Category Archives: Character

Rev. Charles Jackson of Brookland Baptist gives invocation in Congress

I enjoyed this video, shared by Luther Battiste. Luther is chairman of the board of the Capital City Club, on which Rev. Jackson and I both serve. It’s hard to imagine a better choice Congress could have made than Rev. Jackson. It makes me think better of Congress.

If you watch it past the invocation itself, and the Pledge of Allegiance, you’ll get another treat — or at least it was a treat to me, by UnParty standards — both Joe Wilson and Jim Clyburn agreeing in praising Rev. Jackson and the wonderful witness to the community that Brookland Baptist provides. I’ve long regarded Reps. Wilson and Clyburn as the two most partisan members of the SC delegation. At least, I thought that until the recent election. And in the conventional sense of party, they still may be the most fiercely orthodox Republican and Democratic members. I’m not sure those new Tea Party guys fit in that category.

In any case, even if you say they are just being polite, I enjoy watching and hearing them get together on something.

NYT Mag: “Nikki Haley, the governor of South Carolina, doesn’t care what you think.”

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Of course, we knew that — I’ve noted it before (most recently with regard to the Darla Moore affair). But it’s interesting that any national media have noticed it, given the hagiographic coverage she usually receives outside the state.

The State took note of the New York Times Magazine article several weeks back. They saw the “Comet” headline, and noted her wildly hubristic statement that “I don’t lose.”

But they apparently missed the subhead — probably because whoever was doing The Buzz for that edition looked at the piece online, rather than in print.

And that was the best part.

Above is a shot from a PDF of the print edition, which an alert reader shared.

By the way, that little pun — Haley the Comet — reminds me of something I saw in Oxford during my recent visit.

It seems that when Edmond Halley, famous for having first charted the path of the comet, was at Oxford (The Queen’s College), he decided to knock a hole in the roof of his top-floor flat so that he could watch the stars from there. The landlord was VERY accommodating — even though he wasn’t yet the famous Halley of the Comet — and a little observatory structure was built onto the roof.

At least, that’s the way our guide on the walking tour told it. The story may be apocryphal (a few minutes on Google just now failed to confirm it).

But if it’s true, it occurs to me that Halley didn’t care what people thought, either. With him, it turned out all right in the end. With our own Haley, the Comet… that definitely remains to be seen.

Below is the picture I took on Jan. 4 of the building where Halley lived:

Darla Moore makes her voice heard, at the 5 million decibel level

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When she spoke to students and others at the Russell House today (and yes, the turnout for this was SRO huge, unlike at the rally yesterday), Darla Moore acted with the class you would expect. No whining or moaning or pointless lashing out.

But boy, did she make her voice heard. You can watch the whole speech here. After thanking those present, particularly the students (and she made it clear on multiple occasions that her message was for the students rather than the media and university honchos on hand) for their “encouragement, your kind sentiments and your support,” she went on to “reaffirm my love for the USC, my support for the USC and for the state of SC,” and to speak of the “shared obligation to move this institution forward not only for ourselves but for generations to come.”

Saying she was not there to talk about “the wonder of me,” and adding, “This is also not about money,” she went on:

By your reaction, you have ignited what I believe is the collective consciousness of this state to an issue that is far more fundamental to the state’s future than any other challenge that we face. And this is about having the courage, and the singular focus to understand the critical importance of a strong, progressive and properly resourced higher education system — and I mean from technical colleges to research universities — and the role it plays in securing a bright and productive future for all of us….

We can compete at the highest level.

Just because I no longer serve on the board does not mean for one second that I will be deterred in my efforts to expand our reach for excellence.

And I’m sure y’all have noticed that I don’t need a title or a position to speak out; I just need a voice, my vision and a forum to be heard.

Just like you did this week…

Then, in her one directly defiant statement toward the governor — and by implication, toward her replacement, whom the governor said she picked because he shared her “vision,” she said:

I’ll not allow our university to become a discounted graduation mill. I want you to be proud of your degree; I want you to be first in line for the best jobs available. And I want you to stay in South Carolina, to be a part of our effort to make our state great.

Excellence is our standard, and it must be maintained even if there are those who would offer policies that would dumb us down….

Finally, she said:

This is very personal: There’s been speculation that I would take my checkbook and go home. I want you to know that my commitment to USC is as strong as ever.

She then demonstrated that by hauling off and giving another $5 million:

Ousted trustee Darla Moore told USC students today that she does not plan to take her check book and go away. Instead, Moore – removed from USC’s board by Gov. Nikki Haley – said she would give the school $5 million to start an aviation research center named after Ronald McNair, killed in the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.

Like Moore, McNair was a native of Lake City.

USC had sought the money from the state to, it said, capitalize on Boeing’s plans to build 787 Dreamliner aircraft in Charleston.

However, House budget writers, faced with a $700 million shortfall in state money, killed the request, which Haley opposed as premature.

Moore is USC’s largest single benefactor ever. Her removal by Haley, who named a campaign donor to the USC board, has angered many USC students and graduates.

Key to photos below:

There were plenty of honchos on the front row, but Ms. Moore repeatedly said she was there to speak to, and take questions from, the students.
The view from the back of the ballroom.
The view from the front (hey, you’re not paying extra for captioning here).
Taking questions from students.
President Harris Pastides was slightly mobbed by media afterward. He was very diplomatic, as I would expect him to be. He said he appreciated that the governor called to explain her decision — which was the first time I’d heard that she had (and marks the first thing I’ve heard of her doing properly — the first thing I’ve seen of her showing respect to anyone involved — in this whole affair).
Yep, that’s Will Folks, all dressed up. I don’t recall having seen him this way. By the way, he said that while he sides with the governor on this issue, he was favorably impressed by the way Ms. Moore handled it.

Another middle-aged white guy heard from about Kitzman letter

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And the thing is, this one is one of Eleanor Kitzman‘s bosses — House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Cooper, 50.

This came in over the transom yesterday, and I suppose it’s the letter that John O’Connor (oh, and happy birthday today, John) referred to in this story.

Of course, I kid about the “middle-aged white guy” thing, because I find Identity Politics (particularly as practiced by Ms. Kitzman) so wonderfully goofy. But the real issue is how unprofessional it is to play the defensive toady to ONE of your bosses in such a public manner.

So I can see how Rep. Cooper would not approve.

Pretty scathing, huh?

Is Gov. Haley doing something responsible on health care? (If so, ssshhhh! I don’t want to get her into trouble with her base!)

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Down in this story about how Jim DeMint is putting hurting Barack Obama ahead of good health care or saving millions of dollars (and is it supposed to be news that DeMint places ideology over sound policy?), was this bit:

S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley has shared DeMint’s national spotlight in opposing health care reform, challenging President Obama, first, to repeal the legislation and, later, to speed up a judicial review of its constitutionality.

Outside the spotlight, Haley also is using a $1 million federal grant to see how South Carolina might enact the law if it has to.

Wait, run that by me again? She’s doing what?

But even as she pushes against the health care law, Haley has instructed key agency heads to get ready for its implementation.

“We don’t know what the outcome will be, but for the citizens of South Carolina, we have to be prepared for whatever happens,” said Tony Keck, Haley’s new director of the state Department of Health and Human Services.

“Right now, the law of the land is health care reform,” Keck said. “Although we’re fighting it and looking to produce our own alternatives, we also have to prepare to implement it to meet the deadlines. The risk of not preparing for any eventuality is simply too high in the form of penalties from the federal government and interruption to care.”

The state is using a $1 million grant under the law to evaluate whether it will set up and run its own health insurance exchange or turn that function over to Washington, an option under the law.

Keck and new S.C. Insurance Commissioner David Black are heading up a task force, formed by a Haley executive order and to include members chosen by the General Assembly.

With its first meeting scheduled for April 15, the panel will call in experts from states that already have insurance exchanges, among them California, Massachusetts and Utah….

Normally, this would not be news, either. Away from the TV cameras, most elected officials — regardless of the wacky ideological stuff they may crank out publicly — quietly go about their duty, obeying the law and administering the government as responsibly as they are able.

It’s just that with Nikki Haley, she has gone so far out of her way to irresponsible that are NOT consistent with good stewardship — the Darla Moore fiasco comes to mind — that I find this tidbit reassuring. It may not be much, but I take comfort where I can.

Good for you, governor…

Nikki Haley dumps Darla Moore: A plain case of old-fashioned naked patronage

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It’s really hard to keep up with all the petty outrages (both “petty” and “outrageous” — yes, that seems about right) that our new young governor keeps pumping out.

I’m a busy guy — working, blogging, trying to grab a little sleep at night — and sometimes find myself momentarily out of the loop. Particularly when there are so many far more important things going on in the world. Let’s see, the Japan earthquake, Qaddafi (I’ve gotten to where I just spell his name with the first combination of letters that my fingers hit, so I hope that suits) moving to crush the rebellion while the world is distracted with Japan, Saudis intervening in Bahrain and people getting killed… And sometimes you have to put even that aside, and do other stuff…

So when I finish my Virtual Front Page and close the laptop, I sometimes don’t see any new developments until 7ish the next morning. Which is why I was taken aback at the very first Tweet I saw this morning:

@nettie_bNettie Britts

Explain Darla Moore to me.

I replied, “Well, she’s this rich lady from South Carolina who tries to give back to her home state. That’s the Twitter version, I guess…” And I went on to breakfast. There, the grill room at the Capital City Club was buzzing with what I didn’t know about, since I hadn’t sat down to read the paper yet (don’t ask me why it wasn’t on thestate.com when I was doing the Virtual Front Page yesterday; maybe it was and I just missed it). The state and community leaders weren’t going, “Did you hear about Darla?” It was more like, “What do you think of the news?” Period.

Yep, this stuff happens to me, too. Not often, but sometimes.

So I sat down, and I read the paper. And I Tweeted this out:

@BradWarthen Brad Warthen

Nikki Haley dumping Darla Moore is classic case of naked, arbitrary exercise of patronage power….http://tinyurl.com/4nu4of8

You can congratulate me later for having gotten a link, an editorial point, “Nikki Haley,” “Darla Moore,” and “naked” into the Twitter format (with 14 characters of room left!). Let’s move on to the substance.

And the substance is… well, what I just said. It just doesn’t get any more blatant, plain, slap-in-the-face, I-don’t-care-what-you’ve-done-for-our-state-or-this-institution-I’ve-got-my-own-guy than this. Just bald, plain, take-it-for-what-it-is. Although I do have to hand it to Haley staffer Rob Godfrey for managing to twist the knife a bit with this bit of sarcastic insouciance:

Asked why the appointment was not announced, he said: “Given that there are over 1,000 appointments to boards and commissions the governor can make, we never intended to have a press conference for each one.”

Because, you know, Darla Moore isn’t any more important than that.

At the Cap City Club this morning, one of the regular movers and shakers made a rather naive and innocent remark (sometimes movers and shakers can surprise you that way), honestly asking, “How do you just brush aside someone who’s given $100 million to South Carolina?” (Yeah, I know she’s only pledged $70 million to USC and $10 million to Clemson, according to the story, but I guess he was rounding.)

I replied, patiently, here’s what Nikki Haley would say to that (were she brutally honest, of course): “She didn’t give ME a hundred million dollars. Tommy over here gave me $3,500. I don’t understand the question.” That’s Tommy Cofield, by the way, a Lexington attorney.

People who are not movers and shakers (and who in fact have a sort of visceral aversion to movers and shakers) can say some naive things, too. Over in a previous comment, our own Doug said “Are we assuming that Sheheen wouldn’t have replaced anyone he didn’t like?”

To that, I responded once again with the painfully obvious: “No, Vincent would not have replaced Darla Moore with an unknown, minor campaign contributor in such a prestigious post. If that’s what you’re asking.” Of course, I should have added, “without a reason.” By that, I would mean a valid reason, one that takes South Carolina’s and USC’s legitimate interests into account, one that is not just arbitrary.

Oh she GAVE what I suppose some folks (probably including Doug, believing as he does that there is nothing so deleterious to society as experience and commitment to the public weal) will regard as a reason: “As is the case with many of our appointees, the governor looked for a fresh set of eyes to put in a critical leadership position…”

That’s it.

And if you are one of the people who takes Nikki Haley at face value, as her supporters tend to do, and you don’t know or care about Darla Moore or the University of South Carolina — you just like to cheer on your Nikki — that will suffice. In with the new, out with the old. She will feel in no way obligated to explain what was wrong with Darla Moore’s service on the board, or to cite any of the exciting new ideas that her appointee brings to the table that were previously missing. No one will expect that of her; it probably wouldn’t even occur to her to think about it. The governor will skate on this with these people — this is something that is core to her whole approach to politics ever since she transformed herself into the darling of the Tea Party in preparation for her run for this office for which she was so unprepared.

This WORKS for her. She skates on this, just as — with the voters she cares about — she will skate on apparently having told a prospective employer in 2007 that she was making $125,000 a year when she was telling the IRS that she made $22,000. This will matter not. People are just picking at her. The nasty, powerful, status quo people — those people who hang out at the Capital City Club! — are picking at Nikki because they’re mean, you see. (By the way, on the “petty” vs. “outrageous” spectrum, the thing on the job application is more the typical “petty” violation of her alleged principles that we have come to expect; the Darla Moore thing, dealing as it does with the leadership of such an important state institution, is more of an “outrage.” If you’re keeping score.)

She will not only skate, but her supporters — or at least, this is what the governor banks on — will continue, in spite of all evidence, to see her as a champion of transparency, a reformer, a nemesis of “politics as usual” and patron saint of Good Government. Which just, you know, boggles the mind if you’re the sensible sort who thinks about things.

That’s the plan, anyway. And that’s why she did this, and really doesn’t care if you, or the university, or the business community, or Darla Moore don’t like it.

Interesting letter from Eleanor Kitzman today

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I don’t read the letters to the editor as closely as I used to. OK, to be perfectly honest, I hardly read them at ALL now that I’m not paid to do so, unless someone brings one to my attention.

Today was an exception, though. As my eye ran over the page, something in the last letter jumped out at me. I saw the words, “As a former Democratic candidate for state superintendent of education,” and scanned to the bottom to see the writer’s name was “Carlos W. Gibbons.” Hmmm. I do not know a Carlos W. Gibbons, which made me curious, and I sent out an e-mail to someone who knows stuff I don’t know, and learned that apparently he is a veteran educator who ran for the office in the early 1970s — and the father of Leeza Gibbons of TV fame.

In any case, he was right to advocate that the state superintendent post be appointed by the governor.

But it turns out that, until a few minutes ago, I had missed today’s really interesting letter — the one at the top of the stack. Alert reader “Tim” brought it to my attention moments ago. I’m just going to go ahead and put the whole thing here, and hope I don’t run afoul of Fair Use. Because this was an unusual letter:

Keep ignoring reality, governor

I have known Gov. Haley for many years, and she is one of my five bosses on the Budget and Control Board. If the governor is ignoring reality as Roger Hawkins contends (“Haley can’t continue to ignore realities,” March 3), my advice to her is to keep it up; it has served her well.

Moreover, I’d suggest that others follow her excellent example. Rather than ignoring reality, however, I believe Gov. Haley has wisely rejected the so-called reality that others saw for her as a disadvantaged minority.

There’s never any shortage of people telling you that you can’t do something.

Perhaps more insidious are those who maintain that we need their “help” to overcome adversity because not everyone has the governor’s abilities to plow through the impediments of life or navigate around diversity issues. I couldn’t disagree more and would ask why not.

We may not all become governors, but we can achieve our goals if we stop seeing ourselves as victims.

We must be fearless and willing to work hard, make good choices and, most importantly, never give up in pursuit of a dream. (Don’t even get me started on yet another middle-aged white man explaining how the real world works to an ethnic woman.)

Eleanor Kitzman

Columbia

Now, the thing that was unusual about this may not be immediately apparent to you. But if you had known any of Ms. Kitzman’s predecessors as chief of the Budget and Control Board, you’d know. It’s sort of hard to imagine — actually, impossible to imagine — Frank Fusco, or Fred Carter, writing (or even thinking) words that would be anything like those that Ms. Kitzman put in that letter. Whether you think of them as faceless bureaucrats, or as the very models of professional discretion that they were, it’s difficult to imagine them expressing their views in such a manner.

If you don’t know those guys, and don’t have that background, my reaction to Ms. Kitzman’s letter probably won’t make much sense to you.

Under those guys, the B&C Board (which should not exist at all, but you know that once I get started on that subject I can be all day) was a lot of things, but one thing it was not was a forum for expressing personal sentiments about particular politicians — the governor, or anyone else. There was a reason for that — the director worked for five bosses with five different egos and agendas. What was the point of being too closely identified with any of them?

I mean, forgive me for sounding like “yet another middle-aged white man explaining how the real world works,” but gee whiz, folks… (I thought, as exclamations do, that “gee whiz” sounded appropriately whitebread and old fashioned, didn’t you? I’m trying to play my assigned part as well as I can, and these small touches mean so much.)

The letter was so… emotional. So indignant. So partisan, in the sense of taking one person’s side against another. There are other terms I could use, but you know what? I just keep coming back to emotional — which I suppose will just expose me to, um, passionate condemnation for gender stereotyping, but hey, leave gender out of it (isn’t that what the brutes always say — “leave gender out of it?” the cads…). Think that I’m saying it the way Lee Marvin said it to Robert Ryan, “I owe you an apology, Colonel. I always thought that you were a cold, unimaginative, tight lipped officer. But you’re really … quite emotional. Aren’t you?” (The way I look at it, you can’t get any further away from gender politics than by quoting “The Dirty Dozen.” Am I right or am I right?)

I read something like that, and I think, what possessed her to write that? Yes, she owes her $174,000-a-year position to the governor as a matter of political fact, but why call attention to that in such a dramatic way? Did the governor know she was writing that letter? Does the governor approve of her having written that letter? She certainly didn’t need such a defense; she would have been fine without it.

For my part, I hadn’t even read the piece she was referring to (remember, I’m no longer paid to), but I can bet you I went and read it after seeing that letter. It was… unremarkable, really. Kind of unfocused. Seemed like the writer was trying to make some strong points, but trying to be kind and gentle with it, and swinging back and forth between commending the governor for being a determined “don’t let anything stand in your way” type and admonishing her for engaging in “magical thinking.”

Was the op-ed from this Hawkins fella somehow an example of White Male Oppressor insensitivity? Did he show a lack of appreciation for the governor’s inspiring story of ethnic pluck that we’ve heard so… much… about…? Was he trying to brutally impose on her “the so-called reality that others saw for her as a disadvantaged minority?” Hardly. He had, on his own initiative, shown due deference to the obligatory talking points in that regard. In fact, he went on about it as much as Ms. Kitzman did:

Haley’s success to this point in her life has been built around navigating diversity, not letting it get in her way or positioning herself as just a diversity hire. She was born into Sikhism, an Indian religion that adopts elements from both Hinduism and Islam, and later converted to the Methodist faith.

Haley earned a degree in accounting — a profession dominated by men — and began her career at a waste-management and recycling company. Throughout her formative years, she never interacted with large numbers of people who looked like her. Her political career is also based on being an outsider. She recently told an audience that Sanford told her the state wasn’t ready for a female governor.

OK, wait a minute; here’s the trouble. Seems Mr. Hawkins was, rather than being too indifferent, a bit too CONCERNED about matters of Identity Politics, for he had just said:

What Haley has done that is troubling is appoint nine white men, three white women and one African-American woman to her Cabinet. None of her 16 executive staff members is African-American.

Hey, you know what I think about all that I.D. stuff — if you wanted a “diverse” Cabinet and staff in the superficial demographic sense, you should have elected the White Guy. (And if you ARE someone who cares deeply about such things, you probably DID vote for the White Guy, and Nikki Haley knows that, so quit your bellyaching. Whoops, I’m being insensitive again…) But this guy apparently DID care about it, and said so. And for this, he’s condemned as… what was it again… “yet another middle-aged white man explaining how the real world works….” Yeah, that was it — no wait, I forgot the part about “to an ethnic woman.” Mustn’t leave that off.

Anyway, it just wasn’t the kind of letter I’m used to reading from B&C Board chiefs. This is going to be interesting going forward, folks.

Caricaturing Qaddafi. Or Qaricaturing Chaddafi… (how DO you spell “caricature,” anyway?)

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Thought this was interesting over on the NYT site:

Before the Libyan opposition began retreatingbefore forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, Finbarr O’Reilly of Reuters took account of the wealth of anti-Qaddafi graffiti and other graphic expressions of popular anger, which include some anti-Semitic sentiments. He wrote to Lens:

Like many dictators, Qaddafi carefully controlled how his image was used, often portraying himself as a deity or beloved leader. With the rebellion, however, freedom of expression in rebel-controlled areas means that ridicule has become a key weapon in the fight against the climate of fear that has long gripped the country. Anti-Qaddafi caricatures and graffiti have sprung up across cities like Benghazi, most of them portraying him in an unflattering light.

Those first few words give me pause… Before the Libyan opposition began retreating…

I wonder, was this little eruption of irreverence toward the Libyan dictator destined to be short-lived? If so, view the images while you can…

The images themselves, in some cases, betray an elaborate complexity one doesn’t often see in political caricature, at least not in this country. Listen to me, like I’m an art critic. They’re actually sort of hard to characterize. Sort of Ralph Steadman without the drugs, or something… or maybe with different drugs… See what you think.

Sheheen (and Knotts — yeah, Jake) going after “leadership PACs”)

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Got this yesterday, thought I’d pass it on:

Dear Brad —

People say that “money is the mother’s milk of politics.”

It seems that no matter how many rules we put into place to regulate the flood of money and influence in our elections, politicians too often find ways around these rules. Here in South Carolina, one vehicle for getting around campaign contribution limits imposed by law is through entities called leadership political action committees or “leadership PACs.” Some politicians operate “leadership PACs,” which enable them to accept larger contributions from their cronies and then, in turn, dole out money to other candidates. This creates a culture of politicians whose coffers are flush with money being able to exert influence over others through their “leadership PACs.”

The end result? Corruption and unfair influence. I’m writing today to for your help in putting a stop to this practice.

It has not been the custom in the South Carolina Senate for members to operate “leadership PACs,” but recently Sen. Jake Knotts and I proposed and passed a new rule explicitly banning the practice among senators. We are hoping that this will put pressure on our colleagues in the South Carolina House of Representatives to follow suit.

I’ve sponsored a bill this session that, if passed, would ban PACs organized by or on behalf of any statewide officeholder or member of the General Assembly.

Will you call or email your legislators today and urge them to support S. 633? You can look up your members of the South Carolina House and Senate by clicking here.

The editorial board of The State newspaper published an editorial this week urging members of the legislature to pass this bill. I’ve included this editorial below.

Not sure how the Sheheen/Knotts team-up happened. I guess it’s just a coalition of the willing. In any case, 38 other senators have signed on. Of course, as Cindi noted in the edit, that’s probably because “leadership PACs” are a House, not a Senate, phenomenon. You probably know that historically, the divide between House and Senate has been much sharper than that between Democrat and Republican. As the edit noted:

For the record, the only ones we’re aware of are controlled by House Speaker Bobby Harrell, House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Cooper, House Labor, Commerce and Industry Chairman Bill Sandifer, House Democratic Leader Harry Ott and Reps. Jim Merrill, Alan Clemmons and Gilda Cobb-Hunter.

Obama: Ready To Tap Oil Reserve If Needed — which it ISN’T, not by a long shot

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The president at this afternoon's presser. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

Well, gasoline prices are rising toward levels that might, just might, cause some of us to face reality and acknowledge that it’s not a good idea at all to be so desperately dependent on cheap oil from crazy-dangerous parts of the world, and what are our elected leaders — Democrats and Republicans — doing?

Why, what they always do — pandering. But there’s pandering, and then there’s pandering.

The GOP is busily blaming Barack “Root of All Evil” Obama. The president himself is responding by saying, at a press conference today, that he’s prepared to tap the strategic oil reserve, if needed.

But that last part is key, and his way out as a rational man. It’s like his promise to “start” withdrawing troops from Afghanistan by a certain date, which in no way commits him to draw down dangerously before it’s wise to do so. Obama’s smart; he’s not going to pander so far that he commits himself to something irresponsible. This is a quality that he has demonstrated time and again, and which has greatly reassured me ever since he beat my (slightly) preferred candidate for the presidency. This is the quality — or one of them — that made me glad to say so often, back in 2008, that for the first time in my editorial career, both major-party candidates for president were ones I felt good about (and both of whom we endorsed, in their respective primaries).

It’s certainly more defensible than Mr. Boehner’s reflexive partisan bashing. And it’s WAY more defensible than Al “Friend of the Earth” Gore asking Bill Clinton to tap the reserve to help him win the 2000 election.

To quote from the report I just saw on the NPR site:

Obama said he’s prepared to tap the U.S. emergency oil reserve if needed. But as gas prices climbed toward $4 a gallon, the president said the U.S. must adopt a long-term strategy of conservation and domestic production to wean itself off foreign oil.

“We’ve been having this conversation for nearly four decades now. Every few years gas prices go up, politicians pull out the same political playbook, and nothing changes,” Obama said.

“I don’t want to leave this to the next president,” he said.

Some in Congress have been calling on Obama to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. And the president made clear Friday that that was an option, although he indicated he wasn’t yet prepared to exercise it. He declined to specify the conditions that would trigger the step, but said it was teed up and could happen quickly if he chooses to call for it….

His threshold, based on what he said, is a Hurricane Katrina, or worse. Personally, I’d raise the bar a bit higher than that, but he’s on the right track, trying to set a high standard. (You make a disruption like Katrina the standard, then next thing you know, you’re tempted to lower it to, say, a BP oil spill — and that’s not the direction you want to go in.)

The key word here is “strategic,” a threshold that I would think wouldn’t be crossed until we have a sustained inability to GET oil to power our economy — something we came close to, in spots, in recent crises. But it seems to me one only turns to such “strategic” options as a last resort. The president should be “prepared to tap the U.S. emergency oil reserve if needed” in the same sense he is expected to be prepared to crack open the “football” and activate the codes for going nuclear. OK, maybe that’s a bit extreme, but you get where I’m going with this. It’s something we hope and pray never happens, and we do our best to pursue policies that avoid such an eventuality.

By the way, back to that excerpt above. I particularly love “the president said the U.S. must adopt a long-term strategy of conservation and domestic production to wean itself off foreign oil.” Earlier today, I disparaged the president for being no Energy Party man. (I was essentially repeating an observation I made about both him and McCain in a July 6, 2008, column.)

But maybe I was wrong. If he keeps saying things like that, he may deserve the Energy nomination in 2012 after all.

NPR “sting” illustrates the challenges of being PUBLIC media

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Back on an earlier post, after I had been wringing my hands (but in a light-hearted manner) about the difficulty these days in finding a way to pay for good journalism in the 21st century, Phillip took occasion to praise the public model, giving us a link, headlined “Public media put millions into investigative work,” about how NPR and PBS are trying to take up some of the slack left by the declining (and, on state and local levels, moribund) MSM.

Wow, that was a long lede sentence. Back in the heyday of the MSM, that would never have made it past the copydesk. But I digress.

I responded that hey, y’all know how I love NPR — it’s as good as any print medium, and I can’t say that about anything else in the broadcast arena.

But the embarrassing news today about a soon-to-be-former executive at NPR sort of illustrates the special tensions of being a public medium.

Did you see the story? Here’s how NPR itself reported on it. But if you prefer another source, here’s the WashPost version:

The former head of NPR’s fundraising arm says in a surreptitiously recorded video by a conservative activist that members of the tea party movement are xenophobic and racist and that NPR would prefer to do without subsidies provided by the federal government.

In the video, released Tuesday morning by conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe, NPR executive Ron Schiller disparages conservatives in general and tea party members in particular, saying some of its followers are part of an “anti-intellectual” movement.

Schiller and another NPR fundraiser, Betsy Liley, believed that that two of O’Keefe’s operatives were representatives of a Muslim philanthropy. The video was shot at Cafe Milano in Georgetown during a lunch meeting set up to discuss a $5 million contribution to NPR by the equally fictitious Muslim Education Action Center, which one of the men tells the NPR executives is connected with the Muslim Brotherhood, a political organization with suspected ties to terrorists.

On the video, Schiller, who formerly headed the NPR Foundation but left the organization last week, says: “The tea party is fanatically involved in people’s personal lives and very fundamental Christian – I wouldn’t even call it Christian. It’s this weird evangelical kind of movement.”

He adds that “tea party people” aren’t “just Islamophobic, but really xenophobic, I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it’s scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people.”…

And for another source, here’s ABC’s report.

For the report of the group that pulled this stunt and got this poor Schiller schmo fired, follow this link. The group’s video is above.

And what this makes me think is this:

Hey, it’s great that NPR does such fine work. That’s why I listen to it every day. But boy, this business of being funded partly by the gummint and partly by contributions sure does have its drawbacks. Think about it:

If NPR didn’t get some public funding, it wouldn’t be the big, fat target that it is among anti-government types, and this group would never have pulled this stunt.
If NPR didn’t also depend upon grants and contributions, it wouldn’t have a development executive, and wouldn’t send anybody even to listen to such a pitch from a group allegedly affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, much less grovel as embarrassingly ineptly as this guy did. (I’ll give him credit for one thing only: He didn’t quite let them bait him into antiSemitism, try as they might.)

So… there are indeed drawbacks to this funding model.

Let’s hope that the guy who replaces this guy at NPR is a little smarter. The really embarrassing thing about listening to this, as the fan of NPR that I am, is that this guy is so … unsophisticated. Yeah, I realize he’s not a journalist, and he’s not expected to have a nuanced understanding of politics. But anybody in NPR’s news department has to be mortified to hear anyone even remotely connected with them blathering in such a knee-jerk, bumper-sticker manner. I mean, did this guy ever even listen to NPR?

The old business model of the MSM — journalists do their thing, while the entirely separate business side goes out and sells ads — had its challenges, but it worked more smoothly than this. Of course, that’s dying out, and we still have to find something else if we’re to meet the demand for reliable news (which seems to be as great as ever).

But as we hunt about for a new method of paying for newsgathering, we see that the public/donor model has its problems.

You’ve got to be kidding me

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Just saw this — significantly, while I saw it on thestate.com, it’s being reported out of The Associated Press’ New York office — and I’m thoroughly boggled yet again:

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is writing memoir

By HILLEL ITALIE – AP National Writer

NEW YORK — Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina has been busy trying to close her state’s $700 million budget gap, but she has found time for a more personal project, jotting down thoughts and memories during quiet moments in the early morning, late at night and on weekends.

She is writing a memoir.

“I will tell you that since the election it was amazing the number of people of people who wanted to know my story, about the challenges of growing up and the challenges of running for office and what got me through it,” the 39-year-old Republican, the nation’s youngest governor, told The Associated Press during a recent telephone interview….

Note that last bit: “the nation’s youngest governor.”

Indeed. She hasn’t done anything yet, and she’s writing a memoir!?!?!? Of what?!?!? I’ve known her for years, and nothing worth writing a book about has happened during that time. Maybe there’s a lot of fascinating stuff that happened before then, that I haven’t heard about — or heard her say over and over again on the stump. (You know the drill: “I’m the daughter of…,” etc.)

Of course, you know why she’s doing this, and why it’s being revealed through a national medium. For the same reason Mike Huckabee is doing a book tour, and Sarah Palin before him.

I hate even to write the words, but she thinks she’s presidential timber. There’s one thing that DOES set her apart, of course, and would be worth exploring in the book: She holds the record among SC governors for having her head turned by White House hubris. Our last four governors (each of them with less justification than his precedessor) all harbored presidential ambitions. But they, at least, waited until the got elected governor before contemplating such things. Not our Nikki. In her mind, she had already skipped over the whole being-governor thing about six months, and started looking beyond it, before she was elected.

I don’t know how much more of this I can stand. Remember my post the other day, listing three examples illustrating how “Our young governor’s presumption apparently knows no bounds?” Well, add this to the list.

A memoir. Sheesh.

Callista? Wasn’t she that disturbingly skinny chick on TV?

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Well, I’m behind the curve again — when Politico posted this:

Callista Gingrich moves to spotlight

The first word from Newt Gingrich at his announcement last week that he would explore a presidential campaign was “Callista.”

Callista Gingrich is, literally, in the foreground of her husband’s new campaign website, over which her beaming blonde visage looms as large as his. The former speaker’s wife co-signs his organization’s e-mails, produces his movies, appears beside him on Fox News, and even reads his work for audio-book adaptations – but she has maintained such a low profile over a decade in their marriage that she remains an enigma even to some of his closest supporters.

She is, ironically, simultaneously the most public and the least known of the political partners bracing for the scrutiny of a presidential campaign. In eleven years of marriage, Callista Gingrich has never been the subject of a profile. Gingrich’s aides declined to make her available to POLITICO for an interview, to talk about her or the marriage on the record or on background, or even to suggest friends who might offer a glimpse of the would-be First Lady….

… I’m like, Callista? Wasn’t she that chick on that TV show I never watched, the one that everyone talked about being so disturbingly thin?

Apparently not.

But who she IS is a matter of some concern, especially since it looks like Newt’s going to be the latest candidate offering us a “twofer” (which, whether it’s Bill and Hillary or Mark and Jenny or whatever, generally tends to make me uncomfortable, seeing as how one of them isn’t actually elected) and so little is known about her.

For instance, is she Wife 3? Or Wife 4? With Newt, you need a scorecard.

Since she is … let me check … as much younger than Newt as my oldest child is than I (was that last bit grammatically correct? hey, don’t ask me to diagram it), she will no doubt invite comparisons to Jeri Thompson (not to be confused with Mick Jagger’s Jeri, for whom he foolishly overthrew Bianca), who as it happens was born the same year. Although I think she actually looks more like Cindy McCain.

OK, that’s more musing than I usually do on candidates’ wives. But I wanted to get something up for running to some meetings, so there…

Our young governor’s presumption apparently knows no bounds (and it’s kinda freaking me out)

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Been feeling the need to write this ever since I read the paper early this morning. I haven’t had time before now…

Nikki Haley kind of blew my mind on three fronts this morning, which caused me to go on a bit of a rant at breakfast (Wesley isn’t the only ranter in Columbia), along these lines:

“Haley to grade legislators.” Did you see that headline this morning? I normally eschew text-speak, but WTF? None of the lawmakers quite came out and said this, but I’ll tell you what they were thinking: “This little girl couldn’t even get called on when she raised her hand at the back of the class a year ago, and now she’s going to grade US?” This would be followed by the aforementioned “WTF?” Yep, lawmakers really think like that, the insensitive brutes. Now, before you think this is just a question of whom you like — with reactions divided between Haley fans who cheer, “Go get ’em, Nikki!” and the harrumphers who do not and never will be Haley fans — allow me to point something out to you. It would be presumptuous for anyone to do this. Back when I worked in Tennessee, some writers at one of the Nashville papers would grade all the legislators at the end of the session each year. I thought it presumptuous as all get-out, but… it was still within the bounds of acceptable commentary. And it would certainly be permissible for me to do something like that on my blog, although you would be equally free to tell me to what extent I was full of it. Just an exchange of views among citizens. But here’s the problem with Nikki doing it, in case you didn’t make it through Civics 101: She’s the governor, which means she’s the closest thing to a head of the executive branch that we’ve got (in another state, she’d be the head of the executive branch, but this is South Carolina). For the chief executive to use whatever political influence she has to harass and bully and threaten lawmakers, even in as silly a manner as this (do my will, or I’ll give you a bad grade!), smacks of bossism. Ben Tillman would have loved a device like that for keeping lawmakers in line, and Boss Crump as well. Folks, the best virtue Nikki Haley has going for her is that she advocates restructuring that would make the executive branch more accountable to the governor (and in fact, it’s their positions on reforms like that that she plans to “grade” lawmakers on). But this kind of behavior gives executive power a bad name, and gives lawmakers — who don’t want to give the governor power anyway — an excuse to blow her off, just as Mark Sanford did with his defecating piglets. And that’s what takes this beyond silly, practically to the realm of outrage. The very modest restructuring legislation that just passed the House will have tough-enough sledding in the Senate (where all such reforms go to die) without this nonsense.
“Governor takes aim at state employee benefits.” Wow. Poor Nikki. Last year, she was the darling of the national media (which is how she won the election), making the cover of Newsweek twice. Now, she feels forgotten. Through the lens of this story, you can see the little wheels turning in her head: Look at all the attention that governor in Wisconsin is getting! That’s so unfair? What’s he doing? Oh, he’s trying to take away state employees collective bargaining power. What an awesome idea! I’ll do that too, and then I can get some attention? What? Oh, drat! We don’t HAVE public employee unions in South Carolina, so I can’t strike dramatic poses fighting against them! That’s really, REALLY unfair! What, oh what am I going to do? There must be SOMETHING I can do to state employees here that will draw attention… but what? I know! I’ll go after their BENEFITS…
“The mystery man on Haley’s staff.” THIS one is so weird, that I suspect there’s a typo in it somewhere. So… Nikki has a guy on her staff who supposedly is only being paid $1 a year. He’s supposedly a government-efficiency expert who’s gonna help the gov straighten out waste and inefficiency in our gummint. He uprooted his family and moved here from Pennsylvania for the job — for the $1-a-year job. OK, this causes a lot of people to suspect there’s something else going on, and speculate that he’s waiting around for a real job that could come open soon. This he denies, or at least says he hasn’t been promised anything. But that wouldn’t be my theory anyway, given those facts. MY theory is that he’s being paid by one of those national ideological groups that flock around the Mark Sanfords of the world. Howie Rich, or Grover Norquist or some such. But he says no, that he’s living off his state employee pension from Pennsylvania. Got that? OK… The story also says he’s 32 years old. Twice. In the main body of the story, and in a graphic. After someone suggested it was a double-typo, I Tweeted John O’Connor to ask him. He Tweeted back that “No, that’s his age according to the governor’s office.” So maybe the governor’s office is wrong about his age. But if not — this guy’s able to live on a state pension (and I went back to look again, and yes, the only jobs listed in the published summary of his resume sound like state jobs) at the age of 32 — and he’s here as an expert on government efficiency? That ought to make state employees breath a sigh of relief. No way he’ll have the nerve to urge the governor to reduce their pensions, huh? Unless he’s the nerviest guy in two states. Somewhere, there’s gotta be something inaccurate in this picture, because the “facts” we have definitely don’t add up.

OK, I got all that off my chest. Now, to shift gears on you, and praise our governor for her pushiness — in that same story about state employee benefits, she promised to present lawmakers with a comprehensive tax reform plan. THAT’S the kind of presumption I can cheer for. But I’m going to hold my applause until I see whether it’s comprehensive, and whether it’s reform. The first sign will be whether she steps up and proposes to undo the execrable Act 388.

And… now that I’m cooled down a bit… I’ll go further in that backtracking direction: I still haven’t made up my mind about what I think of the bill I wrote about earlier that would do essentially what Nikki’s saying with state pensions. (Mainly because I haven’t yet seen enough about it — on something that complex and that financial, I sort of need some broad input to make up my mind.) But the truth is, I read items 2 and 3 right after reading item 1 this morning, so it all looked bad while I was in that mood.

And now that I’m looking at them again before hitting “Publish,” I’m still kinda freaked out…

Good luck with that, Mayor Steve

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When you make yourself available, you never know who's gonna show up. Like, check out the geek with the bow tie. You know HE'S trouble.../2010 photo by Bob Ford

Just read this in Steve Benjamin’s monthly newsletter:

Mondays with the Mayor

Ensuring the City of Columbia is open and accountable to all of the people has been a priority of mine from day one because, for me, government transparency is about living up to that most fundamental commitment: the people deserve the truth.

From moving council to evening meetings, working to limit executive session, and streaming every city council meeting live online; we are working live up to that responsibility and today I am pleased to announce a new initiative to further that cause: “Mondays with the Mayor.”

Kicking off on March 7th, “Mondays with the Mayor” is a monthly open session where citizens can schedule a 5 minute meeting here at City Hall to discuss the issues they care about with me personally.

WHAT: Mondays with the Mayor

WHEN: Monday, March 7, 2011
5:00pm to 7:00pm

WHERE: City Hall
1737 Main Street

To schedule a meeting, please call 803.545.3073 or emailAppointments@columbiasc.net on Friday, March 4th between 9:00am and 11:00am. The message should include your name, address, phone number, and issue to be discussed.

I believe that, by working together as One Columbia, we can raise the standard for citizen driven good government not just in South Carolina, but across the nation.

I believe we can make a difference.

First, hats off to the mayor for his commitment to openness and transparency. He’s acted quickly on several front to demonstrated that commitment, and praise is due to the council for its part in implementing such steps.

As for this one-at-a-time levee he plans — I hope it is everything a true lower-case-d democrat could wish for. But I also cringe a bit.

Admittedly, this may be partly because I just watched “Taxi Driver” all the way through last night for the first time, and that scene in which Travis Bickle has presidential candidate Charles Palantine in his cab. The candidate oozes transparently bogus mutterings about how he loves to hear the wisdom of cabbies like Travis, to which Travis responds with a skin-crawling diatribe on how the city is nothing but filth, and the next president should “flush” it all away — making the candidate very eager to get the heck outta that cab.

I’m sure it won’t be like that. And I’m sure it will be far better managed than the time that Andy Jackson threw open the doors of the White House for an inaugural backwoods kegger.

But… if you’ve spent as many hundreds of ours of your life in public meetings as I have, you know that there are certain people, who are not representative of the people overall, who love to show up and monopolize such affairs. Perhaps the 5-minute limit will take care of that.

But still… Again, I’m proud of the mayor for this fine gesture of openness. Lord knows we need more of that in South Carolina. And at the same time, I’m glad it’s him and not me spending two hours a month in the political equivalent of speed-dating.

Wait a sec — someone was paying THIS person to design clothes?

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Well, you’ve probably heard the shocking news about John Galliano.

Not that he was fired by Christian Dior.

Not that he said all sorts of disgusting, vicious, antiSemitic things.

No, I’m going to the shocking fact that existed before any of that. The one I discovered when I heard of him for the first time, a couple of days ago, and I went “who’s that?” and I looked to see, and was totally stunned that somebody — a name designer house, in fact — was paying this person to design clothes.

I can’t post any picture to support my shock here, because I can’t seem to find anything in the public domain. So I will refer you to pictures of him elsewhere, courtesy of Google Images. Such as this one. And this one. And this one. And this one.

Or the first one I saw, in the WSJ the other day.

And now, if you’ve looked at any of those links, you’re wondering the same thing I am — having had a look at his own, personal expression of taste, who would pay him to design anything?

Dior, apparently. But why, I don’t know.

That’s a whole universe that I just do not get… and I don’t think I want to. You want answers to fashion and stuff like that, check with my friend The Shop Tart.

I become a five-timer on Pub Politics (no, excuse me — THE five-timer)

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Pub Politics Episode 45: Subterranean Night, Part 2 from Wesley Donehue on Vimeo.

Here, finally (not that I’m complaining, Wesley), is the video from my record-setting appearance as the first five-time guest on “Pub Politics.” This episode was taped in front of a sizable and enthusiastic studio audience (with whom you’ll see us interact a bit, even though, alas, you can’t see them) at The Whig last Wednesday night, Feb. 16, 2011.

Here is Wesley’s blurb on the show, or rather this segment of it:

The boys of Pub Politics meet up in the basement bar known in Columbia as The Whig for a subterranean night. Political blogger and former journalist Brad Warthen and WACH Fox news director Bryan Cox jump on for segment 2 to the intersection of the Internet and journalism.

Join Brad Warthen online at bradwarthen.com.

Visit WACH Fox online at midlandsconnect.com.

A HUGE thank you to The Whig for hosting us. Visit them at thewhig.org.

And of course we were talking about this, which is why Bryan and I were there.

Who are your Top Five Presidents?

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Salon is SO predictable. For President’s Day, they post a piece posing the question, “Who’s the worst president of them all?” And of course, since that site is totally in the grip of Bush Derangement Syndrome (still), it boils down to a choice between George W. Bush and someone else. In this case, Buchanan.

Of course, being Salon, that’s why they ran it. But you know where they would go before you clicked on the link, right? So partisan. So parochial. So lacking in historical perspective.

Yawn.

Me, I’m not interested in a worst, or a worst list, because that just doesn’t seem in the spirit of Presidents’ Day, which is about celebrating rather than tearing down. So, who are your Top Five, All Time, Desert-Island presidents?

Oh, and if you include Barack Obama, which to me would be the flip side of picking W. as the worst, as if you can’t think outside your own 21st century chauvinism, I’ll just quote Barry at you:

Couldn’t you make it any more obvious than that? What about the Beatles? What about the Rolling Stones? What about…Beethoven? Track one side one of the Fifth Symphony?…

(You sort of have to know Barry to get that. And if you don’t, I definitely recommend that you read High Fidelity, which is where I got this mania for Top Five Lists. The movie’s fine, but read the book.)

My own list is a little shaky, but I’ll just throw some out there to get this started:

Abraham Lincoln — The guy who held us together at the fulcrum of our history, and did it with heroic force of will and epic strength of character while at the same time maintaining his own instinctive humility. He seemed at times to stand alone, politically, in his insistence on holding the nation together (and thank God he did). No one outdoes him in rising above finger-in-the-wind politics to embody leadership; only Washington and FDR come close. That brooding statue at the memorial is the visual evocation of what I’m talking about, which is what makes it so iconic. Of course, if you’re of pacifist tendencies, you have to note that no one person in our history was more singlehandedly responsible for the shedding of more American blood — without his force of will, the nation likely wouldn’t have stayed the course that long. But then, you have to ask yourself, was it worth it? Unfortunately, we’re still fighting over that in SC.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt — Again, almost superhuman leadership through crises of such scope and sweep that they stagger the mind. Argue all you want about the effectiveness of the New Deal, I think it was this cripple’s ebullient refusal to be a cripple, or let his country wallow in its troubles, that pulled us through the Depression more than anything. As for the Second World War — the nation was right to feel panicky when he died just before we’d finished winning it; his leadership was that critical on an abstract, spiritual level. The fact that we went ahead and won it quickly is a testament to what he’d already done, but also, it should be said, proof that the nation’s greatness and strength exceeds that of one man, however great the man. You could say that anybody who was president through those crises would be deemed great after they ended successfully. But I would say the nation was very fortunate to have this particular man at that time. And the people of this country knew it, which is why they elected him four times.
John Adams — OK, he’s not necessarily the greatest AS president (in fact, that was one of the low points of his career), and sure, there’s that business where he let the more partisan Federalists maneuver him into the Alien and Sedition Acts. It’s just that, if you take his whole life — and his whole adult life pretty much was devoted to getting this country started, being the most eloquent advocate for independence, getting backing from abroad (the French, the Dutch) for the revolution, suggesting Washington to head the Continental Army, (and suggesting Jefferson do the final writing on the Declaration), and on and on — it’s hard to imagine one guy contributing so much to a new country. But he did. I guess I’m putting him on here as a sort of Lifetime Achievement Award.
George Washington — Back when I was in college, it wasn’t fashionable to emphasize Washington as much as some of the other Founders. You know, because he was so obvious, it was uncool. (We were like Barry, in other words.) I tended to focus on the idea guys — Adams, Madison, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton. But over time, I’ve come to understand better the importance of his leadership — both in terms of being an inspirational leader that the country could rally around (something he cultivated consciously, which would make some dismiss him, but I think he saw what the country needed and provided it), and in terms of his self-effacing refusal to become a king or a facsimile of one. In other words, my understanding and appreciation has progressed beyond the cherry-tree myth.
Theodore Roosevelt — I used to think that Teddy was on Mount Rushmore for the same reason that people tend to put W. and Obama on their best and worst lists (depending on their inclinations): He was the president at the time, so they put him up there. But having read the first book in Edmund Morris’ trilogy (I need to get to the second; it’s sitting on my bookshelf waiting), I’m far more convinced of the role he played in transitioning the nation from what had been since 1776 and taking it to what it would be in the 20th century. His building up of the Navy would have been enough to get him on a Top Ten list. But then you look at his Progressive initiatives, his passion for reform, and that takes you much further. A lot of detractors would dismiss his imperialism, but I think that’s another sort of temporal chauvinism — applying today’s standards to a man of another time. I would look at the positive side of that — he saw the importance of the United States taking its place alongside the “Great Nations of Europe,” and saw aggressive posture as essential to that. In other words, you can take his “Bully!” a couple of ways. But in my book, as you know, I think the world is better off with the United States in the leading role, rather than some of those “Great Nations,” as they were then. And I worry about a future time when a nation that would never, ever produce a TR is in that role. Roosevelt personified American vigor, optimism, innovation and industry, making him a sort of archetype, an embodiment of the nation at that point in history — much the way JFK did later.

Wow. Barry would really be dismissive of MY list. It’s like, Mount Rushmore minus Jefferson, plus two. But I can’t help it; the “name” presidents do tend to be among the best, if you’re honest about it. (And I was going to put Jefferson on there, crediting him for the Louisiana Purchase and dealing with the Barbary Pirates — both flying in the face of his own ideology, and I love it when politicians rise above their party lines — but I wanted the other five on there more.

Go ahead, argue with me.

Who, if anyone, is the grownup in the governor’s office? (Hint: It SHOULD be the governor)

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Have you seen Kevin Fisher’s column about the Nikki Haley/WACH thing? It’s pretty good; you should check it out.

For my part, this bit reminded me of something I wanted to share:

Haley made the post late on a Sunday evening, presumably in the privacy of the governor’s mansion. Would she have done so the next morning after talking it over with advisers while sitting in the governor’s office? I doubt it. She strikes me as too smart to have made a mistake like this upon reflection, and certainly her communications staff would have advised against it (or if not, she should move quickly to get new communications people).

Last night on “Pub Politics” (which was a good show, with an excellent studio audience filling up The Whig — Shop Tart was there! so was Laurin!), Wesley Donehue made a related point, but in a far more outrageous way.

In defending Nikki — or trying to — he basically tried to excuse her immature and inappropriate published insult of WACH on the fact that it was spontaneous, and of course she wouldn’t have said something like that if she had consulted with her staff first. (I forget his exact words, but I’ll post the whole show when he sends me the embed code, by tomorrow probably.)

This set me off.

OK, I said, I can dig that Wesley and Phil Bailey might think it’s OK to say something like that, because after all, they themselves are unelected political operatives hired by elected officials. Professional pride, if nothing else, might lead to such thinking.

But folks, the governor is the governor. The governor is the boss of those people, the one who should be the grownup in the room, checking and correcting her subordinates, not the other way around. The governor is the one who was ELECTED by the people, the one who is accountable to them.

Yes, I realize we have a governor who was nowhere near ready, someone seriously lacking in the kinds of professional and life experiences that prepare one to be the boss (and a politically accountable boss, which is an even more demanding job requirement). We have someone in the office who a year ago was a very junior, very green back-bencher, suddenly thrust into leadership.

It happens. (The unfortunate thing about this situation is that she has no one on her staff to BE that grownup for her, to make up for her own lack. Mark Sanford had Fred Carter, but unfortunately failed to listen to him, and ran him off. Who can play that role for Nikki? Not her chief of staff — he doesn’t even know the system or the players; he’s a political operative from out of state. A mature type like Fred Carter who was from out of state, a real pro from Dover, could make up for his lack of local knowledge with pure, transferable professionalism, the knowledge that in ANY state, there are things you do and say and things you don’t. But as we saw with the Curtis Loftis incident, Tim Pearson is not that guy. Or at least, he hasn’t shown us that guy yet. But I digress. Of course, that’s what parentheticals are for.)

But SHE was the one who decided to go off half-cocked on Facebook. And even if she’d done it on advice of staff, SHE would be the one responsible for it.

If SC “opts out” of Obamacare, you will definitely have stepped over the line

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I say that because, between the two of them — him and Nikki Haley — I figure he’s the one more likely to listen to reason. At least, I would normally think that, although his recent behavior on this subject injects a large measure of doubt.

Here’s what I’m on about:

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham and Gov. Nikki Haley on Monday opened the S.C. front in the Republican Party’s battle to roll back health care legislation signed into law by President Barack Obama last year.

At a State House news conference, Graham and Haley took turns blasting the law as an expensive federal takeover of the nation’s health care system. Graham said the law, which won 60 votes in the 100-member U.S. Senate, was passed through a “sleazy” process that offered no opportunity for GOP input.

Graham also said he has introduced legislation to allow South Carolina and other states to “opt out” of the law, which is being challenged in federal courts.

“I’m confident that, if given the chance, a large number of states would opt out of the provisions regarding the individual mandate, employer mandate and expansion of Medicaid,” Graham said, referring to requirements in the law that individuals buy insurance, companies offer it and Medicaid be expanded to cover those without insurance. “As more states opt out, it will have the effect of repealing and replacing Obamacare.”

Last time, I was sort of seriocomic in warning Sen. Graham that he was goin’ to messin’, with my “Lindsey, fill yer hands; I’m a callin’ you out” post.

It’s not funny any more.

In fact, this is the one thing that leading Republicans (or anyone else who got such a notion) could do that would be totally beyond the pale, truly unforgivable.

Look, I get it: You don’t like Obama. No, scratch that: What I get is that your constituents don’t like Obama (in some cases for reasons that don’t bear a lot of scrutiny), so you’re playing to that. I doubt Nikki has any strong feelings toward the president one way or the other (she never even had occasion to think about him until she decided to become the Tea Party’s Dream Girl last year) and for his part Lindsey is perfectly happy to work with him in a collegial manner. But they’re trying to stay in the game with Jim “Waterloo” DeMint, and this leads to trying to fake the symptoms of Obama Derangement Syndrome.

I fully get the fact that since the defeat of November 2008 (when, it you’ll recall, I endorsed both John McCain and Lindsey Graham), the Republican Party has gone stark, raving mad, having concluded that its problem in ’08 was that it wasn’t extreme enough, not wacky enough, causing it, as it wandered lost in the post-apocalyptic landscape, to embrace the Tea Party in its lonely desperation. I get all that.

But that is a disgusting, absurd, inexcusable, disgustingly irresponsible reason to try to prevent the people of South Carolina — who have perhaps more need for health care reform than people in any other state — from deriving any benefit that might accrue from the federal health care legislation.

No, the thing dubbed “Obamacare” doesn’t accomplish much; it’s a bit of a Frankenstein of a bill. But it actually would do SOME people SOME good. And it at least has the one essential element that one would have to have in any attempt to address the crisis in paying for health care in this country, the national mandate — which, absurdly, is the ONE thing you object to most vehemently. (We’ve discussed in the past how there’s no point in talking about “reform” unless you start with the premise that everybody has to be in the game for it to work, so I won’t go on and on about it now.)

Yep, Obamacare is pretty inadequate. But you have NOTHING to replace it with, nothing in the wings (with any chance of passing, or any chance of doing any good if it DID pass) to do what little good Obamacare will do.

So trying to tear it down is nothing but an act of pure destruction. And the thing you’re destroying is the ONE thing that’s been done lately to address the one greatest domestic need in this country.

I expect this kind of nonsense from Nikki Haley (the Tea Party Nikki Haley that is, not the promising young House member I used to know). But Lindsey Graham is fully smart enough to know better.

Fine, have your little press conferences and make your symbolic gestures. But if you actually start to make this “opt-out” thing a reality, that will be unforgivable.

WHAT:	Mondays with the Mayor
WHEN:	Monday, March 7, 2011 5:00pm to 7:00pm
WHERE:	City Hall 1737 Main Street