

22 Replies

Bush_honor_guard_1Support for U.S. Iraq effort and
support for Bush not the same
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
IT’S OK TO WANT the United States to succeed in Iraq, and still disapprove of President Bush. Really. It’s allowed.
    You don’t have to feel guilty if the president’s energy, tax and spending policies make you go “nookeelar,” but you understand that what matters in public policy is what you do with the situation you’re in — not the situation you would be in if you could rewrite history.
There’s nothing wrong with you.
    In fact, you owe it to your country to separate your feelings about Mr. Bush from your knowledge that failure in Iraq is not an option. It also helps if you have a clear grasp of the cold fact that he will be the president until 2009.
The single most important challenge, foreign or domestic, facing this country is to succeed in helping the Iraqi people build a free, safe and stable place to live. At the same time, the country needs another president — one just as committed to the mission, but with a clearer idea of how to accomplish it — to take over.
    But that can’t happen for almost three years. Given recent defeatist poll results, holding out that long is a tall order. But opinion that shifts one way can shift the other. That’s why every word I write about Iraq is aimed at persuading anyone I can reach that we must remain committed.
That’s what I tried to do in that super-long column we ran Sunday — to summarize all the reasons why, and how they connect.
    The response was mostly encouraging. Blog respondents who slap me around on a regular basis said complimentary things — even some who disagree.
    “Brad, this is a very thoughtful and well-organized argument for your viewpoint on Iraq,” wrote Phillip. “Of course, as you know, I disagree with most of it, but won’t rehash all of that here, just wanted to give you props for the good column.” Thanks, Phillip.
    Of course, we still had “Mary Rosh” out there to say, “Once again Warthen proves what a lazy, cowardly, hypocritical piece of garbage he is.” Mary’s not reachable.
    What worried me more was LeRoy, whom I seem to have reached, and yet not: “Sorry Brad but your sentiments are misplaced. True we are now in Iraq and unfortunately stuck there for several decades…. However to stay there with the same team that ‘had the best intentions in the world’ is misplaced loyalty.”
    How can he agree that we can’t leave, but interpret such commitment as support for the “team” that led us there? And what does he propose as an alternative to riding out the next three years with this team?
    “BLSAiken” wrote: “The President as much as admitted the other day that it will take another president to close out the mess he’s made. Brad makes some substantively good points, but it’s moot until the present band of nincompoops, including Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, etc., are out of office.”
    I’m anxious for another crew to take over, too. I don’t think those guys (and I’ll get to Ms. Rice in a moment) are “nincompoops,” but I think they have made far too many mistakes after the invasion. And Mr. Rumsfeld should have been replaced long ago. I made that clear in my Sunday column.
    But I didn’t go on and on about it.
Why? There’s no point. In late 2003, I begged for a candidate
to step forward and offer a credible alternative to the incumbent. I wrote out a long litany of what was wrong with the president.
But that was then, when there was a chance to replace him. That chance is gone.
    Bush-haters have fantasies of impeachment, or censure. This is idiotic. If he were impeached, Dick Cheney would be his replacement. (No, Virginia, they wouldn’t go out together.) And you couldn’t impeach both before their terms end. All you would accomplish is to weaken the United States in a time of war. Ditto with censure.
    We are already badly weakened. War/Bush opponents may have succeeded in infecting a majority with despair and defeatism, despite the relative success on the ground in Iraq. Even the Bush administration occasionally exhibits this battle-weariness; it was disturbing to hear Ms. Rice saying we might draw down in the near future.
    All of this plays into the hands of those who mean us nothing but ill — and want nothing but oppression for the Mideast.
    A Wall Street Journal op-ed Wednesday described the thinking of a leading foreign policy strategist in Iran’s radical Islamist government:

    “To hear (Hassan) Abbasi tell it the entire recent history of the U.S. could be narrated with the help of the image of ‘the last helicopter.’ It was that image in Saigon that concluded the Vietnam War under Gerald Ford. Jimmy Carter had five helicopters fleeing from the Iranian desert…. Under Ronald Reagan the helicopters carried the bodies of 241 Marines murdered in their sleep…. Under the first President Bush, the helicopter flew from Safwan, in southern Iraq, with Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf aboard, leaving behind Saddam Hussein’s generals, who could not believe… they had been allowed (to) live to fight their domestic foes, and America, another day. Bill Clinton’s helicopter was a Black Hawk, downed in Mogadishu….

    “According to this theory, President George W. Bush is an ‘aberration,’ a leader out of sync with his nation’s character and no more than a brief nightmare…”

    Mr. Abbasi is anxiously waiting for that “last helicopter” to leave Iraq, so that he and his ilk can fill the vacuum. I’m hoping and praying Mr. Bush will keep sticking it out, and that his successor will exhibit equal resolve, but greater effectiveness.
    This nation’s great tragedy is that far too many Americans agree so strongly with Mr. Abbasi that the president is a “nightmare” that they, too, long to see that “last helicopter” take off, because they badly want to see Mr. Bush fail.
    Hate the president if you insist. I wouldn’t recommend it — since he’s the only president we’ve got, you’re much more likely to influence policy by constituting a rational, loyal opposition than by foaming at the mouth. But that’s between you and him.
    I beg you, though: However you feel about the president, please love your country enough to support its crucial mission in Iraq. For all the reasons I wrote about Sunday, there simply is no good alternative. Don’t just “support the troops”; that’s a cop-out. Support what they’re doing, the goals they give their blood, sweat and tears for. They deserve that much. So do the rest of us.

My column on Joe Azar

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Our interview with Joe Azar, veteran candidate
By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
APPARENTLY, it’s going to be my fault if Joe Azar loses — again — to Bob Coble in next month’s election for mayor of Columbia.
    He didn’t tell me this himself. I learned that when I Googled him.
    The first thing that came up for Joe Azar was a story posted by City Paper, a local publication I didn’t know existed until I read something in The State about its editor quitting. Long story.
March06_099_1    Anyway, the piece was based on an interview with Mr. Azar in a local bar around midnight. (It said he doesn’t drink, but does shoot pool.) The story related Mr. Azar’s own “personal and strangely intriguing theory” as to why Kevin Fisher got into the race:
    “Azar believes The State knew that if he ran against Bob Coble alone he would have a good chance of winning. For that reason, The State threw in Kevin Fisher as a spoiler, he says.”
    I urged Mr. Fisher to run solely to stop the Azar juggernaut? Why would I do that? Mr. Azar explained: “There’s always been a cozy relationship between The State… especially the editorial… and city elected officials.”
    So how — and I’m just asking — do you explain our having endorsed Tameika Isaac
and Daniel Rickenmann
over council fixtures Franny Heizer and Jim Papadea?
    Oh, never mind. Apparently, his is a nice, neat explanation that helps Mr. Azar feel good about the fact that we never endorse him. I’m all for that.
    Joe Azar is a genial guy. He goes around with a huge, passive-aggressive chip on his shoulder, but he’s genial. He always greets me with a big smile. When he met with Associate Editor Warren Bolton and me last week, he suggested having lunch after the election is over. Fine by me.
    But I can’t imagine endorsing him. I think this mystifies him. I’m sorry about that; it’s unpleasant for me as well as for him. It makes our biennial or quadrennial formal meetings rather awkward.
    And when I don’t write about him — something I prefer not to do, in keeping with the old saw, “If you don’t have anything good to say…” —  it puzzles readers. One wrote on my blog Sunday, in response to my column contrasting Messrs. Coble and Fisher: “We have three candidates for mayor, not just two. Why was Mr. Azar only given one sentence?”
    I’ll try to explain. Maybe I owe Mr. Azar that, seeing as how I’m spoiling his big shot. I’ll tell you what a meeting with him is like. That may help. He only came in to meet with us after complaining to Warren that he saw little point in it. Fine. Nothing special about that. Bob Coble had asked Warren if there was any point in his coming in, seeing as how I was backing Kevin Fisher. (Why am I always the last to know these things?)
    But when Mayor Bob came in, he acted like a guy who was really serious about seeking office.
Joe Azar did not.
    First, he spent a long time talking about how useless it was to come in, and how mean we always were, and how he knew the fix was in for Mayor Coble (which will shock my “main man” Kevin Fisher). “I wonder why you invite me; you can write the editorial without me,” etc.
    But eventually, he talked about being mayor. He said he would do things that would set him apart. “I’d love to… live in a project for two weeks.” He said the other candidates would “never have stopped a young man who may be wearing gang colors, (and) engage them in dialogue. Before you can involve them, you’ve got to invite them. Say ‘I would like to involve you in a board or commission. But first you’ve got to clean yourself up, talk well…’”
    He’s gregarious, and seems truly interested in helping people, on a retail level. He sees himself as a street-level guy. He holds out his hands and tells us how he gets calluses crawling under houses, showing “my guys” how to install the audio and video equipment he sells out of his Five Points store.
    He says he would set up a “place for the homeless in the floodplain” where they could grow food to feed themselves and “have a little farmer’s market.” He would call for “a work-study program” for youth. A weightlifter, he would “emphasize more health and fitness.” He said he had had Marvin Chernoff’s idea for an arts festival “for years.” He would recycle computers. He would do a better job of hiring and retaining city employees. He would have a summer activities program, with a community band and amateur sports. “Gentrification is a serious problem,” he said. “And I wish I had time to talk about that.”
    Sound breathless? He was. Late in the interview, I had noted the time and asked whether he had other points. He pulled out a document. Refusing to give me a copy, he read all of the above proposals aloud, at high speed, with an occasional gripe about being pressed for time. Our fault, you see.
    I just took notes as fast as I could, and resolved to check his Web site later. (But there’s nothing like that list on the site.)
    After an hour, he rose, and amid the smiles and handshakes, told us how upset he’d be when our endorsement came out. He said he would want to punch the walls, but instead, he would “put a picture of you and Warren at the bottom of the urinal.”
    Or maybe he would put Warren in the urinal, and me in the toilet. Or maybe just put our faces on a dart board at a favorite bar.
    “That would be classier,” I observed. Nah, he decided, he’d stick with the first idea: the urinal.