46 thoughts on “Governor Henry McMaster?”

  1. JesseS

    Wasn’t Gowdy the AG pick just yesterday? Now it’s McMaster AND Haley? Gee, maybe tomorrow Dabo Swinney will be Trump’s pick for Sec. of the Interior and Darius Rucker will be named Poet Laureate?

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  2. Brad Warthen

    WHAT?!? Secretary of STATE!?!? Nikki HALEY!?!?!!!!!!

    Look, I’ve praised her recently. I think she’s grown in office. She’s now a not so bad governor, if you grade her on a curve.

    But Secretary of STATE? The most important job in the country after president?

    I thought they were talking about undersecretary of the Interior or something….

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    1. Brad Warthen

      Oh, what the hey? Why not? It’s not as bad as TRUMP BEING PRESIDENT!!!

      And it’s probably better than Giuliani…

      Remember, folks, the bar is now lower than it has been in our 240-year history.

      By comparison with that crowd around Trump, Nikki looks pretty good…

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          1. Brad Warthen Post author

            Let’s be optimistic. Let’s hope this happens…

            Trump meets with Romney, and says “I don’t want this! I was never supposed to win! I didn’t want to win! YOU take over!”

            Sure, there’d be some constitutional details to work out and hoops to jump through, but that would be a good start toward setting the world to rights.

            Then, as soon as he was in charge, Romney could work with Congress to repeal Obamacare and replace it with Romneycare, and everybody would be happy…

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            1. Bryan Caskey

              Thinking practically here, it could also be to talk about Secretary of Treasury. Romney knows finance, and my guess is that he is pretty close to Trump on how Treasury should run. State, eh, not so much. I think Romney and Trump would disagree on too much foreign policy stuff for Romney to be a good fit at State.

              Treasury controls the IRS, so that’s not an entirely unimportant job.

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              1. Phillip

                More likely that Trump just wants the chance to say “In your face, Mitt” to him. Unless, of course, Mitt has no core principles and is willing to take a Cabinet just to be in the mix to lead the GOP if Trump’s Presidency crumbles. It’s all going to make for some awkward confirmation hearings.

                Meanwhile, given his fine record as a landlord here in Columbia, it should be obvious: McMaster for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development!

                .

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                1. Bryan Caskey

                  It’s not a necessary condition that someone have “no core principles” for them to serve the President, even if it’s a President who isn’t great. Actually, it’s probably more incumbent on you to serve when you think the President isn’t great.

                  Whatever happened to trying to serve the country as best you can?

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                  1. Brad Warthen Post author

                    I agree. If Trump asked me to do something in the government that was in my skill set, and I thought I could do some good at it, I’d sort of feel obligated to do it.

                    Like Ainsey Hayes.

                    Well, not exactly like Ainsley Hayes. I wouldn’t be able to say, “>as she did, the following:

                    Say their approach to public policy makes you want to tear your hair out… but don’t call them worthless. At least don’t do it in front of me. The people that I have met have been extraordinarily qualified, their intent is good. Their commitment is true, they are righteous, and they are patriots.

                    But the sense of duty to the country would be there, just as it was with her…

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                    1. Brad Warthen Post author

                      I could probably make myself say, “but don’t call them worthless.” Because nobody’s worthless. But I wouldn’t be able to say the stuff after that….

            1. Brad Warthen Post author

              No, no, no! Sonny may have been a hothead, but he was competent. He had made his bones. He knew the job; he was just out of control.

              Remember, Trump is Tattaglia.

              But… who is Barzini? There has to be a Barzini. Trump could never have outfought Santino Hillary.

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                1. Brad Warthen Post author

                  I’m pretty sure Putin thinks he is. And based on what he says, Trump thinks he is, too.

                  Tell you what — set up the meeting with Putin and Assad. Tell them I want it to be in a public place, where I’ll feel safe — like Switzerland…

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                  1. Brad Warthen Post author

                    Nope! Sorry! Bad joke. Bad as Putin is, I won’t make a joke about assassinating him… unless I’m convinced he’s going to keep trying until he gets the old man…

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  3. Mark Stewart

    The only proper response is HaHaHa.

    Then reality sets in: The Trump transition team has 1) no qualified supporters, 2) no ability to inspire any kind of confidence in anyone who might possibly have the skill and be pursuadable, and 3) absolutely no idea what they are doing.

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    1. Doug Ross

      And yet when six months from now things are going relatively smoothly, all this anxiety will be forgotten.

      Although when Democrats and the media are looking for every opportunity to criticize, speculate, promote rumors, and exaggerate everything, it’s going to be difficult. Gee, it seems just like 2008 when Obama won and Republicans and Fox News did everything they could to be obstacles to progress. But it’s okay this time because Democrat’s are more noble and love children.

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      1. Brad Warthen Post author

        Doug, a) it won’t be going smoothly, and b) it won’t be forgotten.

        Do you really, truly think this is like other elections, that this is like the transitions of Obama, the Bushes, Clinton, Reagan, or any other president in history (with the possible exception of Jackson, whose supporters trashed the White House when he was inaugurated)?

        Well, it isn’t, to engage in spectacular understatement…

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        1. Doug Ross

          I think it will have its ups and downs over the next six months — changing an entrenched system where people have personal and ulterior motives is never without problems. There are a lot of career politicians, lobbyists, and bureaucrats who will be resisting change with all their might.

          Are we forgetting all the previous crises – government shutdowns, filibusters, Obamacare implementation (it would be tough to top that clusterf$ck), IRS targeting conservative groups… There’s a reason Congress has an 11% approval rating – they’re a bunch of self-abosrbed, greedy, unethical hacks surrounded by greedy lobbyists and inefficient, unaccountable bureaucrats.

          Sorry, but there’s nothing Trump could do besides pressing the red nuke button that would be worse than what the government sausage grinder spits out right now. The IRS and TSA and “No Child Left Behind” and Solyndra are what we get when the supposed experienced, dedicated, intelligent politicians are in charge. They produce garbage — just incrementally and continually instead of rapidly. Give me a rapid reset on some of those areas and I’ll be very happy.

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          1. Brad Warthen Post author

            Good God, Lemon. (That was my Jack Donaghy impression.)

            Your hatred of government takes you to some strange places.

            Unless, of course, by “resisting change,” you mean that people who KNOW what the f___ they’re doing will be doing everything they can to resist the damage that a seriously unbalanced, childishly impulsive and profoundly ignorant man — surrounded by similar people in senior positions — will DO?

            It just never occurs to you how amazingly fortunate you are to live in a peaceful, stable, affluent, WELL-RUN country, or what a departure that is from what most humans have experienced for almost all of human history.

            You focus on a flaw here or there — inevitable in ALL human organizations, and private ones are ABSOLUTELY no better — and conclude that the correct response is to send a demented bull into the china shop.

            I just do not see how you can look around you at the country you live in and draw that conclusion…

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            1. Brad Warthen Post author

              OK, deep breath…

              Let’s take comfort from the fact that both Nikki Haley and Henry McMaster would appreciably raise the standard in a Trump administration, from what we’ve seen thus far, and that could have an ameliorating effect.

              Now, could we please go have a discussion about casting “Stranger in a Strange Land?” I’d really rather do that…

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            2. Jeff Mobley

              I don’t think Doug is looking around at the whole country. He’s looking at Washington, DC. And you don’t have to register as a Know-Nothing to believe that the reasons for America’s historically exceptional stability and prosperity don’t have much to do with the way Washington works now:

              Government does useful things and, though the Elizabeth Warrens and “You Didn’t Build That!” gang make rather too much of it, decent, effective, liberal government is part of what makes modern capitalism the engine of prosperity and global cooperation it is, securing the civil peace, protecting property, and enforcing contracts… It sometimes even does good work in helping to provide an educated work force and a decent transportation system for moving goods and materials around, though it probably isn’t really needed for those jobs, which could be left to free-market providers. The problem is that if you add up everything legitimate Washington does in the way of keeping the peace, securing property, and enforcing contracts, you can account for — if you’re really generous – maybe 20 percent of federal spending, which is the real measure of federal activity. The rest is straight-up transfer of income and wealth from one political constituency to another and a whole lot of Harry Reid cowboy-poetry festivals and research involving getting monkeys high on cocaine.

              Do all human organizations have flaws? Yes. Do they all have taxing power and armies? No.

              So, while, on the one hand, Brad knocks Doug for seeming not to appreciate the great system we have here in America, on the other hand, he seems not to appreciate the capacity of that system, when working properly, to mitigate the potential detrimental effects of a Trump presidency.

              If Doug has a hatred of government, then Brad likes to don the rose-colored glasses sometimes. Personally, I think I’m somewhere in between. But I tend to think that Doug’s prediction, that things will settle down and we won’t really be thinking about this “chaotic” transition period, is probably right.

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                1. Doug Ross

                  I hope as well. But the harder people like Brad and Democrats work to undermine, criticize, and predict doom, the harder it will be to accomplish. We’ll end up with the same stuff Obama went through.

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              2. Doug Ross

                And just to clarify – I don’t “hate government”. I hate inefficiency and waste regardless of where it exists. It’s just rampant in government.

                There are aspects of government that work well: libraries, state and national park, law enforcement and fire departments. But most of the rest aspires for mediocrity and frequently achieves incompetence.

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              3. Brad Warthen Post author

                Jeff, I don’t have rose-colored glasses. I just sound that way in trying to counter Doug’s view.

                I tend to see things holistically. When I look at a face, I see a face — not just the pimples on it. When I look at a forest, I see the forest, not just the inevitable dead trees in that forest.

                In a vacuum — say, when I’m not in a conversation with Doug — you might hear me speak against the concentration of power in Washington. You might hear me oppose the preference of Democrats (and lobbyists, who find it much more convenient to lobby Congress than all 50 states) for federal solutions.

                I think too much is concentrated in Washington. And one of the worst such concentrations is the concentration of national attention, which is a function of the fact that media sources on the state and local levels are dying out, while the coverage of Washington has increased exponentially. Worse, the coverage follows the polarized model pushed by the parties and interest groups, which makes everything a life-and-death conflict, in which everything done by the opposition is the Worst Thing That Ever Happened.

                This causes everybody to think of politics in terms of that model. It’s turned our nation’s politics upside-down. Once, everything was local. Now, everything is national.

                This warps our perception of everything political. Here’s one bad effect of that: Since people ALWAYS hear pols characterizing the opposition in apocalyptic terms, when something truly horrible and unprecedented actually HAPPENS — like what happened in last week’s election — people tune it out, thinking it’s just the usual hypebole — as Doug did back here.

                And that is a real problem. We need to be able to believe the boying crying “Wolf!” when there actually IS a wolf, or a whole pack of them….

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                1. Brad Warthen Post author

                  And I’m telling you there’s a wolf.

                  Can y’all imagine how frustrating it is for me, as a guy who has spent a career decrying all the rhetorical excess of parties, who has gone to SO much trouble to create a nonpartisan, civil forum, to be dismissed as just the usual noise when I stand up and tell you THIS TIME IT’S REAL — that we actually have had a truly disastrous election result?

                  It’s REALLY frustrating. I mean, if you don’t believe me when I say that, if you can’t separate what I say from the partisan shouting points, then there just really is no hope for us…

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              4. Brad Warthen Post author

                One more point, Jeff, in response to this:

                “Do all human organizations have flaws? Yes. Do they all have taxing power and armies? No.”

                If you think further about that, you’ll see that’s sort of irrelevant to the point I was making. My point is that ALL human endeavors are subject to error, whether public or private. The fact that the state has coercive power (as the libertarians love to stress) doesn’t change that dynamic of the fallibility of organizations, which was my point.

                Are you saying that we should hold the public sector to a higher standard? If so, I agree entirely. Public entities belong to all of us, and have a greater obligation to be accountable to us. And so it’s perfectly appropriate that we seize on failures and demand that things get fixed.

                But Doug — who I think misses the fact that most such failures involving incompetence or dishonesty or venality at PRIVATE organizations are almost entirely invisible to us, because they have no obligation to be transparent — takes that to the extreme of “Private good, public bad.”

                And yeah, when he does that, I’m always going to be the Jimmy Stewart character who gets up and talks about how Frank Capra-wonderful this country is, BECAUSE of its system of government, with a fife playing “Yankee Doodle” in the background, because someone needs to counter such overdone — and, I believe, harmful — negativity.

                Just as Doug feels the need to respond to my alarm about Trump by saying he’s not so bad (even though Doug think’s he’s pretty bad, too), because he thinks I’m going overboard, I feel the need to do the same with him with regard to this country and its system of government…

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                1. Jeff Mobley

                  While it’s true that any organization made up of fallen humans will be flawed and subject to corruption, it’s also true that the damage caused by corruption in government affects the public at large and generally can’t be avoided. Also, because the government is not a business (and should not be run as if it were, as you are fond of pointing out), some of the market forces that push businesses toward efficiency and quality don’t push government as hard or as immediately. This, and the lure of power, means that, while rotten apples can be found everywhere, they can often prove harder to dislodge from government than from private organizations.

                  For these and other reasons, it’s entirely reasonable for a person to view government through an extra layer of skepticism, and to wish to see it limited in both scope and size to the minimum that gets the job done.

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            3. Doug Ross

              A flaw here or there… That’s rich. There are more flaws than excellence. The problem is there is little that can be done to fix it due to entrenched bureaucracy.

              I walk thru a TSA gate twice a week. It’s an utter waste of tax dollars. It’s not suffering from some flaws – it’s a joke – on the level of K-Mart on its worst day. But that’s just a few billion dollars thrown down the toilet.

              The incompetence is visible on a daily basis, large (TSA, IRS) and small (Richland County government for the most part).

              The big flaws are inexcusable. The little flaws are annoying. For example, when I had my business I bought a laptop that had to be declared to Richland County for property tax purposes (stupidity #1). I got a bill from the county each year 2011 to 2015 for somewhere around $11. I ended my business last year and it took multiple phone calls (since nobody in the office responded to emails) to get them to acknowledge I didn’t need to pay the tax any more. Guess what showed up in the mail last week? Another bill for 2016 for $11.43 and in the Property Description it says “Business Closed”. Sent emails already with no response. Phone calls go to voicemail. How difficult should this be for any competent organization? Answer email. Answer the phone. Because they have a monopoly and are unaccountable to anyone (unless the Governor fires them), I’m stuck dealing with incompetence. It;s the time more than the money. If I thought this would be the last bill, I’d pay it just to save the hassle of talking to someone on the phone.

              And it’s so nice to see that 32 cents of that $11.43 is going to the Recreation Commission and a nickel to the Zoo. I hope the 3 cents that I’m contributing to “Mental Health” will get me some excellent service when I go insane from dealing with this idiocy.

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              1. Doug Ross

                Just called again on this. Voicemail. Want to bet I don’t get a call back?

                And if I don’t pay the $11.43, what do you think happens? I’m guessing all sorts of processes kick off – notices, liens, collection, etc.

                Take your worst experience dealing with an insurance company and that is what it is like to deal with every organization in Richland County. Monopolies = inefficiencies.

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              2. Brad Warthen Post author

                Meanwhile, while Doug is frustrated by dealing with government…

                I’ve been meaning to cancel my cable TV. I recently got an HD antenna, and that and Netflix and Amazon Prime give me all the TV I need.

                But I keep putting off calling because back when I called BEFORE getting the antenna, just to find out what it would cost me to cancel the TV and just keep my wifi, I almost never got off the phone.

                Let’s not get too far into the fact that I was talking to someone at a call center in a country where they learn to speak something that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike English, because I don’t want to sound like a xenophobic Trump voter. But when you’re trying to negotiate something as complicated as a cable bill (which, to use another Douglas Adams reference, employs bistromathematics), the last thing you need is a language barrier that makes you say “Huh?” to every other thing the person says.

                And remember, the reason the private sector uses such call centers is because the private sector is so goshdarned efficient, unlike government, and is always cutting expenses to maximize profits. Keep that in mind, please.

                Then there’s the fact that I cannot say a single thing to this person about this or that part of my service — the TV, or the internet — without it triggering an automatic, rehearsed, conditioned-response sales pitch for some upgraded service that I really, truly MUST sign up for — ANOTHER thing you will only get from these wonderful, hyperefficient private companies.

                Never mind that I had only called for information, and did not want to make any changes at that time. This was irrelevant. Eventually, the woman got onto a loop about how she could cancel my TV and upgrade my internet (which sounded good, actually, but I wasn’t interested at that moment) at a price of only X amount, but ONLY if I acted RIGHT THEN, before we got off the phone.

                So I kept saying no, I just wanted information and wasn’t ready to make a change. And then I would thank her for speaking with me and try to get off the phone (before you say “Why didn’t you hang up?,” reflect that I am a gently reared Southern male), she would go into a rapid-fire routine where she at first SOUNDED like she was saying goodbye, and that she hoped she had answered all my questions, and then with blinding speed segued into, “and I hope you realize that if you will only act now…” and we were off into the sales pitch again. She could talk pretty fast for someone with such a thick accent (thanks to private-sector efficiency).

                This happened at least three, and maybe four times. Just hearing my end of it, my wife was cracking up…

                I finally ended the call after about half an hour that I will never get back.

                So, I’m really dreading the call in which I actually try to get something DONE…

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                2. Doug Ross

                  but you can choose a cable provider or none at all. I can’t opt out of things like paying for the zoo or paying for morons. and let’s not forget how ingrained the cable companies are with government. Regulated, taxed, monopolized. . The best thing that happened for consumers was Directv. It helped break the stranglehold cable companies had. I have noticed more companies going back to u.s. based call support because of the backlash against offshore models. That doesn’t happen in the public sector. Efficiency isn’t even on the table.

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                3. Doug Ross

                  And the number of cord cutters is a perfect example of how the free market works. We will see more a LA carte cable options very soon. We won’t see any improvement in the tax code in our lifetimes.

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  4. Bart

    Hope she turns it down. In my estimation, overall, Haley has been a good governor. Naturally I don’t agree with her on everything but when it counted, she stepped forward and led us the way a responsible leader should in the aftermath of the mass murder in Charleston. It is my concern that if she ties her political future to Trump, it will end with Trump when he leaves office unless he ends up being a good president. Maybe she should stay with her first and second opinions about endorsement and neither one was Trump.

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