About an hour after Kevin Fisher called me to set the record straight on whether he had called me, I met Boyd Brown for a beer at Yesterday’s.
We had a fine time getting acquainted — I don’t believe we’d every had a conversation before — although it was unnecessary from my point of view. Boyd had suggested the meeting because he thought I was mad at him or something, and I went along because, as my readers know, I’m always glad to spend time at Yesterday’s (see the ad at right).
It was a very South Carolina kind of conversation. We talked about Boyd’s experiences with his Daddy (who is probably younger than I, since Boyd is younger than my fourth child) being on county council in Fairfield County, and about when his grandfather was a high official in state government, and about the people he’s related to in Bennettsville (my birthplace), and partisan politics, and race, and… just a little of everything.
And, more to the point… Boyd says he did not realize until after he had said it that in the case of our governor, his remark could be construed on yet a third level that, he agreed, is inappropriate. So we had a total meeting of the minds. Except, to some extent, when we got on the subject of upcoming legislation that he’s planning to push, but more about that later…
“Ironically, I tend to look left,” said SC Atty. Gen. Alan Wilson at the Columbia Rotary Club today. “That’s a joke.”
He said that because he had already gotten a big laugh, unintentionally. Worried about his time, he had turned to tell our president that he was just going to speak a minute-and-a-half about Yucca Mountain before going to questions. Except that our president, Rodger Stroup, was on his right, and he turned the other way and said it to David Kunz, who was seated up there to do Health and Happiness. The laugh came when David said, very enthusiastically, “All right by me!”
But the rest of his speech went pretty well. Crawford Clarkson turned to me afterward to say it was one of the best speakers he’d heard at Rotary. And Crawford’s been in Rotary approximately forever. I said I didn’t know about that, but I thought he did well.
He did well because he spoke as something other than what detractors of his Dad might expect. Sure, he started out sounding a lot like Joe, looking around the room and recognizing his many friends. But that was cool. I’ve always liked that about Joe. He’s very sincere about it, and so was Alan. Alan was a bit cooler about it, in fact. Joe tends to be rather manic in his extreme excitement to be there as a congressman.
Anyway, as I said, some would like to think that Alan is another Charlie Condon. (Charlie, who is a perfectly reasonable human being in person out of the limelight, turned into a sort of pandering monster as A.G., pursuing one issue after another that seemed fabricated to further his political career.) But I haven’t seen that yet, and there was none of that in the presentation we got today. Charlie would have worked in the “electric couch” somewhere, but not Alan.
Wilson spent a large portion of his time simply talking about the routine work that the A.G.’s office does in the course of meeting its statutory and constitutional obligations — handling civil litigation, criminal prosecution, post-conviction relief, criminal domestic violence, etc. That he chose to do so, to explain his office in such professional terms rather than political ones, is to me worthy of praise. Perhaps because I’m always on the lookout for another Charlie. (Fellow Rotarian Henry McMaster was a welcome change from Charlie — and it should be pointed out, Henry was largely responsible for the emphasis on CDV. I’m glad to see Wilson is continuing to be interested in that.)
Then he got onto the controversial issues — the NLRB/Boeing thing (although in SC, that’s hardly controversial), the health care mandate, Yucca Mountain — and he fought his corner well on these. His point on each was that he approached them according to the law as he read it. Of course, I’m less likely to disbelieve him than some, since I see the first and third ones the way he does. I disagree strongly with him on the middle one (and the idea that he could be successful in pursuing severability appalls me), although I fear he may be right that in the end it will be settled by a 5-4 SCOTUS decision, one way or the other.
In supporting his assertion that for him it’s about the law and not political advantage, he cited the Cornell Arms case, in which a security guard shot and killed an unarmed man who he said he thought was threatening him. Wilson said some told him that “You’ll take heat” from 2nd Amendment advocates for supporting the government’s prosecution of the guard. But in his account, he said, “That’s irrelevant.” The man had served five years, and would have been released by the state Supreme Court had Wilson not filed for a rehearing. As John Monk (happy birthday, John!) reported after the meeting:
“This has nothing to do with the right to carry (guns), nothing to do with the gun issue,” Wilson said. “The defense has the right to appeal at each level of litigation, and the state has a right to ask the court to reconsider their decision.”
A good example for the point the A.G. was making. But whether you agree that he’s always representing the law rather than serving politics, I was impressed that he took no opportunity to posture before Rotary. There was no ideological cant about “big government” or, to cite something his predecessor sank to in trying to run for governor, about promising to protect us from Obama and his Washington “vultures.” He opposes the mandate and sees it as constitutionally unsound. Fine. I just disagree. At least he expresses himself like someone who respects the law, rather than an ideological ranter.
And that counts for a lot. Now, to be perfectly frank, his website seems a tad more self-promotional than his speech today (I went there to get y’all a link to look up more about these issues and his involvement with them). But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good speech. That it was, and well received.
Last night, Phil Bailey called me with five minutes to go and asked me to be a last-minute replacement for Joel Lourie on Pub Politics, so of course I said yes, and they held the show for a few minutes to give me time to get there.
That’s seven times now, people. No one else comes close. The Five-Timer Club long ago became passé for me. I’m the standard fill-in guest. The one sad thing is that I can never be a stand-in guest co-host, because you have to be a Democrat or Republican. That’s the format. Speaking of which, Wesley Donehue was out of town again (China was mentioned), and Joel Sawyer filled in for him. You know, the former press secretary to Mark Sanford, now state campaign director for Jon Huntsman. He did great.
One of our topics, as it happened, was Kevin Fisher’s column about my post about Boyd Brown’s inappropriate little witticism. (When I entered The Whig, I saw Corey Hutchins seated at a table, went over and stood over him, cocked a fist back and said, “Look out — I’m liable to attack you…”) Our discussion — during which both Phil took the position that Boyd’s comment was great, and Joel held that it was Corey’s journalistic obligation to report it — led me to an ironic observation: While one of them represented the left and the other the right, I was the only real conservative at the table. They would only agree that I was the grouchy old guy upholding outdated notions of civility and propriety. (Which is basically what conservatism is, properly understood.)
We also discussed other, more interesting stuff. I’ll post the show when it’s available.
But that’s not why I come to you today in this post. I wanted to share with you this op-ed from the aforementioned young Mr. Brown, in which he expresses his thoughts regarding the “F” the governor gave him in a far more mature and appropriate manner. An excerpt:
Recently, as you may have heard, Gov. Nikki Haley released her legislative report cards for 2011. I will not venture into the sheer pettiness of this nonsense, although it is just that – petty nonsense. Instead, I’ll explain why I got the grade I received, and why, for the first time in my life, I’ll ignore the “teacher’s” advice on how to improve my grade.
According to her standards, I was given an “F.” Not since my first year of Carolina have I been awarded an “F,” and now that I’m in law school, I hope it’s not a recurring theme. I was ashamed of the “F” I received on my first test in freshman philosophy, but I recovered and did well in the course. I can’t say the same for the “F” I was awarded by Nikki Haley; instead, I am proud of it.
Some would argue that since she is our governor, she knows what the people of South Carolina want. Those who are really drunk on her Kool-Aid would probably argue that point loudly and irrationally. Here is my argument:
The “F” I received stands for Fairfield, for your family. In last year’s election, Senator Vincent Sheheen won our county with overwhelming numbers. Nikki Haley and her platform (or lack thereof) were soundly rejected. She is clearly out of touch and out of step with our community – just look at the election returns.
It is offensive to me for her to think that her agenda for our state trumps the agenda of those who I represent. For her to think otherwise shows her skyrocketing level of arrogance, which only rises higher with every national news show she visits, and every out of state fundraiser she attends….
And so forth.
This is good. This is right. Far better that you express clearly why you are offended by her actions (and you have every reason to be offended by her presumption) that for you to be offensive yourself.
That’s it. That’s my fatherly, or at least avuncular, advice for today.
A reader Tweeted, as I was headed to a late lunch (1:46 p.m. EST), “Eager to read your thoughts on Spurrier v. Morris.” I had not the slightest idea what he was talking about, but now I do. I’ve seen the video and everything. (Interestingly, I could not find anything about it on the mobile version of thestate.com, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t on the browser version at the time.)
Of course, by that time, the news that the coach, or Eric Hyman, or somebody, had thrown Stephen Garcia off the team — apparently for real, this time. Hyman explained, “For Stephen to return to and remain with the football squad this fall, we agreed on several established guidelines. Unfortunately, he has not been able to abide by those guidelines and has therefore forfeited his position on the roster.”
I don’t know what the guidelines were, as I don’t follow this stuff. But I did see the Auburn game, and a reasonable guess would be that one of his guidelines involved throwing the football straight. Yes, I’m joking. Sort of.
But Micah apparently wanted to know what I thought about the Ron Morris thing. Gee, I don’t know.
I’m not Ron’s editor; never was. If I were, right now I’d be saying, “What the hell, Ron?” Or perhaps I’d use some other, saltier, newsroom expression. And Ron would tell me what was going on as well as he could, from his perspective. Although, based on the performance I saw on the video, it might not be altogether clear to him what it’s all about (apart from the usual animus that, from what I’ve seen, Ron is accustomed to engendering). Anyway, assuming he had the information available, I would have Ron lay out for me his version of the story. Then, I would check it out as well as I could.
If Coach Spurrier had an ounce of professionalism in him, of course, he would already have communicated to me (as Ron’s theoretical editor) what his beef was. Let’s assume he does, and he did. In that case, I would already have had it out with Ron about it and, given the way Spurrier acted today, probably would have told him I’d decided to back Ron. Hence the public tantrum.
Of course, if the coach did NOT try the normal, civil route first, then his performance today was inexcusable. Perhaps understandable on some level given that his QB was just canned after letting him down, but still not excusable in a man paid $2.8 million a year by a public institution to represent that institution.
Speaking of which, if I were Eric Hyman or Harris Pastides, I’d right now be having a serious talk with the coach about his performance — a sort of mirror of the one I’d be having with Ron as his editor. We’d start by watching his game film. Some of the things I’d be asking him:
What’s this really about, Steve? And don’t give me that nonsense about some column last spring. That was last spring; you blew up today. What’s really going on? (Oh, wait: Maybe THIS is the column Spurrier is referring to, in which Morris wrote, “Spurrier poached Horn’s program.”)
What exactly do you mean when you say it’s “my right as a head coach” not to talk to Ron Morris? Is that some special right we don’t know about? Do assistant coaches, or ordinary mortals walking the streets, not have that right? Because one would think that they do; that any human being walking the planet would have the right not to talk to Ron Morris if they chose not to. (Unless, of course, they were working for us, and we were paying them $2.8 million a year, and we told them to talk to him…) So what’s this imperious “as a head coach” stuff? Have we really made you feel that important?
And so on. That would just be for starters. And I’d be doing that in between fielding phone calls from people over at the newspaper asking me, “What the heck?” Because they use language like that in talking to the public.
So, as I say, if I were charged with taking a position on this, I’d be in fact-finding mode now before making a decision. But if you held the proverbial gun to my head (and I’d much prefer that to a literal one), I’d have to choose Ron on this one. And I might get embarrassed doing so — I might later have to run a full retraction on the challenged column last spring or something if it turned out Ron was wrong. But if you forced me, I’d go with him on this, because I know him. Or at least, I know him better than I do Spurrier, whom I’ve never met.
That means I used to run into Ron in the hallway sometimes, and stop to chat. I never actually worked with him. I don’t think he was in the newsroom when I was (pre-1994), and even if he had been, we’d have had little occasion to deal with each other. But he has always struck me as a pretty thoughtful, careful guy.
I knew people hated him — people of the “Cocky is God” persuasion. And I used to wonder about that, but I’ve often had occasion to wonder about really serious football fans. Sometimes, when one of Ron’s columns caused a splash of some sort, I’d actually turn to the sports pages and read it. And it usually read OK to me — of course, I was judging it outside the context of having any particular knowledge of the subject matter.
My shock arises partly from Amanda being the… well, something over at the SC Democratic Party (apparently they’re too democratic at party HQ for titles, but she recently appeared on Pub Politics as the counterpart of Matt Moore, the GOP executive director). I know that her Twitter feed says “My tweets reflect my personal opinions…..,” but still…
The second is that, well, Amanda just seems like such a sweet “little girl” (to use our governor’s term) to an alter cocker like me. I mean, look at her; I ask you.
Amanda, Amanda, Amanda…
And Corey, and Boyd — what are you boys doing using language like that around Amanda?
Seriously, folks… This is not only grossly inappropriate language to be used when referring to the governor of our state, it’s not an appropriate topic, even if you used euphemisms.
And why am I writing about it? Well, I wouldn’t have if this had come from one of the usual sources for such. But this was said (apparently on the record) by a state representative, repeated by a representative of the Fourth Estate, and picked up by a party official.
And that’s wrong, on all counts. Daniel Patrick Moynihan had a term for it, or at least one that can be adapted to this purpose: Defining deviancy down.
We don’t need to be on this downward spiral, people.
On Tuesday, while still eating breakfast, I sent Cindi Scoppe an email telling her what a good column she had written about Nikki Haley’s ridiculous claim (later retracted) that half the job applicants at SRS had failed drug tests.
I was proud of the fine job she had done. I was also proud of myself, because I told her it was good without any caveats or “yes, buts” or any qualifications of any kind. I mean, I didn’t even tell her that I thought the headline could have been stronger. I was unusually nice, for me. (Dave Moniz, who worked for me as a reporter in the early 90s, used to say the highest praise anyone ever got from me was “pretty good.”)
But was she grateful? No. She complained later that I hadn’t said how good the column was on the blog.
So here goes. Actually, I think I’ll just quote from the piece:
THE EXTRAORDINARY thing about Gov. Nikki Haley’s discredited claim that half the job applicants at the Savannah River Site had failed drug tests — the actual number was less than 1 percent — wasn’t her acknowledgement that she couldn’t back it up. It was her explanation for why she ever would have parroted such an absurd claim to begin with.
Some unidentified someone she talked to told her that during the campaign, she told The Associated Press’ Jim Davenport last week, and she took it at face value and ran with it. “I’ve never felt like I had to back up what people tell me,” she said. “You assume that you’re given good information.”
I used to think the same thing about elected officials.
I don’t mean I believed everything they said. Quite the contrary. As a reporter, the most fun I had — and some of my most important work — was writing “fact check” articles that explained what was untrue or misleading about the claims politicians made in their political ads, speeches and debates.
Typically, this involved sins of omission: Candidates take their opponents’ votes or comments out of context to create an incorrect and unfair impression. And it tended to be confined to the campaign trail. The overwhelming majority of elected officials I’ve dealt with in a quarter century of covering politics could be trusted with the basic facts once the campaign was ended and they were talking about policy instead of their opponents. They didn’t fabricate “facts”; even Mark Sanford just manipulated numbers in convoluted and misleading ways — although he did it more purposefully and masterfully than any of his predecessors.
I took note before last year’s GOP primary of several misleading claims Ms. Haley had made during a meeting with our editorial board. What was striking was that she would stretch the truth so far in a setting where most candidates go out of their way to be extra careful. More striking was that there was no need for any of it. Although it might have meant a bit more work, she could have made legitimate arguments if she had stuck to the facts.
What has remained notable since she took office is that her demonstrably inaccurate claims continue to be unnecessary…
She goes on to give examples. It’s a good piece. You should go read it.
Wait, here’s another good bit:
That sort of carelessness is fairly common among people who aren’t used to being in the public spotlight. But most elected officials I know are actually quite careful about getting the facts right. They footnote their claims. They say they’ll have to get back to you before answering a question — not because they want to figure out how to spin it but because they want to make sure that they know what they’re talking about…
And here’s another:
Now that she has been forced to back off the drug-testing claim that she says convinced her that we need to make laid-off workers pass drug tests before they receive unemployment checks, I’m struck by the fact that she’s still pushing for the mandatory tests.
I don’t find it objectionable to require the tests. Wasteful, yes — since taxpayers would have to foot the bill, and indications are that fewer than 5 percent of applicants would test positive — but not philosophically objectionable.
What I find objectionable is basing an expensive policy position on an unbelievable anecdote that you didn’t even bother to question because it fits so comfortably with your preconceived notions. And then clinging to that position even after the anecdote has been so utterly discredited…
The worst thing about the “It’s a great day in South Carolina!” order isn’t the fact that it is so grating and insulting to the caller. Callers can shrug that off; if they really need to do business with the state, they’ll take a breath and go ahead (even while filing a mental note that they now think less of SC government than they did before).
The worst thing is the attitude that underlies the order, which was ably set out in the newspaper this morning by Haley spokesman Rob Godfrey:
“While the press focuses on the negative, the governor is changing the culture of our state.. She is proud of South Carolina, and while we have challenges, we are making great progress every day. The focus of this greeting is to have state employees pass along a positive attitude and ask the caller, ‘How can I help you?’ so that they remember – and the people know – that they work for the taxpayers. The governor has always said that it’s time for government to work for the people, and this is the first step.”
She’s changing the culture of our state…. It’s time for government to work for the people…
This is the first step.
Because, you see, that never happened before. It’s never occurred to any state employee that they serve the people of South Carolina. Ever. Nikki Haley invented it. Thank God for Nikki Haley, because not one single state employee in the history of South Carolina has ever considered serving the public, even for a moment. If any had, this would not be the “first step” in implementing this wonderful new day. And this is the first step.
Again, we are seeing what we get when a person who does not have a clue about an organization — what it’s for, whom it serves, what its personnel are like, how it works, how it should work — is placed in charge of that organization.
Tragically for all of us, that organization is our state government — an institution that the people of our state, perhaps more than the people of any other state in the union, badly need to be well-led.
But there’s more to it than that. Nikki Haley is merely a symptom of a sickness in the politics of our state. The sickness is a nasty attitude of despising those who serve the public — and despising them more and more as their jobs become more difficult.
She is now engaged in the process of tearing down that workforce. And the first step is humiliation.
The no. 3 Republican in the Senate will step down from his leadership position early next year, despite having no plans to retire from Congress.
Lamar Alexander informed his fellow GOP colleagues of his rather surprising decision on Tuesday morning in a letter obtained byPolitico, saying that the move was the best decision for him and the Senate.
“Stepping down from leadership will liberate me to spend more time working for results on the issues I care most about,” the 71-year-old former Tennessee governor wrote. “I want to do more to make the Senate a more effective institution so that it can deal better with serious issues. There are different ways to provide leadership within the Senate. After nine years here, this is how I believe I can now make my greatest contribution. For these same reasons I do not plan to seek a leadership position in the next Congress.”…
I’ve respected Lamar Alexander since I covered him in his first successful run for governor in 1978, spending a good bit of time with him on the road (OK, so I was on the road with him 24/7 for one week before switching over to cover his opponent, but it was enough time to form a positive impression).
Lamar was never a guy you get particularly excited about. He was… bland. One of the most striking things about him was how much his speaking voice sounded like Pat Boone’s. (Once, I heard a PSA on the radio by Boone, and I thought it was the governor until he identified himself at the end — or was it the other way around?) His much-publicized walk across Tennessee in the trademark red-and-black shirt was SO contrived, such an earnest bid to be interesting, that I would joke about it, while at the same time appreciating his seriousness. He was what Tennessee needed after the rollicking corruption of Ray Blanton (who had defeated him four years earlier, on the very first election night of my newspaper career, when I was a copy boy at The Commercial Appeal). I would joke that Lamar’s main appeal to the voters was to subliminally project, “I won’t steal the silverware from the governor’s mansion.” But after Blanton, that was progress.
Turned out that there was a lot more progress to come with Alexander. He was different from any Republican governor I have seen since. He started out appointing Democrats to his Cabinet (his chief political adviser was someone who had worked for Democrats), and he reached out to the Democratic majority in the legislature to get his agenda passed, including significant movement toward merit pay for teachers. From day one, he was about raising the incomes of the average Tennessean, and he was for working with whomever it took to get that done. He worked particularly productively with the iconic speaker of the House (and later governor) Ned Ray McWherter.
He has served his state, and now his country, with pragmatic dedication and moderate sensibilities. So I’m sorry to see him leave leadership.
And puzzled. What does he mean he can be more effective outside that role? There’s a hint in the original Politico story:
Alexander says the decision was rooted in his desire to foster consensus in the gridlocked Senate, a role he felt constrained playing while spearheading the partisan Senate GOP messaging machine.
That sounds very cool — and even, despite this being Lamar Alexander, exciting. In an UnParty sense. I’d love to hear an elaboration on that. It would be nice to have back about 15 minutes of that time I spent riding around with him in cars and planes back in the day. I think I’d have more interesting questions now…
On the campaign plane with Alexander, back in the day./Brad Warthen
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) – South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said Monday she can’t back up claims that half of the people wanting work at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site failed drug tests and half of the remainder couldn’t pass reading and writing tests.
Haley said in an interview with The Associated Press that she’s learned a lesson and is going to be more careful.
“I’ve never felt like I had to back up what people tell me. You assume that you’re given good information,” Haley said. “And now I’m learning through you guys that I have to be careful before I say something.”
Haley said she’d probably repeated “a million times” the story that about the test failures before being questioned about the assertions after a Lexington Rotary Club on Sept. 8. Her spokesman has been asked almost daily since then whether the claim could be substantiated…
Hey, if she has truly “learned a lesson,” I think that’s wonderful. And if she’s going to be more careful (and, dare we hope, thoughtful), that would be even better.
Don’t know whether you’ll be able to actually read this Greenville News editorial online (they make it hard), but here are excerpts:
Stop bashing state’s unemployed
The state’s more than 236,000 unemployed workers deserve better treatment than they have gotten in recent days from Gov. Nikki Haley. In her rush to score points with voters who mistakenly believe the unemployed have done something to earn their unkind fate, Haley used careless language to push a fundamentally flawed idea.
“I so want drug testing,” Haley was quoted as saying last week when discussing South Carolina’s stubbornly high unemployment rate that has gotten worse on her watch. “It’s something I’ve been wanting since the first day I walked into office.”…
Haley’s campaign mirrors those being run in a couple dozen states where some politicians are trying to convince people that drug-testing of the unemployed is needed to improve the nation’s wretched unemployment numbers. It’s an approach that simply defies the reality of what has happened over the past few years as the worst economy since the Great Depression has resulted in unemployment stuck near double digits.
This politically driven campaign ignores an important fact. Until the day they were handed their pink slip by companies looking to shore up their bottom lines, unemployed people actually had a job. And in much of America, those jobs came with a mandatory drug test before the job was filled and with other opportunities for random or for-cause drug tests during employment….
… Drugs were a factor in only about 1,000 of more than 400,000 unemployment claims, according to an Associated Press story from earlier this year.
Gov. Haley and other state leaders should focus on bringing more jobs to South Carolina and nurturing a system that better matches employers with workers. And they should stop this unseemly crusade of beating up on unemployed people just to score political points.
I’ll add a thought to that…
Who ARE these people with whom you can make political points by saying stuff like this? Who ARE these people who think of the unemployed as the undeserving “other”? It’s unimaginable to me. Well before I lost my 35-year newspaper career, I knew plenty of people who were out of work, across the economy, and plenty of others who were worried, and with good reason? Who lives in such a bubble that they don’t know all of these worthy, smart, hard-working people?
Oh, I know the answer to those questions. But I’m still incredulous that anyone could be so lacking in perception, and so mean-spirited. And I continue to be stunned that people such as Nikki Haley can appeal to such lowest common impulses and succeed in elections. And I’m sick and tired of this being the case. I want to live in a rational world.
And that’s the bottom line, really. I suppose it’s entirely about compassion in the case of people who are way nicer than I am. But I’m more about recognizing the things that are actually wrong with our economy, seeing how they affect us all, and seeing how even rational self-interest (altruism aside) requires us to address these problems realistically instead of acting like hermit crabs and reaching desperately for stupid excuses to dismiss what’s actually happening.
If you’ll recall, Nikki Haley got into trouble for sorta, kinda, trying to do the right thing: Save girls’ lives by getting them vaccinated against the papillomavirus that causes most cervical cancers. Until she realized it might not be a popular move with political extremists.
Columbia, South Carolina (CNN) — As the debate over Texas Gov. Rick Perry mandating the HPV vaccine continues between Republican presidential candidates, a woman whose endorsement is coveted by all them, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, has her own complicated history on the issue.
In 2007, shortly before Perry issued an executive order requiring that schoolgirls be vaccinated against the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, or HPV, that causes most cervical cancers, Haley was throwing her support behind a similar bill in South Carolina. At the time she was in her second term as a state representative.
State Rep. Joan Brady introduced the Cervical Cancer Prevention Act in South Carolina, and the Republican corralled more than 60 legislators, including Haley, to sponsor the bill. Unlike the executive order for which Perry is taking heat, this legislative mandate did not include a provision for parents to opt out of inoculating their daughters.
Within months, fierce opposition mounted, and legislative records back up accounts from sources who recall sponsors “dropping like flies” before a unanimous vote killed the bill on April 18, 2007.
More than a dozen legislators formally requested to be removed as sponsors from the bill, but the future governor of South Carolina was not one of them…
[State Rep. Kris] Crawford, a Republican, said he is not so sure.
“There are exactly two groups of people who can claim they were against this giant overreaching of government — those who never sponsored the bill and those who were sponsors but subsequently removed their names from the bill when it was explained to be a boondoggle mandating vaccination of little 12-year-old girls against a sexually transmitted disease,” Crawford said. “Everyone else was either for the bill or riding the fence trying to claim victory regardless of outcome.”…
This is a pattern we’ve seen, of course — one in which our young governor blunders into a situation, can’t decide which is the safest political course for her, hunkers down and hopes to survive it, whatever happens to everybody else. By being on both sides, she hopes eventually to be on the winning side, and have some credit splash on her. It’s worked for her so far. As you’ll note, CNN is still calling her a “rising star.” Really.
But even some of the national media are starting to notice things.
I am copying and pasting an article in the NYT about Jim Cooper, a Blue Dog Democrat considered to be the last true moderate in the House. A very good read. FYI – linking to articles is not one of my strong points.
Personally, I think he has identified the turning point of politics in my lifetime and how things have devolved since Newt Gingrich, a man I have never liked for one second, was elected to congress. Gingrich tries to come across as an intellectual but in my estimation, he is a man possessing a high I.Q. but without the ability to put it to proper use for the good of everyone, not just his own personal ambitions.
The article is a refreshing walk down memory lane when one considers the tone of things out there today. There was a time when politics was populated with men and women who had a certain sense of duty to all citizens, not just party loyalty.
Thanks,
Bart
My response to Bart was to say:
I don’t know whether Cooper is the LAST, but there are precious few — in office. We’re not so rare out in the population.
Which is true. Unfortunately, our vaunted two-party system increasingly guarantees that moderates will not make it to Congress. No one has a chance in the fall without the backing of one party or the other. And the nominating process weeds out reasonable people, most of the time. Sort of makes me want to try running myself sometime, just to see how hard it would be. My prediction: Hard as getting a Republican to say something nice about Barack Obama. Or a Democrat about W.
Jim Cooper, a Blue Dog Democrat who represents the Nashville area, was first elected to Congress in 1982. He was 28, and if it’s not quite right to say he’s been there ever since — he spent eight years in the private sector after losing the race for Al Gore’s Senate seat — he’s still been a congressman most of his adult life.
You’d think that Cooper’s tenure would ensure him the privileges of seniority. It doesn’t. Considering that he’s a mild-mannered man, you’d think he’d have friends on both sides of the aisle. Not so. He’s loathed by Republicans for being in the wrong party, and scorned by Democrats for his fiscal conservatism. At the least, you’d think that he’d be respected for his institutional memory. Wrong again.
The reason is that Cooper is the House’s conscience, a lonely voice for civility in this ugly era. He remembers when compromise was not a dirty word and politicians put country ahead of party. And he’s not afraid to talk about it. “We’ve gone from Brigadoon to Lord of the Flies,” he likes to say….
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) wants thejobless to pass a drug test before they can receive benefits, but she seems to have an exaggerated sense of drug use among the unemployed…
Haley said scads of job applicants flunked a drug test at the Savannah River Site, a nuclear reservation along the Savannah River.
“Down on River Site, they were hiring a few hundred people, and when we sat down and talked to them — this was back before the campaign — when we sat down and talked to them, they said of everybody they interviewed, half of them failed a drug test, and of the half that was left, of that 50 percent, the other half couldn’t read and write properly,” Haley said….
Jim Giusti, a spokesman for the Department of Energy, which owns the River Site, told HuffPost he had no idea what Haley was talking about with regard to applicants flunking a drug test.
“Half the people who applied for a job last year or year 2009 did not fail the drug test,” Giusti said. “At the peak of hiring under the Recovery Act we had less than 1 percent of those hired test positive.”
The River Site doesn’t even test applicants. “We only test them when they have been accepted,” Giusti said.
A spokesman for Gov. Haley did not respond to requests for comment…
That’s some good reporting by HuffPo, although the headline was weak. If the body type was right, this was more than an “exaggeration.” Also, I’ve never heard SRS referred to on second reference as “River Site,” but whatever.
Gee, maybe if I’d given up some of those really heavy-duty drugs, I wouldn’t have been out of work for most of 2009, huh?
Earlier today, I passed on a headline on the WIS site that said, “SC Gov Haley says she regrets ‘little girl’ remark.”
WIS later took down that headline because they realized what I did when I read their story. There was nothing supporting the implication of the headline, which was that the governor had apologized.
Later in the day, Gina Smith over at The State explained what had actually happened. Here’s the operative paragraph:
“The story painted a grossly inaccurate picture and was unprofessionally done,” Haley said in a statement. “But my ‘little girl’ comment was inappropriate and I regret that. Everyone can have a bad day. I’ll forgive her bad story, if she’ll forgive my poor choice of words.”
Yep. In her expression of “regret,” she went further in trying to insult the reporter.
That’s our governor. If she does something she shouldn’t obviously it’s someone else’s fault.
Nowadays, we have our young lady governor calling a reporter a “little girl.” In the olden days, when men were men and so were governors, they were somewhat more polite toward the youthful and female. But if they weren’t careful, they also came across as a bit kinky. I refer you to this column I wrote in 1994:
CARROLL CAMPBELL MUST LEARN HOW TO TAKE THE HEAT
State, The (Columbia, SC) – Sunday, April 10, 1994
Author: BRAD WARTHEN, Editorial Writer
If Carroll Campbell really wants to run for President of the United States, he will have to grow a much tougher hide.
The Governor is regularly mentioned as a top contender by some of the most respected political writers in America, including The Washington Post’s David Broder. But Broder and company are missing something. To use a baseball analogy, the top sportswriters have taken only a cursory look at this rookie. They’ve seen him field, throw and bunt. They’ve yet to determine if he can hit a curve ball. Or as Harry Truman might have asked, can he take the heat?
Mr. Campbell is an extraordinarily thin-skinned man for a politician. The general public doesn’t know this because Campbell manages his public exposure with an artful care reminiscent of the way Richard Nixon was handled in 1968. He stays above the fray.
But when he can’t do that — say, when someone surprises him with a tough question, off-camera — the image can fall apart. Experienced reporters have seen that carefully groomed mask shift, with remarkable speed, into a visage of suspicion and hostility. His eyes flash, and his answers, if he responds, are highly defensive. The motives of questioners are questioned.
This flaw isn’t fatal. People can change and, in fact, over the last couple of years, Mr. Campbell has mellowed. He’s become more statesmanlike and less confrontational. In seven years as governor, he has polished some of his rough edges.
At a luncheon briefing for editorial writers at the Governor’s Mansion in January, I saw the Carroll Campbell that Dave Broder sees. He was open, talkative and articulate, exhibiting an easy command of any topic that came up. In the next day’s editorial on his State of the State speech, I wrote about the “New Carroll Campbell .”
A month later, the Old Carroll Campbell was back.
It started with the effort by former state Rep. Luther Taylor to get his Lost Trust conviction thrown out. One of the tactics his lawyer used was to say the federal investigators had backed off investigating charges that could have implicated Mr. Campbell .
A little background: In 1990, when I was The State’s governmental affairs editor, we looked into these same charges and found an interesting story about how the Legislature gave 21 people an $8.6 million tax break. But we never found any evidence that Mr. Campbell was involved. And neither did the feds, with their far superior investigative powers.
Taylor alleged that the federal agents hadn’t gone far enough. The new U.S. attorney, a Democrat, agreed to investigate. The State’s federal court reporter,Twila Decker , concluded that the only way to check the course of the previous investigation was to gain access to Mr. Campbell ‘s FBI files, and she needed his permission. So she asked.
The Governor went ballistic. He requested a meeting with The State’s publisher and senior editors. This led to an extraordinary session on Feb. 17. Assembled in a conference room at The State were the various members of the editorial board and three people from the newsroom: Managing Editor Paula Ellis, chief political writer Lee Bandy and Ms. Decker . Mr. Campbell had a small entourage. Most of us wondered what the Governor wanted.
Over the next hour or so, we found out — sort of. Mr. Campbell had brought files with him, and between denunciations of those raising these charges anew, he read sporadically from the files. Each time Ms. Decker tried to ask a question, he cut her off, usually with a dismissive “young lady.”
Throughout the session, rhetorical chips fell from his shoulder: “This young lady had given me a deadline. . . . You’re smarter than the court. . . . I will not even be baited. . . . May I finish. . . . Now wait a minute, young lady; you’re mixing apples and oranges. . . . I really don’t care what you have, young lady. . . . You seem to be obsessed with ‘lists.’. . .”
No one in the room thought Mr. Campbell had done anything wrong, and everyone wanted him to have the chance to clear the air. But we were all riveted by his agitation, particularly as it was directed at the reporter. At one point, Editorial Page Editor Tom McLean felt compelled to explain to the Governor that Ms. Decker wasn’t imputing wrongdoing on his part by simply asking questions. It did little good.
At the end, the Governor stormed out, without the usual handshakes around the table — without even eye contact.
Later that afternoon, Consulting Editor Bill Rone, who had missed the meeting, stuck his head into my office to ask what had happened with Mr.Campbell . Bill said he had run into the Governor in the parking lot, and that he had been upset about Twila Decker . He told Bill he had been so mad he had wanted to “spank” her.
Repeatedly during the interview, Mr. Campbell had expressed indignation that he was being questioned by someone who wasn’t “here at the time.” Is that what he will say when the national press corps starts taking him really seriously, and somewhere in Iowa or New Hampshire or Georgia someone in the pack asks him about that capital gains thing in South Carolina? Or the 1978 congressional campaign against Max Heller? Or fighting busing in 1970? Or the Confederate flag?
Mr. Campbell has gotten altogether too accustomed to the relative politeness of the South Carolina press corps. Our group was throwing him softballs — real melons — and he went down swinging. What will he do when he faces major league pitching?
Of course, the late Gov. Campbell didn’t mean anything kinky about it. He just wanted to punish her somehow. Putting Twila in the pillory would probably have satisfied him.
I remember one of the newsroom editors — someone who has not worked there for a long time — saying after he read my column, “Hey, I’d like to spank her, too.” He meant it the other way.
A friend — a woman friend — passed on to me this item from The Post and Courier. She told me it might not appeal to me because it was “chick stuff” — that she nearly passed on it for the same reason (you’d have to know this woman, who in some ways thinks more like a guy than I do) — but that she thought it was worth a moment’s attention. An excerpt:
A lot of women are going to be disappointed with your comments on conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham’s radio show….
Maybe you were still feeling some fallout from reporter Renee Dudley’s story about your European job-recruiting trip funded by the taxpayers.
But that was no reason to say what you said.
Near the end of your interview, Ingraham offers this observation:
“This character at The Post and Courier clearly wants to portray you as someone hypocritical, that you’re not what you pretend to be.”
(No, governor, you’re doing a really good job of that on your own, actually, but that’s beside the point.)
You responded: “All I will tell you is, God bless that little girl at The Post and Courier. Her job is to create conflict, my job is to create jobs.”
Little girl?
The governor of the great state of South Carolina called another woman a little girl?…
Gee, all they had to do to get my attention was yell, “Girl Fight!” I would have come running. Any guy who’s ever been a third-grader would. We’d also be careful not to get in the middle of it…
A few days ago, I actually managed to get my email INbox down to single digits. Which required days of ruthless slaughter, starting close to 500 and more than 100 coming in every day.
Before I delete it, though, I thought y’all would enjoy this perfectly routine official Democratic Party rant — of the sort that I frequently share with y’all — which would not have been worth sharing, except that it was from a guy who was not quite yet a household word at the time. OK, so maybe his name WAS a household word, but it wasn’t applied to him, specifically, until he showed his to the world.
The date was March 26 (oh, trust me; I dug through layers of sediment much older than that). The name was Anthony Weiner:
Brad —
Let me tell you something about these Republicans: the only way to deal with them is to stand up and face them head on.
Just look at the stunts they’ve tried to pull since taking the Speaker’s gavel: cutting off funding for teachers, ramming through a bill to defund NPR and repealing health care reform.
Now, they’re trying to let the same banksters and corporate criminals that got us into this economic mess off the hook by tearing away at Wall Street reform.
We’re fighting them with everything we’ve got but it doesn’t mean anything unless we’ve got you standing behind us every step of the way.
“the only way to deal with them is to stand up and face them head on…” But one tip, Mr. Weiner: Be sure your clothes are on before you do that! Oops. Too late…
Or breeches, if you prefer to be proper. I just like using the colloquial version in this context.
I was not set off by the video above, but rather by this headline in the paper this morning:
DeMint mocks Obama in video, won’t attend speech
What I’m saying is that boycotting the speech is what gets me much more than the video, which is fairly run-of-the-mill, even tame. But the part where he won’t deign to listen to the president, after the president has already been dissed by the House, takes us to a new level.
Jim DeMint, between refusing to tolerate the presence of the president of the United States (perhaps our latter-day Wellington is frustrated not to have brought about Mr. Obama’s “Waterloo” yet) to his peremptorily summoning those who would replace the president before him, to be questioned one at a time like prisoners in the dock, seems to be trying to carve out a unique space for himself in American politics.
It seems to be a position something like that of a king (or something more powerful, a kingmaker). In any case, it’s nothing that our Framers envisioned in setting up this system of governance. It’s personal. It’s specific to him. And it answers to no one. We need to come up with a whole new system of political science (or at least, hark back to a very old one) even to come up with the terminology with which to explain what he is doing.
Democrats may have used the strategy to win elections in 2006 and 2008, but Jeb Bush has a stern message for those seeking the GOP nomination in 2012: “You can’t just be against the president.”
The former two-term Florida governor warned the field of Republican presidential hopefuls that they risked alienating moderate voters with a campaign based solely on criticism of President Obama.
“I think the president means well, but his policies have failed, and to point that out — nothing wrong with that. That’s politics,” Bush told Fox News host Neil Cavuto in an interview Tuesday. “But just to stop there and say I’m going to win because I’m against what’s going on is not enough. You have to win with purpose if you really want to make these big changes.”…
“I think the president was dealt a tough hand. He didn’t have the experience on how to deal with it. He made a mistake of outsourcing big policy decisions to Congress, to Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi and her leadership team, and that was a disaster. He’s made a situation that was bad, worse. He is deserving of criticism for that,” Bush said. “He’s not deserving of criticism of everything, the common cold all the way up the chain.”…
This tells us several things:
Jeb Bush isn’t running for president. Hence the “above-the-fray” tone.
Maybe there’s something to the old saw about, “If you had a family member who…” You know, like, “If you had a family member who was gay, you’d be for hate crime laws,” or whatever. In this case, maybe if you had a family member who was president, and was the target of a lot of hatred from the other party…
He knows a thing or two about independent voters, things that pols in his party have largely forgotten in their terrified eagerness to please the Tea Party: We don’t like hearing the kind of stuff that appeals to the angry extremes. We don’t like Obama Hatred any more than we liked Bush Derangement Syndrome.
Which might make you curious which candidate Jeb Bush likes for president:
“I am neutral in the presidential race, but I am an admirer of Gov. [Mitt] Romney’s and I’m excited that he’s laying out a jobs agenda to set the agenda a little bit, because the conversation needs to get to how do we grow so we can create jobs over a long period of time, not just short term,” Bush said.
By the way, PBS got this from an interview on FoxNews.
Yes, I can think of some reasons, but since all of the ones I think of are… unpersuasive… I continue to wonder whether there are any defensible reasons for having devoted that choice real estate to such a purpose (not to mention putting the Strom Taj Mahal workout center in a location that only the Greeks could walk to conveniently and safely).
If you know of any, share them.
Here’s the thing about this sudden discovery by the university that fraternities tend to encourage unseemly behavior (“USC officials, Greeks debate hospital trips, strippers,” The State) — I’ve never understood why their presence is in any way encouraged at public institutions of higher learning.
At all of our colleges and universities today, administrators know that one of the most serious problems they face is binge drinking, and other activities that most of us associate with… well, Greek life. It astounds me that, in the 21st century, we even allow these organizations onto campuses, much less do anything to make them feel welcome. Not that we independents haven’t been known to chug a brew or two in college, but most of us didn’t join societies that, to the larger world, are essentially seen as drinking clubs.
I could see it if these associations had a salutary effect — say, if they militated against such irresponsible behavior. But I’m not seeing much indication of that.
Of course, I’m prejudiced. I went through college in the early 70s, which is actually the time that the cultural phenomena we associate with the 60s kicked in across most of the country. In my day, there were Greeks, but they seemed terribly anachronistic. It was something my Dad did (Pi Kappa Alpha), but not cool people in my generation. By the 70s — or at least by 1978 — they were associated with a benighted past, an object for satire. It was like, if you were in a frat, what century (or at least, what decade) were you living in? I understood that some people had their arms twisted by their parents into joining their frats and sororities, but what was the motivation beyond that? (There was this one guy who kept calling to invite me to check out his frat, and he only did it because he was bugged by his Dad, who worked with my Dad. I always came up with excuses to be elsewhere.)
The fact that people actually attached importance to this presumed bond — which is a perfect illustration of a granfalloon — has always puzzled me, and even caused me to think a little less of the human race. (While different, it’s distantly related to the way I feel about political parties.) To share another anecdote…
Once, when I was a student at Memphis State, a bunch of us were playing basketball on an outdoor court next to my dorm. Some guy got mad about something stupid and pointless, and put on a disgusting display of petulance, quickly convincing everyone that he was a total jerk. Finally, he decided to walk away, pouting. The attitude of every guy present was, Good Riddance. Every guy but one, who had to chase after him and try to… I don’t know, console him or commiserate or whatever. “We all said, what the hell, man? The guy’s a complete d__k! Come back and play.” There was some reason that his departure mattered to us, I forget what that reason was. Maybe he was taking the ball with him. Otherwise, we probably would have said Good Riddance to him as well.
Anyway, he said he had no choice but to run after that guy, because… he was his fraternity brother. We all looked on in disgust at this display of completely misplaced loyalty based on nothing more substantial than that.
But I’m sure some of you have a different perspective. Please, help me understand the ways that frats contribute to institutions of higher education.
Clue me in as to why those brick palaces, in the core of our community, add to our community.
