Category Archives: Character

Mitt Romney, peering deep into the abyss

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How bad has the past week been for Romney, between the Libya remarks and the “47 percent” video? Bad enough that this bit from The Onion is just barely funny:

DALLAS—With his campaign still reeling from a series of miscues, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney asked a group of top advisers Wednesday whether it would be worth going after Obama by questioning the nation of his birth. “What about that whole deal with his birth certificate, or him being born in Kenya or wherever—you think that might stick?” said Romney, adding he was “just spitballing here.” “Also, wasn’t he connected to that terrorist guy, what’s-his-name? Ayers? Bill Ayers? That might have legs, right? Let’s look into that.” After agreeing that the situations should be investigated, Romney and his aides then reportedly sat in silence for 10 whole minutes.

And somewhere out there, some second-guessing Republicans are thinking, “The Donald is tanned, rested and ready…”

Meanwhile, over in a quarter where none of this is funny, one WSJ columnist is lecturing the nominee that his loyalty should be to the country, not his hapless campaign staff, and Karl Rove is saying yes, the situation is bad, but it’s not over — after all, Jimmy Carter was leading Ronald Reagan at this point in 1980.

Speaking of Reagan, Peggy Noonan is writing that it’s “Time for an Intervention:”

What should Mitt Romney do now? He should peer deep into the abyss. He should look straight into the heart of darkness where lies a Republican defeat in a year the Republican presidential candidate almost couldn’t lose. He should imagine what it will mean for the country, for a great political philosophy, conservatism, for his party and, last, for himself. He must look down unblinkingly.

And then he needs to snap out of it, and move…

The central problem revealed by the tape is Romney’s theory of the 2012 election. It is that a high percentage of the electorate receives government checks and therefore won’t vote for him, another high percentage is supplying the tax revenues and will vote for him, and almost half the people don’t pay taxes and presumably won’t vote for him.

My goodness, that’s a lot of people who won’t vote for you. You wonder how he gets up in the morning.

This is not how big leaders talk, it’s how shallow campaign operatives talk: They slice and dice the electorate like that, they see everything as determined by this interest or that. They’re usually young enough and dumb enough that nobody holds it against them, but they don’t know anything. They don’t know much about America.

We are a big, complicated nation. And we are human beings. We are people. We have souls. We are complex. We are not data points. Many things go into our decisions and our political affiliations.

You have to be sophisticated to know that. And if you’re operating at the top of national politics, you’re supposed to be sophisticated…

And this is what Mitt Romney is hearing from what should be his cheering section.

Is Mitt Romney a bad CEO? No, says this writer

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Over at Bloomberg Businessweek, Joshua Green insists that the chaos in Mitt Romney’s campaign does NOT mean that he’s a bad CEO:

Romney’s problem is not that he’s brought too little executive rigor to the job of running for president. It’s that he’s brought too much. He’s behaved too much like a businessman (or a consultant) and not enough like a politician. His campaign has all the hallmarks of being run by someone looking only at the numbers, someone who lacks a true politician’s appreciation for the other dimensions of a race—a feel for the electorate, a convincing long-term plan for the country. Were he forced to defend himself before a board of directors, Romney would actually have a pretty solid case for doing what he has done….

… Romney has scrupulously avoided committing to anything that is remotely unpopular, such as naming which tax loopholes he’d close to pay for his agenda. That is to say, he is doing just about everything a close reading of the polls says you should do, and he’s trying hard not to do anything the polls say you shouldn’t do. If a team of Bain consultants were hustled in to pore over the data and devise a strategy, I doubt they would have devised a meaningfully different campaign.

The problem is that politics is about much more than a tactical, short-term reading of the numbers. Candidate skills matter, and the audience in a presidential election is much more variegated than a board of directors. There isn’t much, frankly, that a stiff guy can do to make himself warm and approachable. (Earth tones, anyone?) The glaring weaknesses in Romney’s campaign—the fuzzy details, the inability to convincingly articulate plan for growth, and above all the weird tics and gaffes—are not ones that a businessman’s skills can rectify.

In other words, he’s more a bad politician than a bad CEO. We are left to conclude what we like about what sort of president he would be.

Something to consider, for all those who still think the silly phrase “run government like a business” makes sense.

What Mitt Romney thinks of Obama supporters

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The WashPost brings my attention to the above video, which was put out by Mother Jones (and of course, if it were just Mother Jones, I wouldn’t be paying as much attention — but the Post seems to regard it as legit, so…) From the Post report:

Bits and pieces of a private fundraiser held by Mitt Romney have been leaked to Mother Jones magazine, exposing some blunt talk from the Republican candidate on voters, his campaign and American society.

In one video, Romney argues that it’s not “my job” to win over the 47 percent of voters committed to President Obama, because they are “dependent on government” and he will “never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

What Romney says in the video will perhaps endear him to some of the base that have thus far been cold to him, because that’s exactly what they think of Obama voters.

But personally, I would have thought Mr. Romney had a somewhat more respectful, and open-minded, attitude toward this nearly half of the American electorate. It’s a bit disturbing to think that, if elected, he’d come into office holding 47 percent of Americans in contempt to this degree.

Looks like Nikki will stay away from SC even more

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This is bound to create mixed feelings in people who care about South Carolina:

Gov. Nikki Haley will balance her time between governing South Carolina and stumping for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney over the next two months.

Haley’s target audience? Women voters, a critical voting bloc for Romney because of polls that show women favor incumbent Democratic President Barack Obama by a double-digit margin.

“Governor Haley has a very full schedule of job creation and economic development meetings and events in the next two months,” said Rob Godfrey, Haley’s spokesman. “But as much as her schedule permits, she does plan on helping the Romney-Ryan ticket. …

“Mixed feelings” in that our state could use some leadership in trying to pull out of, not only a recession, but our historic near-last ranking in by so many measures. On the other hand, if the only governor we’ve got is Nikki Haley, well… maybe she might as well run off and have her picture made some more, and leave us alone.

I find myself torn between the two ways of looking at it.

Bill Clinton just gave the best political speech of this century, thus far

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Earlier today I wrote something about the contrast that was expected between Elizabeth Warren’s speech and Bill Clinton’s. That was certainly dead on. She gave one of those speeches full of resentments and blame, the kind that makes me dislike political parties so much.

And then Bill Clinton gave a speech that, while lifting the crowd in the arena to their feet, talked right on through them and to all of America, making the case for Barack Obama as no one has ever made it before, in a way that was a feel-good celebration of politics and democracy and this country and the things that make it great.

I can’t remember the last time I heard a political speech this good. Here are my thoughts, via Twitter, as it unfolded. You can see my enthusiasm build from the moment the former president started talking. The Tweets that follow, starting at 9:29 p.m., are mine, except where otherwise indicated:

  • The most warmly positive, uplifting speech I’ve heard tonight so far was from the sister from Nuns on the Bus. It was beatific…
  • Back in the day, when there were 3 networks covering gavel to gavel, I seem to recall less gab and more voting; less show, more action.
  • Wow, they weren’t kidding about this woman [Warren]. Who wrote her speech? Huey Long? https://bradwarthen.com/?p=17980
  • amhistorymuseum ‏@amhistorymuseum Abraham Lincoln was the first presidential candidate to distribute his campaign portrait all over the country. #campaigncollecting
  • … Which you wouldn’t automatically assume would have been to his advantage…
  • Billy’s doing his duty, actually talking about Obama rather than himself. How about that?
  • Good line about “cool on the inside”…
  • “Business and government working together… ” That’s a welcome contrast to Warren’s anti-biz, populist rant…
  • He’s giving the Third Way a hard sell, and doing it well…
  • They’re not quite sure what to make of Clinton’s lauding of Republicans for the good things they’ve done…
  • The speech Bill Clinton is giving fulfills the Democrats’ best hopes (and stills their worst loose-cannon fears). This is impressive.
  • Bill Clinton is reminding American what it’s like to be a Democrat, a winning Democrat, whose politics aren’t based in resentment…
  • Maybe President Obama should let Bill Clinton do the speech TOMMOROW night, too…
  • He may have lost weight, but he hasn’t lost his touch. The Comeback Kid still has it. Maybe some of it will rub off.
  • No, Bill! Don’t say “listen to me…” Shades of the Lewinsky denial. You’re on a roll! Don’t go off course…
  • When Bill Clinton’s talking, it almost sounds like it would be fun to be a Democrat…
  • Warren Bolton ‏@BoltonWarren If nothing else, this will have Obama juiced for tomorrow for sure. Can he deliver?
  • I don’t know, but Bill sure is teeing it up for him. The key to what he’s doing is the confidence, and the sheer joy.
  • He [Obama] just needs to come out cool on the outside, and burning inside for America…
  • Bill is the first person speaking positively to independents tonight — except for maybe Sister Simone…
  • I’ve never heard anyone make the case for Barack Obama this well.
  • The thing about Clinton is, he convinces you he really understands the wonkish details (mainly because he does), and is really INTO them.
  • “It takes some brass.” His second best line of the speech. The best was the “cool on the outside” thing…
  • He knows he’s got them. He can feel it. He can slow it down, or speed it up, and they’re right there with him every second…
  • John O’Connor ‏@johnroconnor I really only needed Clinton 101, not 201 and 315
  • This is the graduate seminar course. This is Bill Clinton under a yellow sun, with all his powers.
  • One of the many things Bill Clinton understands is the importance of talking to the millions of us who are NOT in that room.
  • Bill knows how to tear the Republicans a new one — or two — without making you think he hates them…
  • Warren Bolton ‏@BoltonWarren This is where the preacher, with the congregation firmly in his hands, says “I’ about to take my seat.” Then 15 minutes later …
  • Now he’s schoolin’ ’em on ‘rithmetic…
  • No, don’t shake your finger at us, Bill. It evokes bad stuff. Stick with the good stuff…
  • This speech is the most generous and selfless thing that Bill Clinton has done in his whole life.
  • Bet on America… we always come back… Man, he’s hitting every note, and hitting it just right…

It was amazing. He’s just that good. And I say that as the editor who presided over an editorial board that was tied as first in the country to call on him to resign after he admitted lying to us. But he was always really, really good at this, and I don’t just mean in ways that were good for him. It’s actually good for the country to hear a speech like this. So much of politics these days is depressing, dispiriting. We all needed a lift like this.

Some were complaining that the speech was too long. No. Bill Clinton has given some of the longest, most tedious speeches most of us can remember. But tonight he wasn’t indulging himself. Tonight he was giving.

Democrats ask Nikki to come home soon, please

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Mia Butler Garrick and James Smith urge Nikki Haley to come home. That blinding light is emanating from the direction of the governor's vacant office.

Alleging that she is now entering her third week of absence from the state for political purposes, Reps. James Smith and Mia Butler Garrick, both Richland County Democrats, stood outside Nikki Haley’s office this afternoon and asked her to return and do the job she was ostensibly elected to do.

Among the points the two representatives made about the gov:

  • The state’s unemployment rate is climbing.
  • Her trips have been purely political.
  • Her activities don’t even have anything to do with South Carolina politics, but are purely national.
  • She isn’t really benefiting Mitt Romney doing this, but merely herself.
  • They fully understand that a governor would go to her own convention, just as SC Democrats are now flocking to Charlotte — but she doesn’t have to spend the week attending theirs as well.
  • No other full-time state employee — a teacher, say, or a DHEC worker — would be able to take such a purely personal extended vacation, at least not without being fired.
  • It is unclear who is paying for her junkets.

I had not realized that the gov was planning on spending all of this week out of town as well. For that matter, I had not known she stayed in Tampa after her speech, but that would be par for the course.

It’s also far from unprecedented for a governor to visit the opposing party’s national convention, when it is in a neighboring state. I remember seeing Carroll Campbell at the DNC — the one Don Fowler ran — in Atlanta in 1988. (It was kind of a hoot because Campbell — or maybe his press guy Tucker Eskew; I forget — noted that he didn’t bring with him nearly the extensive security retinue that Lt. Gov. Nick Theodore had with him there all week, complete with a command post set up on the ground floor in the delegation’s hotel.)

It’s a very tacky partisan practice, this business of trying to spoil the other side’s celebration — I’ve thought so ever since I saw Campbell do it — but it’s certainly not unusual.

But, noted Mia and James, Nikki is spending the whole week up there for the “counter-convention,” doing various national media interviews, with her schedule for the week showing her having no scheduled events here.

That’s hardly fair to the governor, I pointed out. If practically the entire retinue of national political media — Nikki Haley’s constituency, the people who elected her — are just up the road in Charlotte, how could anyone expect her to stay down in Columbia? After all, anyone who voted for her expecting her to do anything other than just what she is doing at this moment was sadly deluded.

Precisely, said Rep. Smith.

A good speech that failed to move the needle

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Here’s my reaction to Mitt Romney’s big speech last night (you remember Romney; he came a couple of speakers after Clint Eastwood’s extraordinary presentation of surrealistic performance art), in two parts:

First, I really appreciated his tone. We had heard he would take this opportunity to reach out to us swing voters, and he did, mainly by leaving out any hint of the crazy hate-Obama talk that has become so common among Republicans. Not that he would have talked that way anyway — without the condescension that Marco Rubio applied in saying the president is a “good man,” let me say that I see Mitt Romney as a nice man — but he could have thrown the crowd a little more red meat, and he didn’t. He reached out.

In fact, I think he made his case in as positive a way as anyone could. He mentioned “Hope and Change” without the usual sneering contempt with which Republicans imbue the words, and said too bad, it just didn’t work out. So let’s try something different.

I think that’s his case, put as positively as possible.

That’s part one of my reaction. Here’s part two: I don’t think he made the case — again, to us swing voters, not the faithful in the hall — that he necessarily has a better approach than Obama. In fact, when he tried to explain the difference between the Obama approach and the Romney/GOP approach, he had a tendency to fall back on the red meat stuff, the favorite stereotypes that Republicans spout with regard to Democrats. You know, like the one about how liberals hate success, which was probably one of his bigger applause lines. It went like this: “In America, we celebrate success, we don’t apologize for it.” It has the added bonus of implying, I don’t know how they do it in the country YOU come from, but in America…

And the problem, for folk who are not Tea Partisans or birthers or Club for Growth types, is that we don’t hear much positive in what Romney would do instead that would be better. The clearest message about what he would do that is more or less understandable to all is repeal Obamacare. Which I certainly don’t want him or anybody else to do, especially when they don’t want to replace it with anything better.

And that brings us to the problem with Romney. The poor guy; he’s just a non-ideological businessman who wants this job, and he has to charm all these crazies in order to get to it. So you get some odd behavior. Someone on the radio noted this morning that in the video before his speech, there was not one mention of his one great accomplishment as governor of Massachusetts — the health care reform that helped inspire the national reform that he is obliged to attack.

So here’s what we’re left with: Romney is this nice, non-ideological  guy who makes the entirely credible case that what President Obama has done hasn’t worked, or hasn’t worked very well. So we are asked to trust him, as a proven, competent businessman, to run things better. Never mind the details (because when we get into details, it doesn’t help his case).

On the whole, I think it was a good speech. He didn’t hurt himself. But I’m not at all sure he moved the needle, in any way that will last through the polling bump that Democrats will likely get next week.

Speaking of that — some commenters on the radio this morning were saying that puts the Democrats in “a box” — they have to prove next week that what they have done has prevented things from being worse, and that better days are ahead with them in charge of the executive branch. That’s probably doable, if Democrats can rise above their own pander-to-the-base foibles and project pragmatic confidence. We’ll see.

But in the meantime, here are my Tweets and reTweets from last night, showing my real-time impressions of the proceedings from 10:05 p.m. on. All are by me, except where otherwise indicated:

  • I’m Clint Eastwood, and I don’t have to comb my damn’ hair if I don’t feel like it, punk.
  • Larry Sabato ‏@LarrySabato George H.W. Bush briefly entertained the idea of making Clint Eastwood his1988 VP ticketmate. It’s true.
  • I wish Clint weren’t struggling like this…
  • Scott English ‏@scott_english Clint Eastwood is doing a one man show at the #RNC entitled “This what happens when you cut Medicare.”
  • Wesley Donehue‏@wesleydonehue Watching Gamecocks, but according to twitter Clint Eastwood is either sucking or killing it.
  • Kinda both. It’s weird…
  • Roger Ebert ‏@ebertchicago Clint, my hero, is coming across as sad and pathetic. He didn’t need to do this to himself. It’s unworthy of him.
  • OK, what’s up? Rubio’s wearing that same weird flag pin with the superimposed star that Ryan was wearing last night. Is it a cult thing?
  • Oops, I was wrong. It’s not a star; it’s an “R”…
  • Todd Kincannon‏@ToddKincannon I think the Eastwood speech is absolutely brilliant. He’s not a politician and he doesn’t sound like one.
  • No. “Gran Torino” — now THAT was brilliant.
  • Wesley Donehue ‏@wesleydonehue Gotta get Phil back on twitter so that he quits suggesting tweets to me all night. He may become my ghost tweet writer.
  • Is he trying to get you to post something about a “Mormon Jesus“?
  • I’ve never watched Rubio before. Good speaker. But I’m struck that Eastwood is followed by someone you’d expect him to call a “punk”…
  • Wow, they’ve got Mitt doing a “Bill Clinton” through the crowd. Are they desperate to humanize him or what?
  • Well, the suspense is over — he accepts…
  • Mitt just said “iPod.” Wow, he must be cool…That hepcat!
  • Bruce Haynes‏@BrucePurple 10:34pm EST. Working people parties want to appeal to really want to be in bed now. And probably are. When will convention planners get it?
  • Yeah. And all the really cool voters live in EDT…
  • At this point, I’d like to see Clint come back out and pretend Mitt is an empty chair: “No, Mitt! I can’t do that to myself!”
  • Ed O’Keefe‏@edatpost The Clint Eastwood transcript:http://wapo.st/UfbT12 #gop2012
  • You mean that was WRITTEN DOWN???
  • Greg Reibman ‏@Greg_Reibman I’m still chuckling over the story of Mitt’s mom discovering her husband died. Nice to see the real Mitt.
  • You mean like, “Where’s my flower?” That was … odd.
  • Todd Kincannon ‏@ToddKincannon We may have a new Reagan.
  • Maybe they should have invited him to the convention… 🙂
  • Rick Stilwell ‏@RickCaffeinated Somebody please explain the “attack on success” to me. Haven’t seen it, want to know where that’s coming from. #learn #notjudging
  • Dunno, but @KarenFloyd just quoted it without irony. It’s something Republicans are convinced Democrats believe…
  • I liked that he cited “Hope and Change” without sneering. OK, that shouldn’t be a biggie, but the civility bar is really low these days…
  • He’s playing his role. He showed up for work, and he’s doing the job. Not inspiring, not exciting. But solid, workmanlike…
  • “Unlike President Obama, I will not raise taxes on the middle class.” OK, remind me again where “middle class” starts and ends…
  • “I want to help you and your family.” Is this the Democratic convention? I mean, is that what I want a POTUS for?
  • TeresaKopec ‏@TeresaKopec There sure are a lot of countries with CIA installed dictators that would disagree with Romney on that “America takes out dictators” line.
  • On that one, he was right. Moral relativism (“Oh, America is just as bad as anybody”) is dead end, politically & geopolitically
  • TeresaKopec ‏@TeresaKopec Obama has never said that. (At least the Obama who is visible to the human eye & not the invisible one Clint was talking to.)
  • No, he hasn’t. But some of my Democratic friends DO talk that way, as though this country were a net evil in the world.
  • Where he was WRONG is that in the aggregate, Obama has projected US power more aggressively than any predecessor.
  • Jack Kuenzie ‏@JKuenzie Ah, the K-Tel version of “Living in America.” #GOP2012
  • And if you act now, you get The Fifth Dimension performing “Up, Up and Away”…
  • Bonus question: Compare and contrast this balloon drop to others throughout history…
  • Amy Derjue ‏@derjue Joe Biden is gonna SCHOOL Clint Eastwood on how to ramble incoherently in Charlotte. See ya next week, nerds! #gop2012 #dnc
  • Scott English ‏@scott_english Sometimes I wish it was the Party of “Hell No.” RT @tdkelly: Mitt leads crowd in reaffirmation of “party of no.’
  • No, that would be the Tea Party…

Note that there were a couple of errors, only one of which I correct here (changing “Wow, he must me cool” to “Wow, he must be cool”). Romney did not exactly say, “I want to help you and your family.” He said, “MY promise… is to help you and your family.” That was my best effort to reproduce it on the fly; I messed up.

Paul Ryan: The Deerslayer, policy wonk version

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OK, you know veep candidate Paul Ryan is a major policy wonk. One thing you might not think of him as is a good old boy. But a magazine with a name that sounds like a stutter — Deer and Deer Hunting — is aiming to set you straight. See this release:

Republican vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan opens up to Deer & Deer Hunting Magazine about his love of the outdoors.

“Bowhunting is my passion,” said Ryan to Deer & Deer Hunting’s Editor Alan Clemons. “Studying the strategy, preparing food plots, the strategy of where a dominant buck is living or will be moving and then being in position to get a shot, that’s really exciting.”

Ryan talks more about his childhood, being a father and balancing his hunting and Capitol life in an exclusive interview with Deer & Deer Hunting. The column will be in the October issue of Deer & Deer Hunting and will be available on newsstands September 4.

If you’d like to learn more about the interview, I can provide you with the pre-released interview, a press release, a copy of the magazine issue or any additional information you may need.

For more information on Deer & Deer Hunting, please go to www.deeranddeerhunting.com. For any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

I didn’t get to read the whole story because I didn’t want to give the mag my email address and have a whole new batch of emails to delete (I’ve made that mistake too many times in the past). But I confess to being curious as to whether the piece contains any other quotes as, um, interesting as “Studying the strategy, preparing food plots, the strategy of where a dominant buck is living or will be moving and then being in position to get a shot, that’s really exciting.”

Yeah, OK. I thought he only got that excited about cutting Medicare costs.

Of course, I’m a bit of an old hand with a bow myself. One day when we were in England last year, we were strolling in Hyde Park and came across a sort of carnival, which had a booth called “Robin Hood,” which enticed marks to shoot an arrow at balloons. Sure, it could have been a trap set by the sheriff, but I couldn’t resist. I immediately laid down my five quid (the real Robin Hood would have loved to find a fat friar carrying that on him), gave my camera to my wife to record the moment, and took my three shots. Unfortunately, my wife thought the camera was set for still photos rather than video, and merely aimed it at me, pressed the shutter release, and turned away.

So it was that she missed when I actually burst one of the balloons. But the great tragedy was that she missed my next shot, which split the previous arrow… yeah, that’s the ticket…

OK, so that last part didn’t really happen. But I did get one of the balloons. Of course, I’m sure that doesn’t match the excitement that Ryan speaks of. But that’s OK by me.

Take THAT, ye oppressor of good Saxon yeomen!

What’s really wrong with Todd Akin

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All the moralizing on this previous post about the work Wesley Donehue is doing for this month’s pariah, Todd Akin, goads me to share what I actually think of Mr. “Legitimate Rape.” Even though I know it’s going to make pretty much everybody mad at me.

Well, here goes…

To begin with, Akin is one of those people who makes you furious because he’s on your side of an issue (if you’re me), and he’s giving people on the other side of the issue more than enough excuse to dismiss you and all who think like you (or, once again, to be more accurate, me) as idiots or evil or both.

The issue here being abortion, not rape. The thing (I think) I agree with him on, that is.

As for being an idiot or evil, well, I reject both with regard to myself, although of course I’m not perfect. With regard to Akin… I don’t think he’s evil, although he possesses a certain very common character flaw (which will be my point, when I get to it) in an extreme form. And as to the idiot part… well, my wife often calls me down for calling people idiots, which is one of my character flaws — and after all, we are specifically enjoined from doing so, and very sternly warned about it, in the Bible.

But… confession time here… when I heard about what Akin said, and then saw a picture of him, one of my first thoughts was, Yes, he looks stupid enough to have done that. Which I know is wrong, to leap to such a conclusion just from looking at someone. I am in fact quite embarrassed to confess it. But there it is.

Basically, Akin tried to make a point that would have been extremely objectionable to most people even if he had put it in the most diplomatic way possible. And then, he managed to put it as offensively as possible. This suggests a sort of genius for offending, but again, I look at him and I think he only stumbled on this perfect combination by accident.

Neither I, nor I suspect his most vehement political opponents (although I could be wrong here) thinks that Akin meant to say that any sort of rape is “legitimate,” in the sense of being licit, or a good thing. So we can set that aside. (And yes, I know I’m setting aside a whole, complex discussion about how some people reject that all cases of rape are “real” rape, but I’m trying to address a separate point, and believe me, this post is going to be long enough.)

And of course, I think he was just trying to defend a political position that I share — the notion that if one truly believes that abortion takes a human life, one cannot defend exemptions for rape or even incest.

And yet, I, too, am deeply offended by what he said. I see it as both foolish and wrong. But then, I think his sin is a very common one.

Finally I get to my point: Like many, many people across the political spectrum, Akin sought to rationalize away any human cost of his own political position. What he did reflects both sloppy thinking and a sort of moral cowardice. And it’s a function of the absolutism that infests our politics today.

Akin and I agree that you can’t have exemptions for rape when you’re talking about a human life. That innocent unborn human didn’t commit the rape, and condemning him or her to death for it is unjust in the extreme. I’m deeply opposed to the death penalty even for murderers, but I can certainly see more justice in that than I can in this.

But here’s where Akin and I diverge: He wants to explain away the consequence of this position. He wants to say, well, if it’s really rape, then the woman won’t get pregnant. Which is amazingly foolish and ignorant, but which seems to arise from a very human desire to believe that no innocent human being will suffer because of the position I’m taking.

I know better. I’m not going to shy away for a moment (I hope) from the fact that the human cost to a woman caught in this kind of situation is horrific, beyond even imagining. I can’t even begin to think of what to say or do that would ease the suffering of a woman in such a situation (aside from such weak expedients as providing material support). I don’t want her to be in that situation, any more than the pro-choice person does. It awakens in me powerfully strong protective impulses, and vindictive ones, including a determination that the person responsible for it must be punished to the fullest extent of the law (while, at the same time, knowing that no amount of punishment could possibly erase this woman’s pain). I am fully aware of the terrible odds her child will face — not only not being wanted by his or her mother, but being the material embodiment of the most horrible moment in her life.

But none of that justifies killing the child, either before or after he or she is born. Not in any truly moral balance that I am capable of conceiving. As much as I understand the pro-choice advocate’s desire for a magic solution that makes at least this one facet of the crime go away for the woman, I can’t see any way that that expedient is justified in a society that is just. It in fact adds another moral horror to that which already so unjustly exists.

It’s not comfortable to face and acknowledge the additional pain to which having to bear this child would condemn a rape victim, but I see no moral alternative to doing so. Akin? He wants to cop out on it.

But that’s a common impulse. Too seldom do any of us face up to the very real consequences of the positions we take. We like to believe that our attitudes are all to the good, that nothing bad would happen if only the things we believe were acted upon. And in the take-no-prisoners absolutism of today’s politics — in which each side wants to see itself as all good, and the other side as all bad — people regularly paint themselves into corners trying to make their positions look as good as possible. And to make themselves feel good about those positions. There are a lot of Todd Akins out there.

For instance… and here’s where I make everybody mad… there are those on the opposite side of the abortion issue who rationalize away the human life that is destroyed by abortion. They say it isn’t a human being at all, even that it’s nothing more than a random collection of cells, and ridding oneself of them has no more moral weight than sloughing off dead skin.

(Not all do this, of course. Right off the bat, I can think of pro-choice friends who have persuaded me that they are fully cognizant that abortion takes an innocent human life and that it is deeply wrong — but that the imperative of choice overrides it. This chills my blood — just as my antiwar friends are chilled by my advocacy of some military actions in spite of my pro-life beliefs — but I can’t criticize them for failing to face reality.)

They say this — that the fetus is not a human being — because they would find the moral burden of believing their position results in the destruction of innocent human life even more unbearable than Akin would find it to contemplate the suffering of a rape victim. (Now, before all my pro-choice friends shout that they say it because they believe it, let me quickly interject that I know you believe it. I just, personally, find it very hard to believe that you would believe such an unlikely thing without a powerful human need to rationalize, which is related to the fact that you are a good and caring person.)

Now to an empiricist, of course, there’s a difference between Akin’s rationalization and the it’s-not-a-human-being rationalization — one that I readily acknowledge. After all, you can physically, scientifically prove that Akin is wrong in his fantasy about true rape not leading to pregnancy. Whereas science can’t prove or disprove that a fetus is human — no matter how strongly I believe it unlikely that smart people would assert that it isn’t, in the absence of this powerful cause for rationalization. Nevertheless, I’m convinced that similar mechanisms are at play.

This dynamic translates to other issues, of course. There are those who advocate war, and blind themselves to the worst aspects of the human cost — such as the deaths of noncombatants, at the most extreme end of that spectrum. On the other side are those who are so opposed to war and its horrific human costs that they try to rationalize away the cause for war — minimizing the evils of the Saddam Hussein regime (how many times have I read that we invaded an inoffensive country that wasn’t doing anything to anybody, as though it were Switzerland?), or the costs of a precipitate withdrawal from Afghanistan, allowing the Taliban to rise again.

There are costs both to acting militarily and not acting militarily, and it’s wrong to blind yourself and try to wave them away. For my part, seen as I am here as the bloodthirsty warmonger, I try never to turn my mind from the horrors of war, and I recoil from efforts to make war seem costless just as much as I reject attempts to paint it as never worth engaging in. And for me, the horrible thing about war is not just that innocent civilians, or one’s own soldiers, get killed and maimed. Every armed enemy’s death also diminishes us. (I’m reading right now a phenomenal book about the cost of killing in war, Dave Grossman’s On Killing. It powerfully reinforces something I have long believed — that the greatest price we ask of a soldier is not that he die for his country; the most awful thing we ask of him, the thing that costs him the most, is expecting him to kill for his country.)

Well, I could go on and on. Actually, I have. There are other places I could go with this, carrying this phenomenon out of the realm of life-and-death issues. I could get into how, for instance, in this absolutist political atmosphere, neither those who want more government spending nor those who advocate shrinking government small enough to drown in a bathtub like to face that there are tradeoffs to their positions… but I think this is enough for how…

“And we will now answer any questions you may have… psych!”

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wistv.com – Columbia, South Carolina |

On the last post, a reader called my attention to the video of the exchange, such as it was, between Nikki Haley and Gina Smith.

You really should watch it. It’s very short.

Our governor begins the Q and A by saying, “And we will now answer any questions you may have.”

The first question is from Gina. It’s rather involved. It takes about 13 seconds to ask it. The governor waits impassively until the end, and — almost, but not quite, before Gina gets her last word out, then says, “Gina, I’m not going to answer any of your questions. Anybody else?”

The first word that always pops into my head at these moments is “unprofessional.” But then it occurs to me that to folks who vote for people like Nikki Haley, “professional” is a bad thing. It smacks of being “a career politician,” and God forbid we should have people in positions of responsibility in government who know what they are doing! In choosing Nikki, they went deliberately for unprofessional, and that’s what they got.

So I fall back on “immature,” which works nearly as well.

Our governor’s latest immature outburst

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Har-de-har-har-har.

This morning, Corey Hutchins Tweeted:

Cue the @BradWarthen blog post about the governor and Gina Smith three days from now…

Yeah. Good one. Ha-ha.

Here’s the thing, folks — I long ago decided that it was better to write about something out-of-cycle than it was never to address it. And them’s the choices you gets, folks, more often than not. Other bloggers, fearing to be seen as slow, will drop an idea after a couple of days. And of course I DO drop far, far more than I’d like. But if I get a chance to go back to something,  I do.

The great thing about blogging is that there are no space limits, so you can write about everything you think of, and not be limited to, say, one or two columns a week. The terrible truth about blogging is that it’s impossible to find the time to write about everything that you think of.

I discovered that almost immediately when I started doing this in 2005. The original idea is that I would put EVERYTHING on the blog — my notes from every editorial board interview (most of which never got a mention in the actual paper), every opinion idea that I had but didn’t have room for in the paper.

But that proved impossible. So now I get to the things I get to, and that’s it. The sad thing is, many of my best ideas for posts never get written, because they would take too much time, while I toss up little throwaway things just to keep the plates spinning.

But still, when the occasion arises later, I try my best to get back to the good stuff.

Oh, by the way, here’s the thing that Corey was referring to:

State reporter Gina Smith asked Gov. Nikki Haley during her Charleston press conference Wednesday if Haley’s ethics proposals were part of an anticipated reform package by lawmakers and the state Ethics Commission.

“Gina, I am not going to answer any of your questions,” Haley responded, moving on to take other reporters’ questions.

Asked why Haley would not answer Smith’s question, Haley spokesman Rob Godfrey responded: “The governor believes respect should be a two-way street.”

Yes, it is. And it would be nice if the governor would grow up and start answering reporters’ respectful questions with matching respect, both to them and their readers. A two-way street indeed.

As is her wont, rather than stand up and tell reporters why she is acting like a middle-schooler, our young governor took to Facebook to air her innermost feelings (and you know, that’s what it’s all about — Nikki’s feelings):

In response to my refusal to answer Gina Smith’s question today: she is the same reporter that 1)wrote a Front Page, Above the Fold story about me being indicted, with no truth what so ever. 2)She went on to write a story about my 14 year old daughter without having the facts, against the urging of SLED Chief Keel that said it was unprecedented to write about a governor’s child knowing the safety concerns. Respect is a two way street.

Our virtual governor, in her comfort zone.

There’s nothing wrong with negative campaigning

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This is a favorite topic of Cindi Scoppe’s; let me see if I can beat her to the punch in saying it in this cycle…

There is nothing wrong with negative campaigning. Not a thing in the world. In fact, if there’s something wrong with your opponent that the voters ought to know in making their choice, and there’s a reasonable chance they don’t know it, you do them a disservice by not telling them.

Something that used to drive me nuts in endorsement interviews is when I’d begin the process knowing little about either candidate, and I’d ask one of them to compare and contrast himself and his opponent. Sometimes, the question was as simple and innocent as, “I haven’t met your opponent yet. What can you tell me about him?” The candidate would get all lofty and self-righteous and say, “I’m not going to talk about my opponent.” My reaction to that was, well, then, why are you here? There have to be reasons why I should endorse you and not the other guy; if you’re not going to help me in discovering what they might be, then you’re wasting your time and, closer to my heart, my time….

What sets me off on this minor tirade is that about an ago in my car, I heard a discussion on NPR about negative campaigning. A caller said he had worked in a campaign, and complained that people seemed unable to distinguish between telling what’s wrong with one’s opponent and “negative campaigning.” Well, pal, there’s a reason they can’t tell the difference — there is no difference, if language means anything. Criticizing your opponent is being negative. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

What’s wrong is misleading, unfair, irrelevant, out-of-context campaigning, or campaigning that plays on the emotions of the electorate, rather than their reason, in a way that is detrimental to one’s opponent’s electoral chances.

For instance… one of the examples mentioned during the radio program was the Willie Horton ad. What was wrong with that? Well, a couple of things. One, it’s ridiculous to try to condemn a governor because one person let out of jail in a program he supervised committed a terrible crime. If that’s your standard, then we would never, ever let anyone out of prison again, given the recidivism rates.

Eddie Murphy as Tyrone Greene

But of course, that wasn’t what was really wrong with that ad. What was really wrong was that everyone involved knew that what was really going on here was an appeal to race — saying Dukakis is soft on those people, and don’t you know you can’t give ’em an inch! The picture said it all. It was such easily understood cultural shorthand. It was the very archetype of the Dangerous Black Criminal. Eddie Murphy mocked this iconic visage, so frightening to the white bourgeoisie, in the skit in which his character, Tyrone Greene, recited his poem, “Images.” (You know, the one with the refrain, “Kill my landlord.”)

To bring it to the present day, acceptable negative campaigning is for Mitt Romney to “blame” the president for Obamacare, and make it clear that he would try to appeal it. What’s not acceptable is repeatedly lying in saying that the president has tried to do away with welfare-to-work requirements (a false charge that employs another racial stereotype, by the way — the black president who wants to undo welfare reform).

Similarly it’s perfectly fine for Obama to accuse the opposing ticket of favoring tax cuts that he opposes (although I could do without the “for the rich” mantra; it gets old). What’s unfair is to blame him for that woman dying.

Sometimes, in my more quixotic and masochistic moments, I think about running for office. I think about, just as an example, running against Joe Wilson for Congress (I think of that because I have no major problems with how my county councilman or state legislators represent me). And I imagine how the campaign would go. And I’ll tell you right now, I’d say negative things (how could any writer of my blog doubt it?).

But I’d be fair. The way I would approach it would be beyond reproach, in my book.

I’d say, first, that I like Joe. He’s a likable guy, and he’s always been nice to me. He sincerely believes in public service, and loves, more than anyone else I’ve ever seen (even Floyd Spence) being a congressman.

But… he is a walking, talking, hand-shaking representative of what’s wrong with Washington. He is a perfect representative of the partisanship that tears our country apart and paralyses our national government. If Joe has ever had an original thought that didn’t come right out of the Republican (or more recently, Tea Party) playbook, I wasn’t around when it happened.

My beef with Joe isn’t that he cried out “You lie!” We all get carried away sometimes. Why once (although when I was only 4 years old), I yelled right out in church, interrupting the preacher, and to this day when I visit Bennettsville, old folks mention it when they see me. Joe got carried away, and he knew he’d done wrong, because he immediately apologized for it.

So I don’t blame him for yelling out, not much anyway. What I blame him for is his deliberate, shameless, continuing effort over the past few years to capitalize on that wrong thing he did, to boast about it and remind folks that he did it, so that they will send him campaign money. That continuing, unapologetic pandering to some of the worst, lowest-common-denominator impulses in our political life, is what I’m running against…

And so forth. See, that’s relevant criticism. And it’s negative. But there wouldn’t be anything wrong with it.

What do you mean, “we,” Kemo Sabe?

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I imagine some in the GOP will be echoing that classic punchline after the latest pronouncement from Todd Akin:

“I haven’t done anything morally or ethically wrong,” Akin told Huckabee, saying the backlash against him “does seem like a little bit of an overreaction.”

“We are going to continue this race for the U.S. Senate,” Akin continued. “We believe taking this stand is going to strengthen our country, going to strengthen, ultimately, the Republican Party.”

So… who is this “we,” Kemo Sabe?

I’ve often wondered at politician’s odd penchant for saying “we” when they mean, “I.” So many times over the years I’ve asked an elected official, “What do you think about X?” and heard in reply, “We’re taking the position that…” No. There is no “we” here, white man. It’s you. You are the elected official (or the candidate), the only person responsible to the voters for the position you are taking, so don’t be trying to dilute accountability. You might have a team behind you, but you’re the only player who counts.

Sometimes I think pols believe it sounds less self-centered to say it that way. Other times, I believe they are presuming a certain grandiosity, as in the royal “we.”

Of course, a casual observer might note that I have often written “we” during my career as an editorialist. But that was different. If I were speaking of a personal column, I said, “I think.” If I were speaking for the editorial board — expressing the opinion of an institution, not an individual — I said “we.” The word added to clarity (assuming the listener was paying attention to the distinction), rather than detracting from it.

In any case, I would imagine there are plenty of Republicans right now who wish Akin would ixnay the eeway.

A blast from SC’s past (and present, alas)

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There was a meme bouncing around on Twitter this morning having to do with the expression “dog whistle politics.” It’s a phrase you’ve probably heard before, which is easy to understand intuitively, but I was curious about its provenance, so I looked it up. And I found a little gem that, if I had read it before, I had forgotten.

This is from the Wikipedia entry on the term. WARNING: OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE:

One group of alleged code words in the United States is claimed to appeal to racism of the intended audience. The phrase “states’ rights“, although literally referring to powers of individual state governments in the United States, was described by David Greenberg in Slate as “code words” for institutionalized segregation and racism.[8] In 1981, former Republican Party strategist Lee Atwater when giving an anonymous interview discussing the GOP’s Southern Strategy, said:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968, you can’t say “nigger” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”[9][10]

Assuming that actually was South Carolina’s own Lee Atwater speaking (and it sounds like him), that’s the most direct line I’ve ever seen drawn — by an insider, that is — from the old segregationist politics, through the Southern Strategy and the redefinition of the Solid South, to today’s anti-government, anti-tax ideology.

The implication has been, ever since we entered this phase, that government is all about taking money from people like us and giving it to those people. Which of course is an idiotic understanding of what government is and whom it benefits, but it’s a line of thinking we often hear, with varying degrees of explicitness.

The thing is, most of the anti-government crowd would be furious at being called racist, and would indignantly point to Tim Scott and the sometimes nonwhite Nikki Haley as “proof” that they haven’t a racist bone in their bodies. And indeed, some of them (such as Mark Sanford, and his longtime friend and ally Tom Davis) are just natural-born libertarians. But far, far from all.

The thing about Atwater was that unlike the true believers, he was aware of what he was doing. That’s what made him so good at it.

Of course, as he points out, this is a process of distillation that takes us from the physical-world idea of race and transforms it to a pure abstraction that doesn’t literally bear on skin color. So it actually does become something other than racism, a set of attitudes more intellectualized than merely a visceral response to melanin. So those who become indignant at cries of “racism” do have a leg to stand on, and get angrier and angrier at having such an epithet flung at them. And so the back-and-forth accusations about what such attitudes really imply leads to even greater alienation, and the polarization of our politics gets worse and worse.

But you knew that, right?

The news story that was (in part) about itself

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You may or may not have seen that the finished version of the story about the ramifications of Nikki Haley’s daughter getting a PRT job finally appeared in The State today. Of course, it was far more involved and complete than the “draft” version that appeared inadvertently on the web pages of The Rock Hill Herald and (so I’m told) The Charlotte Observer last week.

In the end, the story turned out to be almost as much about itself as about the suggestion of nepotism.

While nothing can really erase the embarrassment for the newspaper of readers knowing about the story for a week before it appeared, the editors did everything they possibly could to make up for it. Most importantly, they thoroughly explored the ridiculous “controversy,” generated by the governor herself, about whether it should be published.

I particularly like the sidebar box that lists all the perfectly rational, professional questions that the newspaper had been asking the governor’s office from the beginning of this silly saga, followed by the immature, petulant, emotional statement from the governor’s office, refusing to answer those questions — all of which a public official who actually does believe in transparency would have answered immediately. Let’s quote that sidebar in full:

Questions, but no answers

Emailed questions sent by a State reporter to the governor’s office on Monday, July 16. (The State has removed the name of the governor’s daughter in the email exchange below.)

Here are my questions about (NAME REMOVED) Haley working at the State House gift shop:

When was she hired? When she did she start work? Will she continue to work at the shop after school starts?

What are her duties?

How many hours a week does she work?

How much is she paid?

Is this her first job?

Who does she report to? How many people work at the shop?

Was this job posted to the public? (If so, can I see a copy of the posting?)

Was the job budgeted? (If not, how was this job added and funded?)

Were work hours of shop employees adjusted to accommodate (NAME REMOVED)?

Why did her parents choose the gift shop as a place to work?

Some people might not think it’s fair for (NAME REMOVED) to have a job tied to a state agency where the director is appointed by her mother (PRT). Response?

If the governor’s office has concerns about (NAME REMOVED)’s safety, about the public knowing where she works, why does she have a job at one the state’s most-prominent and most-visited historical sites?

Would she have needed additional security if she got a job outside the State House?

The governor’s office response

Sent on Tuesday, June 17

What follows constitutes our office’s response for any story you plan to write regarding (NAME REMOVED) Haley.

Quote from Rob Godfrey, Haley spokesman: “The State newspaper – the reporter who wrote it, editors who approved it, and ownership who published it – should be ashamed for printing details of a fourteen year old’s life and whereabouts, against the wishes of her parents and the request of the Chief of SLED, who is ultimately responsible for her security. We have nothing more to say.”

Quote from South Carolina Law Enforcement Division Chief Mark Keel: “I have expressed my concerns, as of yesterday, that publication of information regarding minor children of elected officials creates problems for State Law Enforcement and its efforts to provide security for the children of this governor or any governor. In my 30 years-plus of experience at SLED, the security or activities of minor children of elected officials is something that the media in general has taken a ‘hands off’ approach to in reporting except as officially released by the elected official’s office.”

Did the newspaper manage to convey to you that it was going out of its way not to name the child, or do you need to get hammered over the head with (NAME REMOVED) a couple more times? No? OK, good, we’ll move on…

The story was unaccompanied by editorial comment (unless you count Mark Lett’s statement of the newsroom’s thinking on publishing the story), but for anyone able to put two and two together, the lesson to be learned here is obvious: This governor, when backed into a corner, will use hypocritical obfuscation in an effort to manipulate an emotional backlash reaction from her base so that she can hide behind it, rather than give straight answers.

Most telling on that score was the fact that Gov. Haley herself has consistently disclosed information about her children and their doings, even to providing the name of her daughter’s orthodontist — and yet has the nerve to (apparently) induce the head of SLED to say, absurdly, that disclosing that her daughter has a job that is just outside the governor’s office and protected by more than one layer of security somehow threatens her safety. Yes, any information published about any person’s whereabouts could, conceivably, make that person marginally less safe. So maybe the governor will think about that in the future when she posts on Facebook.

Substantively, in terms of the bare bones of the original story, what this story contained that last week’s draft did not were some basic facts that Nikki provided to the Charleston paper after refusing to answer The State (more petulance): such as her daughter’s hours, and what she was being paid. (Actually, the Charleston story turned out to be less about the governor, and more about the continuing, puzzling absence of the story from The State.)

No one who brought the draft story to my attention ever mentioned the one significant fact that was missing from it: What the child was being paid, or even whether she was being paid. This seems to be what held up the story. I think that’s a lousy excuse to hold the story– I would simply have written, we don’t know whether she’s being paid because the officials who should tell us refuse to — but it does seem to explain the delay. As soon as it had that information, from the third party, the paper ran the story.

Nikki Haley will continue, to the extent she acknowledges this story’s subject, to try to dupe her base into rage that the paper intruded on her child’s privacy.

But to anyone with even a rudimentary capacity for reason, it should be obvious that this story, now that it has finally appeared, is not about a child. It’s about the governor’s childishness.

Haley suspended mayor who allegedly hired son

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Catching up with e-mail (my inbox is down to 296!), I came across one from several days back, from one of a number of readers who remain puzzled as to why The State still hasn’t published Gina Smith’s now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t story about Nikki Haley’s daughter getting a job working for an agency she supervises.

I wonder about it myself. But that’s not what this post is about. What it’s about is something else I had missed, and which this reader was attempting to bring to my attention:

The Associated Press

NORWAY, S.C. — The mayor of the Orangeburg County town of Norway has been indicted on charges of misconduct in office and nepotism.

Gov. Nikki Haley has suspended Jim Preacher from office while the charges are pending.

The indictment says Preacher gave himself a raise without the approval of the town council and hired his son at the town’s water treatment department…

There was more to it than that, including a bizarre alleged interaction between the mayor and a state trooper. One senses that more than nepotism brought the mayor to this pass. But what struck me was the irony that the governor has suspended this guy who among other things is charged of providing his son with a job in a department that apparently is under his purview.

Yet, in the story that briefly appeared in the Rock Hill Herald before disappearing, we found this:

State law prohibits public officials from causing the employment of a family member to a position they supervise or manage, according to the State Elections Commission. However, Haley does not supervise the gift shop; she supervises the agency that operates it, making the teen’s summer job permissible, an attorney with the commission said.

Really? So we’re to suppose that the governor’s position had nothing to do with an agency that reports to her deciding to hire a 14-year-old child?

This is a strange little story. To quote Jubal Harshaw, “this has more aspects than a cat has hair.”

Does Nikki maintain her Facebook page herself? I suspect so…

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Someone speculated earlier that Nikki Haley doesn’t maintain her Facebook page herself. I suspect that she does. Or at least that some of the posts, or status updates, or whatever you want to call them (I’m a Twitter man, and get impatient with Facebook) are written by her personally.

They are so emotional. And they are so carelessly written that I hate to think anyone was paid to produce them — unless the rough edges are part of the service being provided, to add authenticity.

For instance, there’s this:

SC Law Enforcement Dir. Chief Keel responding to The State Newspaper: “I have expressed my concerns, as of yesterday, that publication of info regarding minor children of elected officials creates problems for State Law Enforcement and its efforts to provide security for the children of this governor or any governor. In my 30 yrs plus of experience at SLED, the security or activities of minor children of elected officials is something that the media in general has taken a “hands off” approach to in reporting except as released by the elected official’s office.”

First, one wonders what she’s on about. I didn’t see anything in the paper about her daughter before this appears. That sort of airing of a background battle as though everyone knows what’s going on is so off, so unprofessional, that it really feels like it’s coming from her.

Also, it follows her pattern of embarrassing her appointees by enlisting them in her personal political battles. I feel for Mark Keel.

It’s probably a reference to this thing Will Folks wrote about. I suppose The State was working on the story (the MSM have this quaint habit of confirming things with on-the-record sources, which makes them lag the blogosphere), and that freaked Nikki out in a way that Will’s post did not.

There was an earlier post on the same subject that was more emotional, and blasted The State as a worthless, “biased” entity that was persecuting Nikki’s family, and that one really felt like her. Here it is:

Scrutiny of me comes with the territory of being governor. I expect it. But it’s a sad day for journalism in South Carolina when The State newspaper goes after my 14 year old daughter. Public officials have a right to expect that their minor children are off limits from political opponents and even from biased media outlets like The State. Its disgusting. Shame on them.

If a paid staffer wrote that for her, then I’m embarrassed for that person, too.

Nikki, you just keep right on Facebookin’…

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At one point in the midst of his reporting on the Senate’s override of most of the governor’s vetoes, Adam Beam Tweeted this:

Sen. Joel Lourie tells ‪#scgov‬ @NikkiHaley to “stay off Facebook.” He was referring to this post: http://on.fb.me/Q4QnOg

So I followed the link, to where the gov posted,

veto of SC Coalition of Domestic Violence $453,680. Special interests made their way into the DHEC budget. This is not about the merit of their fights but the back door way of getting the money. It’s wrong and another loophole for legislators and special interests to use. Defeated 111-0

Hey, if this is the kind of response she’s going to get, the governor should spend more time on Facebook, not less:

  • Nick Danger Dunn Loopholes for special interests are only okay when they’re being used by people who have donated enough to your campaign, or who share your similar “interests” of furthering your political power and mutual backscratching. Right? Right? Otherwise they are unacceptable and wrong.

    Tuesday at 11:30pm ·  ·  16
  • Kim Ponce Obviously you are clueless as to how sexual violence impacts adults and children in South Carolina. DHEC has a long history of providing much needed funding for these services, many of which insurance companies will not pay for. What if it was your child, your sister, your mother needing a change of clothes at the ER, a child sensitive medical exam or interview, counseling?

    Tuesday at 11:32pm via mobile ·  ·  16
  • Xiomara A. Sosa again, with all due respect, this is not a “special interest” issues. This is a health and human services issue. please doo not muddy the water with such political jargon that is only divisive and pointless. Respectfully, Xiomara A. Sosa

    Tuesday at 11:32pm ·  ·  15
  • Marnie Schwartz-Hanley Does that mean the agencies will get the money to help us so that we are not 8th in the nation for criminal domestic violence?

    Tuesday at 11:35pm ·  ·  8
  • Alyssa Daniel As a 20 year victim of domestic violence, you should be ashamed

    Tuesday at 11:36pm via mobile ·  ·  16
  • Angie Wilson Rogers Maybe now YOU can stop being a distraction to SC voters, One-Term Haley?

    Tuesday at 11:37pm ·  ·  13
  • Grace Ammons The people have won. But I still cannot concieve of how this woman became our Governor!

    Tuesday at 11:40pm ·  ·  13
  • Dawn Ridge We’re 7th in the Nation and climbing, but GOD forbid we have money to support Victim’s Rights!!!!! Just make sure those inmates are watching cable tv and having 3 hot meals a day!!!!! This is complete and utter BS!!!!!!

    Tuesday at 11:43pm ·  ·  9

… and many more…

Of course, the comment thread is liberally sprinkled with the kind of “You go, girl!” responses Nikki expects. But it’s far from the unadulterated stream of fawning adulation that caused her to retreat to Facebook as her favored means of communicating with the world to begin with.

Are some of those responses a little on the emotional side, and lacking in calm discernment? Yep. But so are the kind of responses that Nikki goes to Facebook seeking. You can get calm and detached on an editorial page, but our governor scorns that. This is her medium.

I just hope she reads them all.

Just once, it would be nice to be able to respect one of this governor’s vetoes

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2008 file photo

Cases could probably be made for some of Nikki Haley’s vetoes, but she doesn’t offer them. With each news story I read about yet another veto, I wait for her argument — and it never comes.

For instance, here’s what was offered instead of an actual reason for vetoing the Governor’s Schools:

“All of these are good things, but if we’re going to lead and take South Carolina to a new place, we’ve got to take the emotion out of it,” she said Thursday. “How can we handle these things smarter? To do that sometimes hurts, and to do that sometimes means we wait but we make good decisions in the end.”

You almost get the feeling that she pulled those words out of a dictionary at random. Take emotion out of it? What emotion? “Handle these things smarter?” OK, in what way? Just give us one of your smarter ideas. That would be helpful. Give us just one example of what a “good decision” might look like, by your lights. If you can.

But it increasingly appears that she can’t. These vetoes aren’t intended for analysis; they’re intended to appeal to gut impulses within her base. She vetoes the Arts Commission because it’s the closest she can get to slapping at the National Endowment for the Arts, which Robert Mapplethorpe put on the map as a favorite whipping boy of the right. (Yes, I know that doesn’t make sense, but with the Snake Flag crowd, things don’t have to make logical sense.)

She vetoes the Governor’s Schools because, I don’t know: Maybe some of those kids will grow up to be supporters of the Arts Commission. Maybe she figures none of her most ardent supporters have kids who go to the Governor’s Schools. Maybe she’s right.

(Disclosure: Two of my children attended the governor’s schools — one the one for science and math, the other the one for arts and humanities — but neither chose to stay there until graduation.)

I’d feel better about it if she would explain precisely what she wanted to do with the money instead, and why. I might argue with it, but I could respect her more.

As it is, I’m just sick and tired of hearing about her little gestures of pointless destruction. I’ve never been a fan of nihilism.

More evidence in defense of John Rainey

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As long as I’m mentioning Cindi and Warren today, I’ll go ahead and call your attention to something else I saw in The State this morning. It was a column by Kathleen Parker, in which she stuck up for John Rainey in light of our governor’s emotional attack on him.

Remember her oh-so-classy way of defending herself against the ethical questions Rainey had raised? She called him “a racist, sexist bigot who has tried everything in his power to hurt me and my family.”

I briefly touched on a couple of things that just leapt to mind about John Rainey that seemed at odds with that assessment. Since Kathleen is still paid to write columns, she dug a good bit deeper and came up with some other examples of things that make Rainey sound like anything but what Nikki Haley says he is:

Inarguably, the governor’s charges, made publicly and aimed at a citizen, albeit a powerful one, are far more damaging than whatever Rainey said during a private meeting. Judge as you may but consider the following facts before accepting Haley’s indictment of Rainey.

Rainey

For no personal gain, Rainey frequently has raised money and organized groups in common cause across party lines. He and his wife, Anne, marched in 2000 with 46,000 others to protest the Confederate flag, which then flew atop the state Capitol dome. He personally hosted several private meetings with NAACP and legislative leaders to find a compromise for the flag’s removal.

He served as executive producer and raised funds to finance Bud Ferillo’s documentary “Corridor of Shame,” about the dismal condition of public schools along the Interstate 95 corridor through South Carolina. Candidate Barack Obama visited one of those schools and cited the corridor in campaign speeches.

In 1999, Rainey chaired the fundraising committee for the African-American History Monument on Statehouse grounds. In 2002, while chairman of Brookgreen Gardens, he raised funds to erect a World War I doughboy statue in Columbia’s Memorial Park and sponsored a bust of a 54th Massachusetts Infantry African American soldier. He received the sixth annual I. DeQuincey Newman Humanitarian Award in 2004, named for the United Methodist minister and first African American elected to the state Senate following Reconstruction.

Latest to the roster is a sculpture that Rainey has commissioned, honoring two Camden natives, financier Bernard Baruch and baseball great Larry Doby. Baruch was a philanthropist, statesman and consultant to presidents (Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt). Doby was the first African American to play in the American League and was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1998.

The sculpture, which will be unveiled in April, is a monument not only to two local heroes but also to the sort of reconciliation Rainey represents. His record speaks louder than words.