Monthly Archives: January 2007

Is he really gone?

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Howardhunt1

"Disinformation," I thought.

I know it’s disrespectful of the dead, and I do feel guilty about that, but the truth is that when I heard the news this morning of Howard Hunt’s death, my very first thought was:

"Do you really believe he’s gone?"

I know, I know: I’ve read way too many spy novels… There’s that, and the fact that I started my career in the middle of the whole Watergate thing.

Howardhunt2jpgpart

Closing the process

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So that you’ll know where to direct your ire — or your appreciation, in some cases — here’s how S.C. House members voted on whether to close Republican (and other) Caucus meetings to the public:

{BC-SC-Closed Meetings-Roll Call,0384}
{By The Associated Press}=
  The 59-52 roll call by which the South Carolina House adopted a Republican-backed plan to allow caucuses to meet behind closed doors.
   On this vote, a "yes" vote was a vote to adopt the change.
   Voting "yes" were 2 Democrats and 57 Republicans.
   Voting "no" were 42 Democrats and 10 Republicans.
   Not voting were 6 Democrats and 7 Republicans.

{Democrats Voting Yes}
   Bales, Eastover; Neilson, Darlington;

{Republicans Voting Yes}
   Ballentine, Irmo; Bannister, Greenville; Barfield, Conway; Bedingfield, Mauldin; Bingham, West Columbia; Bowen, Anderson; Brady, Columbia; Cato, Travelers Rest; Ceips, Beaufort; Chalk, Hilton Head Island; Chellis, Summerville; Clemmons, Myrtle Beach; Cooper, Piedmont; Dantzler, Goose Creek; Delleney, Chester; Gambrell, Honea Path; Gullick, Lake Wylie; Haley, Lexington; Hardwick, Surfside Beach; Harrell, Charleston; Harrison, Columbia; Haskins, Greenville; Herbkersman, Bluffton; Hinson, Goose Creek; Hiott, Pickens; Kelly, Woodruff; Leach, Greer; Limehouse, Charleston; Littlejohn, Spartanburg; Loftis, Greenville; Lowe, Florence; Lucas, Hartsville; Mahaffey, Lyman; Merrill, Daniel Island; Mulvaney, Indian Land; Owens, Pickens; Pinson, Greenwood; M.A. Pitts, Laurens; Rice, Easley; Sandifer, Seneca; Scarborough, Charleston; Shoopman, Greer; D.C. Smith, North Augusta; G.M. Smith, Sumter; G.R. Smith, Simpsonville; J.R. Smith, Langley; W.D. Smith, Spartanburg; Spires, Pelion; Taylor, Laurens; Thompson, Anderson; Umphlett, Moncks Corner; Viers, Myrtle Beach; Walker, Landrum; White, Anderson; Whitmire, Walhalla; Witherspoon, Conway; Young, Summerville;

{Democrats Voting No}
   Alexander, Florence; Anderson, Georgetown; Battle, Nichols; Bowers, Brunson; Branham, Lake City; Brantley, Ridgeland; Breeland, Charleston; G. Brown, Bishopville; R. Brown, Hollywood; Clyburn, Aiken; Cobb-Hunter, Orangeburg; Funderburk, Camden; Govan, Orangeburg; Hart, Columbia; Harvin, Summerton; Hayes, Hamer; Hodges, Green Pond; Hosey, Barnwell; Howard, Columbia; Jefferson, Pineville; Jennings, Bennettsville; Kennedy, Greeleyville; Kirsh, Clover; Knight, St. George; Mack, North Charleston; McLeod, Little Mountain; Miller, Pawleys Island; Mitchell, Spartanburg; Moss, Gaffney; J.H. Neal, Hopkins; J.M. Neal, Kershaw; Ott, St. Matthews; Parks, Greenwood; Rutherford, Columbia; Scott, Columbia; Sellers, Denmark; F.N. Smith, Greenville; Stavrinakis, Charleston; Vick, Chesterfield; Weeks, Sumter; Whipper, North Charleston; Williams, Darlington;

{Republicans Voting No}
   Agnew, Abbeville; Edge, North Myrtle Beach; Frye, Batesburg-Leesville; Hamilton, Taylors; Huggins, Columbia; Perry, Aiken; E.H. Pitts, Lexington; Simrill, Rock Hill; Talley, Spartanburg; Toole, West Columbia;

{Those Not Voting}
  Democrats: Allen, Greenville; Anthony, Union; Coleman, Winnsboro; Moody-Lawrence, Rock Hill; Phillips, Gaffney; J.E. Smith, Columbia;
   Republicans: Cotty, Columbia; Crawford, Florence; Davenport, Boiling Springs; Duncan, Clinton; Hagood, Mt. Pleasant; Skelton, Six Mile; Stewart, Aiken;

Give the general a chance

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Petraeus_testify

Gen. David H. Petraeus had not even had the chance to present his case to Congress before some otherwise thoughtful folks were moving to undermine his ability to implement his plan for stabilizing Iraq — a thing he’s shown in the past he know how to do.

Nevertheless, he went on to present it, to the Senate Armed Services Committee, today.

I truly believe it would have been worth waiting to hear him before judging his chances.

On past occasions, the trio of John McCain, Lindsey Graham and John Warner has been a bulwark of sanity, courage, and principle in the U.S. Senate. They stood together to move the Bush administration on the treatment of enemy prisoners, for instance.

But now they’re parting ways on Iraq, and I see it the way Sen. Graham does:

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
    Contact: Wes Hickman or Kevin Bishop
    January 22, 2007
    (202) 224-5972 / (864) 250-1417

    Graham Statement on the
    Warner-Collins-Nelson
    Iraq Resolution
    WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) today made the following statement on the Warner-Collins-Nelson Iraq resolution.
    “Unfortunately this new Iraq resolution, no matter how well-intentioned, has the same effect as the Biden resolution. It declares General Petraeus’s new strategy a failure before it has a chance to be implemented.
    “Any resolution that could be construed by American forces that Congress has lost faith in their ability to be successful in Iraq should be rejected because it rings of defeatism at a time when we should be focused on Victory.
    “Success or failure in Iraq will spread throughout the region creating momentum for moderation or extremism. Petraeus’s new strategy is our best hope for success, acknowledges past mistakes, sets benchmarks for Iraqi leaders, and provides needed reinforcements in all areas: militarily, politically, and economically.
    “I urge my colleagues not to try to micromanage the war, but instead listen to General Petraeus and fully resource his proposal.  We must stand behind him and the brave men and women who will execute this new strategy, as the successful outcome in Iraq is essential to winning the War on Terror."
                                ####

Of course, one of the virtues of independent, thinking, honest people is that they are free to disagree, rather than being mindlessly bound to ideology or party.

But I’m sorry to see Sen. Warner go the way of the crowd on this one. Men such as Sen. Graham and especially Gen. Petraeus need support on this. The stakes are too high to play resolution games that will weaken the general’s position before he and his new troops even get their boots on the ground.

Warner

Asking the governor

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This is the audio of my effort to get the governor talking about the reform ideas that he and new Superintendent of Education Jim Rex have in common. I wrote about this in today’s column.

It was interesting for me to go back and listen to it. I had forgotten how long and hard I had pressed to get a few seconds of response from the governor — and what he did say was remarkably noncommital even by his standards. (My question took a minute-and-a-half to set up and ask; the governor answered vaguely for 15 seconds.)

Poor Tom Davis jumped in and talked and talked (for more than two minutes) after the governor stopped, and I had the impression he was consciously trying to make up for the governor’s apparent lack of interest in what is really a remarkable opportunity to achieve some dramatic reforms by reaching across party lines.

I remain hopeful, though. If the governor does decide to seize this chance, he should find a willing partner in Mr. Rex, who pretty much jumps at any opportunity to build bridges on these issues. For a little corroboration of that, check out this video from after the State of the State address. You can fast-forward through it; Mr. Rex is the last person interviewed by my sometime TV sidekick Andy Gobeil.

Sanford and Rex column

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Sanford, Rex should work together
on common reform goals

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
“I think there is a lot of common ground, and hopefully we’ll find it.”
    — Jim Rex,
    superintendent of education,
    on reform ideas that both he
    and Gov. Mark Sanford support

Gov. Mark Sanford is the most prominent advocate of converting South Carolina’s separately elected constitutional offices into Cabinet posts. He is also probably the biggest political impediment to such essential reform.
    One day after Sen. Glenn McConnell delivered
on his promise to get constitutional officers legislation out of committee, a Democratic senator said what so many have said before: He sees the merit in consolidating the executive branch, but the idea of giving the governor power to appoint the superintendent of education really gives him heartburn.
    And no wonder. This governor showed virtually no interest in our schools in his first term, beyond leading an all-out campaign to undermine taxpayer confidence in the very idea of public education, and pay parents to desert it.
    But that was then. Now, with a new term, and a new superintendent, there’s an opportunity for progress — if the governor (and the superintendent of education, but I’m less worried about him) will seize it.
    Based on what Mr. Sanford has said over the past four years, and what Jim Rex said during the 2006 campaign, there are significant reform ideas that both of them favor.
    If they are serious about these ideas, they should get behind them with all their might:

  • Merit pay for teachers. Mr. Rex has told teachers they’d better get used to the idea of being paid according to their performance, rather than just by the old standards of degrees and longevity. The governor has proposed that.
  • More educational “choice.” Mr. Rex, who has the support of the very forces who have most resisted the governor’s “choice” advocacy (which has unfortunately focused primarily on promoting private schools), wants parents to be able to choose the public schools their children attend.
  • Comprehensive tax reform. This would help beyond education, but it is essential to fixing the inequitable way schools are funded across the state.
  • School district consolidation. The governor would reduce the state’s wasteful, duplicative archipelago of 85 districts to one per county. Mr. Rex wouldn’t go that far — he suspects that some counties, such as Horry, are too big for a single administration — but he sees the need for some consolidation of districts, and certainly sharing services across district lines. There seems room for an alliance between them on at least the concept.

    The concept is simple common sense. Some of the worst schools in the state are in some of the tiniest, least rationally conceived, districts. There is a crying need for consolidation, and a fierce resistance that has kept the Legislature deaf to it.
    Ditto with the other ideas, which have been mightily resisted by what detractors call the “education establishment” — a constituency that lawmakers have been loathe to offend.
    But if both of these statewide elected officials really poured their considerable political capital — the governor was re-elected by the greatest margin in 16 years, and Mr. Rex has the almost total support of the most critical constituencies — into these fundamental reforms, our state could be transformed.
    That would, incidentally, also advance the idea of putting the state Department of Education — which presides over nearly half of state spending — where it should be, under the authority of future governors. Ironically, Mr. Rex actually opposes that. But if education advocates could for once see this governor publicly backing serious proposals for positive change, and see Mr. Rex behind those same ideas, they could be reassured that maybe the governor’s office isn’t an inherently destructive force.
    Can it happen? I don’t know. The governor has expended little energy on pushing these ideas in the past. For that matter, we’ve yet to confirm whether Mr. Rex is more than talk — and senior Sanford adviser Tom Davis has expressed doubts that the superintendent will be able to stand firm in the face of opposition within his own party.
    But so far Mr. Rex has been the guy pushing. He initiated a meeting with the governor several weeks ago. He says both “talked candidly about the belief that we had a lot of common ground.”
    “Yeah,” said the governor when I asked him about it. “We’ve had a couple of visits, and they’ve been pleasant, and um, I think productive. I like his style; he seems to be very matter of fact. Ummm. So, yeah.”
    When the governor went no further, Mr. Davis jumped in to say there was “tremendous opportunity” to work together on these issues. But the governor’s staff still seems to wonder how far Mr. Rex would go with them.
    If I were Mr. Rex, I’d be wondering to what degree the governor’s commitment exceeds lip service. But there’s one way for everyone to be sure: Come out together on these issues in a huge, public way, each binding the other with his unmistakable commitment.
    The governor was also friendly, in a noncommittal way, with Inez Tenenbaum at the start of his first term. But all that evaporated when he and well-funded out-of-state allies started attacking public schools outright in pushing his tax credit idea. “It was just all-out war after that,” Mrs. Tenenbaum recalls.
    If both the governor and the new superintendent would seize the chance to have a much more positive relationship than that, it would be good for Mark Sanford, good for Jim Rex, and very good for South Carolina.

The French

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Got a kick out of this comment from Phillip:

The following is completely a non-sequitur, but I absolutely can’t
resist: in today’s State, Brad and Dave’s worst nightmare…"France had
more babies in 2006 than in any year in the last
quarter-century…capping a decade of rising fertility that has bucked
Europe’s graying trend…."

Then he followed it up with some kind of twisted Paris talk
that I couldn’t make out:

Nous avons votre "valeurs familiales" exactement ici!

It doesn’t make sense to me, either. But I think the thrust of it is that Phillip is suggesting I have a certain antipathy toward the Gauls, to which I can only say: Hate the French? Moi? Perish the thought.

I’ll confess that I did enjoy Sasha Baron Cohen’s send-up of every "Old Europe" stereotype ever conceived in "Talladega Nights" (yes, I finally got around to seeing it, and yes, it was mostly pretty awful, although I also enjoyed Gary Cole, as usual).

But how can any red-blooded American despise the French these days, with signs that the De Gaullists are dying off? And check out (again) who might be their new president:

As I said to a colleague the other day when I ran across that video, "You know, if she were my president, I’d probably believe everything she said, even though I wouldn’t understand a word of it." Being a good friend, he warned me, "Careful … it’s just like those French socialists to send comely, sweet-talking females to fool American men." To which, being besotted, I could only reply, "If she wanted to surrender Paris to the boche, I’d say, ‘Sure, we can get it back later….’" Hey, we’ve done that for the French before, right?

But pretty is as pretty does, and we have to assess folks by words and actions as well as by pulchritude and sheer foxiness. Fortunately, Segolene measures up pretty well in that department to — relatively speaking. For a French Socialist.

Here’s a link to a WSJ piece that had encouraging things to say about her, and especially about her center-right opponent. I was encouraged, anyway. Here’s a pertinent excerpt:

His version of Gaullism — and Mr. [Nicolas] Sarkozy does after all lead the general’s old camp — would save "la France éternelle" through a rupture with the Gaullist past.

Less can be said about Ms. Royal’s views; she smiles
much and reveals little. But, in a series of debates before November’s
Socialist primary, what Ms. Royal didn’t say said plenty. As the other
candidates brought out the well-worn trope of France as counterweight
to the evil hyperpower, Ms. Royal stayed mum. So far she refuses to
play the anti-American card. Though Iraq’s "a catastrophe," she says
its democracy deserves support. To more guffaws from Paris elites, Ms.
Royal calls for "extremely strong diplomatic action to prevent Iran
from getting nuclear power, which would be very dangerous for the whole
region" and rules out atomic energy for civilian use. That’s as hard a
line as any out there today. Ms. Royal, wrote a gushing editorialist in
Le Monde, "favors a break with the soft consensus that for too many
years has prevailed in French foreign policy."

As I said — for a French Socialist.

How about testing the teachers?

49 Replies

The author of this op-ed piece in today’s editions of The State
has a point when he says we can’t have open enrollment without providing transportation for all children whose parents want to take advantage of it.

And he’s completely right when he notes the rather obvious fact that income levels are a major predictor of student performance. In fact, it’s the one great objective measurement we have, in terms of finding correlations between measurable factors.

But he’s wrong, I believe, when he says open enrollment is a bad idea. And I suspect he takes the poverty factor, as important as it is, a little too far.

People who want to destroy public schools by paying the middle class to desert them like to lump us at the paper in with the "defenders of the status quo." But here’s where we depart from them. They say it’s purely a matter of poverty, and suggest that there’s nothing a teacher can do to change that. This is why they resisted so strongly the PACT and accountability, which we strongly supported.

As critical as poverty is, we believe good teachers and well-run schools can do a far better job of educating poor kids. The point of accountability for us is to point out, beyond a shadow of a doubt, where those good teachers and administrators are most needed. The true "defenders of the status quo" blanch at the thought of suggesting that some teachers are better than others, which in turn suggests that some teachers are, well, not up to snuff.

But it struck me in reading this piece that there’s a way to settle this dispute: Test the teachers. If their students’ scores are an imperfect indicator of the job their doing because they don’t control what the kids bring to the classroom — and that’s true enough, to a point, we just don’t know to what point — let’s come up with a PACT for teachers. Then we could see how much of the problem in rural schools comes from the students’ poverty, and how much from the fact that good teachers choose to work under better conditions, and they have the skills to get jobs in the suburbs.

This would be extremely useful. We could address the task of improving the quality of education available to all students much more effectively. We could even — gasp — use it as a factor in instituting merit pay. You want to see the system push back, try that. Or for that matter, try testing teachers to begin with.

The argument against it would be that the quality of a teacher lies in many things, many of them unmeasurable in a test. I would agree. But the test would give us some information we don’t have, and it would be helpful. As for taking it as far as using it in calculating merit pay — it wouldn’t be the ONLY factor. Along with the performance of their students (weighted by income levels plus the student’s performance under other teachers), you would have to consider subjective assessments — mainly the principal’s judgment, but you might want to toss in parent surveys.

That would really send those who resist reform through the roof. Subjective judgment, oh my! But what do you think those of us out in the private sector have to deal with, every working day of our lives?

A too-late “teaser”

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OK, so I had this neat idea as to how to do a "teaser" this afternoon on the governor’s pre-State of the State briefing — which was embargoed until 7.

But with one of my colleagues out today, I had to turn to putting out tomorrow’s pages myself when I got back from the governor’s mansion.

So now the governor is well into his speech — may even be done by the time this posts — and the embargo is off.

But I went ahead and finished it anyway, to see if my idea for how to produce the item would work. Here it is. More will follow.

Way to go, Sen. DEmint

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Jim DeMint got a mention on NPR this morning (I couldn’t find the specific link, but I swear I heard it) for his excellent work on a bipartisan approach to reining in earmarks. The announcer pronounced his name DEmint, with the accent on the first syllable, but it was much-deserved recognition all the same.

When he spoke to my Rotary a while back he introduced himself as that other senator, and allowed as how members may not have heard of him if they read The State newspaper. Well, true, Lindsay Graham does play on a bigger stage, and gets more play — and not just from us.

However, I think the November election provided Sen. DeMint with a way to distinguish himself from the herd, and to his great credit, he is seizing the opportunity. When he was just one of the GOP majority, and one of the most slavishly loyal to whatever the party line happened to be, there was no particular reason to pay attention to him. You know: You talk to one redwood, you’ve talked to them all.

But now he is distinguishing himself. The irony is that the Democrats had to take over (after promising reform) before he could really flex his muscles as a true fiscal conservative. This definitely sets him apart from the old crowd. As you can see in this video, his fellow Republicans have not only been inclined to keep the earmark system as is, but to take full advantage of it — while excusing themselves by saying this is just the way the system is, so they have no choice if they’re to serve their constituents.

No such rationalizations for our Jim. He’s getting something done. And with Nancy Pelosi, no less, which means he believes in the principle of getting the job done more than he does in the destructive old GOP notion of only working with your own. Here’s hoping more folks of both parties take a cue from him.

Anyway, here’s his press release on the subject. I hope to hear more such good news in the future:

U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina)

Contact: Wesley
Denton (202) 228-5079 or Adam Temple (803) 771-6112

For Immediate
Release: January 16,
2007

 

Senate
Unanimously Approves DeMint-Pelosi
Earmark Transparency
Reform

 

Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South
Carolina) made the following statement after the Senate unanimously approved an
amendment he sponsored that would require disclosure of all earmarks on the
internet 48 hours before they are voted on. U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy
Pelosi (D-California) authored similar reforms that passed the House earlier
this
year.

"I’m pleased we were able to work in a
bipartisan way to make sure the Senate is completely transparent when it comes
to congressional earmarks," said Senator DeMint. "This is a very important first
step in earmark reform, and it is a victory for American taxpayers. However, the Senate lobbying reform bill
still does not do enough to prevent Congress from steering taxpayer dollars to
special interest projects.

 

"The outcome we achieved on earmark disclosure
demonstrates that we can work together to achieve meaningful results and I hope
we can continue this progress by considering several important reform amendments
that are currently
pending."

 

"We need to stop earmarks from being airdropped
into conference reports without being considered in either the House or the
Senate. We also need to consider and
vote on the Legislative Line Item Veto amendment that would allow the President
to have Congress reconsider questionable earmarks that make it into the budget
and annual spending
bills."

 

The DeMint-Pelosi Amendment
requires:

  •   Disclosure of earmarks for federal
    projects;
  •  Disclosure of all earmarks contained in report language,
    which is where approximately 95 percent of earmarks are prescribed;
    and
  •  Members seeking earmarks provide written information to
    committee of jurisdiction, which must be made available to the public on the
    Internet in a searchable format 48 hours prior to consideration.

Senator DeMint has sponsored an amendment that
prohibits adding preventing out-of-scope earmarks that were not in either the
House or Senate versions of the bill from being "airdropped" into a conference
report. Senator DeMint has cosponsored the Legislative Line Item Veto amendment
with Senator Judd Gregg (R-New
Hampshire).

Patterson on “Homeboy” Clyburn

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In Washington and all over South Carolina, everybody is falling all over themselves so talk about what a big shot Jim Clyburn is, now that he’s the U.S. House majority whip.

But not Kay Patterson, who has a few home truths to share about his "Homeboy" Jim. He provides an excellent example of the quotation he cites from a prophet having no honor among his own. Of course, it’s all in fun…

This was at the Urban League‘s annual MLK Day breakfast, which is sponsored by the former BellSouth, and hosted this year at Brookland Baptist‘s new banquet and convention facility in West Columbia. It’s a very nice facility, although the lighting is sort of low for videographic purposes…

Hoedown

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I‘ve just come back with some video and other material from MLK Day activities, and before I start processing it, I realize I haven’t posted this bit from the inaugural barbecue last Wednesday night. I won’t offer much in the way of setup beyond what I said on YouTube:

The crowd
was thin and it was hard to talk, but those who showed did their best
to enjoy themselves at the barbecue celebrating Gov. Mark Sanford’s
second inauguration, Jan. 10, 2007.

Oh, I will say this — sorry about the shaky, inaccurate camera work. I now realize that my shoot-from-the-hip style I use in meetings works a lot better in our board room, with a table to steady the camera. Trying to hold it low and be unobtrusive while walking around talking to folks at a barbecue doesn’t work as well. Another lesson learned.

Iraq “Surge” Column

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It’s a sound plan,
but Bush can’t sell it

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
WE HAVE in place much of what we need to succeed in Iraq. We have a new, comprehensive plan that corrects many of the mistakes of the past three years. We have new leadership on the ground, in the form of a general who has shown that he knows what it takes to win this war.
    We just need a better salesman.
    If you saw and heard President Bush’s address to the nation live Wednesday night, and listened with an open mind, you probably still went away saying, “Huh? How is this going to improve the situation?”
    I’m glad that wasn’t my first impression. I missed the live broadcast. And before watching a replay of the Bush speech, I called U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham.
    George W. Bush has two, and only two, virtues as our commander in chief: He understands, on some fundamental, gut level, how important it is that we succeed. And he won’t give up. Those are fine, but they’re not enough.
    We need someone in charge who is able to communicate to the nation why we need to be in Iraq, how we need to proceed, and why that course of action can work. He needs to persuade fair-minded people to believe him, and to follow.
    Of course, he has to have a good plan to start with. If I had heard him tell about it first, I would doubt that he does.
    In fairness, it helps if you start by asking the right question. The president was trying to talk to a nation that polls tell him is asking, “Why on Earth are you sending more troops?” I asked Sen. Graham, “Why on Earth do you think 20,000 will be enough?”
    Sen. Graham and his friend and ally Sen. John McCain have maintained that we need more troops in Iraq. The senator from Arizona has insisted that it needed to be a lot more. But Sen. Graham had indicated he was pleased with this smaller “surge.” Why? Because it’s a part, and not the largest part, of a comprehensive new approach that stresses diplomatic, economic and political initiatives.
    The military mission is specific: Put in enough troops to provide security in Baghdad and increase our muscle over on the Syrian border, in Anbar province.
    Here are some critical points related by Sen. Graham that the president failed to get across:

  • Tremendous pressure is being placed on the Shia-dominated Iraqi government to ensure Sunni leaders that their people will get their cut of the country’s oil wealth. Assure them that their tribe will not starve out in the cold, and you remove ordinary Sunni Arab insurgents’ motivation to kill Shiites. That removes the cloak of legitimacy from the Shiite militias, which their communities will no longer see as essential to their protection. Extremists — Shia and Sunni — become isolated. Neighbors start dropping a dime on IED factories. We destroy those, and we largely eliminate the cause of 80 percent of current U.S. casualties.
  • None of the above can happen without the capital being secure. How would such a small surge make that happen? It would double the U.S. combat capability in the capital, a force that would be multiplied by embedding the U.S. troops in the Iraqi units that will have the job of actually kicking down doors and cleaning up militant neighborhoods (one idea taken from the Iraq Study Group). As the president did mention, those neighborhoods will no longer be “off limits”; the Maliki government can no longer protect the Sadr militia.
  • The brigade sent to Anbar would have interdiction as a large part of its mission. Amazingly, we have never shut down the terrorist superhighway flowing out of Syria; this would address that.
  • The pivotal role of the new U.S. commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus. Sen. Graham describes the plan not as what President Bush wants to do, but what Gen. Petraeus wants to do. He doesn’t say Congress needs to listen to the president. He says “Listen to this new general; give him a chance to make the case.”

    Who is David Petraeus? He’s a West Point graduate with a Ph.D. from Princeton. He’s the former commander of the 101st Airborne Division. Under his command, the 101st was described by the author of Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq as the one Army outfit that was doing it right — providing security in its area, and winning hearts and minds. The general himself is the author of the Army’s new manual on counterinsurgency, which applies practical tactics that work.
    The president didn’t do an awful job in his speech. He explained how things went wrong, emphasizing the critical bombing of the Golden Mosque. He mentioned increased diplomatic efforts, the fact that we need to hold as well as clear dangerous areas, and that troops will now go wherever they need to go to get the job done. He let us know that even if things go perfectly, there will be more casualties.
    But a wartime president who has lost the people’s trust to the degree that he has needed to go a lot farther, and the president did not. He failed to draw a clear, bright line between his past failure and a future in which we have a realistic expectation of success.
    Why the president didn’t even mention the name “Petraeus,” explaining what a departure he was from the discredited Rumsfeld approach, is beyond me.
    After talking to Sen. Graham, I feel a lot better about our future in Iraq. I’m still not positive that six brigades is enough, but I now have sound reasons to believe we’re finally on a better track.
    I’ve put a recording of that interview on my blog. I urge you to go listen to it — and don’t miss the senator’s column on the facing page.

For that, and observations on last week’s inaugural activities, go to http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/.

Graham phone interview

40 Replies

This is a test. We’re going to see just how big a wonk you are.

I have, to the best of my ability, given you full access to the audio of a phone interview I conducted with Lindsey Graham on Thursday morning. I was restricted by certain challenges. The interview is 28 minutes long, and I have no sound file compression software. I DO have video software that compresses things as a matter of course in saving them. So I put the audio in a video file, and added some recent still photographs from the wire, just to see if I could.

The only way I knew how to give you access to the audio without you having to download the whole gargantuan file was to stream it from YouTube. Trouble is, YouTube won’t take files longer than 5 minutes, no matter how they’re compressed.

So here you go — it’s in seven parts, and the audio and photos aren’t nearly as nice as they were before I compressed them. But you can still hear it. I recommend that you give it a try, because it’s pretty interesting.

The background for the interview: I was seeking input before we decided what we would say in Friday’s editorial. As it happens, the interview only had an indirect — although significant — impact on the editorial, since the person who wrote it was not involved in the interview. All he had was what I had briefly told him about it. In other words, my impressions of Graham’s views had an influence on the forming of consensus that led to our conclusions, but you won’t find much trace of it in the paper. That’s the way it is with most of the things that go into editorials — the factors are too many for all to be mentioned.

But I thought it was particularly interesting and helpful, so I’m working on a followup column based on the interview. Yeah, doing it this way is pretty weird and awkward, but bear with me. I’m just exploring new ways to make this blog useful and worth the time, both yours and mine.

Please do your bit for the blog by doing two things:

  1. Listen to the interview, or as much of it as you have time for.
  2. Then comment to let me know whether it worked, and whether you found it helpful. Or to say whatever else you want.

Thanks.

Anyway, that’s Part I up at the top of the post. Here’s Parts II-VII:






Paul! Laurin!

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Demarco07

Once again, we run into our intrepid correspondent, Dr. Paul DeMarco, at a political event (in this case, Wednesday’s inauguration ceremonies).

But Paul wasn’t just slumming. As usual, he had come down from Marion on a mission to help South Carolina. He had just attended the last meeting of Jim Rex’s transition team. I asked him to write us something about the experience — either for the paper or the blog — and I think he will.

Meanwhile, I had the privilege of meeting our good friend Laurin Manning for the first and second times Wednesday. She introduced herself at a post inaugural reception for 2nd-term Attorney General Henry McMaster. Then, that night, I ran into her again at the governor’s barbecue. That’s her friend Rebecca Dulin with her at the party. These two lovely young ladies will be featured in my barbecue video, which is in post-production, and which you can expect to see tonight, or tomorrow, or sometime between now and Sunday. I’m going to go get dinner now…

Laurin

Empty seats

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2ndsanford_003

Back in this comment, Dave noted that the inaugural ceremony looked sparsely attended in my little teaser video.

That’s very perceptive on his part, because that particular little clip showed the most crowded part of the assembly — the choice seats up front.

Here’s what it looked like from the back. (And no, this is not from before or after the event — I shot this 12 minutes and 42 seconds after the even had begun, according to my camera, which means this is probably the peak of attendance.) I have never been to an event on the Statehouse grounds — certainly not an inauguration — that had this many empty seats. It was a very subdued event (relatively speaking), as was the barbecue that night.

In fairness, I must say that I didn’t get to the barbecue until late — after 8 or so — but the fact that the crowd was thin at that point in the evening is telling.

It wasn’t anything like that four years ago. There was an air of excited anticipation. I mean, it was considerably more sedate than the SERIOUS party that Samuel Tenenbaum had thrown for Jim Hodges four years earlier (Democrats were SO thrilled to be back in power that night), but it was upbeat, and pretty much everybody was there.

Last night was a letdown by comparison.

By the way, here’s the closest I can come to a picture from the 2002 inaugural to compare to what I have above. It’s not the same angle, but it conveys pretty much what I remember: Standing room only:

Inaugurationtd04

Inaugural teaser

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Here is the essential existential conflict of the Blogosphere. You can either:

  1. Sit around in your PJs eating Skittles and drinking coffee, staring at a screen and doing an admirable job of keeping your blog up-to-date; or
  2. Go out and experience life, and see and hear and do things that would be worth writing about on the blog — and that would add a much-needed sense of reality to the discussions — but then you don’t have time to blog.

Anyway, that’s been my conundrum.

So I went to the inaugural ceremonies this morning, and I went to the governor’s barbecue tonight, and I took notes and collected video and still art, etc., but I haven’t had time to do anything with the footage I shot, and now I’m worn out and ready for bed.

I was going to put together a little video montage from this morning’s events, but I had just loaded part of it into my editing software this evening before I had to run (I had to go to The State‘s "20 Under 40" reception before I went to the barbecue). So here’s a trailer, or teaser or preview, or whatever you want to call it, from this morning — sans title, credits, and with most of the material missing:

I’ll try to give you something more complete before the week’s out.

I realize a REAL blogger would have had this up less by 2 p.m. today, but let’s face it — I’m a dilettante at this. I’ve got this full-time day job that often spills well into the night. All I can do is keep trying.

A good sign

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There’s probably something I’m missing here — some hidden gibe — but I think state GOP Chairman Katon Dawson is actually, sincerely congratulating his opposite number in this release:

Dawson congratulates South
Carolina Democrats for securing debate
South Carolina GOP Chairman emphasizes state’s
importance in choosing next president

COLUMBIA, S.C. – South Carolina Republican
Party Chairman Katon Dawson today released the following statement on the South
Carolina Democrat Party’s 2008 presidential primary debate:

“I would like to congratulate our friends at the South
Carolina Democrat Party, including Chairman Joe Erwin, and South Carolina State
University for securing a presidential debate.  This shows how important South
Carolina’s role will be in choosing the next president.  Here at the South
Carolina Republican Party, we are honored to host what should be the first
Republican presidential primary debate in the Nation.  Fox News will air the
South Carolina Republican presidential primary debate live on May 15,
2007.”

It so, that’s wonderful. If it isn’t … well, point out what I’m missing. I won’t be shocked, but I’ll be disappointed.

Hail Petraeus

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Petraeus_mugA colleague brought my attention to this WashPost piece on our new commander in Iraq, Gen. David H.
Petraeus. What was particularly interesting about it was the way he recommended it to me: This colleague soured on the Iraq War long ago, but he said this guy actually offers him some hope for the first time in a while.

My eyebrows went up at that, so I read the piece as soon as I could. Even those of us who fully believe in the importance of our Iraq mission could use a little hope now and then.