I don’t know about y’all but I didn’t see this until just now. Mildly amusing, although certainly no Tina Fey as Sarah Palin. And of course, it’s yet another needless embarrassment for South Carolina. I share it for what it’s worth.
Only once did I ever work in an office with another “Brad.” At the time, I joked that he would have to go, because it was too confusing, and eventually, he did. That was over 20 years ago.
I’ve never met a person named Warthen to whom I was not related. Oh, I’ll occasionally run into the name attached to a stranger in a phone book. And there was that ballplayer Dan Warthen, who used to get his name in the paper a lot when he played for the Memphis minor league team. And that town, Warthen, Ga. — apparently derived from a branch of the family, which originally came into this country through Maryland in the 1630s.
I was as sure as you could be of anything like that that among the 6 billion or so people on the planet, I was the only “Brad Warthen.”
But Facebook changes things. There are so many people there that your sense of uniqueness may have to undergo an adjustment. Some time recently I discovered that there was another Brad Warthen. I couldn’t find out anything about him; I just saw that he was a young guy with red hair. I left it at that.
Then tonight, I got an e-mail:
Brad Warthen sent you a message on Facebook…
Subject: dude
“dude we have the same name so i know ur a bad ass”
I wrote back to him, “Obviously.” I mean, what else could I say? I didn’t want to let him down.
Well, this is interesting. I followed a link on Facebook that said:
And it led to this Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee page. All it was was a generic party come-on urging folks to give money to “send a message to Republicans like Congressman Joe Wilson.” In other words, it wasn’t actually about the 2nd District or about South Carolina at all; it was about something I couldn’t care less about — whether there are more Democrats or more Republicans in Congress overall.
But I did like that it didn’t mention Rob Miller. There was no reason why it should, since it wasn’t really about this race. But as useless as parties are (and as shamelessly as they try to whip up and cash in on outrage), I was glad to see in this case, to the extent it was about the 2nd District at all, it was NOT about one particular candidate.
The 2nd District needs options. It doesn’t need a fait accompli, whether it’s Joe Wilson or Rob Miller. And it has disturbed me that up to now, people who wanted to express their opposition to Joe have given money to Rob.
Not that I’d recommend giving to this fund, either. As I said, I wouldn’t give two cents to help either party achieve or maintain majority status. I think the ideal in Congress would be a dead tie, with a handful of independents (like my man Joe Lieberman) in position to call the shots. Hey, I can dream, can’t I?
Thought it was really conscientious of Richard Eckstrom to promise to keep us posted on how the stimulus money is spent:
More than a half-billion dollars in stimulus money from an estimated $3 billion have come through state government so far, according to a news release from Eckstrom’s office.
“The debt from this spending extends far into the future of our children and grandchildren, so we owe it to those future generations to ensure the funds are spent without impropriety and with accountability and transparency,” Eckstrom said in the statement.
“People deserve easy access to how this money is spent. Not only that, but when spending is done in the open, public officials are usually more accountable,” he said. “They know their spending decisions will be examined by the public. If transparency is important under ordinary circumstances, it’s even more critical with massive infusions of cash like this, which can invite opportunities for waste, mismanagement and even fraud.”
The stimulus-spending details will be updated monthly, Eckstrom said.
OK, let me get this straight — one sixth of this has been spent. You are going to keep us posted as it is spent, which also indicates that this is something that is ongoing, and most of it has not yet occurred. Am I reading that right?
And yet, you already declared the stimulus a failure back on July 13 — the 13th day of the budget year. More than two months ago.
What am I missing here?
Well, I did my little cameo appearance last night in the Workshop Theatre production of “The Producers.” It went fine. Although I’ve got to tell you that by the time my cue came early in the second act, I was much more anxious not to mess up than I had been before the curtain went up.
That’s because the show was so good. Everybody was turning in such an impressive, high-energy performance that if there had been ANYthing wrong with my part, short as it was, it would have stuck out like a sore thumb. The stakes had been raised. I was sitting there thinking that I was out in right field. You know that feeling? It’s the one where you stand there and stand there and stand there, and the ball never comes to you, and you get used to the ball not coming to you, and you never get warmed up, and then when the ball finally does come to you, the stakes, the consequences of screwing up seem so huge and overwhelming that… well, you screw up. (For that reason, I always infinitely preferred playing pitcher or catcher, where you’re involved with every pitch, to playing the outfield.)
By the time my bit was approaching, everybody on stage was SO warmed up — Matt DeGuire, as Max Bialystock, had worked up a visible sweat before the second scene — that I felt like I’d never be able to come off the bench and jump into something moving at this pace. I felt like the whole show would trip over me or something. But I guess it went OK, because no one threw rotten tomatoes.
After that, I was able to enjoy the rest of the show without that feeling of dread hanging over me. And I really enjoyed it.
Which, I can admit now, surprised me.
Not that I didn’t think the folks at Workshop would do a good job. I assumed they would. My problem was with the show itself. I tried to watch the movie version with Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane, and I got sick of it by the end of the first scene. I’m a huge Ferris Bueller fan (who isn’t?), but I found Broderick’s trying-too-hard impersonation of Gene Wilder really off-putting. And frankly, as I thought about that, I realized I hadn’t been crazy about the Wilder-Mostel version either.
For me, “Young Frankenstein” was Mel Brooks’ masterpiece, and “Blazing Saddles” had its amusing parts, but it trails off after that. And the movie versions of “The Producers” fell somewhere below “Spaceballs” in my estimation.
So I was startled to see that something that didn’t work for me on the movie screen was so entertaining in a live show. But it was. And it was more than the fact that “over-the-top” fits the live stage better than the wide screen, which prefers subtlety. It was the wonderful performances of these individual local actors — particularly DeGuire as Max, Kevin Bush as Leopold Bloom, Mandy Nix as Ulla, Kyle Collins as Franz and on and on (there are no weak performances) — and the chemistry of how it all came together.
This was the best thing I’ve seen on a stage in Columbia (except, of course, for the shows that my children were in…)
You should definitely go see it. Even though I won’t be in it anymore. Or perhaps, especially since I won’t be in it anymore…
You have to understand that to me, Elvis Costello is The Latest Thing. He came along late in my life — after I was married and had kids already — so it’s actually a testament to his considerable talent that I became a big fan of his. He was the last popular musician to enter the ranks of my favorites along with the Beatles and others from my youth.
So normally, I would not have gotten the joke when Stan Dubinsky over at USC sent this link with the message, “Kanye West insults the USC website.” I’m still not entirely sure I get it, but at least I know who Kanye West is — sort of. That’s because my 23-year-old daughter went to “The Producers” with me last night, and since I had gone early to check in with the stage manager, we had time to chat before the show, and we started talking about current events, and she mentioned this West guy.
All day long, I’d been seeing references to him on Twitter, but I didn’t know what it was about. My daughter explained it. OK, so now I see why some people were referring to him and Joe Wilson in the same breath. Then she said something about Serena Williams, and I knew who she was, but didn’t know what she had done to cause the world to buzz. I don’t follow sports, either. (FYI, I just learned that USC will have a home football game on Saturday, which means I will stay over on my side of the river all day to avoid the craziness. I appreciate the warning, and thought you might appreciate my passing it on.)
Good thing we had that chat, because now all this stuff has entered the print universe — some of it was the subject of a column in The Wall Street Journal this morning — and I’m glad I knew about it going in.
But I still can’t tell you of anything Kanye West has ever sung.
The first time I met Rob Miller, he was still a captain in the United States Marine Corps. He was having breakfast at the Capital City Club with Samuel Tenenbaum and Bud Ferillo. They were talking with him about his plan to leave the Corps and run for Congress in the 2nd District. He was in civvies — a blue blazer and conservative tie, as I recall — but he was marked as a Marine by two things: His head was shaved, and he compulsively called every man he addressed “sir” in a way that made you feel like he was just barely containing himself from saluting. (Marines always do this, and I find it disconcerting. I’m a lousy civilian; I should be calling them “sir,” not the other way around.)
When next I met him, a few months later, his hair had just started to grow out, and he was both a civilian and a candidate for the 2nd Congressional District. About all I knew about him was that he had been a Marine, he was a combat veteran, having served two tours in Iraq, and he was Bobby Hitt’s nephew (I had worked for Bobby when he was managing editor of The State in the late 80s) — and that some prominent Democrats had taken an interest in his campaign, at least to some extent.
Other than that, he was a blank slate for me, so this interview did a lot to form my impression of him as a candidate. It was not a strong impression. I did not feel like he was ready to run for this office. He seemed uncertain in talking about why he was running, and had to grope for answers to questions that simply asked him to elaborate on what he had said in his opening remarks. He had this trouble in spite of having a little notebook with him, to which he repeatedly referred.
Now, in complete fairness to Capt. Miller: This was very early in his transition to civilian life. I thought he seemed more poised and confident later in the campaign, such as in the October debate with Joe Wilson that I helped moderate. (The header photo above is from that event.) Unfortunately, the link to that video no longer seems to work, and I lost everything that I had put on my laptop in September and October of that year when my laptop was stolen (although I don’t think I had anything on him from that period anyway). So the one thing I have to refer back to is this video from May of that year.
We did not endorse Capt. Miller in the primary, which is what this interview was about. We endorsed Blaine Lotz, who had had a somewhat more extensive military career than the captain (he had retired from the Air Force as a colonel), and a far greater grasp of national security issues — after the Air Force, he had a distinguished civilian career at the Pentagon specializing in intelligence, and in 1998 he was appointed by Secretary of Defense Cohen to be Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Oversight. Of course, he was still in that position under Donald Rumsfeld, for which S.C. Democrats were apparently unwilling to forgive him. Or maybe they didn’t even know that; he didn’t seem to get as much exposure in the campaign as did Capt. Miller. In any case, Miller won.
Even though he made a better impression in the fall, we still did what many of you will no doubt consider unforgivable — we endorsed Joe Wilson. It was a tepid endorsement, but an endorsement all the same. In that same editorial, we also endorsed Jim Clyburn (also unenthusiastically) and John Spratt (wholeheartedly). An excerpt:
Newcomer Rob Miller seems poised to give incumbent Joe Wilson a real contest this year. The Democrat is an ex-Marine, an Iraq combat veteran and a member of a prominent South Carolina family (his uncle used to be managing editor of this newspaper). He seemed uncertain about issues in the primary campaign, but still managed to beat a former Air Force general [I don’t know where that came from, since his bio online says he retired as a colonel] with an impressive resume. He has gained confidence in the intervening months with an aggressive, populist, anti-establishment message. Combine that with the Obama Effect, and you have a candidate with a chance.
But we endorse Republican Wilson, who demonstrates a greater command of the issues, and is much more attuned to the wishes of voters in the district’s gravitational center, Lexington County. Yes, he’s a hyper-Republican, and we’d like to see a less partisan candidate with competitive credentials. But Rep. Wilson is a hard-working, earnest representative who is truly devoted to serving his district and his country, and voters will be better served to re-elect him.
In the 6th District, we see both strong similarities and a stark difference. The similarity is that the incumbent, Jim Clyburn, is just as partisan as Mr. Wilson, and much more successful at it — he’s the third-ranking Democrat in the U.S. House, the majority whip. It’s his job to line up votes for Speaker Nancy Pelosi; he takes the job seriously and does it well.
Where this district, which runs from Richland County through the Pee Dee and down the I-95 corridor, differs from the 2nd is in the fact that Mr. Clyburn is strongly supported in every part of it. He is closely attuned to his district’s wants and needs, and passionately devoted to serving its people. Consequently, he faces weak opposition in Republican Nancy Harrelson, who is running on a populist platform in some ways similar to Mr. Miller’s.
We endorse Mr. Clyburn, a highly experienced and savvy public servant who is clearly better qualified.
By the way, about that reference to “a populist platform in some ways similar to Mr. Miller’s” — while he seemed more confident and polished by the fall, the persona he had adopted was that of the somewhat ticked-off champion of the common man, which was sufficiently at odds with his previously self-effacing junior-officer demeanor that it seemed contrived. At least, that’s the way I remember it. I wish I could find that video to check my memory.
Anyway, my point in sharing all this is to answer the question that a couple of folks have asked, which is, what do I mean when I say Rob Miller was unimpressive, and that I’m distressed that Joe Wilson’s outburst has now put so much money in his campaign coffers that it seems no other, stronger challenger is likely to emerge?
Again, I offer the caveat that this video is from very early, but this is how I initially formed my impression of Rob Miller. After that my impression was modified, but not entirely. Bottom line, I think it’s a lousy situation that here we are in the market for a replacement for Joe Wilson — a moment in which a challenger might have a chance — and the flood of money to Rob Miller (because he happened to be the guy standing there at the time) has probably precluded the possibility of a stronger candidate emerging.
See what you think.
You may recall that, back here, I told you of my invitation to do a cameo role in Workshop Theatre’s production of “The Producers.”
I agreed. And my appearance will be tonight. Other local non-actors are playing the same part on different nights. Judge Joe Anderson is on tomorrow night, for instance. Sheriff Leon Lott will do it next Friday night (the 25th), followed by Sheriff Jimmy Metts the next night.
It’s a small part. A very, very small part, and very silly. And now that the night is upon me, I’m suffering from pre-performance jitters to the extent that I really sort of hope no one is there to see me — but, since the idea behind inviting me and the sheriffs and the others to do this was that we might have a certain following that might come out and buy tickets, well, I… I urge you to come on out, and watch me make a perfect ass of myself.
Here’s the part I’ll be doing, from the movie version. Not exactly like this — the director gave each of us the freedom to change the character as we chose, and my version, while still silly, is silly in a very different way from the guy in the movie. (No doubt I could make if sillier if I had a government grant to develop it.)
So come on out. But don’t blink when I step out onto the stage, because you might miss me. Fortunately, for the enjoyment of paying customers, my part is very short. But I said that already.
I tell you, the things we unemployed people will do to keep ourselves out there in the public eye…
Joe Wilson’s outburst last week should have created an opportunity to upgrade our congressional representation in the 2nd District (which is where I live and vote).
Unfortunately, the dynamics of the perpetual partisan shoutfest centered in Washington have utterly precluded that. The fix is in, all we have to look forward to in 2010 is more of the same.
Thanks to the way the partisan spin machines have manipulated this affair (mutually supporting each other in their common cause of constant political conflict), Joe Wilson and Rob Miller have both raised enough money to make each a fait accompli for his respective party’s nomination. This is it, the choices we will get.
The choice will be between Joe Wilson, as reflexive a party follower as you’re likely to find in the GOP, and Rob Miller, who is a nice young man who deserves our deep gratitude for his service as a United States Marine, but (from what I’ve seen so far) is no more capable of expressing independent thought that goes beyond his party’s cliches than Joe is.
Our chance to improve the quality of representation in the 2nd District has been blown away by this hurricane of money — a hurricane driven entirely by the mutually-supporting partisan spin cycles of the two parties, and NOT by the interests of the people of the 2nd District. (It works just like a hurricane, too — first you get furious winds tearing at you from one direction, then after the eye passes and you think it’s over, furious winds tear at you from the opposite direction. But it’s all the same storm.)
If it weren’t for the constant, furious spinning of those machines (which are really one machine ultimately, since neither can “justify” its existence without the other — do you think I’ve made that point in enough parenthetical asides yet?), this past week might have been a time for some thoughtful individuals to step forward and send up test balloons about a possible candidacy. But that won’t happen now, with the way the knee-jerkers on both sides have inflated the campaign warchests of these two.
You know, if I could figure out how to put groceries on the table while doing it (which is sort of my top priority these days), and if I thought there was some possibility of wresting attention away from these well-financed inevitabilities, I would run, win or lose, just so the voters of the 2nd District would have a real choice, one that offers a break from absurdity as usual … But those are two really big ifs.
Meet the new boss; same as the old boss… And make no mistake, we WILL get fooled again.
Just noticed that I had passed a milestone this morning — 300 “followers” on Twitter.
Here’s hoping my 300 fare better than the famous Spartans — although I’m sure they’re just as tough, brave, fierce, etc., else they would not be following me…
There was no question that Joe Wilson should have apologized to the House for violating its rules and just generally for conduct unbecoming a gentleman (and unbecoming Joe Wilson, if you know him — he’s generally a gentle man). Barack Obama was not the only person insulted by “You lie!” If you insult a guest at a social occasion, you apologize to your host as well as the insulted guest.
But as soon as it became something that the Nancy Pelosis of the world were trying to MAKE Joe do, all question of right action went out the window. It became a matter of which side is going to win? That’s what everything boils down to these days in our nation’s hyperpartisan capital. Thought doesn’t go any deeper than the playground equation of whether one can be compelled to say “uncle.” And once a crowd had assembled, and members of his own gang were assembled around him urging him not to give in (and sending him $1.6 million), Joe wasn’t about to give in.
Silly and contemptible, but that’s party politics for you.
So I don’t attach much importance to the vote yesterday to express weak “disapproval” of Joe’s outburst. The outcome was predictable. Republicans voted against, and Democrats voted for, and since there are more Democrats than Republicans, Joe got “punished” — punished in a manner so insubstantial that it put me in mind of what Huck Finn said about Aunt Sally’s attempts to discipline him: “I didn’t mind the lickings, because they didn’t amount to nothing…”
I guess we all tend to choose up sides, but for my part, I tend to lump all the partisans of both parties on one side, and myself on the other. To me, they all act alike. Not only that, but their actions so perfectly complement and support each other that it’s almost as though they were colluding. Think about it: It would have been impossible for the House Democrats to make such a production over the matter, with a formal vote of official disapproval, if Joe hadn’t cooperated with them so beautifully by childishly refusing to apologize to them. Everyone played his assigned part to perfection. Or almost everyone.
In fact, I’d ignore the whole affair, except for the fact that the vote wasn’t entirely along party lines. For instance, South Carolina Republican Bob Inglis voted for the “disapproval” resolution. Because he did that, because he thought for himself and did something that might cost him the support of many in his tribe, what Bob Inglis has to say about the subject actually matters. Unfortunately, I didn’t see much about what he had to say on the subject in the paper — just the usual ritual pronouncements from the people who voted along party lines, and you knew what they would say.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a statement on his decision to vote as he did on his Web site. But I did find his statement from the other night about the president’s speech. (That’s the video version of it above. Note his fundamentally respectful way of disagreeing with the president — something that shouldn’t be noteworthy, but is.) And because he stood up for decorum and had the courage to vote against his own party, I paid more attention to what he had to say about health care than I otherwise would have. By the way, here’s what he had to say at the time — before it had been inflated into another meaningless contest between the parties — about Joe’s outburst:
OBAMA: “The reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.” One congressman, South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson, shouted “You lie!” from his seat in the House chamber when Obama made this assertion.
THE FACTS: The facts back up Obama. The House version of the health care bill explicitly prohibits spending any federal money to help illegal immigrants get health care coverage. Illegal immigrants could buy private health insurance, as many do now, but wouldn’t get tax subsidies to help them. Still, Republicans say there are not sufficient citizenship verification requirements to ensure illegal immigrants are excluded from benefits they are not due.
Bob Inglis has always been a thoughtful guy who stands up for what he thinks is right, regardless of the dictates of the tribe. I’ve always appreciated that about him, even when I think he’s wrong — such as when he opposed the troop “surge” in Iraq. His iconoclasm causes me to care about what he says, which puts him in a lonely category in the U.S. House. A man who’s willing to pay a political price for his views deserves to be heard.
I would also like to know more about the thinking of those Democrats (Arcuri, Delahunt, Giffords, Hinchey, Hodes, Kucinich, Maffei, Massa, McDermott, Moore, Taylor and Teague) who voted against the mild “disapproval” resolution. I haven’t seen anything from any of them, but if any of my readers would kindly provide a link, I’d like to read what they had to say. It interests me far more than the ritual pronouncements of party orthodoxy…
A lot of folks are presuming to explain Joe Wilson, based on the impression he made last week in his Tourette’s Moment (or the far worse impression he’s made since then trying to leverage the moment to his political advantage). Some, such as bloggers from the left, are explaining it as just the sort of thing you expect from those idiot Republicans. Voices on the right, meanwhile, hail Joe as the guy who was saying What Real Americans Think (which you know has gotta be making Sarah Palin jealous, because what else has she got now that she’s not governor any more?). Maureen Dowd, after saying she was “loath” to resort to such oversimplification, chalked it up to racism, asserting that what Joe really meant was “You lie, boy!”
Well now, there’s something to that if you’re making a general statement about the Republican Party in the South. There was a time when to be a Republican in the South meant you were either a reformer who couldn’t bring himself to join the Old Boy network that was the Democratic Party, or black. But then Strom Thurmond, inspired by Lyndon Johnson’s embrace of civil rights, defected to the GOP in 1964. It took awhile for a lot of white voters to follow him. But then some of the folks who followed George Wallace in his independent run in 1968 just didn’t go back. Some considered themselves independents for awhile, but they eventually drifted into the GOP, and after awhile a certain dynamic was in place whereby more and more white folks got the impression that all the other white folks were going over there, and joined them.
The process wouldn’t be complete in South Carolina until Republican lawmakers persuaded some black Democrats to join forces with them in a reapportionment battle in the 90s. Here’s where things get more complicated than the Dowd explanation. You see, after a certain point (the point to which white Democrats were willing to go), the only way you can create another black-majority district (which will presumably, according to conventional wisdom, elect black candidates) is by creating several surrounding districts that have been bleached free of black voters. Such districts are FAR more likely to elect a white Republican than a Democrat of any color. Anyway, that reapportionment deal led to the election of a few more black members and a LOT more white Republicans, which is how the GOP took over the Legislature.
So yeah, the dynamics that produce a Joe Wilson — or a Jim Clyburn — are just shot through with racial considerations. So you can always say that race is part of the equation in any confrontation such as we saw last week. I haven’t examined the list of people who contributed to Joe Wilson’s campaign coffers last week because he made an ass of himself, but I’m thinking it’s pretty safe to say that it’s somewhat whiter than South Carolina as a whole — and most likely whiter even than the 2nd District.
Does that mean Joe Wilson is a racist? No. The idea would shock him. He would sputter and protest in that out-of-breath way he has when he’s excited, and he would be absolutely sincere. I know Joe Wilson; I’ve known him for more than two decades, and I know that he’d mean it when he said that he’d never judge the president or anyone else by the color of his skin. Joe Wilson is a guy who goes out of his way to be nice to everybody.
No, there’s another explanation for why a guy like Joe Wilson gets elected, and why huge numbers of white folks will flock to his side when the Nancy Pelosis of the world are looking daggers at him. It’s a phenomenon that runs in parallel to the narrative of race in our state’s history, one that is so interwoven with it that whenever it appears, people look right past it and see only the racial aspect, black and white being less subtle than what I’m talking about.
White South Carolinians, as a group, exhibit a trait that is not at all unusual in this nation, but which has shown some of its most extreme expressions in the Palmetto State. It’s the thing that makes a guy put his foot down and declare that no government is going to tell him what to do. This manifests itself in lots of ways. It was surging through the veins of those Citadel cadets firing on Fort Sumter. Yes, you can say that the Civil War (conceived and launched right here in South Carolina) was about race. You can say it was about a minority of wealthy whites wanting to keep black people as their property, and the majority of whites being dumb enough to go along with them on it, even though it was not it their economic interests (or any other kind of interest) to do so. But ask yourself, HOW did the ruling elites get all those other whites to go along with them? By selling them on the idea that the federal government was trying to run their lives. It worked like a charm, and we’ve been reaping the evil result of that madness ever since.
It’s no accident that we have twice elected a governor who has NO accomplishments to point to and who distinguished himself by being the last governor in the union to accept stimulus funds that S.C. taxpayers were (like taxpayers everywhere, if they live long enough) going to have to pay for. Standing against gummint involvement, especially federal gummint involvement, plays well among a significant swath of the electorate here.
But defiance is not a necessary ingredient. If it were, Joe Wilson would not have gotten as far as he has. He’s no stump-thumper (the shouting incident was truly anomalous); you wouldn’t mistake him for Ben Tillman, or even Strom Thurmond. But Joe Wilson is the natural heir of another political phenomenon that Thurmond embodied (and Sanford has raised to an art form): the do-nothing officeholder.
It’s a twist on the Jeffersonian notion that one is safest when the government governs least, a play on the old joke that we’re all safe now because the Legislature’s gone home, etc.
We all know about the highlights, or lowlights, of Strom Thurmond’s career — his Dixiecrat campaign, his infamous filibuster against the Civil Rights Act, his later mellowing on race, etc. Less noticed by the popular imagination is that for most of his multi-generational career, he didn’t do much of anything. In fact, the only legislation I can remember bearing his mark in the years that I was responsible for The State‘s coverage of him was those little health warnings on beer cans and wine bottles. That’s about it. I mean, that’s something, but it’s not much to show for half a century in the Senate.
What Strom Thurmond did was constituent service. He perfected the technique of staying in office by being the voters’ (black voters or white voters, he didn’t care) own personal Godfather in Washington. You got a problem with that big, bad government up there? Talk to your Godfather. Doing personal favors for people was far more important than lawmaking. And this made him politically invulnerable.
Over in the House, the member who best embodied the Thurmond Method — minimum lawmaking, maximum constituent service — was Floyd Spence. Joe Wilson became Spence’s acolyte, his squire, his sincere imitator. It was perfectly natural that he became his successor. Floyd was a nice guy who loved being a congressman but didn’t want to accomplish much in Washington beyond constituent service and a strong military, and Joe fits that description to a T.
The 2nd District has come to expect, even more than any other district in the state, elected representation that Does Nothing on the national scene (beyond fiercely supporting a muscular national defense, of course).
The representative of that district, who is very much the product of that non-governing philosophy, is bound to be at odds with a president who is the product of the Do Something philosophy of government. And you can see how he might get a little carried away with himself in trying to stop the Biggest Thing Barack Obama has tried to get the government to Do.
And yes, you can describe this dichotomy in racial terms. The folks who keep re-electing Jim Clyburn want government to Do As Much As Possible (at least, that’s how he interprets his mandate, and I don’t think he’s wrong), while Joe Wilson’s constituents tend to want the opposite. And those districts were drawn to put as many black voters in Clyburn’s 6th District as possible, thereby leaving the 2nd (and the 3rd and the 4th the 1st, and to some extent the 5th) far whiter than they would be if you drew the lines without regard to race.
I’m just saying there’s a lot more at work than that.
You know how back in the day, people would say they didn’t smoke dope, but if a joint was going around they’d take a toke “to be polite?” Doonesbury once made fun of it, with Zonker speaking the punch line, “I’m VERY polite.”
Well, I’m sort of that way about getting my picture taken with the guest of honor at rubber chicken dinners, receptions, etc. When somebody (usually some enthusiastic lady who has worked hard to put on the event) tugs my elbow and says, “Come have your picture taken with …” whomever, I may grumble a bit, but then shrug and make the best of it.
That explains why there are photographs of me with a wide variety of people, from our latest political persona non grata Joe Wilson (see the new header on my home page) to people I actually feel a little intimidated and unworthy standing next to, such as Elie Wiesel (below). You can see the awkwardness in my face on that one.
But in the Wilson pic, I’m perfectly at ease. You can probably even see a bit of amusement. This was taken at a reception for Joe at the Republican National Convention in New York. This was the last time the newspaper ever paid for me to travel out of state to do journalism, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. At this point, I’m grinning both to be a good sport, and because all week, I had been watching Joe really, REALLY enjoying being at the convention. Joe just has to pinch himself all the time, he SO enjoys being in Congress, and being a Republican, and being around other Republicans, to the point that he just wants to be friends with everybody. He was definitely not saying “You lie!” to anyone that week.
I don’t get enthusiastic like that, and people who do make me smile. Different strokes.
The Obama picture is slightly more complicated. In this case, I was amused not by the candidate, but by the excitement among some of the other people in the room. This was immediately following our editorial endorsement meeting. And while there were no member of the editorial board asking to have their pictures taken with the candidate (Warren, Mike and Cindi are too cool and professional for that) this was one of those meetings that people from around the building who had nothing to do with our editorial decisions asked if they could sit in, and I always said yes to such requests, as long as there was room and no one was disruptive.
And some of them were lining up eagerly to have their pictures taken with Obama. If you’ll recall, this is the kind of excitement his candidacy engendered. The candidate was anxious to get downstairs and put on some longjohns in the men’s room before going to sit in the freezing cold at the MLK Day rally at the State House, but he was a good sport about it.
And after several of these pictures were taken, I said — with an ironic tone, making a joke of it — well, why don’t I get MY picture with the senator, too!? Of course, it wasn’t entirely a joke. On some level, I was thinking that someday my grandchildren will want proof that I met all these famous people, and for the most part I don’t have any photographic proof. Here was my chance to get some, as long as everybody was camera-happy. I was also thinking, it’s all very well to be cool and professional but isn’t it a fool who plays it cool by making the world a little colder? Or something. Anyway, I like to do things that other more staid professionals turn their noses up at. It’s why I started a blog, while my colleagues didn’t. It’s why I do http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/2007/10/the-colbert-end.html”>silly stuff like this. You enjoy life more this way…
My regret that I have looking back is that I didn’t get my picture taken with John McCain, Joe Biden, George W. Bush, John Kerry, Al Gore, Ralph Nader, Ted Sorensen, Benazhir Bhutto, Jesse Jackson, or hosts of others. Mainly because I was too cool at the time when I was around them (especially back in the days when I spent a lot of time with Al Gore — in my early career I would have been WAY too self-righteous to pose for any such thing). I never even got my picture taken with Strom Thurmond. You know what? Next time I see Fritz Hollings, I’m going to ask somebody to take our picture…
OK, not really. But if the UnParty did release a video, I hope it would be as fresh, and original, and cool as this one — in that nerdy way that only Elvis Costello can be cool. In fact, it occurs to me that in the ads that the GOP is imitating back here, Microsoft should have hired Elvis to punch the message that maybe geeks use PCs, but geeks can be cool.
Last night, YouTube brought this one to my attention, based upon my past viewing preferences, and I really liked it, so I offer it as a kind of sorbet, to cleanse the palate after the GOP video…
I’m a Republican from SCGOP on Vimeo.
Nowadays, I’m feeling sorry for the Republicans. There were times in the past when I felt sorry for Democrats, but not at the moment. I don’t like the parties at any time, but at least I can work up some sympathy when they are losing.
I remember back in the late 80s and early 90s, as the Republicans marched inexorably forward in lockstep toward their dominance of the state, I found the Democrats totally charming in their own feckless way. They remembered a time before party politics (when there’s only one party, there might as well be none), and they were sort of Ashley Wilkes-like in their gentlemanly wistfulness for a time when people weren’t so crass about party affiliation. (The Republicans, meanwhile, were more like Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler, doing whatever it took to succeed, with no looking back.)
Now the Republicans are the hapless losers, and they are taking on the tone and vocabulary of losers, and since I love seeing parties lose, it makes them lovable in my eyes.
This is the inescapable point to be mined from the latest party video, which borrows from another lovable loser, the Microsoft-based PC. After Apple had so devastatingly mocked the haplessness of the PC alongside the oh-so-hip Mac in ad after ad, Microsoft came back with the message, “I’m a PC,” in which it embraced the image of the four-eyed, unhip loser, and tried to make THAT cool.
Now S.C. Republicans have their derivative “I’m a Republican” ad, which endeavors to make the same point: No we are NOT cool, but we like ourselves the way we are and hope you will, too.
The ad has its good points — at a time when many in the rest of the country believe Joe Wilson meant “You lie, boy!,” the ad preaches a message of inclusiveness, showing black and brown faces in far greater preponderance than you will see at most GOP gatherings. While it may stretch credulity, it’s a good message to send right now, to South Carolina and to the nation. The fact that they wanted to send that message deserves praise.
And the production values aren’t too bad.
Beyond that, the hackneyed phrases sort of grate at me. I find myself thinking, Is this the best we can do in South Carolina, or in the nation? Just repeat these same, often meaningless, lines?
Not that it doesn’t get creative, but when it does, it’s kind of weird. My good friend Eric Davis mentions “conservative solutions,” which strikes me as a bit off. If you’re a conservative, doesn’t that mean you think things are fine and we don’t need any solutions? Maybe not, I think further. Maybe it means that we DO need solutions, but the time-honored ones we employed in the past will work just fine.
But then he throws me another breaking ball that causes me to swing and miss completely — “conservative change.” I’m sorry, but I thought being conservative means not wanting change, sort of by definition. You know, “conserve,” as in “keep,” “stay,” “maintain,” “preserve,” and so forth.
The message I come away with is this: “We know y’all want change, change you can believe in, which is why you’re not voting Republican. But hey, we can give you change; we can give you … conservative change! Yeah, that’s the ticket.”
Some will say, “The Democrats aren’t delivering change, either, just the same old partisan games,” and if you’re speaking of the Democrats running Congress, for instance, you’d be completely right. But it IS what they run on. It IS kinda their brand, you know. You’re supposed to judge them (and for my part, I judge them fairly harshly) on how well they deliver what they promise.
But Republicans aren’t about change. They’re about conserving. Stick to what you know, guys. Don’t try so hard to be cool.
So you like being what you are, and are proud to call yourselves Republicans. Fine. Whatever floats your boat. Me, I like using PCs, even though Macs are cooler (one of my daughters just bought one last week), so I understand. To each his own.
But stick to what you know.
Well, I sure didn’t see this coming. Looks like it’s going to be Mayor Steve Benjamin (unless some other similarly viable candidate emerges because of this news). Here’s Mayor Bob’s statement:
I wanted to let you know that I have made a personal and family decision that twenty years as Mayor of Columbia is enough, and I will not run for re-election next year. I have had the honor of serving as Columbia’s Mayor and have enjoyed every minute. I count as a source of pride being called “Mayor Bob.”
Working together over the last two decades we have accomplished a great deal. Columbia and our neighborhoods have been revitalized, reversing three decades of declining population; we have started Innovista and Engenuity that are critical components of our entering the knowledge economy; Columbia’s Downtown and Riverfront have been revitalized including the Gervais Streetscaping, Publix, Main Streetscaping, EdVenture and Three Rivers Greenway; we built the Convention Center, the Hilton Hotel and the Colonial Life Center; and under the leadership of Ike McLease we successfully navigated BRAC in 2005.
While we have accomplished much there is still much to be done during the remainder of my term including funding the RTA and addressing homelessness.
I will not be seeking any other political office but will concentrate on my family and law practice. On behalf of the Coble Family we would like to thank the citizens of Columbia for allowing us to serve as Mayor.
Wow. How about that?
With this week’s anniversary, all sorts of analysts will be telling us why they think Lehman Bros. went under. Why should I be left out?
My theory is simple: It was Richard Fuld‘s face. Fuld himself is said to harbor deep resentment (and he’s got a face built for it) that the gummint bailed out all the other kids on the block, but not him. I think it’s because the various officials involved in such a decision knew they’d have to draw the line somewhere, and Fuld’s perpetually glowering, arrogant, self-important visage was the deciding factor.
For the year or so leading up to last year’s collapse, I saw the image at right in The Wall Street Journal a lot, and in my mind, this one face had come to symbolize the very worst of the Wall Street “Master of the Universe” mentality. I suggest that I was not alone in this. If the bailout gravy train had to be stopped somewhere, there was no way this guy was going to get a helping hand to be the last one aboard. (There’s something a bit off about that metaphor, but I’m going to stick with it, because that’s what I think Richard Fuld would do, even if it meant running his entire thesis into the ground.)
Yeah, I know, people who understand a lot more about this situation than I do (such as people who, for instance, have a clue what in the heck people who worked at Lehman Bros. did for a living) can probably explain in detail why I’m wrong, citing all sorts of facts and figures and graphics with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was, demonstrating conclusively that there were all sorts of objective reasons why Lehman was allowed to fail while others were not. I acknowledge that. But I’m pretty sure that one could also find a bunch of other knowledgeable analysts who could prove that the opposite was true.
What I’m saying is that, given all the highly complex variables involved, there was a point at which intangibles came into play. And I think the people making the final call were sick of this guy looking down his nose at them and the rest of the world — or they understood at least that if you had to pick a fall guy, Central Casting couldn’t have come up with one less likely to excite widespread public sympathy than this guy.
That made the decision a lot simpler than it would have been otherwise.
This is not a new theory for me; I’ve just refined it over the past year, and this seemed a good time to trot it out so you could admire it. Here’s what I said about the best-known image of Fuld’s face last year:
It was the sort of picture that no sane company publicist would ever have distributed, unless it wanted its CEO to be hated. And you knew this was a CEO; the picture just radiated, “I’m the kind of guy who thinks he’s really hot stuff because I’m so absurdly overcompensated.” And you know, I seldom think that when I look at people. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt (something that drives some of y’all crazy, because you’re always wanting me to join you in despising somebody, and I just don’t feel like it — not necessarily because I’m a nice guy; I just don’t feel like it). But this picture INSISTED that you not like the guy. If a psychologist included this photo in a Thematic Apperception Test, I suspect there would be a surprising uniformity in the stories the subjects would tell.
I found Lindsey Graham’s townhall meeting very interesting. While I disagree with him substantively about the subject at hand — health care reform — it’s always interesting to listen to him because he’s a smart guy who has a lot to offer to any policy question. In other words, while he clings loyally to support of Joe Wilson as a fellow Republican, he’s not a guy who’ll ever reduce his objections to a shouted “You Lie!”
Let’s dispense with the disagreement first — Sen. Graham fails to persuade when he says his crowd-pleasing things (Republican voters got calls at home asking them to come) about how we don’t want the gummint taking over any more of our lives. The argument that we can’t have a public option because the private sector can’t compete only condemns the private sector in my mind. The senator’s replies to the student who objected that private companies compete quite successfully with the Postal Service were weak. He got the crowd to cheer by mentioning the huge public subsidy the Postal Service needs to keep going, which to ME argues that its private competitors do just fine. He then argued that competition doesn’t work the same way in health care, which is true, which is why we can’t expect the market to solve our problems. (Lindsey agrees at least with that. He’s for regulation, not a new government entitlement program.)
But the senator repeatedly stressed how we should find things on which we agree and work from there — he talked about areas of agreement between him and Russ Feingold (who agrees with me that the way to go is single-payer) — and I know he means it, so I listen all the harder to what he has to say.
And I was fascinated with his central argument. It was this: It would cost too much. And he doesn’t trust the American people, including all the anti-gummint types in that room, to prevent the program’s costs from going out of control. He kept doing an interesting thing… he kept getting the crowd to cheer with assertions about how inept the gummint is, and how we don’t want it intruding any more into our lives, and then he’d ask how many people there were on Medicare (quite a few) and how many would voluntarily give it up (no one).
So basically, he repeatedly demonstrated that this crowd that was so willing to moan at the awful gummint and laugh ironically when Lindsey referred to Obama’s promises to control costs LOVES its gummint-provided health care — at least, those who have it do. He even said it fairly direction once: “Everybody clapping (at one of his shots against government), half of them are in a government plan.”
And the costs of that government plan, Medicare, are so out of control that he doesn’t want to create another program that would be JUST as popular, even among people who THINK they don’t like government programs, and that therefore would be just as costly, if not more so.
That’s what I heard, and it was interesting.
As he alluded more than once, Lindsey Graham walks a fine line, trying to be a moderate as a Republican from a beet-red state. Another time he said many who were applauding had tried to rip him a new one over immigration reform. He referred to having voted to confirm Justice Sotomayor. So it was fascinating to see him use populist techniques to get a crowd to support him on something where his position is that essentially, he doesn’t trust them, the people, not to support a program that would bankrupt us.
This, by the way, is why I won’t jump to run for office. I’m not sure I could maintain that balance between stroking people and leveling with them that you’re taking a position they may not love. I think I’d get fed up with it pretty fast.
Lindsey Graham doesn’t. And while I can see the contradictions inherent in what he’s doing, I can also respect him for being willing to wrestle with those contradictions — even when I believe that, substantively, he’s wrong on the issue.
Lindsey Graham’s town hall meeting today — about which I’ll have more substantive things to say momentarily — only got ugly once, and very briefly. When a gentleman who was seated pretty far from me got up and, after prefacing his question by thanking Sen. Graham for always being courteous to him and answering his calls and letters, started to express his objection to Joe Wilson’s outburst the other day, a guy a few rows behind me yelled out “bullshit!”
This was followed by a murmur of “nos” and boos, and a lady seated near both of us said reproachfully, “It’s not bullshit,” the guy repeated himself. And then sat back looking smug and satisfied with himself.
But nothing happened. No one acted after that like anything happened. The guy himself left early. The lady who had reproached him later asked a question. (She, too, was an Obama supporter. And just to reinforce everyone’s stereotypes, the two Obama-supporting questioners to whom I refer were both black, the yelling guy — like most of the crowd — was white.)
In fact, most people being polite and preferring to ignore grotesque breaches of etiquette, after a few moments I wondered whether I had heard it right: Did it really happen? Did the guy yell “bullshit” in this public forum?
Can anyone who was there back me up on this?
Tom Davis’ Tweets have brought it to my attention that all the really serious anti-gummint types from across the nation are all gathered in Washington for some sort of ritual or other. Tom is saying 300,000 (when he’s not saying 2 million) and the WashPost says “tens of thousands.” Whatever.
Quick! Let’s convene the Legislature! This is our chance to pass some rational laws, while the main obstructionists, the people who have done the most to hold our state back in the 19th Century, are away…
If we only act quickly, before they get back, we can have:
And on and on. Oh, if only they would stay there, and allow an Age of Reason to dawn in the Palmetto State. We have way, WAY more than our share of such folk, and always have. It’s why we fired on Fort Sumter, and it’s why we lag behind the rest of the country on so many measures of social, economic and even physical health….