At an event Wednesday night, the first two people I ran into were the senators pictured above, Nikki Setzler and John Courson.
Courson was bragging on the grade Nikki Haley had given him earlier in the week — a “C.” And of course, as he kept telling everyone, it was “a strong C.”
For him, he told me and others, that was perfect. An “A” would have gotten him into trouble with the rather large number of Democrats in his Shandon district. An “F” would have sent the Tea Party out for blood in a primary next year. It was a Goldilocks grade — just right.
So there was at least one happy pupil in Haley School.
Nikki — Setzler, not Haley — wasn’t complaining about his, either. But of course, in his Lexington County district, it probably would have been nice to get a grade a little higher than his “D.”
And he could have done that, too, if he had done the governor’s bidding more. But what sensible man would actually decide whether to vote yea or nay on actual legislation — laws we would all have to live by — in hope of a meaningless “grade” from this governor?
And Nikki Setzler is a sensible man.
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They both look giddy, they must be thinking about their retirement system.
[like] what Steven said.
James Smith was also there. As you may recall, he got an “F.”
Not exactly an academically stellar group I was hanging with, by Haley standards.
Sen. Courson of course got a “gentleman’s” C.
Gentlemen don’t have to get “A”s. Leave that to those going into trade, or the professions…
C = Compensation? Career Politician? Cronyism?
It doesn’t even give you a second of concern that they abuse the retirement system? As I said before, the bar is set REAL low.
No, it doesn’t bother me a bit — which is why I had Cindi Scoppe write about it all those years, and brought it to your attention again recently…
Where on Earth would you get the idea that I don’t oppose that system?
Oh, yeah, I forgot — if an individual has a flaw, or is part of something flawed, you dismiss him completely, and disregard anything else about them. And you think I’m horrible for not doing the same.
Well, let me tell you something, Doug… if I reacted to people the way you do (I’m supposing you would have me snort in contempt and brush past John and Nikki when I run into them unexpectedly, or only interact with them to grill them about the retirement system, now that all of a sudden other people are paying attention to something I’ve been telling them about for years). Well, I won’t live my life that way, and if I did, I couldn’t possibly have done my job. Because if you can’t have normal human interactions with people, you never find out anything (beyond the words in a document, or recited at a press conference), and you have zero context for the few things you do learn, so you don’t know what they mean.
This speaks to something else that I don’t suppose you can ever understand, because your life isn’t like that.
Liking someone — as I like Courson and Setzler — doesn’t add up to not treating them professionally. Which means criticizing them when they do something wrong. And the opposite works, too. Someone may irritate me every time I see him, but I’m going to write about him fairly.
An immediate example is that I like, and have always liked, Nikki Haley. But you see the things I write.
Usually, the way this works with politicians of any experience (which is one tiny reason why I prefer them to the ever-renewed novices you automatically prefer) is that they accept this. You criticize them, they understand that it’s just you doing your job with intellectual honesty, and they continue to be cordial.
Sometimes, that breaks down — to my great regret (not only on a personal level, but professionally it can be most inconvenient when an important source stops talking to you). All communications got cut off between Jim Hodges and me when he was governor (it happened to a lesser extent with Sanford; with Haley, and her staff run by young, inexperienced non-South Carolinians, it’s more like with Hodges). I blame that largely on Kevin Geddings, but in any case, it happened. From the time I hired Nina Brook away from him (she had been a sort of bridge), all communications were cut off.
I regretted that, and not just because it was a hindrance to me in doing my job. But that didn’t keep me from heaping on the criticism, and the breach just got wider.
Now, I’m happy to say, Jim and I get along fine. We’re not the best of buds, but we have a very cordial relationship. But it was pretty unpleasant back then. Still, I did my job. Perhaps a bit too well, in the opinions of some. I ran into a professor at Francis Marion the other night who said he always respected my work at The State, but he never agreed with me. “Never?” I asked. (I seldom hear “never;” usually it’s “I didn’t always agree,” to which I say, “I’d be worried about you if you did.”) I probed a bit further, and it turns out that he simply disagreed strongly with our opposition to Jim Hodges’ lottery.
Doug, I’ve spent my career opposing the very foundations of our system of government, and its culture, since I arrived in South Carolina. I have done so with greater insistence and vehemence than anyone in this state, with the possible exception of Cindi Scoppe. Part of that has been regularly informing you, the people of South Carolina, about just how outrageous the legislative retirement system is.
Just because we have a governor who only pays attention to national media (because her focus is not on SC), and therefore only decides to push to change it after it’s in USAToday, doesn’t mean I should suddenly start hating anyone who has anything to do with that system.
And I hope you’ll forgive me if I get a tad disgusted that people suddenly have this at the fronts of their minds NOW, after I (or rather Cindi has, at my direction) have been telling them about it for years.
I get it now – it’s a totally flawed system full of honorable people. They can’t fix it.
And maybe the pension issue is in the front of people’s minds now for a simple reason – the power of The State newspaper to cause change was not there. Maybe because the paper was too afraid to offend people instead of being “professional”.
Doug, you’re almost there. It’s a deeply flawed system full of people — people of all kinds… honorable, dishonorable, in between. People.
And you missed the part where The State wrote over and over again. Cindi would tell people, in very strong columns, people would get stirred up, then they’d forget, then we’d say, “time to tell them again,” and we would…