Monthly Archives: November 2008

The failed hyperbole of the past eight years (column version)

45 Replies

By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
QUICK, WHO said this?

    “Americans have watched in horror as President Bush has trampled on the Bill of Rights and the balance of power.”

    I’ll give you some hints:

A. Oliver Stone
B. MoveOn.org
C. An overexcited intern at the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee
D. The New York Times

    The answer is “D.” Yes, I’m sorry to say that overwrought purple prose was the lead sentence last week in the lead Sunday editorial of the paper I was so recently congratulating for having the good sense to back the Columbia Free Trade Agreement. (And they made so much sense that day.)
    Editorial writers — particularly at one of the best papers in the country — are supposed to use words with care and discrimination. Some say I occasionally fail to do that. For instance, some say I was mean, nasty and ugly to Gov. Mark Sanford in my column last week. Go read the letter to the editor from the governor’s press aide that ran in Wednesday’s paper (as always, you will find links to that, and the NYT piece, and any other linkable item mentioned in this column, in the Web version on my blog — and the address for that is below). An excerpt:

    This editorial page was once respected as a voice for good government. Now, thanks to Brad’s childish screeds, fewer and fewer people are reading.

    And yet… I challenge you go find anything that I said in that column that comes anywhere near the unsupported, gross hyperbole of “watched in horror” or “trampled on the Bill of Rights.”
    So does President W. get all excited and whip off a letter to protest to the NYT? I doubt it. Nah, he just spends the week working with Barack Obama as though he were already in office, as though they were co-presidents — which, by the way, is exactly what he should be doing, in this extraordinary economic crisis. (I wonder: If this period of cooperation between the president and president-to-be does not lead to economic miracles, will someone look back on the interregnum in January and denounce “the failed policies of the past eight weeks?”)
    Democrats are thrilled that at long last, Bush will no longer be in office. Me, too. He can’t leave soon enough. But I’m even more thrilled that after January, I won’t have to listen to any more semi-deranged yammering about the guy. You know that I never liked him — he’s the guy who did in my guy (remember John McCain?) in the 2000 S.C. primary. But I have never, ever understood why some hate him so much. The Bush haters can’t simply say, “I disagree with Mr. Bush and here’s why.” They have to go way beyond reason in condemning him absolutely in terms that render him utterly illegitimate.
    Get a grip, people. It’ll be over soon.
    Oh, and for those of you who will say, “But the Times went on to support its statement” — no, it didn’t. Sorry, folks, but his playing fast and loose with federal law regarding wiretapping, to cite one example given, just doesn’t amount to “trampling on the Bill of Rights.” He should have worked from the start to change the law rather than skirting it (as our own Lindsey Graham and others urged), but he did nothing to instill “horror” in a rational person. You “watch in horror” as a gang of thugs rape and murder an old lady — you merely disagree with something so bloodless as monitoring telecommunications without proper authorization.
    Not following me? OK, here are some more things one might “watch with horror:” The My Lai massacre. The butchery in Rwanda in the 1990s. Gang-rape and mutilation of women in Darfur. The Hindenburg disaster. The Twin Towers falling on 9/11. The Japanese reducing Pearl Harbor to a smoking ruin. Men, women and children being herded into the Nazi death camps. The Bataan Death March.
    Get the idea? To apply those words, “watched with horror” to, for example, “the unnecessary invasions of privacy embedded in the Patriot Act” (you know, a law passed by Congress, which Congress can change at any time) as the Times did is to suck all of the meaning out of those words. Once you use those words to describe imprisoning terrorists (real or imagined) at Guantanamo (the main sin listed in the editorial), they no longer have force. If you watch that “with horror,” what words do you use to describe the fire-bombing of Dresden?
    People should not fling words about so carelessly. As a professional flinger of words, I know.
    Now I’ll fling a few more for you Democrats who are watching with horror as I “defend” the outgoing president (when what I’m really doing is defending the language): Folks, settle down. I get it; you don’t like the guy. You like Barack Obama. Well, so do I (he was, after all, my second choice for president). I expect that I, too, will prefer an Obama administration to the past eight years. He’s off to a good start.
    But before we say goodbye to this era, let’s resolve in the future to do what Sen. Obama does so well — speak with sanity and moderation, and mean what we say.

Read the Times piece and more at thestate.com/bradsblog/ .

The long knives come out for Ray Greenberg

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Remember how, back on this post, I pointed out that Dr. Ray Greenberg was particularly (and singularly) courageous to step out and speak truth in the face of our governor’s campaign to make us think South Carolina spends too much on such things as MUSC?

I suggested that the governor himself has to be all polite and good-coppish in light of such a challenge, while his staffers can take the gloves off a bit if they need to — remember?

Well, I reckoned without ex-staffers, who are totally unrestrained in attacking Dr. Greenberg for daring to speak truth to power.

Stay tuned. There will undoubtedly be more.

Obama and the old white guys

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Whiteguys

Several times in the last couple of weeks, various commenters have noted — either with approval or dismay — that Barack Obama is opting for experience in his choice of advisers.

For a sample of what I mean, note this piece from the front of The New York Times‘ Week In Review section Sunday, "Change is Landing in Old Hands:"

AS he sought the presidency for the last two years, Barack Obama liked to say that “change doesn’t come from Washington — change comes to Washington.”

Nearly three weeks after his election, he is testing voters’ understanding of that assertion as he assembles a government whose early selections lean heavily on veterans of the political era he ran to supplant. He showed that in breathtaking fashion by turning to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, his bitter primary rival and the wife of the last Democratic president, for the post of secretary of state.

Mr. Obama will bring pieces of Chicago to the White House in the form of longtime advisers like Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod. But even after vowing to turn the page on the polarized politics of the baby boom generation, he’s made clear that service in the Beltway wars of the last 20 years is not only acceptable, but in some cases necessary for his purposes.

Of course, y’all know what I think — experience is a valuable asset. I may object to the Hillary Clinton appointment, but less because she doesn’t represent "change" than the fact that the particular job seems a bad match. I applaud his turning to other Clinton veterans, such as Rahm Emanuel and Larry Summers.

Anyway, this discussion reminds me of something. Way back last year, I had lunch with someone from the John Edwards campaign after my "Edwards is a phony" column. She was a strikingly attractive young woman of apparently multiethnic background. At some point in our discussion I asked, "Why Edwards?" (Meaning, "…out of all the Democrats running for president?," not "…since he’s such a phony?")

I was really struck by her answer. She said she had thought about working for Obama, but took a look at all the old white guys around him, and thought she wouldn’t feel at home on that team. Yes, the observation seemed ridiculous in light of all the young folks of multiple backgrounds who had flocked to the Obama banner by that time, but I didn’t say so. Maybe at the start of the campaign, his staff had really looked that way to a young political professional. After all, Ted Sorenson was one of his more prominent early supporters, and surely HE is an Old White Guy? Or maybe she was just rationalizing.

Anyway, I knew Obama was smart, and he’s proving it by choosing smart, experienced people for his team. And not all of them are old, white guys.

GOP’s in worse trouble than you thought

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There is a tiresome sameness to the reaction of Republicans to this year’s elections. And this piece by Katon Dawson on Politico is an excellent example of what I’m talking about, replete with the same cliches about "courage of convictions" and "walking the walk" that brought the GOP to this pass.

The irony is that after admitting what should be obvious, that the GOP is "in need of new ideas, new
messengers and a new focus in order to move forward as a party," Katon falls back on this stuff:

    What really cost Republicans at the ballot box during the past two
election cycles was forgetting a lesson many of us learned from our
parents — say what you mean and mean what you say.
    … Our elected
officials, candidates and party leaders dutifully repeated the
principles of our party, but once in office, too many abandoned those
principles. Whether it was abandoning our commitment to fiscal
responsibility, turning a blind eye to serious character flaws in some
of our candidates, or providing a handout to big business at the
expense of the American taxpayers, we seemed to lose the courage of our
convictions.

Of  course, the context of this piece is Katon’s campaign to be national party chairman, as he states openly. He argues against claims that "Republicans were too conservative, that we’ve become a regional party and that
we’re clinging to an old playbook." He says that speaking from the conservative wing of the party, from its regional heart of South Carolina, and gripping the old playbook tightly to his chest. For instance, he says Republicans must:

Renew our commitment to our Party’s timeless principles…by reconfirming
our commitment to be the party of smaller government, lower taxes, individual
freedom, strong national security, respect for the sanctity of life, traditional
marriage, the importance of family and the exceptionalism of America.

THOSE are the GOP’s "timeless principles?" I bet that would surprise ol’ Abe Lincoln. He’d agree with the exceptionalism thing, and he’d be on board with a strong defense, but that’s about it. He sure wasn’t a small-gummint guy.

DHEC response to news series

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Someone just today brought my attention to the Web page full of material that DHEC posted in response to the series that Sammy Fretwell and John Monk down in our newsroom recently did.

The very first item, written by board chairman "Bo" Aughtry, says it "was submitted to the newspaper’s editorial offices Nov. 20." This is the first I’ve heard about it. I’m worried that they might have sent it to Cindi, who is off this week. And here it is 6:23 p.m. on the night before Thanksgiving.

I’m going to try to reach the appropriate people to see whether they had meant to submit it for publication, although I don’t know how much luck I’m likely to have tonight — or any time before Monday. We’ll see.

In the meantime, here’s the full text of that item:

Imagine.
That’s the word The State used to begin its eight-day assault on the Department of Health and  Environmental Control.  So let’s imagine.

Imagine a newspaper that reports  only select facts they decide are important.

Imagine a series with misleading conclusions arrived at through
innuendos, dredging up stories from more than 20 years ago, most of
which have been refuted, and reporting them inaccurately again.

Imagine a newspaper whose reporters have traded objective reporting
for “gotcha’” journalism and half-truth mudslinging, while at the same
time so enamored with itself that it takes three paragraphs to pat its
reporters and photographer on the backs.

Imagine no more. That publication  exists as The State and
there are others who obviously work in conjunction with them on
misrepresentation of fact after fact in an effort to make an agency,
its employees, commissioner and board look bad, in an attempt to
advance its own political agenda or to seek some journalism award.

If anyone  knew all the facts in any of The State’s stories, it would take a very good imagination  to accept their conclusions.

Based on my experience and observations, I find these attacks not
only misleading but unjust. Since I became chairman of DHEC’s governing
board in 2006, I have been continually impressed with the diligence,
commitment and dedication of those employees, certainly including
Commissioner Earl Hunter, with whom I have dealt. Is the agency
perfect? I know of no organization made up of 4,200 employees that can
boast perfection but this one is very good.

Do not misunderstand, I fully believe that DHEC, like any public
body, is accountable to the citizens it serves. Accordingly, it is
subject to responsible, accurate criticism if it fails our citizens.
Yet, for The State to criticize this agency with articles
that are portrayed as complete fact but which are based only on a part
of the story, is, in my opinion, quite irresponsible.

The fact of the matter is that The  State and most of
those quoted in their series, need DHEC. They have decided that this
agency is the villain and they are the self-anointed righteous
vindicators protecting the public. Truth is they’re more interested in
protecting their bottom line, billable hours or such political clout as
they think they may possess, seemingly caring not a whit for the truth,
only for what advances their own motives.

This newspaper, like others, imposes word count restrictions on any
external responses to their reporting whether it be my response here or
a letter to the editor. Because of those constraints, refuting the many
accusations in this series would require more space than what is
readily available here. For our perspective on this series and the
subsequent editorials that I’m sure will appear, I invite you to our
Web site at www.scdhec.gov.

Now here’s a fact you don’t have to imagine. In the midst of state
budget reductions and fewer staff doing more work, we’ll spend taxpayer
dollars laying to rest these ridiculous and self-serving allegations.
Trust me when I tell you the taxpayers of this great state have paid
quite the tab in the last eight months as staff have had to stop what
they were doing to respond to question after question, some of which
were asked multiple times in a thinly-veiled attempt to get an answer
the reporters wanted, not the full facts of the matter. The  State’s
reporters spent some four hours with Commissioner Earl Hunter in
face-to-face interviews, only to have things misrepresented to the
majority of readers who never make it past the headline and first three
paragraphs. 

Imagine? No. I believe this newspaper is doing a disservice to its
readers in casting as fact what is actually subjection, to DHEC
employees and their families through the creation of undeserved public
doubt, and to the taxpayers of South Carolina in wasting tax dollars
through unnecessarily protracted interrogation.

Paul “Bo” Aughtry is chair of  the S.C. Board of Health and Environmental Control

An exchange about macroeconomics

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Here’s an e-mail exchange from today, unadorned. Perhaps y’all will take an interest in the discussion:

From: Kathryn Fenner
Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2008 9:26 AM
To: Warthen, Brad – External Email
Subject: a suggestion

Brad–
    Upon reading Peter Brown’s comment (the old ‘it’s my money’ whine) in Adam Beam’s excellent front page piece in today’s paper on the possibility of federal "bailout" money coming to Columbia as "investments," I wondered if it might not be helpful for some of your readers if you did a simple primer on Keynesian macroeconomic theory (since Friedman is generally considered discredited outside the Governor’s circle). Maybe if people understood that, instead of directly taxing us, the federal government can print money, which, if it pays for certain things like wages, can actually create wealth (increase the pie) rather than taking money from your pocket, everyone might calm down a bit. Or at least some people might….
    A lot of us educated in South Carolina public schools–even the fairly good ones (Aiken) missed out on economics–I only happened to take macroeconomics as an English major at Carolina b/c a friend recommended the professor teaching the honors section (Martin). I would have taken another social science for my requirement for sure otherwise. I also only happened to take an excellent course on the history of the New Deal because it was taught by an excellent professor (John Scott Wilson), whom I had studied under for another course.

Kathryn
—
Kathryn Braun Fenner
Attorney at Law

On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 11:36 AM, Warthen, Brad wrote:
    We touched on economics in my senior year, at Radford HS in Honolulu. You know how we did that? We played a game over the course of several days, in which we were supposed to be marooned on a desert island, and we had to make decisions about how to spend our time. Most time was spent obtaining food, but we could also budget time away from food-gathering to make tools to save time, etc. Scads of fun, much like such computer games of latter days such as Sim City — only we did it on paper.
     That was about it.
    We also read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which Barack Obama ALSO read in high school in Hawaii, and found inspirational. Our teacher for that class was Mrs. Nakamura, so we were way multicultural.
     That’s about it. I know what Keynesian economics is in this context, very roughly — it’s like, spending to stimulate the economy, right? — but I would not presume to set myself up as an expert. Oh, I know one other thing — his middle name was Maynard, like Maynard G. Krebs, whom you are probably too young to remember.

From: Kathryn Fenner
Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2008 12:43 PM
To: Warthen, Brad – Internal Email
Subject: Re: a suggestion
    Dobie Gillis was in syndication and played in the afternoons when I got home from school, man. Maynard went on to be Gilligan, a vastly inferior show. I’m only six years younger than you, not that your face gives that away (what is it,  a portrait in the attic? Some secret Hawaiian face cream? I mean from reading your columns, you got plenty of sun playing outdoors in the tropics and subtropics)
    The game you played was more about microeconomics, which most people probably grasp more intuitively–it’s our household economy, our business. The mess we are in now calls for macroeconomic solutions, which no one in the MSM seems to spell out in a nice graphic for the newbies–how when the government prints money, you get inflation, but you also can get jobs and spending money and ripples through the economy (bottom up works a lot faster–not stimulus in your pocket that you save or pay off credit cards, but jobs for the unemployed who buy groceries and other necessities and thus get the ball rolling again in terms of generating transactions that not only support a civilized lifestyle (as opposed to homelessness or Harvest Hope) but taxable income to repay the "printed money."
    Whatever happened to the notion of "from those to whom much is given…."?  Rotary is such a great example of the fulfillment of the expectations by the fortunate, but some of the bloggers and Peter Brown and Sanford and his cronies (Joel Sawyer’s letter was way off base) need to step to the plate. Dennis Hiltner said something to me the other day that drew Socialist me up short, "The employers who depend on workers who depend on bus transit should pay them enough to afford the true cost." I sputtered, but then I thought, "Surely Palmetto Health could take $10 per shift from the MDs and give it to the custodial staff?" I guess that’s redistributionist, huh?

My fan mail from the governor’s office

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Just wanted to make sure you didn’t miss the note of appreciation I received from the governor’s office for my Sunday column. It ran as a letter to the editor today:

Warthen column damages credibility
    When the facts aren’t on some people’s side, they try and change them to help win an argument. Unfortunately, that’s a model growing in popularity among this paper’s editorial writers.
    I’m writing of Brad Warthen’s latest Sunday rant, in which he lashes out at the governor over a recent column he penned for The Wall Street Journal.
    Congress is contemplating spending another $150 billion to $300 billion to “bail out” states. Every penny of that money will have to be borrowed, from places such as Social Security, or our grandkids, or such nations as China (to whom we already owe $500 billion). The governor is arguing that enough is enough, and that we have to quit piling on debt, no matter how well-intentioned the spending may be.
    You’d know all of this for yourself had Mr. Warthen possessed the courage to print Gov. Sanford’s column alongside his, and let you judge both pieces for yourself. Not doing so is the latest example of a growing lack of credibility on Mr. Warthen’s part, from endorsing one senator despite noting his history of flouting the law, to, on his blog, likening a school choice supporter to bin Laden.
    This editorial page was once respected as a voice for good government. Now, thanks to Brad’s childish screeds, fewer and fewer people are reading.

JOEL SAWYER
Communications Director
Office of the Governor
Columbia

Editor’s note: The State published the governor’s column on the Web. To read it and Mr. Warthen’s column again, go to thestate.com/bradsblog/.

This letter put me in an awkward spot. It was sent to Cindi, but she’s out this week, so when he got her autoreply to that effect, Joel sent the letter to me. And the problem was that the letter needed editing, and it’s hard to work with the writer of a critical letter when you are the subject of the criticism. As editor, there were a couple of things I needed to accomplish:

  • I needed to make sure it was factually correct, so that when he criticized me or the paper for doing XYZ, XYZ was actually what we did. As you can tell from our letters on any given day, we thrive on being criticized. But I draw the line at taking criticism for something we did not DO, because that would give the readers an incorrect impression of what we went to all the trouble of putting into the paper to start with. For instance, when a writer says, "You were wrong to claim that Sen. Hiram Blowhard is a horse thief," but we didn’t say Sen. Blowhard is a horse thief, I’m not running it. If I DID run it, readers would naturally assume, "Well, they wouldn’t have run the letter criticizing them for calling him that if they hadn’t called him that." Unfortunately, the thing that Joel was misrepresenting about us was fuzzier than that. He was trying to make readers think that we had somehow done the governor wrong by not running his column in the dead-tree version of the paper. He was saying this despite the fact that he knows our standard is NOT to use that precious space for guest columns that have run elsewhere (every piece we run like that is another piece that was offered exclusively to us that we CAN’T run). The average Joe on the street could have made the mistake of saying what he said in the letter; he knew better. He also knew that we went to the trouble to publish the governor’s piece online (you’ll recall that in the past I’ve made the point here that our online version is the perfect place for columns by gummint officials — who send us a lot of submissions — that don’t meet our standards for the paper), promoting it from the newspaper on the day it ran, and providing a link to it in the footer of my column about it (why? because I wanted people to go back and read it). But Joel insisted upon accusing us of wrongdoing on this point, so I eventually shrugged and let it go — and resolved to state the fact of the matter in a neutrally-worded editor’s note (knowing, of course, that lots of readers will think publishing on the Web is inadequate; but at least this way they had the facts before them). There were other factual points that were easier to resolve — such as his originally having claimed that we acknowledged Jake Knotts was "a criminal" in endorsing him; I persuaded him to change that wording. But the business of how we had handled the governor’s piece was too central to his point.
  • Then there was the "courage" thing. I never could persuade him that some other word would make more sense to the reader — "courtesy" would have worked; even "decency" would have worked. I mean, what is the reader supposed to think I was afraid of? I wrote a whole column about the governor’s column, told you how to go read the governor’s column, provided links to it, but I was afraid of it? But I guess he thought I was just trying to censor his criticism of me rather than helping it be a more logical letter. So I let that go, too.

Anyway, we spent so many e-mails going back and forth on those points that I never even got around to such minor things as: When you say "the facts aren’t on some people’s side, they try and change them to help win an argument," and you suggest I did that, what do you have in mind? Name one fact I cited that was wrong. But it wasn’t worth it.

"Courage" is a word that is often misapplied to what I do. Truth be told, there are people who read a column such as the one Joel was criticizing and praise me for having the "courage" to write it — but that is utterly ridiculous. "Courage" doesn’t come into it, either way. I mean, what do I have to fear besides dealing with hassles such as that above? But I’ve heard that about columns I’ve written about governors going all the way back to Carroll Campbell. People seem to think I’m tempting the gods or something criticizing these guys. I don’t know.

What I DO know is that if you want to see courage, read Dr. Ray Greenberg’s piece on Sunday. Finally, we have the heads of major agencies having the guts to speak out about how we’ve hocked our future by failing to invest in the critical infrastructure of our society. State agency heads just don’t write columns like that, but he did.

And of course, the governor came down on him over it. Oh, he did it politely. His response (which Joel sent me in the same e-mail with his letter, and which I ran the same day as his letter, which makes his complaint about our not running the governor’s last column seem even more off-point — but I digress) was of course more polite than Joel’s. It’s too important to the governor to be seen as above the fray to write anything like what Joel did. At the same time, a public university president who dares to write anything like that motivated the governor to take him down a notch personally. Other uppity agency heads will take note. (The governor can’t do anything to Dr. Greenberg or to most agency heads, but that’s not the point — most of them don’t want to get into a spitting match with the gov; better to lay low.)

A couple of quick points about the gov’s piece about Dr. Greenberg (aside from the fact that his overall point was to defend the bankrupt notion of arbitrary spending caps):

  1. His utterly laughable attempt to be condescending to the MUSC president: "I certainly don’t begrudge him that view. Like any agency head, his
    role is solely to look out for his corner of state government and the
    tax dollars that are coming his way. On the other hand, we in the
    governor’s office have a very different role in looking after the
    entire state." Go back and read the piece by Dr. Greenberg, who runs an institution of higher learning that employs 11,000. Look at the concerns that the doctor expresses, and compare them to the narrow ideological points espoused by the governor, and judge which of them you believe is really thinking about the good of "the entire state."
  2. Second, the governor cites his favorite misleading statistic. The original text of his piece said, "Government in South Carolina costs about 140 percent of the national average, largely due to an unaccountable and inefficient structure." That is not true. I was able to make it technically (although still very misleadingly) true by the insertion of a single word: "State government in South Carolina costs about 140 percent of the national average, largely due to an unaccountable and inefficient structure." What’s the diff? State government in SC costs more per capita than state government in other states because of our almost unique system of the state performing lots of functions that local governments perform in other states — such as road maintenance, and owning and operating school buses. If you look at government overall, adding in our pathetically anemic local governments, we actually spend less than other states do on state and local government — or at worst, around the average (there are different ways to calculate it; some ways we’re right at the average, some ways we’re well below). A very important distinction, but don’t expect to hear this governor acknowledging it; the fiction that we — the state that won’t maintain its roads or guard its prisons or support its colleges nearly as adequately as other states do — spend too much on government is what he’s all about. Anyway, keep these two facts in mind, as Cindi explained in a recent column: We pay less per capita in state and local taxes than most of the country, and we pay less as a percentage of our income than most of the country. 

One last note, and this is one I DO deserve to be kicked for. The governor misspelled Dr. Ray’s name throughout his piece, and I’m just noticing it. Yes, it was the governor’s mistake, but I’m the one who had it last, so it’s my fault for not catching it.

The failed hyperbole of the past 8 years

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Quick, who said this?

"Americans have watched in horror as President Bush has trampled on the Bill of Rights and the balance of power."

I’ll give you hints:

A. Oliver Stone
B. MoveOn.org
C. John Kerry, writing for the DSCC
D. The New York Times

Yes, I’m sorry to say that overwrought purple prose is the LEAD SENTENCE in the lead Sunday editorial of the paper I was so recently congratulating for having the good sense to back the Columbia Free Trade Agreement.

You know, I’ve got people over at the governor’s office all ticked off (see tomorrow’s letters to the editor) because of the mean, nasty, ugly things I supposedly said in my Sunday column about the gov, and I challenge to you go find ANYthing that I said that comes anywhere near the unsupported, gross hyperbole of "watched in horror" or "trampled on the Bill of Rights."

So does W. get all excited and whip off a letter to protest to the NYT? I doubt it. Nah, he just swallows his pride and works with Barack Obama as though he were already in office, as though they were co-presidents (which is exactly what he should be doing, under the circumstances). Which makes me wonder: Come January, will someone look back on the Bush/Obama hybrid interregnum and speak of "The failed policies of the past eight weeks?"

Democrats are thrilled that at long last, in January, Bush will no longer be in office. Me, too. But I’m even more thrilled that after January, I won’t have to listen to any more semi-deranged yammering about the guy. You know that I never liked him — he’s the guy who did in MY guy in the 2000 S.C. primary. But I have never, ever understood why some hate him SO much. The Bush haters can’t simply say, "I disagree with Mr. Bush and here’s why." Instead, they have to go way beyond reason in condemning him ABSOLUTELY in terms that render him utterly illegitimate and beyond the pale.

Get a grip, people. It’ll be over soon.

(Oh, and for those of you who will say, "But the NYT went on to explain its outrageous statement," let me say now — I read it. They failed to back up that sentence. Sorry, folks, but his playing fast and loose with FISA, to cite but one example given, just doesn’t amount to "trampling on the Bill of Rights." He should have worked to change the law rather than skirting it, but he did nothing to instill "horror" in a rational person. You "watch in horror" as a gang of thugs rape and murder an old lady — you merely DISAGREE WITH something so bloodless as scanning through telecommunications without proper authorization.)

What’s with this Esplanade, and why am I not getting my taste?

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Have you noticed, in that blink of an eye just before you cross the bridge heading toward West Columbia from downtown, a sign that says "Esplanade?"

All I can tell is that it seems to have something to do with the CanalSide development — or the riverfront, in any case. Looking back, I see passing references to it in the paper, and this notice to contractors.

Which makes me think somebody’s pulling a fast one on me. Given that Columbia can employ 42 people in a "unique" department with the express purpose of attracting Homeland Security dollars, I gotta figure there’s money to be made here, too.

True, I haven’t done any actual work to bring this thing about. But neither did Tony Soprano, and he managed to get a couple of "no-shows" and several "no-works" worth of income from HIS Esplanade.

So where’s my taste?

(Seriously, the development of our riverfront is an exciting and positive thing for the Midlands. I just couldn’t avoid poking a little fun at the "Esplanade" name…)

Gee, I don’t even want to talk with Geithner…

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Geithner

Just got this e-mail:

Hi
there,
My name is Jen
Parsons, I’m with Ketchum PR.
I wanted to see if
you’re doing any profiles on Tim Geithner.  We work with
Keith Bergelt, the CEO of Open Invention Network, and
he worked with Geithner in the early 90’s while they were in Tokyo.  Keith can
offer some good insight into Geithner’s work style, career ambition,
etc.
Let me know if you’d
like to chat with Keith.

Thanks,
Jen

Now, that’s service for you. Unfortunately, I don’t even know what I’d ask Geithner himself if I were to have a few minutes of his time. For me, the broad, high-altitude overview Obama provided today regarding economic policy was way more detail than I need.

So no, I don’t need to talk to somebody who just used to work with Geithner.

When I receive a shotgun release like that, especially on Thanksgiving week — when we tend to be more shorthanded even than the skeleton crew we normally have, and I’m cranking as hard as I can with routine, boring tasks that you do NOT want to hear about, just getting the pages out, without even thinking about interviewing or writing, even about subjects I know something about, much less the new Treasury secretary, I find myself wondering whether people who send out releases like that have the slightest idea what’s going on out here in newspaperland. The answer comes quickly: Probably not.

Sorry about the length of that sentence. I didn’t have time to write short ones.

 

Thomas Smith and the pirates

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Among my e-mails today was one calling my attention to an interview (by someone I’m not familiar with, if you’ll forgive the dangling preposition) with Columbia’s Thomas Smith about the pirates. A sample:

TUSR: Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he was stunned
by the pirates’ reach. I was taken aback by Mullen’s surprise—the reach
has been well-documented in all manner of media, even a lengthy feature
in National Geographic this year that somewhat romanticized the
pirates. So why is an admiral stunned?
SMITH: Admiral
Mullen was ‘stunned’ by the pirate attack taking place so far from the
coast, about 450 miles offshore. The attack in fact was a bit
surprising. It was bold, very risky for the attackers, and much farther
out into the so-called ‘blue water’ than previous attacks we’ve seen by
similar bands in recent history.

Now, I’ve since seen a few
bloggers and others criticizing the admiral for his remarks –
suggesting that no true fighting admiral would say such – and perhaps
‘stunned’ was a less-than-stellar word choice. But the admiral is a
professional Naval officer, not a politician. And so I say, it’s easy
for those who have never been to war or to sea—and have no frame of
reference for an appreciation of just how vast and unforgiving the sea
can be—to criticize.

And as long as I’m on the subject, there was a nice piece in the WSJ Saturday drawing some parallels to the Barbary Pirates. I sort of knew the outline of all of that, being a history major who sorta kinda concentrated on that period, but I learned at least one interesting fact from the piece I don’t remember having known before:

By the 1790s, the U.S. was depositing an astonishing 20% of its federal income into North African coffers…

We finally decided maybe it would be better to build a Navy, and deal with the problem. Trying to buy off the pirates just encouraged piracy — which sort of stands to reason, if you think about it.

Anyway, the piece further encouraged a notion I’ve been kicking around, which might turn into a column: The idea that the Somali pirates actually pose an opportunity to President Obama once he’s in office. It’s a chance to show the willingness to use force in the defense of international peace and security, with a ready-made multinational coalition to dramatically demonstrate his unBushness:

Of course, the world is a vastly more complicated place than it was two
centuries ago and America’s role in it, once peripheral, is now
preeminent. Still, in the post-9/11 period, America would be
ill-advised to act unilaterally against the pirates. The good news is:
It does not have to. In contrast to the refusal to unite with America
during the Barbary Wars, or more recently the Iraq War, the European
states today share America’s interest in restoring peace to the seas.
Moreover, they have expressed a willingness to cooperate with American
military measures against the Somali bandits. Unlike Washington and
Jefferson, George W. Bush and Barack Obama need not stand alone.

The boy who cried ‘big government’

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By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
ON NOV. 15 on the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, Gov. Mark Sanford took a courageous stand. Just ask him, he’ll tell you.
    The piece started out with the customary tone of self-congratulatory righteousness that is one of the principal reasons the leaders of his own party in the S.C. State House hate to see him coming:

    I find myself in a lonely position. While many states and local governments are lining up for a bailout from Congress, I went to Washington recently to oppose such bailouts. I may be the only governor to do so.

    So is the image etched sharply enough in your mind’s eye yet? He is Horatio at the bridge, holding back the invaders. He is the boy on the burning deck, “whence all but he had fled.” The big-government barbarians are at the gate, and only he stands against them, the double-edged sword of free markets gripped tightly in his unwavering hand.
    Thank God for Mark Sanford, we are to think, as we read on:

    But I suspect I’m not entirely alone, as there are a lot of taxpayers who aren’t pleased with Christmas coming early for politicians….

    And therein lies the key. He’s not alone, and he knows it. He’s striking a pose before a crowd. This has worked well for him. It got him re-elected in 2006. Despite the fact that he had alienated most people who actually had to deal with him in the course of trying to govern our poor state, he managed to strike all the right attitudes to persuade a majority of voters that he was their tribune, and only he could keep the “politicians” (which reminds me, when was the last time you saw this guy working in the private sector?) from robbing you blind. (Of course, it also helped that the Democrats nominated Tommy Moore.)
    This image has resonated with a lot of folks outside South Carolina as well. The Club for Growth, for instance, and Howard Rich. The folks who edit the editorial pages of The Journal are thoroughly enchanted; they’re the ones who kept alive the idea that our governor would be John McCain’s running mate long after it had been dismissed by everyone else. (Maybe he should have picked Mr. Sanford, you may be thinking at this point. Not at all. Mr. Sanford appeals to a narrower sliver of the GOP base — economic libertarians — than the red-meat, populist slice that loved Sarah Palin.)
    The very day that his op-ed piece was in the Journal, we also read that Mr. Sanford had been chosen to chair the Republican Governors’ Association. So they’re sold.
    Mark Sanford calls the idea of federal aid for his state — a proposal I had not even heard about before he was posturing against it — “Christmas coming early for politicians.” As if any spending from Washington went into the pockets of anyone who thought South Carolina might need the help. He says that while his own prisons chief, Jon Ozmint (one of the most conservative men you’ll ever want to meet) is talking about releasing prisoners early because he doesn’t have the money to keep them behind bars — despite the fact that South Carolina spends less per prisoner than any other state.
    I know Jon Ozmint; he doesn’t want the money for himself.
    Now at this point all you libertarians out there have decided I’m sticking up for big spending. You’re mistaken. I don’t know whether the federal government should help out the states or not. Seems to me the feds have a lot on their plates, and they’ve already done more bailing out (mostly in the vaunted private sector, mind you — you know, the depository of fiscal wisdom and responsibility) than I ever wanted to see.
    The same day that op-ed piece ran, I read in The State that the federal government had spent money to open a grocery store and a bank in the Celia Saxon neighborhood of Columbia. I looked at all of those politicians cutting that ribbon, and I wondered whether that federal investment was a good idea. I understand the need: The lack of viable retail businesses in a neighborhood contributes to a host of social ills — or at least, occurs in tandem with such ills. But, I wondered, if it took federal money to set them up, can the businesses be viable? I hope so, because the neighborhood could use the shot in the arm. But will it work?
    That’s how I look at such spending: Will it work? Will the investment — in prison guards, or schools, or Wall Street, or a grocery store — pay off, and have the intended beneficial effect on the community or the state or the nation?
    Are there some politicians who will always say “yes” to the spending? You betcha, as another governor would say. But I wouldn’t look to those politicians to help me figure out whether spending is wise or not in a given instance.
    Nor would I ask Mark Sanford, because he’s just as predictable. Maybe more federal largesse flowing to our cash-strapped state would be a good idea, and maybe it wouldn’t be. But in trying to figure that out, the last person I’m going to ask is our governor. He’s not the boy who stood on the burning deck in the iconic Victorian poem. He’s the boy from the Aesop fable — the one who cried “big government” so many times that when government finally did go too far, you couldn’t tell by him.

Read the Sanford column and more at thestate.com/bradsblog/.

Colombian FTA editorial

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Our Colombia Free Trade Agreement editorial today (which, as with the Joe Lieberman piece, you should be able to tell I wrote) was based in so many sources that I thought it would be nice to give you a version with links here. So here you go:

Congress should
pass Colombian
Free Trade pact

WHAT DO The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times all have in common? They all agree with The State: All say Congress should pass the Colombian Free Trade Agreement.
    “Pass the Pact,” says The Post. “Seal the deal,” says the L.A. Times. The Journal says the pact offers President-elect Barack Obama a “Lame Duck Opportunity” — tell Congress to agree to a deal with President Bush to link a Detroit bailout to passage of this and other free trade agreements before the end of the year: “U.S. business and the rest of the world would applaud…. President Bush could do the heavy lifting.”
    Perhaps most impressive of all — it’s certainly caused some buzz in the blogosphere — is this opening sentence of the New York Times piece: “We don’t say it all that often, but President Bush is right: Congress should pass the Colombian free-trade agreement now.”
    That puts The Times, uncharacteristically as it notes, on the opposite side of liberal Democrats in Congress — and in disagreement with Mr. Obama’s stated position. But as the broad consensus among editorial boards indicates, pretty much any one who looks at this issue who was not recently elected with the help of Big Labor sees the need to pass the pact.
    Why? It’s common sense. Most Colombian goods already flow into the United States duty-free. This agreement would open Colombia to U.S. products, made by U.S. workers.
    It also would, perhaps most importantly, solidify our relationship with a loyal ally in a region where we have too few friends. Not passing it would give the back of our hand to a country roughly surrounded by nations ruled by people who mean the United States ill.
    It’s ironic that Democrats would oppose this agreement while Mr. Bush supports it. As The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof wrote in a column that ran on our op-ed page in April: “For seven years, Democrats have rightfully complained that President Bush has gratuitously antagonized the world, exasperating our allies and eroding America’s standing and influence.
    “But now the Democrats are doing the same thing on trade.”
    So what’s the argument against the pact? Opponents say the Colombian government has been complicit in violence against union leaders in that country. Some point to recent indictments of top officials for colluding with right-wing paramilitaries who have terrorized unionists. But such indictments actually argue for the agreement, demonstrating how President Alvaro Uribe’s government has cracked down on such violence. Last year, violence against union members dropped below the rate for the general public.
    Some, ironically echoing an argument used by John McCain in a different context, say the agreement should not pass this year because Sen. Obama was elected while opposing it and “elections have consequences.” But as we noted in endorsing Sen. McCain, “Few will cast their ballots on the basis of the Colombian Free Trade Agreement,” and indeed, some who disagreed with our endorsement took us to task for even bringing up a topic so irrelevant to their preference for Sen. Obama.
    The president-elect, and congressional Democrats, are perfectly free to re-examine their positions on this issue. They should do so, and listen to the many independent voices that say they should pass this pact now.

Do I HAVE to go back to writing about Sanford?

13 Replies

Well, it was nice while it lasted — writing about the presidential contest between two guys I liked. It was the first time in my career that had happened, and I got as excited about it all as anyone did, I suppose.

But now I turn back to South Carolina, where our last election for a chief executive was between Mark Sanford and Tommy Moore. Fortunately, we don’t have Tommy to kick around any more, since he went to work for his pals in the payday industry.

But we’re stuck with Mark Sanford. I was unpleasantly reminded of this by the op-ed piece he wrote for The Wall Street Journal last week. It was classic Sanford posturing, another sequel of his personal movie, "Me Against the Big Spenders." It was headlined "Don’t Bail Out My State." It’s filled with the kind of self-aggrandizing, Look At ME stuff that drives others at our State House bonkers.

Anyway, I wrote about it for Sunday, but I’ll have you know I didn’t enjoy it. The prospect of anything positive happening at the State House is just so dim, that it’s depressing.

Back on this post, Doug asked who I believed in the conflict between Nikki and the speaker. Oh, Nikki, of course, I said.

That doesn’t mean I don’t fully understand how it must frost the speaker to see members of the House joining the governor in his holier-than-thou posturing. But you see, like the broken clock, sometimes Sanford postures in favor of the right thing. That’s one of the really disappointing things about him. He’s made so many enemies in the Legislature that it has doomed the causes he was right to advocate, such as government restructuring. We’re at the point now that we’re WAY past the Legislature’s ingrained resistance to reform. Now, they’ll oppose it just for the pleasure of frustrating HIM. It’s an unhealthy situation for us all.

And Nikki’s campaign for recorded votes is the right thing. Sure, there might be practical reasons against making ALL votes recorded, but the House can do an awful lot better than it does.

Hillary at State: Bad call, Barack

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You know the thing we talked about earlier in the week, the thing that David Broder and Tom Friedman and I all said was a bad idea?

Well, apparently it’s happened:

WASHINGTON  —  Hillary Rodham Clinton
has decided to give up her Senate seat and accept the position of
secretary of state, making her the public face around the world for the
administration of the man who beat her for the Democratic presidential
nomination, two confidants said Friday….

That’s bad news for the simple fact that Barack Obama needs to be "the public face" of U.S. foreign policy, because he starts off with most of the world having such a great impression of him. Why squander that by putting Hillary Clinton between him and the world?

His secretary of state needs to be someone who is HIS agent and seen as no more than that, not a larger-than-life rival. The office of secretary of state is far too important to be anyone’s plum or concession prize.

This is Obama’s first significant mistake.

So do I LOOK like a sap, or what?

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That was a rhetorical question. (Imagine Billy Bob Thornton saying that, as Mr. Woodcock.)

Jeffrey Sewell from over at S.C. Hotline sent me this suggestion:

Brad,

Would you consider a blog piece encouraging folks not to give
to panhandlers but directly to shelters and churches during the holiday season?

Would that work? Even for a notorious soft touch like me? Long ago, back when I was in college, I sort of developed this attitude that if someone had degraded himself in his own eyes to the point that he’ll beg me as a stranger for money, why not just give him some? I mean, he might as well have the money, because what else has he got?

Admittedly, that’s a poorly defined philosophy, and an odd mixture of sympathy and judgmentalism on my part, but in all the years since, I haven’t really improved on it. I’ve experimented with giving the money, refusing to give the money, and ignoring the supplicant. All three make me feel bad — the first because I’m generally all but certain that I’m being conned (although there’s always the chance that the NEXT guy who needs just a little more money so he can catch the bus to Greenville to see his sick child will be telling the truth), and the others because, even if it’s a con, they make me feel like a rat.

So generally speaking, I’m a soft touch for beggars. But what gets me is that they can spot me at a distance. Either there’s a panhandler database on the Internet with my name and photo on it (so that’s what they’re all doing when they hang out at the library), or they can just TELL. The way I can just tell they’re going to hit me up from the first clearing of the throat, or the first move in my direction.

Sometimes, I can tell before that. Over the weekend, I was parallel-parked in 5 Points. I was in my vehicle already and just about to start the truck and pull away when I saw, about 10 feet off my starboard bow, a panhandler approaching a young woman. I said to myself, "Go, go, GO!" and cranked the ignition, but even though there was every reason to think I’d escape, somehow I knew that the young woman wasn’t going to buy me enough time; he was going to bypass everyone else and somehow get to me before I could get away. And he did. I started the truck, looked over my shoulder for a break in the traffic, and there he was, tapping on my closed window and holding up — this is the best part — an actual, official, U.S. military ID card.

I rolled the window down (what am I gonna do; run over a veteran to get away?), and he was already into his spiel, of which I only caught bits … "Green Beret… nineteen sixty-four…" Yes, it was the classic Billy Ray Valentine approach:

Uh… I was with the Green Berets – special unit battalion commando airborne tactic specialist tactics unit battalion. Yeah!

Apparently, this was Agent Orange himself. I hastily dug a couple of bucks out of my wallet and handed them over, which provoked a gap-toothed grin. He asked, "Bet you didn’t mumble-mumble-mumble THIS year!" So I said "What?" and he said "Bet you didn’t mumble-mumble-mumble THIS year!" and I said either "Yeah," or "No, I didn’t" noncommitally (how could I have committed? I didn’t know what he was saying). And he grinned and nodded, and I drove off.

Where were we? Oh, yeah, Jeffrey’s suggestion. Good idea. But would that work?

Yesterday was a good day, ’cause I got to write about Joe

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Lieberman_democrats_wart

What with my department being down from four editorial writers (we call ’em "associate editors") to two, I’m having to write more editorials myself these days.

That means more editorials on national and international subjects. It’s best for metro subjects to be handled by Warren Bolton, and state topics by Cindi Scoppe. Those are their areas of expertise. That just leaves the rest of the world to me.

It also means you’ll read more editorials with UnParty themes, because that’s what I’m interested in. Hey, you want editorials from me, I’m going to write them whenever possible on stuff that interests me, Al Franken. Or whoever I am.

Hence today’s piece about Joe Lieberman. John McCain robbed me of the chance to write lots about my man Joe during the election when he picked You Know Who from the frozen tundra. Think what a fine time I would have had.

But this week’s events gave me the chance to write about Joe anyway. And that’s a good thing.

Nikki vs. the Speaker

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One day last week (I’m thinking it was Monday the 10th), Nikki Haley called to say she wanted urgently to talk with me. She came by later that same day. With her approval (she had initially asked just to speak with me), Cindi Scoppe sat in with us. (I TRY not to meet with sources alone, on account of the fact that it’s pretty much a waste of time if someone OTHER than me needs to write about the subject, which is usually the case. Also, in case the meeting leads to an editorial, it helps if more than one board member hears the pitch.)

She didn’t want us to take notes, though, so what I’m writing here is from memory. At the end of our meeting, she agreed to go on the record — which meant that, since Cindi and I had to get back to work that day, Cindi had call her back another day and go through the whole thing AGAIN in order to write her column today, which  I hope you read. Antsy sources can be a problem that way.

Cindi’s column deals with the main conflict between Rep. Haley and her leadership in the House. This post is to provide some additional context from what she said — according to my memory (Cindi and Rep. Haley are welcome to berate me for any errors, which I will be happy to correct). Mind you, since I’m writing neither a column nor (perish the thought) a news story, I’m NOT spending a week running down reactions from other parties the way Cindi had to do to write her column. If anyone, including Speaker Harrell or Harry Cato, would like to ADD their comments to this post, they’re more than welcome. I’m just trying to offer as faithful an account of what Rep. Haley said as I can, before I forget it entirely.

When she first called to request the meeting, she didn’t tell me what it was about, but referred to what had happened when she ran against incumbent Larry Koon back in 2004. She mentioned that again when she arrived. In retrospect, I see only two things the previous incident had in common with this: Both were instances in which Ms. Haley felt embattled, and in both cases she was initially reluctant to go on the record. There was a third potential commonality: I DID write about what happened in 2004, and she seemed to hope I would see my way clear to do so this time. For what it’s worth, here’s a copy of what I wrote in 2004.

Anyway, last week Nikki began her tale by harking back to her chairmanship of the subcommittee that tried to pass a payday lending reform bill. What she tried to do did not go far enough in the opinion of this editorial board — she wanted regulation, not a ban. She can present all sorts of pro-biz reasons WHY regulation is better, and did so at the end of this video I posted here back during the recent election. Probably the most pertinent part is the very end of the video, when she says she had really, really wanted to pass a bill, and so had others on the subcommittee who had worked hard on it — but that was not allowed to happen. That struck me as interesting at the time, but she added to the story last week. She said the bill died after she was called in to meet with the speaker and Chairman Harry Cato and another member of the leadership (I want to say Jim Merrill, but I could be misremembering), and she was told that’s not what they wanted.

But that anecdote was sort of a warmup. She says that’s not why she’s at odds with the leadership now. She says the current conflict is all about her having become a champion, over the summer, of the notion that all House votes should be recorded. That led to various machinations aimed at denying her the chairmanship of the LCI committee, culminating in the speaker wanting to change the rules so that HE appoints committee chairs directly. Currently, the speaker appoints members to the committees, and the members choose their chair.

Speaker Harrell, as you’ll see in Cindi’s column, disputes Rep. Haley’s version of events, and says she’s making herself out to be more important in all this than she is. But they agree about one thing: The House leadership didn’t like it a bit when she went gallivanting about the state with the governor promoting her recorded-votes bill. Note that he says he’s for more recorded votes and all that (you may recall his recent op-ed on the subject). He prefers to portray Ms. Haley’s main sins as being a) working with the governor, and b) setting herself up as holier-than-thou.

Another House member who’s apparently gotten a bit too big for his britches in the leadership’s view is Nathan Ballentine, who has been writing about this all on his blog, here and here. He’s not the only one, by the way. So has Earl Capps, here and here. So has Will Folks.

Interesting, huh?

What to do about the pirates?

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Back on this post, bud said:

NEW DELHI (AP) — An Indian naval vessel sank a suspected pirate
"mother ship" in the Gulf of Aden and chased two attack boats into the
night, officials said Wednesday, as separate bands of brigands seized
Thai and Iranian ships in the lawless seas.
-USA Today

Where’s the U.S. Navy? We spend 3/4 of $trillion a year on the
military and it’s the Indian Navy that sinks these thugs. I know we
have the capability to defend the shipping lanes. So what gives?

And to think, I was going to post something a couple of days ago about the pirates, but thought y’all wouldn’t be interested. Silly me.

As I said to bud (who, if I recall correctly, thought we couldn’t succeed in Iraq, which is neither wet nor moving), you think it’s a snap for even the world’s largest blue-water Navy
to prevent small craft from taking UNarmed merchant ships in a section
of ocean three times the size of Texas? The supertanker was 450 miles
off Mombasa. Look at a map. Think about it.

Folks, the U.S. Navy IS working hard on the piracy problem, along
with the Brits, the French, Italy, Canada, Greece and Denmark. And,
obviously, the Indians.

You know what would have been the best thing we could do to stop
this piracy? Not abandon Somalia to chaos back in 1993 (a retreat on
our part that incidentally persuaded Osama bin Laden that it would be
easy to take down the U.S.; just inflict a few casualties). Piracy works
in the Gulf of Aden because the pirates have a safe place to hide the
prizes, since the "government" of Somalia is useless.

And that will continue to be the case as long as we have failed
states in East Africa. That’s why (ahem) the United States has to
employ a full-range policy of forward engagement in the world. (Remember, we stopped the Barbary pirates NOT by playing defense on the
high seas, but by sending the Marines ashore to take their haven. Diplomacy also played a significant role, but then the Barbary States were states; there was someone in charge to dicker with.)

I’ve been watching the latest piracy problem for awhile (I’m into that stuff, being both a Navy brat and a fan of Patrick O’Brian), and the overall story has been one of the U.S. Navy going after the privateers with increasing aggressiveness. This from the NYT on Oct. 30:

As Somalia’s rulers have struggled with an insurgency and political
instability that culminated in the resignation of the prime minister on Monday,
piracy has flourished off its shores. Experts say that there have been
“many more” than the 26 attacks formally reported to the International Piracy Center this year, and new hijackings are reported with unfortunate frequency.

But the latest hijacking came with news that the United States Navy
has now entered the fray. A distress call from a Japanese-owned
chemical tanker, Golden Mori, found its way to the U.S.S. Porter, an American destroyer, which intercepted and then sank the two skiffs that the pirates used to reach the ship, according to CNN.

Now, the pirates have no obvious exit route, and another American destroyer, the Arleigh Burke
is on their tail in Somali waters, which are usually something of a
pirate refuge. This time, the American navy received permission to
enter from the embattled transitional government….

As you can see, the U.S. and international allies have just started stepping up their response to this growing problem. But to think we’ll just snap our fingers and the problem will go away is unrealistic.

Once you have a failed state as a haven for pirates, the only way to prevent the incidents from happening (unless you think ALL international shipping should be escorted by our Navy at taxpayer expense) is for the merchant ships to be prepared to repel boarders. And yeah, they’ll probably need to hire private contractors for that, much to Capital A’s horror (unless of course you DO think third-nation-flag private ships should be guarded at taxpayer expense). Fighting close battles with small arms at the drop of a hat was a skill the average sailor had 200 years ago, but not today. They’ll likely have to hire some guns.

Once the vessel is taken, and the U.S. or other navies respond, what do you propose we do? We’re fully equipped to sink them (as you saw above we had no trouble sinking the pirate boats, once they were under our guns), but the sailors who specialize in the skills it would take to RETAKE the vessel intact (which I’m guessing that most of us — especially the owners of the ships or their cargos — would prefer), the U.S. Navy Seals, are really, really busy elsewhere these days. (Set Iraq aside; we need all we can train and more in Afghanistan.)

The piracy problem is, of course, closely tied to the terrorism problem. The same sorts of conditions can foster it, and it presents the same challenges to international law (what do we do, for instance, if we catch the pirates — send them to Guantanamo?).

It’s an interesting problem, or rather SET of problems, and one the new president will have on a front-burner, given the escalation in recent days. The supertanker finally grabbed the attention of all of y’all who had NOT been paying attention.

1st black AG (yawn!)? Is anyone still keeping score?

23 Replies

Holdereric

So we’re told Eric Holder would be another historic "first:"

WASHINGTON — Eric Holder, a former No.
2 Justice Department official, has been told that he can become the
nation’s first African-American attorney general, a person with
firsthand knowledge said Tuesday.

While Obama hasn’t formally
tapped Holder, one person with direct knowledge said "it’s his if he
wants it." This individual asked to remain anonymous because of the
sensitivity of the matter.

Beyond being a history-making
appointment, Holder would be faced with some of the nation’s most
divisive legal controversies, including the Bush administration
policies on torture, electronic eavesdropping, the extent of
presidential power and the imprisonment of terror suspects without
charges, trials or the right to challenge their detention….

Which makes me wonder: Now that everyone seems agreed that we just elected our first black president (my quibbles about the terminology aside), just how big a deal is it to have a black AG? Or whatever the job.

And at what point to we stop keeping track? When does it no longer excite comment? Or when does it get to be like baseball stats? I can hear my wife’s cousin Tim McCarver saying, "Joe, this is the first time we’ve seen a mustachioed AG nominee chosen by a left-handed president from Hawaii in the post-election season…"