Did you see this in The State today?
Legislators give Haley ‘B-‘ grade for first session
You’re kidding me, right? You want me to believe that the honest assessment of “legislators” is that Nikki Haley’s performance as governor is worthy of a B-minus? There’s just no way.
Yeah, I realize people who don’t know the State House, and who get their notions of such things from watching national TV news, will say, “That’s understandable — most of them are Republicans, right?” The majority of Republicans would seem to be the last people who would think Nikki Haley — or her predecessor — was worthy of a passing grade. Much less a B-minus. I mean — these people just sued her (successfully) for trying to boss them around. Or McConnell did, which amounts to the same thing. And that was not the low point of the relationship.
Yeah, I know how they are. It’s just the first session. At this point, they were trying to give Mark Sanford every chance, too.
But a grade — a grade isn’t supposed to be a tool of diplomacy, or an expression of future hopes (“Maybe she’ll get better…”)
A grade should be an honest assessment of actual performance. It should confront uncomfortable truths. An honest teacher says, “I know you’re trying hard, and nothing personal, but you flunked the course.”
But we don’t do that in South Carolina, do we? And it’s why we don’t move forward as a state; it’s why we lag behind. We’re so busy being polite and worrying about offending anyone that we never state the case, analyse the problem, and move to fix it.
We can be so pathetic.
I don’t even want to know how The State chose the lawmakers it interviewed. In any case, it was only 20 percent of the General Assembly. I wonder what an actual poll of the whole legislative branch, with secret ballots, would have produced. Probably something much closer to what The State‘s readership came up with. Yeah, the readers who responded were heavily Richland County. But that Democratic bias would have been balanced, in a real survey of the General Assembly, by the fact that those officeholders know her, which should make them just as likely to be negative as Democrats…
Related Posts
It says more about how low The State has fallen than anything else. What a stupid waste of precious column inches!
Something like that would be fine on a potentially infinite resource like your blog, but when they are starving the news pages, crowding them out with sports “news” and feel-good stories, it makes me wonder why I subscribe. I guess I gotta keep ’em paying Monk, Scoppe, Beam, et al.
Well, I don’t blame the paper. Not particularly, anyway. It’s reflecting the sea in which it swims.
The whole situation is all so silly, and embarrassing — whether it’s the governor presuming to grade lawmakers, and giving herself an A+ (because, as she says, she is her own hardest critic) or this, or the governor’s childish response to it (do you suppose she’d have been so petulant about it if she’d known she’d be graded on the curve?)…
Anyway, it’s all pretty undignified.
There aren’t grades in politics – only votes.
Grades are for school. Grades show relative mastery and are given by those who are presumed to have mastery of a subject.
In politics there is only influence and obstructionism sloshing back and forth. Only when politics becomes history can grades be assigned. If The State wanted to begin to shape the historical record, it could begin to assign the grades itself – editorially. However, asking the participants of the legislative process to do so in the moment is asinine.
Nikki Haley is like the job interviewee who, when asked what his/her faults are, says something like, “I’m just someone who works too hard, even though I do an excellent job and everybody likes me.”
Why doesn’t The State ask the same respodents to grade the work of Harrell and Leatherman? Bet there’s some scared little bunnies who wouldn’t go on the record on that one. Or else would say “A+++”.
Here’s my grade for the true leaders of the state:
F on Innovista
F on simplifying taxes
D- on education
C- on roads
C- on economic development
A+ on cronyism, patronage, and bureaucracy
A+ on wasting time on frivolous activity and grandstanding
Overall grade: D
Brad has some latent loyalty to The State and I wouldn’t expect him to say anything particularly bad about it. But seriously The State is just excruciatingly bad any more. The front page has just become nothing but fluff stories. And I like fluff as much as the next guy but at least give me interesting fluff.
As for the Haley grade, it would have to be an incomplete. She did try to get her agenda passed and I applaud her for trying a different approach. But the results were pretty thin.
@Doug–A “C” on roads??? In the pothole capitol of the country? Close examination of any pothole that appears to have been fixed reveals that enough Mini-Coopers, VW bugs and Smart Cars fell into them to fill them up. The state then occasionally puts some asphalt over the top.
@karen
I don’t think you can totally blame the legislature for the roads. Isn’t it really a county issue?
Maybe I’m just dumb, but I would think there should be a truck with pothole repair equipment driving around the county filling in holes every day, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Have a website where people can pinpoint them and then just start driving around filling them. I’m sure right now it takes all sorts of paperwork and planning and resources and overtime to fill in a two foot diamater hole. This is where local government fails. No accountability.
Actually, in South Carolina, most of the roads are in state control.
Another legacy of the Legislative State. As you may know, county government did not exist in SC before 1975. And local govs are still pretty weak, so you see the state doing a lot of stuff that local govs do elsewhere.
Cities and counties do SOME roadwork, but less than in other states.
So where DO you turn to in order to get a scientific poll?
Obviously The State found itself with a hot potato. About 10% of its circulation base responded. Can’t ignore that.
The response was positively toxic.
The State, in an effort to militate the venomous results, did two things. First, it put off publishing the results for a week in hopes that the poll results would appear to be more realistic, and then, it quickly surveyed a handful of the Legislature. That poll was what it chose to be the lede for the story.
Let’s not be too quick to slam The State newspaper. I worked there a lifetime ago, back when our internal motto was that it wasn’t news until it was in The State. So I toiled away on the state desk, under the baleful watch of Bill Hughes and the joyful leadership of Jack Truluck — and I read every damn weekly and rewrote every local story. (Unless Martha Bee Anderson and a host of other local correspondents covered it.)
Today, The State is a mere shadow of what it used to be, but so are so many other institutions. In the case of The State, please do not confuse the lack of substance with a failure of ethics and integrity, no matter how shrill-ly certain bought-and-paid-for blog sites claim to the contrary.
I think some fine effort and excellent writing is being turned in by a tough, dedicated, underpaid, and overworked staff. There are barely a dozen professionals on board each day, and that includes sports, editorial and features in addition to news.
The State seems to showcase its finer work on Saturdays and Sundays.
Please make an effort to appreciate The State before it withers completely away.
And understand that only a nut-job conspiracy theory would refuse to accept that Nikki Haley is in deep do do.
The thing to remember that the ka ka is of her on making through a series of misjudgments and amateur-hour reactions.
And call LL Bean and order some hip waders. She has another 40 months to pile it deeper.
Best to all.
Hmmm… I assumed they had always planned to have the legislator component. After all, this all started with Nikki presuming to grade THEM. So the logical response would be to see what they think of her. Really more relevant than a self-selected reader survey.
An actual POLL (and I don’t say “scientific poll” because to me it’s redundant; either it’s done in a statistically valid manner or it’s not a poll) of voters throughout the state would be interesting. But not the same thing. This was about pols grading each other. I just would like to have seen it done in a way that caused them to be honest. I’m not sure that would have been possible, though. This is the sort of situation in which, in SC, it’s politeness uber alles.
If they had always planned to have legislator input, then why did they not so indicate? And why only a fraction of unnamed solons versus a wholesale effort?
My memory is that The State seemed intent on getting reader input.
I think the reactions were so visceral that they simply had to find a way to remove themselves from the results.
I think the essence of politeness uber alles came from Harvey Gantt — “If you can’t appeal to the morals of a South Carolinian, you can appeal to his manners.”
I am afraid that it isn’t politeness über alles any more–Haley certainly isn’t winning any courtesy awards….I also think Reagan’s commandment “Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican” is also waning (See Knotts, Jakie). I can only guess that the unnamed legislators were Haley allies…
Brad’s right, unlike most states the vast majority of roads in SC are state maintained. If the DOT had sufficient money to properly maintain the roads the pothole issue would be reduced.
“Politeness” in political circles means using paid consultants to do the dirty work. Peddling lies is one of the few booming businesses in this state.
Would you let your daughter date a political consultant?
Many of these “political consultants” are kids who will work their butts off for only a few dollars.
Most get picked up by working campaigns, where they lose their moral compasses and virginity, coarsening up and getting mean. When you take the gloves off on an abstract enemy, the real world gets hazy when you get a political job where the absolute goal is to make the boss look good.
And Doug, some of the best are gals.
A lot of them are embedded in state government, little balls of slime that disfigure some very hard working and dedicated people around them who believe in public service and gag over the political games.
A bit too much gin tonight. grin and groan.
@bud– I think the DOT has problems in addition to insufficient funding…
We all know she is failing at her job. She is failing in the Tea Party arena, and she is failing in helping the citizens of SC. She can not get past her own deceit, misbehaviors and more lies. SC continues to be so much less than she could be, and it is people like Haley and her supporters that bring us down so low.
@tired old man
I’ve seen what you describe close up. I did a year of IT consulting for the Secretary of State’s office back in the 90’s. Three of the top guy’s in the office were really political operatives (one became a semi-famous conservative talk show host in Boston, another is a name very well known in the SC political consulting world now (he was just a young go-getter then), and the third one was a fat kid who worshipped at the altar of Rush Limbaugh).
These guys are in paid roles throughout the government… doing nothing but working on making sure they get their guy elected while collecting a paycheck from the taxpayers.
Brad will probably say I’m just looking for warts, but in SC the system is covered with festering open wounds.
Doug! You’re talking about the Secretary of State’s office, for goodness’ sake! Which even the one-time holder of the office tried to eliminate…
@Brad
So what’s your point? I was there when the office had at least three political consultants on the payroll working on non-Secretary of State office business.
Do you think that’s the only place it exists or that it doesn’t go on today?
You know a political operative who was a paid “consultant” to Jim Rex at Dept. of Ed. What did he do to improve education in SC?
Grades are of no value. The ones that do the grading are not representative of necessarily anything. If The State disagrees with the grading who cares? Who says The State is a qualified voter? They have their own positions quoted on the editorial page and would presumably vote supporting their positions. The real point is that a vote in the State is meaningless because the only power broker that matters is the State Legislature. By virtue of the State Constitution power is vested in that body so they decide. They are so lost in the dream world of control that little is accomplished statewide because of the local interests protected by the State legislators. One day South Carolina will awaken to their low postion of effectiveness because of the continuing control of the Legislature. Term limits. Take away the glory of professional politics and results will improve. There is no great wisdom in continuing in office forever.