If Madonna ditched Guy Ritchie (above) and married the new head of Toyota (below), she’d be a Madonna Watanabe.
You had to have daughters in the ’80s to get this
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Monthly Archives: November 2006
Joe Biden at Rotary
South Carolina, Joe Biden really, really wants you to help him get to the White House. I’ll write about this more later in the week, but for now I’ll refer you to this video clip I shot with my PDA (meaning it’s even lower quality than MOST of my videos) at the Columbia Rotary Club.
The clip begins right after he left the rostrum and waded into the crowd to answer a one-word question: "Immigration?" Note the passion, the waving arms, the populist posturing, the peripatetic delivery. Joe Biden has always loved to talk, but this Elmer Gantryesque performance went far beyond his routine style.
Most of his speech was about Iraq, by the way. And it went over well. This Rotary Club never goes past its 2 p.m. ending time, but he had the audience still sitting politely listening — some of them truly rapt — past 2:30.
It was quite a performance. You may think politicians act like this all the time, because of stuff you see on TV and in the movies. But I have never, in real life, seen a national candidate get this intense seeking S.C. votes two years before the election.
Standards column
Could standards, of all things,
be making a comeback?
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
STANDARDS are making a comeback. We may be able to get a civilization going here after all. You doubt me? I have several reasons for my optimism:
We’ll begin with a trivial matter. The New York Times carried an essay last week from a senior physician wringing her hands about the inappropriate attire worn by young doctors today.
“Every day, it seems, I see a bit of midriff here, a plunging neckline there,” she fretted. “Open-toed sandals, displaying brightly manicured toes, seem ubiquitous.”
She thought it was because she worked in Miami, but colleagues elsewhere assure her it’s a nationwide epidemic, from unshaven male interns in T-shirts, to females with plunging necklines.
“One colleague commented that a particularly statuesque student ‘must have thought all her male patients were having strokes’ when she walked in their exam room wearing a low-cut top and a miniskirt.”
I’ve never seen a doctor like that myself, although I’ve seen an actress play one on TV. But I agree that it’s far better for patients to have confidence in the seriousness of one into whose hands they place their lives.
I recently saw a new specialist about a chronic sinus thing, and I recall being reassured by his attire. He took propriety to places it had not been since about 1955. He had on the white coat, of course (take note, Dr. House), which helped set off his bow tie. But what made the costume was the proverbial reflector on a headband. It was so wonderfully nerdy, it helped me forget his otherwise unforgivable youth. So good for him. I’m quite sure he would never wear open-toed shoes.
It’s good that some doctors are worrying about the small things that provide us with little touchstones of order amid the chaos of life in 2006. The essayist’s employer, the University of Miami, has a dress code specifying “that students have hair ‘of a natural human color,’ among other things.” That’s got to be tough to enforce. But it’s worth trying.
On a more sensational front, someone stood up for standards last week in a way that defied belief: That it was Rupert Murdoch elevates this particular miracle to biblical, Cecil B. DeMille proportions.
A lot of people had shaken their heads and looked away, certain that the plan for a book and a TV special in which O.J. Simpson would tell us how he killed his wife — while pretending that he was speaking hypothetically — was just another incident in our society’s inevitable slide into utter shamelessness. First reality TV, now this. Nothing to be done.
But fortunately, others hadn’t given up right and wrong, and they raised enough ruckus that Mr. Sleaze himself backed off — canceled the book, the TV show, the whole grotesque mess. My own mother had told me to call the local Fox affiliate and tell them they shouldn’t air the TV part of the spectacle.
I didn’t do it, but plenty of others did, and good for them. It gives me hope I didn’t have. Next thing you know, shame will actually make a comeback in America. Not that O.J. will ever feel any, but it’s not too late for the rest of us.
“Seinfeld” was about something: Shallowness. That was the running gag, and it worked wonderfully. Everything in life, big and little, was a joke. Comedic conflict centered around the failure of the four central characters to be sufficiently serious and respectful of the things that mattered in life: Yadda-yadda.
So it’s little wonder that when Jerry Seinfeld arranged for his friend to apologize on the Letterman show for his outrageous behavior at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles a few nights earlier, some in the studio audience took it at first as a gag. Mr. Seinfeld had to interject to say that Michael Richards’ words of abject regret were not meant to be funny.
And nothing about it was funny. Mr. Richards, better known as “Cosmo Kramer,” had loosed an obscenity-laced barrage of racist insults at some black hecklers. You can see a cell-phone video of it on the Internet. Warning: It’s profoundly unpleasant. It’s as though “Kramer” had taken his Jedi-class frenetic eccentricity over to the Dark Side. A human being self-destructs with loathing on a stage, and perhaps the most disturbing aspect is that some people kept trying to laugh. They had paid good money to be amused, and were slow to adjust.
Some of you out there will write or call to say the hecklers are just as much to blame. Well, hecklers are a pretty low life form, and while I can’t hear much of what they said, these don’t seem to be much of an exception. But Mr. Richards was the one with the microphone. Listen to how he responded to that routine hazard of his profession on this occasion, and ask yourself whether you could ever justify reacting as he did. If you can, seek counseling.
That’s exactly what “Kramer” needs to do, because a public “sorry” doesn’t cure the things that lie behind that kind of rage.
It would be easy to dismiss his mea culpa entirely: A has-been comic tries to salvage what’s left of his career by offering a big dose of schmaltz to the gods of political correctness. But forget the politics. This is a guy who lost it to the point of stepping outside all the bounds — and he knows it, Jerry Seinfeld knows it, and so does David Letterman.
I appreciate comedy, and “Seinfeld” provided some of the best. But when the funnymen can sober up long enough to say, “This goes too far,” it helps us all be a little more civilized.
Hello out there
Sorry to have been such a lousy blogger the last few days. Spending time with the family and such, and letting work-related things slide for once on my days off.
I’ll get back on the ball Monday, if not sooner.
I’ve been thankful for the time with the fam. Anybody out there want to elaborate on anything they’re thankful for?
Karen Floyd concedes
Well, we asked her to give it up, and she did. Not that I think the two had anything to do with each other.
I spoke yesterday to Scott Malyerck over at GOP headquarters, and while he said there were folks still out there beating the bushes for excuses to protest the outcome (actually, he didn’t quite put it that way; I’m paraphrasing), it didn’t sound like they were coming up with much.
That’s not surprising. Last week when I called both Zeke Stokes with Jim Rex and Hogan Gidley with Mrs. Floyd, Zeke was all charged up and optimistic and looking forward to the results of the recount, Hogan was more like, Who’s Karen Floyd. OK, I’m paraphrasing again. What I mean is, he sounded like a guy who had put the whole campaign behind him and moved on with his life. In short, disengaged and uninterested.
But it took Karen Floyd being lady enough to stand up and say the other guy won to put an end to speculation, and I appreciate her doing that.
Speaking of the other guy, it sounds like Mr. Rex has put together a pretty good, bipartisan transition team. Here’s hoping he lives up to his promises.
Never give up column
We can’t cut and run from
our public schools (or Iraq, either)
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
THE CRITICS SEE themselves as realists, and can’t imagine why those of us who believe we must continue to slog on refuse to see things as they are.
The whole thing is futile, they say, and it would be madness to keep sacrificing billions of dollars, much less all those fine young people, on our stubborn hubris.
Don’t we know that “those people” will never embrace the opportunity we’ve sacrificed so much in order to give them? Chalk it up to DNA, or simply growing up in horrific poverty and having never known any other way. Either way, we’re wasting our time. 
Look at the generations — the centuries — of culture and tragic history that we’re presuming to overturn.
It would be better, they say, to begin a phased withdrawal.
The more sensible among us over in the “never say die” camp — those of us who believe we would be sacrificing our society’s future to cut and run — agree that mistakes were made. But rather than put it in such passive, Reaganesque terms, we know whom to blame. We are appalled at the “stay the course” fanatics who dig in their heels against new tactics.
We want new approaches — but in the pursuit of success, not surrender. The odds are long, we know. Progress is slow, and sometimes — such as in recent weeks — it doesn’t look like progress at all. We see how it could look to some as though our best efforts have led to nothing but ruined lives and wasted money.
To keep going takes determination, resolve, and a practically Churchillian refusal to give up.
Of course, we’re talking about public education in South Carolina. Oh, you thought this was about the war in Iraq? Fine, because it is. I see both struggles in the same terms:
It’s not optional. South Carolina has no choice but to provide the opportunity for a good education to all of its young people. We know we can do education well; just look at the public schools in our affluent suburbs. More relevantly, look at how successful Richland 2 is at educating even the disadvantaged. We must duplicate that kind of success throughout the state, particularly in the most stubborn pockets of resistance — the poor, rural areas.
Invading Iraq was optional. We once had the choice of other ways and other places to insert the lever of change in the Mideast (our strategic objective; 9/11 taught us that our old strategy of promoting stability in the region was suicidal). But we didn’t, and now the choices are success, or handing a titanic victory to Islamist terrorists, tribalists and totalitarian thugs. Success is going to be extremely difficult to achieve at this point, but failure is unthinkable.
The I-95 corridor is South Carolina’s Sunni Triangle. We have to figure out how to succeed there, or we fail.
If we don’t do it, no one will. No one’s going to help in Iraq; that much has been made quite clear over the last three years. Certainly not the feckless Europeans. Even the Brits are just barely hanging in there with us, thanks to the courage and vision of Tony Blair. The only other entities with a motivation to stabilize any portion of Iraq are people we would not want to see doing so — Iran’s mullahs, or the Ba’athists in both Iraq and Syria.
Universal education can only be achieved by pooling our resources as a society and doing it, in
spite of the odds and the cost. The fantasy that the private sector would create wonderful schools in communities that can’t even attract a McDonald’s is dangerously delusional. The amazing thing is that this approach is espoused by people who insist they believe in markets, when market forces are precisely why those areas have fallen so far behind. The state has to do the job — the market lacks the motive.
The appointment of a new secretary of defense may not get the job done, but it’s a very encouraging sign. So is the election of a state superintendent of education committed to real reform.
We can win, but it’s going to take a long, long time. We’re talking about a generational (at least) struggle here, both in Iraq and S.C. public schools. Anyone who expects us to either win quickly or pull out simply doesn’t understand either the odds or the consequences of failure.
We can’t quit. South Carolina has too many problems — we are at the bottom of too many rankings — to give up on educating our people so that they can attract, get and hold good jobs.
In this profoundly dangerous post-Cold War world, history’s most powerful and essential republic cannot be weakened by another Vietnam. After three years of horrific mistakes, President Bush has now done two things worthy of praise: He dumped Donald Rumsfeld, and he went to Vietnam (finally) and drew this distinction between the two conflicts: “We’ll succeed,” he said, “unless we quit.” Iraq isn’t Vietnam, but there’s a sure-fire way to change that fact: Give up.
We could pull out of Vietnam in the middle of the Cold War, and the Russians still knew we had all those nukes pointed at them. So the world didn’t fall apart, even though our nation’s ability to affect world events atrophied for many years.
Today, too many forces of chaos, from al-Qaida to totalitarians with nukes, are poised to fill any vacuum we leave behind.
So we can’t quit — either here or over there.
Solution to gerrymandering?
Andrew Sullivan just posted something pretty cool. It’s about a computer program that draws far more logical (looking) districts than the madness that political gerrymandering creates. Just imagine — representatives elected by actual, whole communities instead of tortuously carved out to separate people by race and political proclivities, all in the name of partisanship.
Go to his post at least long enough to look at the two images: One of North Carolina carved up by politicians; the other broken into more-or-less reasonable-looking segments by a machine with no axes to grind.
Neither is perfect, but Mr. Sullivan says he knows which one he prefers. So do I.
The Godfather on Pelosi
No, this is not another movie reference. I’m serious.
It turns out that prominent Columbia attorney Jim Leventis is the godfather of the youngest of Nancy Pelosi’s five children, Alexandra. The Leventises and the Pelosis have been good friends for 40 years. Here’s how that happened:
After he graduated from USC law school, someone said, "Go north, young man," or something along those lines, so the Columbia
native went to New York for a stint with Citibank. The guy at the desk next to his was Paul Pelosi, who had married a Baltimore girl name of Nancy Patricia D’Alesandro. (Her father had been mayor of that city, as her brother would later be.)
The couples became close friends, and the Leventises, who at that time had no kids of their own, felt a bond with the Pelosi children. When the youngest came along, Jim was asked to stand as godfather.
"She was just a good mom," is the way Mr. Leventis remembers the lady the Republicans just did so much to demonize (unsuccessfully, as it turns out).
Paul Pelosi was from California, and eventually the family moved back to his home in San Francisco, where his brother was on the local council. Mrs. Pelosi got involved in politics, but on a part-time, peripheral, grass-roots kind of way. That was the extent of her involvement because, as Mr. Leventis recalls, she "had too many children to raise."
Eventually, they grew up. (Goddaughter Alexandra, who is a brand-new mom herself as of this week, is a filmmaker known, ironically enough, for a documentary about George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign, "Journeys with George.") From then on, Mrs. Pelosi went at politics full-bore.
Jim Leventis, you may recall, has had his own foray into electoral politics. He was the Democratic nominee for the 2nd Congressional District in 1988. He did pretty well, too. He won in every county in the district save one. Unfortunately for him, that one was Lexington, incumbent Floyd Spence‘s home turf. It went so big for its homeboy that it overcame the Democrat’s advantage elsewhere.
Speaker-to-be Pelosi actually came down and helped with that campaign, which was Mr. Spence’s toughest re-election fight to date.
Mr. Leventis remains involved — more peripherally, as Mrs. Pelosi once was — in politics. He helped Jim Rex in his (apparently) successful bid for S.C. superintendent of education. But he acknowledges, in the nicest possible way, that his politics are somewhat different from those of his long-time friend. "I think hers are more extreme, so to speak," he said. "My style is more, let’s get together and get things done." But he hastens to add that she "does a good job at what she does."
The Leventises and the Pelosis remain friends. "Paul and I talk pretty frequently," he said. As for Paul’s wife, this is the bottom line for Jim Leventis: "As a person, she’s just a wonderful mom and just a wonderful friend."
Thus spake the godfather.
The Mallory Factor
Who is Mallory Factor, whose guest column appears on the op-ed page today? And no, he’s not a
character from a Douglas Adams novel, even though the name may remind you of "Ford Prefect." (It did me, anyway.)
He’s a really, really conservative rich guy from New York who recently moved to Charleston. He’s also
increasingly into politics. And, like Howard Rich, he’s increasingly into South Carolina politics.
On a bit of a whim, I asked Thomas Ravenel, another really, really conservative rich guy, if he knew Mallory Factor. I kind of had a hunch they might have managed to get together. And sure enough, they had. Here’s what Mr. Ravenel had to say. (Sorry about the way it cuts off too soon; that’s as much as will fit on a clip with my little camera — I still thought it was interesting. Especially the part about going to a roast for the guy who invented the Laffer Curve. You’ve really got to be a supply-sider to get invited to those kinds of parties.)
At a reader’s request…
Dave, I’m glad to oblige. I’ll bet you’re not the only reader who’d rather look at South Carolina’s own Andie MacDowell (we do grow ’em pretty down here, don’t we?). Those of you who don’t like this can go back to Borat.
Quote of the Day
"Andie MacDowell
driving the Mary Kay pink Cadillac with the entire cast of ‘Nip/Tuck’ couldn’t
make this report look pretty."
That’s state Sen. Harvey Peeler, R-Gaffney, as quoted in the Post and Courier. He was talking about a new audit report on the S.C. Department of Transportation. Here’s what the Associated Press had to say about it later in the day, after it was released:
AP-SC DOT AUDIT, 4TH LD-WRITETHRU
Audit: S.C. Transportation Department is wasteful
Eds: ADDS last graph with additional comment from SanfordBy SEANNA ADCOX
Associated Press Writer
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) – The South Carolina Transportation Department wastes millions of dollars even though it has limited funds to build and maintain its roads and bridges, according to a state audit released Tuesday.
Legislators asked the state Legislative Audit Council last year to review the agency’s operations and spending.
"I was concerned about things I was hearing. I believed the audit would actually show there might be minor issues but nothing major," said House Speaker Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston, who wrote the request. "As it turned out, there are huge issues."
The tens of millions of dollars wasted could be used to maintain roads, he said in an interview via cell phone, as his car hit a pothole on U.S. Highway 17 in Charleston.
The 70-page report found the department paid twice as much as necessary to hire temporary employees, wasted $32 million on unnecessarily high management fees, prepaid nearly $9 million for projects eliminated from two ongoing contracts and spent $3 million on an extra project the federal government required in 2002 because of environmental violations.
"This report shows something needs to be done," said Sen. Harvey Peeler, R-Gaffney. He is chairman of one of two Senate subcommittees that will meet Thursday to hear the audit council’s review and then meet Friday to hear the Transportation Department’s response.
"It seems like some of these things have been whispered about over some time," he said. "This actually puts it in writing."
Harrell said he planned to form a special House subcommittee to review the audit and make recommendations.
The Transportation Department said the audit "contains many inaccuracies and misleading conclusions that misinform the Legislature and the public."
Peeler said he was especially concerned by allegations the department tried to keep their cash balances low during the legislative session, when lawmakers craft the state budget. The report said the department may have lost more than $1.5 million in interest over two fiscal years by delaying billing the federal government for reimbursements.
For more than a year, the chairman of the commission that governs the agency has repeatedly asked Director Elizabeth Mabry to resign.
Mabry said earlier this month there is nothing in the report that would make her consider resigning, but she wished she had a better relationship with Transportation Commission Chairman Tee Hooper, who was appointed by Republican Gov. Mark Sanford.
Hooper said the commission will discuss the report at a meeting later this month.
"There definitely needs to be action," he said. "I’m anxious to see what the commission thinks needs to be done now. I’ve made myself clear over the last year and a half."
Hooper stressed the audit is about management, not the agency’s employees. "The DOT has some really great employees _ a dedicated, hardworking group of people," he said. "It has to do with executive management decisions either made or not made."
The Transportation Department’s written response to the audit said it found no significant problems in programs that make up 99 percent of the department’s expenses.
The agency points to a report by the California-based Reason Foundation that ranks South Carolina second nationwide in cost-effectiveness, and its award for excellence in financial reporting from the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada.
The agency stresses it has saved taxpayers more than $3 billion by cramming 27 years of building projects _ more than 200 _ into seven years.
Last month, Mabry wrote an opinion piece accusing Hooper of trying to destroy the agency’s reputation so the governor could take it over.
Sanford has wanted to make the director an appointed member of his Cabinet. He said the report clearly shows that "meaningful structural change" is needed.
"Whether it’s overpaying by tens of millions for contracts, purposeful manipulation of account balances, or violating state law when it comes to temporary employees, this report is disturbing to me and should be disturbing to anyone who cares about taxpayers and anyone who cares about our state’s infrastructure," the governor said.
Sanford, re-elected last week, said reforming the agency will be a top priority next year, and that should happen before the agency gets more money.
Peeler said he does not support ousting Mabry.
"I like Miss Mabry. I don’t think she should be the sacrificial lamb," he said. "I don’t want to say we fired the director and now everything’s OK. I want to make the agency better."
Sanford said the agency’s response is particularly disturbing.
Rather than acknowledge problems, "the DOT has chosen to try and shoot the messenger and go on the attack against the Legislative Audit Council," he said.
Sanford called the council’s work unbiased and "straightforward in laying out problems or challenges that we might face. So the idea that they have some ax to grind is completely at odds with what I think has been fairly noble work over the years."
The solution to this problem is painfully obvious. This agency answers to no one. There is no way to hold it politically accountable under our current system of government. Consider it Exhibit A as to why we need to make the executive branch accountable to the elected chief executive, as Gov. Mark Sanford has been advocating for several years, and as we at this newspaper have been advocating for about a decade longer than that.
Lawmakers can study and wring their hands over this one audit all they want. But until they toss out this Byzantine system by which we run our highway department, nothing will get better.
Borat make controversy
It’s not every day you get to put the star of "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" on the editorial page, but I managed it in this morning’s paper.
The thin excuse I used was the letter to the editor that touched — and indirectly, at that — on the subject on today’s page. I inserted a mug shot derived as a detail from the above photo. I hereby reproduce the full-length image for the benefit of you ladies out there — or at least, the really hard-up ladies.
I saw the movie over the weekend. It may be the funniest of the year, although it’s not for the easily offended. It’s not even for the moderately sensitive, for that matter. Come to think of it, it’s not all that tough to be the funniest movie around when one scene features the protagonist wrestling naked with a really hairy fat guy.
Anyway, have any of y’all seen it? What did you think?
Election stats column
How did ‘our’ candidates do
last week? Very well, as always
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
IT IS WIDELY believed that, like Michael Corleone in “The Godfather II,” I have the power to administer the “kiss of death.” This is not true. In order to administer this kiss, I must first consult with my consiglieri — I mean, my fellow members of the editorial board of The State.
Actually, it is even less true than that. There is no “kiss of death.”
It is popular — among people we have not endorsed, and particularly those whom we will never endorse, for political office — to say they are glad not to get our nod, because our endorsement is the “kiss of death.” Our candidates always lose. There is truth in this, yes?
No. Of course, if there were a correlation between candidates we anoint and those who suffer humiliation at the polls, it would not matter, because we are not trying to make predictions. We are saying whom we believe should win, not who will win.
OK, so maybe it would matter a little. That might be taken as our being seriously out of sync with the people of South Carolina.
But it doesn’t matter at all because it isn’t true. I knew “our” candidates usually did pretty well, but it wasn’t until two years ago that I went back and studied 10 years worth
of endorsements versus actual election results. The people we endorsed won about three-fourths of the time in general elections. From 1994 through 2004, we endorsed 85 candidates, and 64 won, for a 75.29 percentage.
I found out something else.
Certainly you know that we always endorse Republicans. That is, you know that if you’re a Democrat. If you’re a Republican, you are just as certain that we always endorse Democrats. Obviously, one of you is wrong. Less obviously, both of you are.
Here’s the skinny:
It turns out that over that same decade ending in 2004, our candidates split almost perfectly down the middle — 43 Democrats, 41 Republicans and one independent. This was a surprise, and completely unintentional. Party being unimportant to us, we are just as likely to endorse mostly Democrats or mostly Republicans in a given election year.
It was encouraging to realize how it worked out over time.
So enough with the history. How did our candidates do this year?
I was sort of hoping for a big Republican year to make the overall figures perfectly even. No such luck. The Democrats fielded some good candidates, there were a number of Republican incumbents who seriously needed tossing out, and most of our favorite Republicans had no opposition — hence no endorsement.
The result? As I realized the day before the election, we had endorsed 12 Democrats and five Republicans. Yikes.
That was setting us up for a really bad year on the won-loss score (not that it matters, but I’d like to see them win).
Or so I thought. At this point, if you count Jim Rex as a win (and admittedly that’s still a significant if), then 12 of our candidates won, and five lost.
How is that? Every one of the five Republicans we backed (Thomas Ravenel, Hugh Weathers, Mark Hammond, Joe Wilson and Bill Cotty) won, and only five of “our” Democrats (Tommy Moore, Drew Theodore, Robert Barber, Boyd Summers and Sadie Wannamaker) lost.
So every time we picked a Republican, the voters agreed with us. They also agreed on seven out of the 12 Democrats.
If we had been trying to pick winners (which we weren’t), we would have done pretty well. Although it’s not really anything to brag about. Since 12 is less than three-fourths of 17, our running “win” average has now dropped
to 74.5 percent (sigh).
Separately from the whole endorsement business, I (and I alone) did try to pick winners a few days before the election.
Tempted by an e-mail invitation, I tried my hand at predicting. To keep myself honest, I posted my prognostications on my blog.
I was only asked specifically about the eight statewide races on the ballot. I picked six Republicans and two Democrats to win. How did I come out? I was right on five, wrong on three. Both of the Democrats I had picked to win (Grady Patterson, whom we had not endorsed, and Mr. Theodore, whom we had) lost, and so did one of my Republicans (Karen Floyd, whom we had not endorsed).
That’s a batting average of .625, which would be good in baseball, but is not nearly as good as the success rate of the candidates that our editorial board picks as the best without regard to whether they will win or lose.
Sure, I did it just off the top of my head, whereas we had spent months choosing our preferred candidates — as had the voters. And they came up with pretty much the same results we did. Smart voters. Smart us, too.
But I don’t think I’d better give up my day job for predicting the weather. Or anything else, for that matter.
Robert Gates column
The return of the professional
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
“AMID TAWDRINESS, he stands for honor, duty and decency,” another author once wrote of John le Carre’s fictional hero George Smiley.
George was the master Cold Warrior brought back in from retirement to save British intelligence from the liars, self-dealers, ideologues, social climbers and traitors who had turned it inside out. He did so quietly, humbly and competently. Then he went his way, with little gratitude from the system.
With Robert Gates’ nomination to replace Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, old George seems
to have come back in from the cold yet again, although in different form.
Mr. Gates is a Smileyesque professional. He was the only Director of Central Intelligence ever to have come up through the ranks. He had spent two decades in the Agency, from 1969 through 1989, with a several-year hiatus at the National Security Council. He received the National Security Medal, the Presidential Citizens Medal, the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal (twice) and the Distinguished Intelligence Medal (three times).
I trust professionals, particularly those who have devoted themselves to national service. Not in every case, of course — there are idiots and scoundrels in every walk of life — but if all other things are equal, give me the pro from Dover over someone’s golf buddy every time.
Perhaps that’s why I sometimes lower my standards from the le Carre level to enjoy a Tom Clancy novel. Jack Ryan moves in a world peopled by competent, heroically dedicated public servants. Most wear uniforms — soldiers, sailors, Marines, cops — but others are costumed in the conservative suits of the FBI, CIA or Secret Service. The ones you have to watch out for are the politicians; they always have agendas that have little to do with protecting the country or the rule of law.
This has a ring of truth to me. I grew up in the Navy and have spent my adult life dealing with a broad variety of people from cops to lawyers to FBI agents to politicians to private business types. I know a lot of fine politicos and private-sector executives, but as a percentage, I’ll more quickly trust the honor of public-service professionals.
Of course, they often don’t trust me — at least not at first — and I don’t blame them. The press spends too much time with publicans and sinners, and absorbs too many of their values. As a group, for instance, we tend to love it when a special prosecutor is appointed. That means fireworks, and fireworks are news.
Call me a heretic, but I’ve always wondered why we don’t just let the professional investigators do their jobs. Do we really think the FBI — not the political appointees at the top, but the career agents who do the work — can’t investigate corruption? Sure, a politician can try to get such a civil servant fired or transferred to garbage detail, but such overt efforts to subvert the system tend to get noticed, a la Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre.”
Mr. Gates has had his own run-ins with politicians and special counsel. He withdrew from consideration to become Ronald Reagan’s CIA director in 1987 because he had been senior enough for the Iran-Contra affair to have cast its shadow over him. He was under formal investigation in that connection when he was nominated again under George H.W. Bush. No one ever pinned any wrongdoing on him, and he was confirmed by the Senate.
This time, the Democrats who are likely to line the gauntlet he must again run to confirmation
were generally supportive of his nomination. Of course, look at the act he’d be following. Mr. Gates is described as a soft-spoken, yet tough-minded, “pragmatist and realist,” an antithesis to the civilian ideologues who have been running the war.
In Thursday’s news reports, the Gates nomination was treated as another sign of “the ascendancy of the team that served the president’s father.” There’s truth — and reassurance, for pragmatists — in that. He has for the past several months served as one of the “Wise Men” reviewing and critiquing the conduct of the Iraq War, along with former Secretary of State James Baker. That makes him particularly, if not uniquely, well prepared to run the war more successfully.
Of course, he’s not a Defense professional. But the Pentagon might be an exception to my general preference. In that particular case, the real professionals — the uniformed leaders, the warriors —spend their careers trying to stay out of the Pentagon. I worry about the ones who do otherwise. Beyond that, it’s probably best that Defense not be headed by a general or admiral, to preserve the principle of civilian oversight. But it would be nice if they had a boss who would listen to them.
Given those conditions, who would be better than a pragmatic national security professional who possesses mastery of the entire spectrum of intelligence gathering and analysis, and has been studying in depth what has gone wrong in Iraq? He just needs to help the president pick a direction. The generals and admirals will know how to get the job done from that point.
They’re professionals, too.
Thursday election roundup column
Mandates: From Sanford
to Pelosi to Lieberman
By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
ANYBODY WHO thinks there was any one theme, message or lesson from Tuesday’s elections has a few more thinks coming. Let’s start with these:
The Sanford Mandate. Gov. Mark Sanford’s victory statement Tuesday night was the best speech I’ve ever heard him give. I’m hoping to hear more of the same. He talked about a mandate, but with a tone of humility. He said it was a mandate for “change,” and I think he was right. What he did not mention was the plan to privatize public education, and with good reason, given the results in certain other races across the state. That still leaves us with government restructuring, and if the governor pushes as hard on that in the next four years as he has said he would, I’ll be cheering him every step of the way.
Real education reform. Despite her long head start as the governor’s anointed “choice” standard-bearer, despite all those tens of thousands in campaign cash from out-of-state ideologues, despite having that crucial “R” after her name, Karen Floyd was slightly trailing Jim Rex in the superintendent of education race. It could still go either way. Does that mean the voters sent an uncertain message as to whether they want education reform? Absolutely not. The wisest course for the winner of this race, the governor and lawmakers would be to embrace the common-sense reforms that both of these candidates talked about, such as merit pay for teachers.
Bill Cotty survives. They tried to do him in in the GOP primary. When that didn’t work, they tried to take him down in the general by running an independent candidate to split the Republican vote. They flooded his state House district with one slick mailing after another, accusing him of everything they could think of short of having WMD. But the most obvious House Republican opponent to private school vouchers and tax credits withstood everything they could throw at him, and prevailed. And consider this: His Democratic opponent, Anton Gunn, was just as strongly against their agenda as Mr. Cotty was. That means that in spite of all that out-of-state money and effort, 87 percent of the voters utterly rejected their agenda. The people of District 79 love and appreciate their public schools. And they are far from alone.
Eckstrom’s vindication. So how does a guy who calls himself a fiscal watchdog (which is just what a comptroller ought to be), then takes a long family vacation in a state vehicle on a state gas card, then dares to run for re-election as a fiscal watchdog again manage to win? Here’s how: He got voters to believe his whining that he was being picked on, that the criticism of his Minnesota road trip was just the pettiest kind of political nit-picking. Well, it wasn’t. He broke faith with the voters, he never thought it was wrong, and now that he’s gotten away with it, he seems less likely than ever to learn anything from the incident.
The national picture. Everyone says the Democrats’ congressional victories are about Iraq — but what does that mean? Those of us who have backed the war from the start have demanded changes in the way the war has been prosecuted since early on. We’ve been demanding, for instance, that the president dump Donald Rumsfeld. (Mr. Bush got that message right away — three years late, but he got it.)
After all that talk about the war, I’ve yet to hear specifically what Democrats think the voters want them to do. I heard Nancy Pelosi and John Murtha on the radio Wednesday morning. Pretty nonspecific. They want “change.” Nobody’s saying pull the troops out. The party’s most agitated wing will be flapping for that, but wiser heads know better: If that was what the people wanted, Ned Lamont would have won in Connecticut.
I think the country was rejecting the bitter partisanship of the last few years, of which the president and Speaker Dennis Hastert are prime examples. Voters want people who will work across ideological lines to the betterment of the country, both at home and abroad. They reject the Ned Lamonts on the left and the Rick Santorums on the right. They want common sense, not MoveOn.org or Rush Limbaugh.
Who were the Democrats who won? Pro-life candidate Bob Casey in Pennsylvania. Fiscal moderate John Spratt right here in South Carolina. The extremists need to take heed, or prepare to lose the House again in the next election — or the one after.
Joementum! Yes! I practically shouted it out during the live election-night broadcast on S.C. ETV. Joe Lieberman did it! He showed that the right man with the right ideas (including the will to win in Iraq, take note) doesn’t need a political party to win high office.
This is a start. All the U.S. Senate needs now is 50 more like him. Then you’ll see me jumping up and down the way the Democrats are doing nationally, and (most) Republicans are doing in South Carolina. Why? Because for the first time ever, my party will have its chance. I promise you here and now, given that opportunity, we will not let the American people down.
Yes! Now let’s go win this war…
Wonderful news on the day after the election — Donald Rumsfeld is gone! A couple or three years late, but it’s done.
Does this mean that the president is ready to stop his stubborn stance of "I’m never wrong" and "personal loyalty trumps the national interest?"
It would seem so. And that would be the best news of all. This sends a signal to the country, to the troops, to our erstwhile allies, and most importantly to the enemy, that the United States is ready to get serious, finally.
At least, I hope and pray so.
What does it all mean?
So what does it mean that the Democrats took the U.S. House and may yet take the Senate?
Everyone says it was about Iraq — but what does that mean? Those of us who have backed the war from the start have demanded changes in the way the war has been prosecuted since early on. We’ve been demanding Rumsfeld’s head, more troops, better diplomacy with allies, etc.
Democrats ran against Iraq. But now that they won, what’s the message? So far, none. I heard Nancy Pelosi and John Murtha on the radio this morning. Pretty nonspecific. They want change. Nobody’s saying pull the troops out. They know better. The party’s most agitated branch will be screaming for that, but there’s no mandate for that. If there were, Ned Lamont would have won.
Personally, I think the country was rejecting the bitter partisanship of the last few years, of which the president and Dennis Hastert are prime examples. They want people who will work across ideological lines to the betterment of the country, both at home and abroad. They rejected the Ned Lamonts on the left and the Rick Santorums on the right. They want common sense, not MoveOn.org or Rush Limbaugh.
But that’s what I think. What do y’all think?
Signing off for a few hours
This blog is hereby signing off for the night. Be sure to tune in at 9 a.m. EST to hear sidekick Andy
Gobeil and me on "The Big Picture on the Radio."
We’ll be further slicing and dicing the election results. And perhaps we’ll know a little more now than we did then. We’ll see. In the meantime, I’d going to see if I can grab about a five-hour nap and then a really big breakfast before we’re back out on the air.
Goodnight, Chet. Good night, David. And goodnight, Uncle Walter. We TV types miss you the most.
Yes. Yes! YEAH!
This just in from the AP:
SENATE: Joe Lieberman-I elected in Connecticut
You go, Joe! You’re my boy!
Hey, look, Ma! I’m on TV!
We’re on the air at ETV as I type this. How about watching and giving me real-time feedback… hold on… just did a live bit. Walter Edgar’s talking now.
Anyway, please watch and sound off. Let’s make a little S.C. blog history.