Category Archives: Character

Yes, that’s what we have experience for

While I was out with the flu, we had a good-news-bad-news situation arise here in South Carolina.

The good news was that Jim DeMint was leaving the Senate.

The bad news was that, incredible as it still seems every time I’m reminded of the fact, Nikki Haley is actually the governor of our state.

But looking on the bright side even of that, Gov. Haley inadvertently explained something important yesterday (while meaning to say the opposite):

COLUMBIA, SC — Gov. Nikki Haley said Thursday (sic — since this was in this morning’s paper, I’m assuming she actually said it Wednesday) that political experience is not a requirement for the successor to resigning U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint.

Haley will name that successor, and two of the governor’s five reported finalists for the coveted seat – former first lady Jenny Sanford and state agency head Catherine Templeton – have not held elected office.

“It is not about time in office, which I think is the wrong way of looking at government,” said Haley, who was a political newcomer when she won a state House seat in 2004. “It’s the effect and the result they can show in office.”…

Focus on that last sentence: “It’s the effect and the result they can show in office.”

Indeed. In fact, in deciding who might be suited to public office, you have no better guide than what you have been able to observe that person doing in public office in the past. Nothing else is truly useful.

Of course, if she were to elaborate, the governor would no doubt say that what she meant was “the effect and the result they SAY they can show in office,” since with populist ideologues of her ilk, it’s all about the talk and the theory.

But no practical person gives what a candidate says he will do even a hundredth the weight of what the observer has actually seen that candidate do under real-world conditions.

That’s the test.

A reasonable person would not insist upon experience in a school board or city-council candidate, although it’s nice to have. One can excuse the lack of it in a state legislative candidate, if one doesn’t have a better alternative. But the United States Senate? Jimmy Stewart’s Mr. Smith aside, when you have a universe of qualified people out there to choose from, there is NO excuse for choosing a public-office novice. None whatsoever.

And for any who don’t understand the difference, experience running a business — or running your husband’s gubernatorial campaigns, or occupying a government job to which your friend the governor appointed you and in which you have not under any stretch of the imagination distinguished yourself — are not the same as having been elected by the people to public office and spent observable time in that fishbowl, discharging the duties of that office.

South Carolina’s U.S. House delegation is nearly full of relative neophytes (the governor’s kind of people) who at least have spent a couple of years each in an office that is a reasonable precursor to the Senate. Beyond that, the Republican Party has in the past generation produced a large number of potential senators with better resumes that that.

Under the circumstances, there is no excuse at all for choosing inexperience.

What do YOU think of John Brown, all these years later?

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I used to see this original mural in the state capitol in Topeka when I supervised the people who covered state politics for the Wichita paper. It seems to me to sum up Brown pretty well.

I’ve learned a lot of new things, and been reminded of things I once knew, in reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, the latter part of which inspired the movie “Lincoln.” (I’m not nearly to that part yet; last night I read up through Lincoln’s inauguration in 1861.)

One of them was the radical differences of opinion that existed about John Brown at the time. From my 21st-century perspective, I tend to think of who Brown was and what he meant as being a pretty settled matter. It is in my mind, anyway. But of course, at the time, he was perhaps the most extreme litmus test of attitudes ever to occur in U.S. history.

Today, I perused a review of another book, The Tribunal: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid, which consists of contemporary writings about Brown from authors including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, Henry Ward Beecher, Jefferson Davis, Herman Melville, Stephen Douglas, Louisa May Alcott, Victor Hugo and Karl Marx.

Emerson saw Brown as a Christ-like “saint” and Douglass hailed him as “our noblest American hero.” His detractors saw him as “a deranged fanatic whose violent actions made civil war inevitable.”

I always thought of him as a deranged fanatic who just happened to be right about slavery. What he did was inexcusable, however laudable his motivations.

What the Union did in the Civil War was justified not only by the nobility of the cause, but by the fact that it was a case of the duly constituted authority of the country taking action against violent insurrection. But what Brown did was itself violent, murderous insurrection, not in any way supportable under the rule of law, and therefore unjustifiable. (There’s another measurement suggested by Just War theory, which is, Were the goals of his actions achievable? His most decidedly were not.)

A person can have the right idea on a burning issue and still be mad. A person can have noble goals and do despicable things in the name of them. To me, that’s always summed up Brown.

Your thoughts?

New blog civility standard

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As most of y’all know, I have a double standard in trying to foster civility on this blog — I allow people who use their real names on their comments greater leeway in their comments. Although there are things that go too far even to allow named commenters to say.

The overall goal is to create a welcoming space where we can have lively discussions of public affairs, without the ad hominem attacks that discourage many thoughtful people from participating in blogs.

Several of my real-name commenters complained that I wasn’t being strict enough with the anonymous folks — allowing them to bait everyone and get discussions off course. I’ll accept service on that. (My only defense, or explanation, is that in deleting all the way worse comments from those same anonymous folks, I sort of get desensitized, so that something that seems over the boundaries to you seems mild by comparison to me. Also, all those years of getting nasty comments aimed at me via mail, phone and other means sort of built up my calluses to where it’s a little harder to offend me than it is many other folks.)

Michael Rodgers suggested a new standard:

If you wish to continue to have anonymous commenters, I suggest you actually implement your policy by requiring the following two things from every anonymous commenter:

(1) Every comment must be on topic.
(2) No comment may be about other people’s personal or professional life, except if such comment is respectful and on point.

That sounded worth trying to me. (But I should add, Michael, that in a perfect world I wouldn’t allow anonymity at all, but I reluctantly concluded years ago that I’d be eliminating a lot of thoughtful, good-faith commenters if I didn’t.)

Then, Kathryn Fenner added a codicil:

How about no personal remarks of any kind towards identified people by unidentified people? Seems fair to me.

So I’ve decided to try those suggestions, and see how it works out.

Everyone should consider this their official notice. I realize that not everyone will see it, as people engage the blog different ways. But for a time, I will also email anyone who inadvertently runs afoul of the new policy — assuming I have a valid email address for that person.

Yours in fostering constructive conversations…

‘Lincoln’ is one of those rare films you really must see

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The nitty-gritty of greatness.

Over the weekend, I experienced the polar opposites of cinematic achievement: First, AT&T was having a free weekend for premium channels, and while I recorded a number of films I expect to enjoy, one of those channels also showed David Lynch’s execrable “Dune.” I had not watched it since that bitterly disappointing night in 1984 in a Jackson, TN, theater when it first came out. Those few minutes I watched over the weekend convinced me that it wasn’t just that my expectations had been so high at the time. This actually was the worst film I’ve ever seen in my life. Every line of dialogue, every visual touch, every gratuitous plot change from the book (“weirding modules”? Are you kidding me?), was so bad it had to be as intentional as those revolting pustules the make-up people put all over the Baron Harkonnen’s face (something else that wasn’t in the book). Every aspect of it was horrible.

So it was very nice, Sunday evening, to wipe that away by seeing one of the finest new motion pictures I’ve seen in years: “Lincoln.”

Everyone should see this. Every American should, anyway, because it tells so much about who we are and what led to our being what we are. And it tells us something I think we’ve forgotten, which is that great things can be accomplished through our system of representative democracy, even when the barriers and stakes are far greater than anything we face in Washington today.

I could go on and on about the way Daniel Day Lewis inhabits Abraham Lincoln and eerily embodies everything I’ve read about him, or how Spielberg has honed his craft to the very limits of film’s ability to tell a coherent story, while simultaneously making you feel like you’re looking through a time portal at the actual events.

But I’ll just zero in on one thing that contributed to making it so good: The political realism. Most specifically, the way the film not only avoids the temptation to make everything appear to be morally black or white, but rubs your nose in the messiness of real decisions made in a real world.

The main narrative has to do with Lincoln, after his second inauguration, pulling out all the stops to get the House to pass the 13th Amendment, which made slavery unconstitutional. To get the two-thirds, he needs at least 20 more votes even if every Republican supports the measure. This means not only peeling off some Democrats, each defection like pulling teeth out of a dragon, but somehow keeping the peace among the radicals (such as Thaddeus Stevens, played by Tommy Lee Jones) and conservatives (such as Preston Blair, played by Hal Holbrook) in his own party.

Every stratagem is used, starting with the hiring of some sleazy political operatives (I was amazed to realize after I saw the film that that was James Spader playing lobbyist W.N. Bilbo) to employ every trick they can come up with, starting with raw political patronage and moving on from there. (A key part of the strategy involved offering jobs in the second Lincoln administration to lame-duck members of the other party who had just lost their bids for re-election, but not left office yet.) The Lincoln team even stoops to a half-truth — told by Honest Abe himself — at a critical moment to keep the coalition from blowing up.

It’s very, very messy. No plaster saints here, and feet of clay all over the place. Yet through it all, the ultimate nobility of what is being done, in spite of all the odds, shines through irresistibly. We see how politics, with all its warts, can accomplish magnificent things. At a moment when Democrats and Republicans can’t even seem to do a simple thing like keep from going over a “fiscal cliff” with their hands around each others’ throats, we see how politicians (and they evince all of the worst things we think of when we use that term) can accomplish something great, even when (or perhaps, because?) the stakes are so much greater.

This film not only doesn’t flinch at moral complexity; it wallows in it, to wonderful effect. An excellent example is the scene in which Lincoln muses aloud before his team about all the convoluted, mutually contradictory, logical and constitutional boxes he put himself and the nation in when he decided to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. And the tension builds as we come to fully understand why the Amendment — which would fulfill the dream of freedom that the Proclamation could not — must be passed NOW, before the war ended. And we share Lincoln’s intense, focused urgency.

No significant aspect of Lincoln’s public character is missing from this portrait, including the delight that both he and his audiences took in his jokes. (But not all the people all of the time — Secretary of War Edwin Stanton storms out rather than listen to a funny story at a tense moment.) And at the end, after all the deal-making and maneuvering and fiddling and pushing and pulling and playing to venality and petty egos — one is left believing that Abraham Lincoln was a greater man than any marble statue could ever convey. I don’t know how to explain to you how the film achieves that; it just does.

I suppose there will be some people who just don’t get it — black-and-white, concrete thinkers who will be disturbed at the honest portayal of the messiness of politics as it was practiced in 1865. The neo-Confederates who think the Lincoln would originally have kept slavery if he could preserve the Union is some sort of great “gotcha” won’t get it. Nor will those like the local political activist who, a few days ago, said on Facebook that “Lincoln was not a good man” because his attitudes about racial equality weren’t a perfect match for those of a 21st-century “progressive.”

But seeing “Lincoln” may be among the best chances they’ll ever have to see that reality is broader, and often more inspiring, than their narrow perspectives on it.

No-holds-barred 19th-century lobbying in all its grubby glory.

Is Gov. Nikki Haley growing in face of crisis?

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Cindi Scoppe first raised the question in her column yesterday headlined, “Is SC computer breach transforming Gov. Nikki Haley?” The column was made possible by one of the first signs of new maturity in our governor — a phone conversation with editorial writers (as opposed to her usual pep rally with her admirers on her Facebook page), to engage in actual dialogue about the Department of Revenue hacking mess:

… (F)rom her first public utterances, Gov. Nikki Haley insisted that there was nothing anyone in state government could have done to prevent the breach.

Even more troubling were her assurances that weren’t so absurd on their face. She said that hacking experts told her thieves usually use stolen data within six to eight months and that “Usually after a year, they don’t see anything,” but security experts say that while that’s true with credit card numbers, just the opposite is true with Social Security numbers. She insisted that leaving Social Security numbers unencrypted was an “industry standard” in the banking industry, but some banking officials disputed that. She said other states didn’t encrypt their data, but failed to mention that our go-to comparison neighbors, North Carolina and Georgia, do.

I’ve never been comfortable with the governor’s tendency to speak in absolutes, of her black-and-white sense of certainty. But there’s a world of difference between being careless or misleading when defending yourself from political attacks or engaging in policy debates and doing the same thing when what you say affects how 4.25 million current and former South Carolinians make potentially life-changing decisions about their personal financial security.

So it was a relief earlier this month when, confronted by comments to the contrary by an investigator hired by the state, the governor told reporters that she didn’t yet know enough to say whether anyone could have prevented the breach. Of course, she also insisted that she had never said otherwise. Still it was a start.

Then during a conference call with editorial writers on Friday, Ms. Haley gave an uncharacteristically tentative answer to a question about the hacking and added: “Understand that I can’t speak in absolutes because I feel like I learn something new every day.”

“I hesitate on saying whether there was something internal or external, because the one thing I think I’ve learned in this is you can’t talk in absolutes,” she said a few minutes later, noting that after she thought she knew everything about the hacking, “the second day they added more, the third day they added more … .”

Yes, as Cindi noted, the governor still doesn’t know how to acknowledge her mistakes. She follows more the Orwellian approach of adopting a new line and insisting it has always been her line. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia…

But let’s embrace the encouraging new signs. This is a major development, for Nikki Haley to base her perceptions of the world on actual facts and experience, rather than her ideological, self-affirming preconceptions. For an unsullied ideologue like our governor, for whom truth has been whatever aphorisms help to get her elected, to start learning a little more each day, and recognize she’s doing so, and actually apply the lessons she’s learning, makes for a great day in South Carolina, compared to what we’ve known.

After trying out her new approach on editorialists, our governor has gone public with it:

Columbia, SC — As more South Carolinians learned that hackers hold their tax return data, Gov. Nikki Haley admitted Tuesday that the state did not do enough to protect their sensitive financial information and accepted the resignation of the agency director in the middle of the controversy.

“Could South Carolina have done a better job? Absolutely, or we would not be standing here,” said Haley, who had insisted in the first days after revealing the cyber attack that nothing could have prevented the breach.

Hackers possess Social Security and other data belonging to 5.7 million people – 3.8 million taxpayers and their 1.9 million dependents, Haley said. The number of businesses affected has risen slightly to nearly 700,000. All of the stolen tax data dating back to 1998 was unencrypted.

The theft at the S.C. Department of Revenue is the largest known hacking at a state agency nationwide…

Note how she can’t resist using the word “absolutely,” even in connection with an assertion that is the opposite of what she’d said earlier (which means either it’s not absolute, or she was absolutely wrong earlier).

But hey, when your child starts to speak, do you castigate her for immature pronunciation? This is a start, and I’m inclined to celebrate it, and hope our governor continues her journey out of her hothouse bubble and keeps engaging the world as it actually is.

Romney campaign, other Republicans still blaming Christie

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Gov. Christie on SNL over the weekend.

There’s an interesting NYT story today about how Chris Christie got a chilly reception at the Republican Governor’s Association meeting in Vegas. It also goes into just how much the Romney campaign people blame him for their loss. Some experts:

But in the days after the storm, Mr. Christie and his advisers were startled to hear from out-of-state donors to Mr. Romney, who had little interest in the hurricane and viewed him solely as a campaign surrogate, demanding to know why he had stood so close to the president on a tarmac. One of them questioned why he had boarded Mr. Obama’s helicopter, according to people briefed on the conversations.

It did not help that Mr. Romney had not called Mr. Christie during those first few days, people close to the governor say.

The tensions followed Mr. Christie to the annual meeting of the Republican Governors Association in Las Vegas last week. At a gathering where he had expected to be celebrated, Mr. Christie was repeatedly reminded of how deeply he had offended fellow Republicans.

“I will not apologize for doing my job,” he emphatically told one of them in a hotel hallway at the ornate Wynn Resort…

Inside the Romney campaign, there is little doubt that Mr. Christie’s expressions of admiration for the president, coupled with ubiquitous news coverage of the hurricane’s aftermath, raised Mr. Obama’s standing at a crucial moment.

During a lengthy autopsy of their campaign, Mr. Romney’s political advisers pored over data showing that an unusually large number of voters who remained undecided until the end of the campaign backed Mr. Obama. Many of them cited the storm as a major factor in their decision, according to a person involved in the discussion.

“Christie,” a Romney adviser said, “allowed Obama to be president, not a politician.”…

Gee, folks, do you think it could be, as this story suggests, something as simple as the fact that Obama was taking an interest in what was happening in New Jersey, and his opponent was not?

Did YOU think Romney was a ‘poopy-head’?

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That’s what Grover Norquist says President Obama portrayed him as:

Grover Norquist, founder and president of Americans For Tax Reform, has a new theory about why President Barack Obama won — he portrayed Mitt Romney as a “poopy head.”

“The president was committed; elected on the basis that he was not Romney and Romney was a poopy head and you should vote against Romney and he won by two points,” Norquist said on CBS’ “This Morning” Monday. “But he didn’t make the case that we should have higher taxes and higher spending, he kind of sounded like the opposite.”…

This was a neat way, for Mr. Norquist, of distracting us from the fact that exit polls show that most voters last Tuesday want to raise taxes on higher-income individuals.

Petraeus quits over extramarital affair

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Well, this is shocking, and sad, news:

CIA Director David Petraeus resigned Friday, citing an extramarital affair and “extremely poor judgement.”

In a letter released to the CIA work force on Friday afternoon, Petraeus disclosed the affair, and wrote: “Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours.”

President Obama “graciously accepted my resignation,” he wrote…

I’m bracing myself for an onslaught of bad jokes playing on the word “surge.”

This is a sad thing for all involved. Petraeus has done a great deal for his country, and it’s terrible for his career to end in such an ignominious manner.

I’ll even refrain from noting that this is the way an honorable man behaves when he has fallen, by contrast with such people as Bill Clinton and Mark Sanford, who stay in office and drag the world through the sordidness with them.

OK, maybe I won’t refrain. But I won’t go on about it…

A very gracious message, considering

Thomas Jefferson as unrepentant slaveholder

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The usual take on the man best known for writing that “All men are created equal” has been that he owned slaves, but… after which you choose your excuse:

He was really conflicted about it.
He just didn’t think freeing them would be practical.
He was a particularly benevolent master.
It’s not fair to judge someone who was born into that system, and knew no other, by modern ethical standards.

The excuses may bear revisiting in light of a new book, Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves, byHenry Wiencek. Here’s an excerpt from a review of the book this morning in The Wall Street Journal:

The strongest sections of the book track Mr. Wiencek’s close reading of Jefferson’s estate records, where he found a coldblooded taskmaster who ruthlessly exploited child labor and overworked his slaves as a matter of course. Jefferson sometimes countenanced brutal punishment, including the whipping of boys as young as 10 or 11 in his highly profitable nail factory, “whose profits paid the mansion’s grocery bills,” Mr. Wiencek writes. Despite Jefferson’s occasional assertions that slavery would one day wither away, he never lifted a finger to weaken it as an institution, even when implored to do so by friends and allies who regarded slavery as an affront to the values for which patriots had fought the Revolutionary War.

In his youth, Jefferson did hold antislavery convictions. And in his earliest draft of the Declaration of Independence, he may well have had slaves in mind when he declared that all men were created equal.(Southerners were sufficiently worried that they tried unsuccessfully to have the word “men” changed to “freemen.”) By 1784, however, in “Notes on the State of Virginia,” he expressed in graceful but cringe-inducing prose a deep personal distaste for blacks, who, he asserted, smelled wrong, copulated with apes in Africa, and were incapable of intellectual achievement.

Whatever moral ambivalence he may have felt toward the institution of slavery he overcame when he sat down and did the numbers for Monticello. In 1792, he calculated precisely what his slaves were worth. Mr. Wiencek writes: “What Jefferson set out clearly for the first time was that he was making a 4 percent profit every year on the birth of black children. The enslaved children were yielding him a bonanza, a perpetual human dividend at compound interest.” To intimates, Jefferson described slavery matter-of-factly as a good investment strategy, advising one friend that if his family had cash to spare, “every farthing of it [should be] laid out in land and negroes.”…

Actually, I was a bit surprised that Jefferson even handled the books for his estate. I supposed he followed the practice of the landed gentry of having a “man of business” deal with all that. I had supposed he was detached from the enterprises that gave him his wealth, devoting all his time to politics, science and music. I had read that he was a terrible money manager, embodying the Southern planter’s typical indifference to debt, spending above his means on books, scientific instruments and other things that scratched his intellectual itch.

I supposed that, to paraphrase John Travolta (on being a loan shark) in “Get Shorty,” he was never that into it. But supposing he remained above the details of running his estate was just my way of offering him another excuse, I guess.

Mr. Wiencek’s premise seems to be that he was not only his own man of business, but a particularly hard-eyed one, especially on the subject of slavery.

Not that I was ever prepared to give him a pass on that. There are a number of reasons why, among the Founders, I have always preferred John Adams to Jefferson, and have resented that Jefferson was in their day, and still is, more celebrated and revered. One of those reasons was that Adams was adamantly opposed to slavery, while Jefferson, high-minded words aside, was a major practitioner of that evil.

This book should give us all, including those of you who admire Mr. Jefferson more than I do, something new to consider.

Gov. Chris Christie’s effusive praise of Obama

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Here’s something you don’t see every day:

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey took an unscheduled break from partisan attacks on the President Obama on Tuesday to praise him, repeatedly and effusively, for leading the federal government’s response to the storm.

“Wonderful,” “excellent” and “outstanding” were among the adjectives Mr. Christie chose, a change-up from his remarks last week that Mr. Obama was “blindly walking around the White House looking for a clue.”

Some of Mr. Christie’s Republican brethren have already begun grumbling about his gusher of praise at such a crucial time in the election.

But the governor seemed unconcerned. When Fox News asked him about the possibility that Mitt Romney might take a disaster tour of New Jersey, Mr. Christie replied:

I have no idea, nor am I the least bit concerned or interested. I have a job to do in New Jersey that is much bigger than presidential politics. If you think right now I give a damn about presidential politics, then you don’t know me.

A governor who cares more about serving his (or her) state more than national partisan politics? Imagine that. If you live in South Carolina, you might find that difficult, but try…

Why can’t the actual candidates be this grown-up?

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Perhaps it was my intimidating, leonine "Sir William" visage that kept them in line: Nathan Ballentine, your correspondent, Bakari Sellers, Matt Moore, Amanda Loveday

Back in my fire-breathing days when I thought it was possible to completely transform South Carolina right NOW — say, the year that I spent directing the “Power Failure” project, 1991 — I used to rail against the politeness that characterized public life in our state.

Not that politeness per se was a bad thing. My beef was that people were so reluctant to confront each other about anything that nothing ever changed for the better. I was a sort of Rhett Butler railing against a culture that was too busy being gentlemanly to roll up its sleeves and improve our lot.

Now, we have other problems. In fact, too often these days our political problem is less that we don’t get up the drive to move forward, and more a case of being buffeted by all sorts of forces — many of them anything but genteel — that would push us backwards. Some SC politicians seem more intent on copying the behavior of Reality TV contestants than Ashley Wilkes.

In any case, I bring all this up to say that sometimes, I can value what remains of the gentility of South Carolina political discourse.

One of those times was Tuesday night, when I moderated a panel discussion over at Richland County Public Library.

The panelists were Rep. Nathan Ballentine, Rep. Bakari Sellers, state Republican Party Executive Director Matt Moore, and his Democratic counterpart, Amanda Loveday.

These people were there to argue for either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, from a local perspective. All were eminently qualified to do so, and applied themselves to the task with gusto. No one missed a chance to score a rhetorical point, and no one was shy about strongly presenting his or her party’s position. Occasionally, they did so with humor.

But here’s the thing: They did it like grownups. They did not interrupt each other. They did not jab fingers at each other, or act like they were on the verge of throwing down. They did not make sarcastic remarks intended to tear each other down. When I told them their time was up, they cooperated.

Which should not be remarkable, but is so, in a world in which the men vying for president and vice president of the United States conduct themselves like five-year-olds who have consumed a whole box of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs.

These people were not shrinking violets. People who know their backgrounds might expect a free-for-all. Matt Moore used to be executive director of the S.C. Club for Growth, the purest expression of Mark Sanford ideology in our state. Amanda Loveday works for Dick Harpootlian, who seems to embrace a sort of lifelong quest to make our politics less civil. Nathan Ballentine is a very conservative Republican who was probably Nikki Haley’s closest ally when she was in the House. Bakari is the son of Cleveland Sellers, the activist famously scapegoated and jailed after the Orangeburg Massacre.

Not a wallflower among them, but all were perfectly courtly as they strongly made their points. (Wait a sec — can a lady, technically, be “courtly”? If so, Amanda was.)

At one point in the middle of it all, I paused to thank the panelists for conducting themselves better than the national candidates they were speaking for, the people who would presume to lead the world. The audience applauded.

Obama debate performance: Just ONE cup of coffee too much

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Again today, The Onion captures the essence:

Obama Takes Out Romney With Mid-Debate Drone Attack

BOCA RATON, FL—Saying that the high-value target represented a major threat to their most vital objectives, Obama administration officials confirmed tonight that former governor Mitt Romney was killed by a predator drone while attending a presidential debate at Lynn University.

Sources said the drone attack, which occurred at approximately 10:10 p.m. Monday night, obliterated Romney in the middle of a statement on Chinese-purchased U.S. securities, sending his dismembered limbs and internal organs into the audience and leaving a smoking pile of charred flesh and bone in his seat.

“The information we have received from military personnel in the field indicate that tonight’s drone strike took out Mitt Romney, a former businessman the Obama administration has long considered a serious danger, especially in past few weeks,” said White House press secretary Jay Carney, describing the operation as “an unmitigated success.” “The president personally authorized the strike earlier this evening, and as soon as we had visual confirmation that the target in the drone’s sights was, in fact, Mitt Romney, we eliminated him.”…

So maybe President Obama didn’t quite go that far last night, but he was certainly on the attack to a degree that often seemed, to me, unseemly.

By the way, I tried to post this last night, but ran into technical problems — I had left my laptop’s mouse at the office, and my wife’s desktop internet connection was running so slow I figured I’d never get to bed. So here’s what I wanted to share, which was my Twitter feed from the debate. These started at 9:21 p.m. As usual, all Tweets are by me except where another screen name is indicated:

Obama needs to chill. Looks desperate. Nobody wants an Interrupter in Chief…
The Fix ‏@TheFix Worth noting: Obama has attacked Romney on every question thus far. #lynndebate
Peter Beinart ‏@PeterBeinart The egyptian govt needs binders of women to fully develop
Romney is coming across as calmer, which, when we’re talking national security, can sometimes count more than the words being said.
Yeah, Madeleine Albright redux! “@politico: Obama: “America remains the one, indispensable nation.” #debates”
@howardweaver: @BradWarthen that one redux’es WAY farther back than Albright.
Yeah, but I liked her cover version…
In Godfather terms, Romney is playing the Man of Reason tonight. Obama at times seems to be shooting for Crazy Joey Gallo…
OK, I’ve heard the president say he “ended the war in Iraq” too many times. He didn’t do that; the Surge did.
The thing is, I generally approve of the job Obama’s done in the world. But he’s not selling it very well tonight…
If Obama loses this election, and does so because of this debate, I wonder, will it be because he just had ONE CUP OF COFFEE TOO MUCH TODAY?
That’s what I wanna hear! RESOLVE! “@DepressedDarth: I will build 5 new Star Destroyers if I’m elected president. #finaldebate”
grannykate ‏@katespalmer @BradWarthen Surge changed tide. POTUS brought troops home
So would McCain have. Even Bush was on track to do that…
Almost an hour into this, and neither Obama nor Romney has indicated what he would do about Quemoy and Matsu. This is unacceptable.
Slate ‏@Slate RT @fmanjoo: Here’s the place for Obama to say, “Ask Osama Bin Laden if I apologized. Oh, that’s right, you can’t. Because he’s dead.”
Yeah, kinda what I thought… “@washingtonpost: FACT CHECK: Obama did not go on “apology tour” http://wapo.st/SjFXqM #debate”
In what alternative universe did this “apology tour” take place? I totally missed it. Yet so many GOP tweeters assert it as article of faith
The president’s calmed down some. Hasn’t jumped anxiously down Gov. Romney’s throat in awhile.
No, Mr. President, we were no longer “bogged down” in Iraq when you took office. Not after the Surge. Stick to the good things you HAVE done
SunnyPhilips ‏@SunnyPhilips Sad many Americans would rather watch HoneyBooBoo or other trash TV than debates impacting their country’s leadership.#theirvotecountstoo
OK, I give up: What’s a Honey Boo-Boo?
SunnyPhilips ‏@SunnyPhilips Ha. You’ve made my day.
Romney’s strategy tonight has been not to commit major errors tonight. No big strategy proposals, just no screwing up. Generally working…
Nicholas Kristof ‏@NickKristof Candidates take a break from bashing each other to jointly bash China. 太过分了!
If Obama would blame China for Gamecocks’ two losses in a row, he could win South Carolina.
Ramez Naam ‏@ramez China holds only about 8.2% of US federal debt. Most is held by Americans. http://bit.ly/kaOUzI
Really? I’m not seeing that… “@ebertchicago: Obama looks cool. Romney looks sweaty. Will post-mortems agree? #debate”
Scott Huffmon ‏@WinthropPoll Foreign Policy debate: Good thing there are no issues with South America or most of Africa or Europe to be dealt with !
Obama mentions Pacific strategy. About time we got into mega strategy. Still no mention of Quemoy and Matsu…
My Navy Brat nervous system is still twitching indignantly over the horses and bayonets thing…
Nicholas Kristof ‏@NickKristof Foreign policy debate spent more time on Israel than on Europe, India and Africa combined. That’s not our world.
Aaron Gould Sheinin ‏@asheinin Serious tweet: Seeing lots of Republicans calling the debate a draw.
That’s because they wanted their guy to be as combative as Obama was — which frankly was NOT a good thing…
I liked that they shook hands civilly and smiled at each other at the end. How pitiful is it that I’m clinging to something that small?
Dan Gillmor ‏@dangillmor If Romney can persuade the public that he’s the peace candidate — there isn’t one — then the American people are truly out to lunch.
But he might with some, purely on demeanor.
Anyone else think Romney was going particularly after women tonight, rocking back and not being Mr. Aggressive?
David GregoryVerified ‏@davidgregory The President is determined to pick a fight tonight; Romney determined to avoid it. What does that say about where each camp sees the race?
A lot.

That last one posted at 10:50 p.m.

So… what did y’all think — both during, and upon reflection? I haven’t had much time for reflection, so I leave you for now with the stream-of-consciousness.

The Onion’s bold endorsement of SC native son John Edwards

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Gary Karr, ex-reporter, ex-press secretary to Gov. David Beasley, brought this to my attention Friday (Tweeting, “I bet my friends @bradwarthen and@cindiscoppe are envious.”), but I didn’t have a chance to read it until Saturday night, backstage at “Pride and Prejudice” in Finlay Park. And I was busy then.

So I’m just getting around to passing it on to y’all.

Everyone knows what I thought of John Edwards way before the sex scandal, and any of you who remain among his admirers will no doubt be saddened to learn that my opinion has not improved. But then, I’m a stick-in-the-mud, and lack the bold vision of The Onion‘s editorial board.

This seems to mark a departure for that revered organization. They used to be satisfied just to be funny. This goes to a whole new level. It’s positively Swiftian. And it makes anything I ever wrote about the guy seem almost complimentary.

The core argument for the former U.S. Senator (and, we must not forget our shame, winner of the 2004 SC Democratic primary — y’all remember I told y’all to vote for Joe Lieberman, but did y’all listen?), begins as follows:

Mr. Edwards’ career has not been without its missteps. He has, like all of us at one time or another, made his share of mistakes. His opposition to a nationwide military draft, for instance. In addition, his support for the expansion of immigrants’ rights has angered this newspaper’s editorial board. And yet at each turn, Mr. Edwards has recovered in full, with two feet planted firmly on the ground and his dignity and political acumen intact. He is a man who has learned from adversity, knowing, as any former attorney does, that the strongest individuals are forged through trials by fire.

Furthermore, Mr. Edwards conducted a protracted extramarital affair with a younger woman while his wife was dying of cancer, and we like that he did this. Our reasons for liking that he did this are tenfold:

1. It was a brave thing to do, given the possible consequences

2. The woman in question was more attractive than Mr. Edwards’ wife

3. He did what he did without compromising his ideals, at least not to any illegal extent

4. He enjoyed himself, and good for him

5. The Onion believes sex is a natural and healthy biological function

6. Women have a weakness for men in powerful positions, and Mr. Edwards expertly exploited that weakness…

… and so forth. Be sure to read the whole thing. The logic is seamless, and who can say them nay? By these standards, there is no better choice on Nov. 6 than John Edwards.

Think about that as you watch tonight’s debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. It should make both of them look better.

Words from another time, another universe

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Back in the days of typewriters, dictionaries were a great obstacle to my developing what my detractors call “time-management skills.” I couldn’t look up one word without running across another that fascinated me, which in turn caused me to look up another, then three more, and one and on, each word opening the floodgates of dopamine in my brain as I utterly forgot what I had set out to do.

The Web is a dictionary taken to the nth power.

Today, I stuck up for our Founders’ vision of a republic rather than a democracy, which caused Bud to say fine, if that’s what you want, then let’s return to precisely their vision. That caused me to say that I was for repealing the 17th Amendment. Then, when I went for a link to explain to readers which amendment that was, I started reading about the debate at the time over this “reform.” I saw that William Jennings Bryan (you know, the guy Clarence Darrow took apart at the Monkey Trial) was for the change, and Elihu Root opposed it. Thinking Mr. Root was perhaps a man after my own mind, I went and looked him up.

And I read on Wikipedia this excerpt from a letter he wrote to The New York Times in 1910, while serving as a U.S. senator from New York:

It is said that a very large part of any income tax under the amendment would be paid by citizens of New York….

Elihu Root

The reason why the citizens of New York will pay so large a part of the tax is New York City is the chief financial and commercial centre of a great country with vast resources and industrial activity. For many years Americans engaged in developing the wealth of all parts of the country have been going to New York to secure capital and market their securities and to buy their supplies. Thousands of men who have amassed fortunes in all sorts of enterprises in other states have gone to New York to live because they like the life of the city or because their distant enterprises require representation at the financial centre. The incomes of New York are in a great measure derived from the country at large. A continual stream of wealth sets toward the great city from the mines and manufactories and railroads outside of New York.

Wow. Wow. Wow. Imagine that. A serving politician who actually wrote not only in favor of an income tax when there wasn’t one, but told his own constituents why they should shoulder a particularly large portion of that burden. Now there’s a man of principle for you.

You will ask now whether he was re-elected. Well, he didn’t run again.

But it’s not like he retired. He went on to serve in several prominent capacities. In 1912, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for “his work to bring nations together through arbitration and cooperation.” Nevertheless, he would later oppose Woodrow Wilson’s initial position of neutrality as WWI broke out. He believed German militarism must be opposed.

He was a reluctant candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 1916. Charles Evans Hughes won the nomination, and went on to lose to Wilson.

I think I might have voted for Root, given the chance.

Democrats just won’t join Harpootlian in opposing Courson, or in maligning Sheriff Lott

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Somehow I missed this yesterday…

Dick Harpootlian has had a terrible time getting Democrats to line up with him behind Robert Rikard, his chosen candidate to run against their favorite Republican, John Courson. Here’s the latest, in which Dick went overboard to the extent that even Rikard came to the sheriff’s defense:

State Democratic Party chairman Dick Harpootlian linked the endorsement to Courson’s July appointment of Lott to the newly created Public Employee Benefit Authority, a two-year term that includes a $12,000-a-year salary.

“Just two months ago he accepted a $24,000 appointment from the Senator he now chooses to endorse,” Harpootlian said in a news release. “Voters in John Courson’s district see the pattern of Courson using taxpayers funds for his own benefit.”

Lott was out of town and unavailable to comment, according to a spokesman.

Democrat Robert Rikard, who is challenging Courson for the District 20 state Senate seat on Nov. 6, defended Lott, saying: “Leon Lott makes his own decisions, not based on what board he’s appointed to,” said Rikard, a former Richland sheriff’s deputy under then-Sheriff Allen Sloan…

The chairman who can't get any respect.

Rikard’s right. Leon (whose birthday is tomorrow) knows his own mind. This is one of the things that bugs me about people who take the “follow the money” logic to extremes: It doesn’t occur to Dick (or he won’t admit that it occurs to him) that maybe Courson appointed Lott because he’s someone with whom he enjoys mutual respect, not the other way around. That sort of small-minded interpretation defies human nature. It supposes that Leon wouldn’t have backed the senator before, which is not reasonable to assume if you know the sheriff. And the assumption is grossly insulting.

Now a Democrat in a whole other race has seen fit to take issue with Dick’s one-man crusade against the president pro tem:

Columbia, SC – Democratic House candidate for district 78 released the following statement in response to SC Democratic Party Chairman Dick Harpootlian’s comments yesterday:

“I have known Sheriff Leon Lott for many years, so I was extremely disappointed when I read Chairman Harpootlian’s comments. Like Sheriff Lott, I have an independent streak…

That is why I am so proud that Sheriff Lott has endorsed my candidacy for House District 78. If elected, I will do what is best for the people of Richland County and not one political party.”

####

These Richland County Democrats just won’t get with the program, will they?

‘It’s a word. That’s it. That’s all…’

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Speaking of words, I need to warn you of the use of offensive language in this video. Which, like the one I posted earlier, I cannot embed. (All together now: I. Hate. Facebook.)

But since all sorts of strong opinions are being expressed back and forth on the violence in Five Points, I thought I’d share this one, which is… very passionate, to say the least.

I’d not agreeing with this guy, and I’m not disagreeing with him. I just thought this was one of the most interesting comments I’d heard so far. I like it because it’s idiosyncratic. It doesn’t fit into any boxes, at all. Just a man with a very strong opinion.

I apologize again, in advance, for his language, which is of a sort that I don’t normally allow here. But I thought I’d point you to a part of the dialogue you might have missed…

Guess what? Todd Akin could get elected (and SC’s Donehue Direct is playing a role in that)

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Slatest devoted plenty of virtual ink this morning to indications that the-late-and-unlamented Todd Akin campaign is alive again (cue the “Young Frankenstein” clip”):

FOR REAL THIS TIME: After COB today, Todd Akin’s name is more or less set in stone on the Missouri ballot and will remain there even in the event of his death. But what only a month ago appeared to turn into an unwinnable Senate race for Republicans, now looks likely to go down to the wire.

THE NUMBERS: The latest polling from the Show Me State is about two weeks old, so there is no clear picture of the state of the race. But the last two major surveys (taken the last week of August and the second week of September, respectively) show Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill with less-than-comfortable leads of 1 percent and 6 percent respectively.

AND THAT WAS BEFORE: A handful of GOP heavyweights jumped back aboard the Akin train. Mike Huckabee is sticking with Akin. Phyllis Schlafly is doing a bus tour for him. The Senate Conservatives Fund, headed by Sen. Jim DeMint, is seeking support from its donors to help Akin. And yesterday, Newt Gingrich went to Missouri to headline a fund-raiser for him. “What’s the moral case for not backing the Republican nominee picked by the people of Missouri?” Gingrich said at the $500-a-plate event…

Now, I’ll add something to that. As you read here earlier, Wesley Donehue was brought on After the Fall to raise money for Akin, a fact that Wesley’s been touting in promotional materials for Donehue Direct (see the image below from an eblast).

I checked this morning, and he says the effort has raised $700,000 and counting.

Ann Romney to critics: ‘Stop it. This is hard.’

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And she’s saying that to the Republicans who are getting on her husband’s case, according to Slatest:

During an interview with Radio Iowa last night, Ann Romney had a message for the growing ranks of Republicans who have criticized her husband in recent days.

“Stop it. This is hard. You want to try it? Get in the ring,” she said. “This is hard and, you know, it’s an important thing that we’re doing right now and it’s an important election and it is time for all Americans to realize how significant this election is and how lucky we are to have someone with Mitt’s qualifications and experience and know-how to be able to have the opportunity to run this country.”

I find myself wondering whether that was spontaneous on her part — which it could well be — or whether someone in the campaign decided, Let’s have Ann say this. Being a woman and being the spouse and not the candidate, she can get away with it — whereas Mitt would be labeled a whiner.

I could see someone in the campaign thinking that, but I prefer to think it was spontaneous.

Beyond that, I have two reactions:

Yes, indeed. One reason we don’t have more (and better) candidates for public office is that the audience is so cruel and unforgiving, and obsesses over the tiniest slip-up. It isn’t fair, and if you’re in the middle of it all, you do sort of wish the facile critics would have the guts to see what it’s like sometime to be in there trying your heart out.
On the other hand, I’m cognizant of exactly why these GOP critics are getting on her husband’s case, and that makes me think, Yeah, you’re right: It IS hard. Especially for certain people, apparently…

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