Did anyone pay attention to the State of the State?

Henry 2021

I sort of forgot about it, what with a POTUS getting impeached for the second time and all. And other stuff.

Normally, I’d want to watch and see what sort of excuses Henry is offering for his stewardship of our state, but I was busy and to the extent that I was aware of news, other things were shouting louder.

Once, those were Big Wednesdays for me. They took up a lot of my day and night. My colleagues and I would go to lunch at the governor’s house to be briefed on the speech and receive our copies, and then we’d go back to the office and read the copies and argue over it, then one of us would write the editorial, and the writer and I would stay at work through the speech that night to see if we needed to amend the edit before letting the page go. Which we sometimes did.

All this effort was fitting, since the overwhelming majority of what we wrote was about South Carolina and the issues before it.

But now… I’ve done what I could to help South Carolina get committed, rational leadership that actually cares about said issues — all those years on the editorial board, and those few months in 2018 more directly — and just kept running into the same brick walls. It’s hard even to get people to pay the slightest attention. And now I don’t have the soapbox I once did, so… I don’t follow every word said in SC politics the way I used to.

Especially not yesterday.

What about you? Tell me you hung on every word, and offer some cogent thoughts about what was said, and make me feel guilty for having missed it. Beyond that, I’m just curious: Was anyone paying attention?

9 thoughts on “Did anyone pay attention to the State of the State?

  1. Brad Warthen Post author

    By the way, to remind you, I like Henry. Personally. He’s not a malevolent jerk like his master in the White House.

    The problem with him is the line we kept using during the campaign in 2018: The difference between Henry and James was this: Henry wanted to KEEP the job of governor; James wanted to DO the job of governor.

    I get reminded of that pretty regularly.

    But if you watched the speech last night, maybe you can set me straight — tell me about all Henry’s wonderful, dynamic ideas for our state, and how he’s going to lead the charge on them.

    Give me a pleasant surprise…

  2. Brad Warthen Post author

    Actually, I did have ONE thing to say about the State of the State yesterday, hours before the speech:


    But I didn’t watch Mia’s speech either, of course…

    It would have been great to see Walt, though. It’s always great to see Walt.

    Here he is back in 2018, speaking at one of our stops on the very last day of the campaign:

    Walt in 2018

  3. Barry

    I didn’t watch a second of it.

    His COVID leadership has been so pathetic I’ve just tuned him out. He’s irrelevant.

    Probably the first time in over a decade I haven’t watched it.

  4. Ken

    As far as I’m concerned, McMaster is guilty of negligent homicide for his handling of the Covid crisis.

  5. CSH

    I certainly did. As the mother (and daughter, Granddaughter and niece-x3) of SC public school teachers and the wife of a Santee Cooper retiree, he is a disgrace and an embarrassment.
    And now, after several hours trying to get a vaccine for my 82 year old mother, I want to yank his ridiculous long hair.
    I honestly can’t think of anything he has done right.

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