Category Archives: Columns

Lindsey Graham, stand-up guy

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Immigration

By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
LINDSEY Graham is a stand-up guy.
    I just thought somebody should say that before sensible, thoughtful folk completely forget about all the hollering we’ve recently heard about his advocacy of the defunct immigration bill.
    The ones doing the hollering won’t forget, or so they say. Remember the Angry White Male, who rose up and swept Newt Gingrich and his cohorts into power in Congress in 1994? Well, that guy is alive and well, and he’s really, really ticked off at Lindsey Graham. And John McCain.
    Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment is being broken all over the place, right over Sen. Graham’s skull. Some sample comments from my blog:

  • “Snake in the grass, closet liberal, supercilious, condescending, I-know-better-than-you-little-people Lindsey Graham. Government is the only business I know of in which the people who run it continually attempt to tell the customers why they’re wrong.”
  • “Lindsey Graham has betrayed his conservative promises and has voted with the liberal democrats 18 times (from Jan 1st through Jul 1st).”
  • “‘Buenos Dias! You have reached the office of Senator Lindsey Graham. Press 1 for assistance in Spanish. Otherwise, hang up you racist bigot. Muchas Gracias!”’

    And so forth.
    Speaking of the blog — I set them off again when I posted a link to an article in National Review that said, “I hope the American people, at least, step back from the obsessive play-by-play pre-season election analysis and reflect on Senator McCain’s actions for what I believe they were: One of the purest examples of political courage seen in Washington in a very, very long time…”
Joelindsey
    That was written by Sen. Tom Coburn, who opposed Sens. McCain and Graham on the immigration bill, but had the intellectual honesty to admire the extremely rare fortitude they exhibited in their stance.
    But aside from Sen. Jim DeMint going out of his way to be gracious and magnanimous after crushing this initiative by the colleague who usually overshadows him, there is little appreciation for the quality that Sen. Coburn admired. “Lindsey Grahamnesty was not elected to be courageous,” said one of my bloggers. “He was elected to vote on behalf of the people of South Carolina. If he can’t do that, maybe he should go be courageous somewhere else.”
    But courage is too rare and precious a commodity in our politics for anyone to dismiss it. How long has it been since you saw somebody from South Carolina take a tough, leading position on a major national issue, without regard to the consequences?
    Lindsey Graham is a smart guy, about as smart as they come. Whatever the issue, it is a delight to hear him expound upon it. Does anyone really think he didn’t realize in advance how constituents would react? Even if he didn’t realize the magnitude of this tidal wave of opposition, once it broke over him, did he back off? No.
    That’s doing what you believe is right in spite of the cost. Sens. Graham and McCain have repeatedly demonstrated remarkable political courage, on this and other issues — standing up to the Bush administration on torture, reaching out to Democratic moderates to smooth the path for the president’s judicial nominees. Time and time again, they have done what they believed to be right, and explained their actions with intelligence and conviction.
    Those of you who are so livid right now can dismiss that all you want, but you are wrong to do so. You’re also being rather foolish. The “Gang of 14” deal is what led to John Roberts and Samuel Alito joining the Supreme Court. And dream all you want, you just rejected the one best chance you had of seeing any substantive action on illegal immigration.
    I was dismayed to see the two senators step out on immigration in this way at this time.
After all, the only people who considered illegal immigration to be a front-burner issue were the sort of angry fantasists who believe it’s possible to round up 12 million people who don’t want to be found, and deport them.
    I asked John McCain about it: Why this? Why now? He thought it was important to national security. He said “we can’t have 12 million people in the United States of America who we don’t know who they are or where they are and what they’re doing.”
    Sen. Graham agreed. And nothing was going to stop them; they were determined “to stand on principle, and try to solve problems,” as the South Carolinian puts it at such times.
    I was reminded of how rare principled courage was on this issue (and others) when I called around to local Republicans for comment. I got some good ones — not for attribution.
    “There’s no shortage of plain old racism” in this issue, said one of these brave souls. “God forbid you should say it out loud, though. Lindsey said it out loud.”
    “Courageous? I think it was stupid,” said another. “I think it was the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard of.”
    At the same time, that second tower of strength predicted that the people who keep promising they’ll “never vote for Lindsey Graham again” will do just that, because “nobody worth anything will run against him.”
    Possibly. But the 2008 Senate election may answer once and for all whether, in this finger-in-the-wind putative republic of ours, political courage is the one unforgivable sin.

Appetite for victory: Can we get hungry by September?

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By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
HOPE CAN come suddenly from the oddest directions. It can also be just as quickly dashed. But quickness to seize upon it can, if nothing else, be a measure of how badly we want it — and need it.Thursday

    Page A4 of Thursday’s paper was topped with this proclamation: “U.S. shows appetite for victory.” I hadn’t encountered such an encouraging headline in quite a while. But my joy was short-lived: It was about an American winning the world title for eating the most hot dogs in a 12-minute period (66), defeating six-time champion Takeru Kobayashi of Japan.
    Take whatever satisfaction and pride from that you can. I’m still hoping the nation develops an appetite for something that it might find harder to choke down.
    Lower on the same page was the subject I was thinking of: President Bush, in speaking to a Fourth of July National Guard gathering, said victory in Iraq “will require more patience, more courage and more sacrifice.”
    The bitter irony of Iraq is that we have far more reason to have confidence in the troops’ courage and willingness to sacrifice than in the public’s patience.
    “However difficult the fight is in Iraq, we must win it,” Mr. Bush said. “We must succeed for our own sake.”
    He’s right. He might not be right about much else, but he’s right about that.
    If you go to NPR.org, you’ll find this headline on an item I heard over my clock radio as I was waking Thursday morning: “Military: Iraq strategy can work, over years.” Below that is a blurb: “Most military strategists say it is a feasible plan, but it could take three to five years to see results.”
    Exactly. And how far off is the September update on the surge? Hmmm. Not nearly far enough.
NPR Defense Correspondent Guy Raz reported the following regarding the surge:
    “(T)here are signs of its working.” But “the lifeblood of the strategy requires two main elements — commodities that commanders don’t really have, which is time, and troop strength.”
    So much for military reality. He then switched to political reality, which is far more dire: “Ultimately, of course, with pressure coming down from Congress and the American public, military commanders in         Iraq know that they… simply may not have those commodities.”
    He expects the Pentagon to try to play down expectations of Gen. David Petraeus’ September report as “make or break,” and it should.
    But we seem to lack the appetite for any such dish as patience. The general’s subtext for the September report is that Congress and amorphous “public opinion” will view it with the following attitude: Are we done? Can we go now? Few seem prepared to conclude: OK, this can work, but it’s going to take a lot more time.
    With multiple presidential candidates already reinforcing the “are we there yet?” mood, there’s just no way that the folks in TV land are going to suddenly adopt patience as their operative mode, and give military commanders the time that they need. And yet that patience, that appetite, is something we must develop.
    Unfortunately, the president keeps telling us this. That would be an odd way to put it in any other historical context, but in 2007, our commander-in-chief is the one guy least likely to persuade the public to do something it doesn’t want to do (which is the definition of leadership).
    Here’s how bad things are: The candidate for 2008 most clearly identified with his determination to provide commanders with the time and troop strength they need to succeed is increasingly dismissed as politically nonviable because of that. In case you’ve been living in a spider hole, I’m referring to John McCain.
    Mind you, pretty much all of the serious Republican candidates say we’ve got to win, we can’t back down, etc. But they have the luxury of engaging the issue no more deeply than the usual Republican national security swagger. Sen. McCain has the problem of being specifically identified with what it will take to succeed, and what not backing down truly means, so all the “smart” analysts say he’s in trouble. And in politics, when they say you’re in trouble, you’re in trouble.
    That’s the big difference between what the military does and what politicians do — the military deals with ultimate reality: Apply force here, don’t apply it there, and here are the results. It’s an elemental equation — kill or be killed; win or lose. There’s no denying such reality. Only on the playground does “Bang! You’re dead!”/“No, I’m not!” work.
    In politics, from the now-smokeless back rooms to the woman on the street, what is said becomes reality, because if the public has no appetite, the military isn’t allowed that critical, real-world element of time.
    New York Times columnist Tom Friedman has written many discouraging things lately about Iraq. So I was encouraged this week to see him state again a simple truth that he had set forth often back when he was more optimistic: “Some things are true even if George Bush believes them.” And in this case, “it is still in our national interest to try to create a model of decent, progressive, pluralistic politics in the heart of the Arab world.”
    The very mess that we have looked upon in Baghdad and the surrounding country is our preview of what real failure will look like. Only two things will turn that “mess” into success — time and troop strength.
    But the only way our troops will receive those two elements — as essential to victory as bullets and training — is if America works up the appetite before September. That’s a huge if, but it’s the only hope we, and Iraq, have.

Bushwva

Tony Blair, the man the British never understood

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Tonygoodbye

    “The reason that I supported the action in Iraq was not that I thought we simply had to support America. It’s because I thought it was right. I still think it’s right.”
— Prime Minister Tony Blair

By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
AFTER TODAY, Tony Blair is available, and there’s only one thing to do about it: Let’s get busy changing the Constitution so that he can lead this country.
    The British just don’t appreciate him. He’s been their prime minister for 10 years. He’s given themTonyclose_2
New Labor, and peace in Northern Ireland. He’s shown that an intelligent, idealistic and charismatic centrist can still be elected and effectively lead a major Western country, despite all the evidence here to the contrary.
    He has done the right things, for the right reasons, and explained his actions and motivations brilliantly, and the Brits have lately responded as though their ears were filled with fried plaice and chips.
Because of “Blair’s support for the U.S. decision to go to war in Iraq,” droned a British accent on NPR Tuesday morning, the “accusation was that Blair was just the poodle of the White House, prepared to do anything that President Bush wanted, and getting nothing in return.”
Tonybook
    That, against all reason, is what passes as conventional wisdom in Britain these days, which is why Labor voters seem actually happy — for the moment — that dullard Gordon Brown is about to replace the finest P.M. since Winston Churchill.
    The foolishness went on:

    “Today, it is a mystery to many Britons how the left-of-center Baby Boomer who had seemed the ideological twin of Bill Clinton could have thrown in his lot with George W. Bush of the American right wing.”

    It is indeed a mystery — if you are so simple as to believe that everything has to fit within the dichotomy of left and right. But everything doesn’t. In fact, almost nothing real does. Certainly not Iraq.
    To understand how the British feel about Tony Blair — and this is most assuredly about feelings, not thought — see the 2003 romantic comedy “Love Actually.”
    Hugh Grant portrays a prime minister who would be popular were he not in thrall to a certain boorish,Tonytony
bullying cowboy (Billy Bob Thornton) who happens to be president of the United States.
    Mr. Grant’s pretend premier wins the people back by publicly standing up to this ugliest of American cartoons. Mr. Blair refuses to do the wrong thing simply in order to oppose the American, so he’s out. Ta-ta.
    Please, run the tape back. Look and listen. See and hear how Blair was the one who understood why we were in Iraq, and why we couldn’t leave. It was George W. Bush who couldn’t articulate it.
    Mr. Bush did not take us into Iraq because he is a conservative. He did it in spite of being a conservative. This is not what conservatives do, people. They don’t take risks like this. They decry “nation-building” in the most certain, isolationist terms — as Mr. Bush himself did in seeking the presidency. Sept. 11 rattled him, and he took actions contradictory to his nature. Perhaps the greatest reason that he has handled Iraq so badly is that deep down, this just isn’t his thing.
Tonyarnold2
    And yet everyone defines whether one supports the Iraq enterprise as a matter of “supporting Bush.” We can’t seem to realize that one pursues policies for their own sakes, not according to who else supports them.
    Poor John McCain is suddenly cast as the president’s lapdog, when he is the one who said all along that we need more troops over there and it can’t be done on the cheap a la Rumsfeld. Now that the president has moved in his direction with the “surge,” he suffers politically for “backing Bush.”
    It would seem that Americans, as a result of that failure of leadership on the part of our president, have reached the same conclusion regarding Iraq as the British. But I suspect — I have no way of demonstrating it, of course — that a man of Tony Blair’s parts could have kept resolve in the American spine. We’re different. The English have never gotten over the Somme.
    We are also alike. We are certainly as deluded when it comes to the whole left-right thing. Hypnotized by hundreds of thousands of propagandistic repetitions on 24-hour TV “news” and the blogosphere, we remain convinced that there are but two ways to be in the electoral and policy spheres: “liberal” or “conservative,” with a bit of room for prefixes and modifiers such as “ultra” or “neo.”
    These days, the informed, involved, truly knowledgeable and hip political junkie has been thoroughly indoctrinated into the argot of one cult or the other. He gets whipped up by the idiot box, then races toTonyshadow
his PC to rant fluently in a way that he deems deep and enlightened, when he is just regurgitating pre-packaged slogans. He thinks he is a thinker, when he is no more than a parrot — and an ill-tempered bird at that.
    But back to Britain.
    The broadcast segment that set me off on today’s rant ground superciliously toward its conciliatory end with the thought that maybe this man Blair, this singular creature with “his wide-eyed idealism, earnest smile and openly Christian values,” did accomplish a thing or two, despite his having been “seduced by the special relationship”:

    “Perhaps what he did most successfully was to move the debate in British politics to the center, away from the ideological divisions of the past.”

    That’s right. And in trying to assess what Tony Blair did and why he did it, you’d do best to remember that. It’s not about left and right. Never was.

Tonythinking

Gresham Barrett on Fred Thompson

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Gresham Barrett called me back several hours too late to use his comments in my Sunday column — I had been trying since Thursday evening, but a combination of his press secretary being out and his taking a day off led to us not speaking until late Friday.

His comments weren’t all that different from what Larry Grooms had said. I had simply called Rep. Barrett because he was the most prominent of the folks who had stood up to call for Fred Thompson’s entrance into the GOP presidential race on Wednesday. But Grooms was the group’s spokesman.

Some of his comments were so much like the state senator’s that it was like deja vu:

  • "We’ve got some good candidates, but I’m still not seeing a lot of excitement." (He, too, said he had "talked to all the guys" in making this assessment.)
  • "Part of it is his presence. He’s a big guy; he looks the part."

That latter one was in response to a similar question I had asked Grooms, along the lines of, since most folks can’t cite Fred Thompson’s political positions — he’s been out of that sphere for awhile — how do you explain his broad appeal?

For Barrett’s part, he said that after meeting all the others, he went back and researched Thompson’s voting record, and liked what he saw. Then he said an interesting thing: "One of the things that’s appealing is exactly what you said: He’s been out of it." That gives him a "fresh approach," or at least the strong appearance thereof.

As for his views, "He agrees we spend way too much money… he’s pro-life, pro-gun… the things that really push my buttons."

I asked who would be his second choice among the ones already running. "I like all the other guys," he said, specifically mentioning Giuliani, Romney and McCain before reiterating that he liked them all.

But he wasn’t going to cite a backup candidate. "For now, I guess I’m putting all my eggs in one basket, and that’s Fred Thompson."

Fred Thompson column

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Who will run to back Fred Thompson
if he comes to S.C.?

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
STATE SEN. Larry Grooms looked like a very influential man Thursday. On Wednesday, he had led a small band of Republicans in calling on Fred Thompson — the lawyer, lobbyist, star of screens both large and small and former U.S. senator from Tennessee — to run for president.
    The next day, the lead story in USA Today said “the former Tennessee senator not only makes it clear that he plans to run, he describes how he aims to do it. He’s planning a campaign that will use blogs, video posts and other Internet innovations to reach voters repelled by politics-as-usual in both parties.”
    But beyond cliches and pizzazz, what attracts some Republicans to Mr. Thompson?
    Specifically, what causes somebody like Larry Grooms to reject John McCain — whom he and a lot of others had seen as the alternative to “politics-as-usual” not so long ago?
    “I like Fred Thompson better,” said Mr. Grooms.
    OK, but why — particularly when you consider that he first met ex-Sen. Thompson in 2000 on the “Straight-Talk Express,” both of them supporting Sen. McCain in his doomed S.C. campaign against George W. Bush?
    What’s Fred Thompson got that the other 10 or 11 lack? Mr. Grooms had a very unwonkish answer to that: “He commands respect when he walks in a room.”
    In what way? “It might be that he’s very tall or large, but he bears that well.” Also, “When I rode the bus with him campaigning for McCain, he seemed to be the same man in front of crowds and in person.”
    Turning more to substance, he said the Tennessean was a solid conservative: “I don’t see a single issue where he’s wavered.”
    He suggested Sen. McCain and South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham have lost support by striking deals with Democrats.
    “You can’t ignore the other side, but you have to deliver,” Sen. Grooms said — meaning “deliver” in pleasing the base rather than necessarily passing legislation.
    He said a President Thompson would be tough on immigration, promote limited government and lower taxes and be “an effective commander in chief.”
    On that last point, wouldn’t a President McCain also qualify? Certainly — so would Rudy Giuliani, but on social issues, forget it.
    And McCain suffers from “guilt by association” with Ted Kennedy and Dianne Feinstein on immigration.
    Mr. Grooms says there are others out there like him — or there will be: “There are some people with McCain right now who say as soon as Fred makes his move, I’m with him.”
    He said some are waiting to meet the man. Sen. Grooms, for one, has interviewed all the GOP candidates (it helps that they’ve actually been here, unlike Mr. Thompson, whom I haven’t seen since 2000).
    But Bob McAlister — a paid consultant to the McCain campaign — says the Grooms position is rare, among both McCainiacs from 2000 and those who were for rival Bush back then. (Mr. McAlister, former chief of staff to the late Gov. Carroll Campbell, is of the latter category.)
    “John McCain has far more Bushies supporting him than Fred Thompson will ever have (former) John McCain supporters supporting him,” Mr. McAlister said. He might have a lot of media flash, but Mr. McAlister believes in the McCain ground game. “John McCain has locked down the human infrastructure that propelled George Bush to victory in 2000.”
    Another McCain consultant, Richard Quinn, says that while Mr. Thompson will be “the flavor of the month for a while,” McCain’s polling has remained steady, without “spikes and falls,” and he expects it to remain that way.
    “Larry is a good friend, and I met Senator Thompson in 2000 as well. I like him. He’s a very engaging person,” he said. But “I feel very comfortable about where John McCain is in South Carolina.”
    (Mr. Quinn had called specifically to dismiss the Winthrop University poll, which showed Rudy Giuliani edging out Sen. McCain, as an indicator of what will happen. Nothing against Winthrop — “I love college professors” — but it was based on random calling, with only about 260 self-identified likely Republican voters. For predictions, he prefers something based on actual regular GOP primary voters, such as the poll released last week by American Research Group, which showed a 9-point McCain lead.)
    He stresses two strong points: Sen. McCain is “the most consistently conservative candidate who can win in November,” and the “best qualified to lead our nation in the war on terror.”
    But what about someone who isn’t paid to say those things? Former Richland County Councilman Jim Tuten worked in the McCain campaign in 2000, and he’s still on board. As for some of the conservatives who are mad at him or Sen. Graham (“a great statesman” according to Mr. Tuten) over immigration or some other issue, “A lot of people who state those positions don’t really understand those issues or have any background on those issues.” Besides, as he learned on County Council, in order to govern, “You have to give a little to get a little.”
    True. Unfortunately for Sen. McCain, primaries are seldom about governing. Still, whom does a Thompson candidacy hurt — Sen. McCain, whom many avowed “conservatives” already reject, or the rivals who seek to take advantage of that, such as Mitt Romney? I’m thinking the latter.

Immigration gap column

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The GOP split between
rhetoric and reality

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
TUESDAY’S debate revealed a significant split in the Republican Party between Reality and Rhetoric, Ideas and Ideology.
    Sen. John McCain was asked a question that sounded like it had been dreamed up by Tom Clancy: Would he, in a totally “what-if” scenario, torture prisoners to prevent a theoretical terrorist attack?
    Sen. McCain, who has actually been tortured, for years on end, by a ruthless enemy, gave a thoughtful answer based on bitter experience: Knowing the United States would not do what the North Vietnamese were doing to him kept him going, kept him believing in his country and what it stood for. Besides, he didn’t want to give enemies an excuse to torture our troops.
    Rep. Tom Tancredo said he would call the fictional Jack Bauer. Others were no more realistic. Their answers had nothing to do with winning a war and everything to do with stirring the blood.
    Then there’s immigration.
    During the debate, Sen. McCain — again — spoke of his work on the issue that most candidates, and most members of Congress, would rather rant than do anything about.
    Two days later, he stood up with a bipartisan group of senators to announce a deal, months in the making, that represented the first attempt to address immigration comprehensively after a year of stalemate.
    Immediately, the Big GOP Split reasserted itself with a thunderous crack. South Carolina’s U.S. senators illustrated the split. Lindsey Graham — who had been late for the debate Tuesday because the White House had asked him to stay and help hammer out the agreement — hailed the proposal as “the last, best chance we have, probably for decades, to fix immigration.”
    Jim DeMint, sounding peeved at not having been in the room, was dismissive: “I don’t care how you try to spin it, this is amnesty.”
    He didn’t know yet what was in the bill, but he knew the magic word for condemning it.
    Sen. Graham had this to say about that: “Amnesty is a pardon and means all is forgiven. This legislation is not amnesty…. I hope all Senators, particularly those who were not part of the negotiations, will become more informed about the details of the bill before making incorrect statements. Here are the facts… . Illegal aliens will not be allowed to jump in line for citizenship ahead of those currently waiting. If they want to become citizens they must pay fines, learn English, pass a civics exam, undergo background checks and leave the United States and return to their country of origin. The punishment is fair and just. The public expects Members of Congress to speak their minds, but be informed in their opinions.”
    That’s too much trouble for some. I asked Rep. Tancredo Friday morning, when he called into a radio show I was on, whether this compromise wasn’t better than doing nothing. He was unequivocal: “Doing nothing is better.”
    I mentioned that to Sen. Graham Friday afternoon. “The Tancredo model never leads to a solution,” he said.
    “I have decided, as a United States senator, to stand on principle, and try to solve problems. And they’re not inconsistent. One of the principles that made America great is that the problem-solvers have always been greater in number and will than the demagogues.”
    He said, when a reporter asked, that he was not referring to Jim DeMint. “Jim is a very serious guy,” he said. But, he added, “one thing I would suggest is that before you enflame the public by using buzzwords, let’s look and see what we did.”
    Shortly after Sen. Graham said that, Sen. DeMint put out another release, complaining that the negotiators were trying to rush the bill through without letting him and others see whether they could go for it (which may very well be what they’re doing). He raised the “A-word” again, but in a somewhat more conciliatory way: “As we understand it, this plan will grant amnesty… This can be fixed, but it will take time and there is no way the Senate can responsibly complete this debate in one week.”
    On the presidential campaign trail, however, there was little appetite for closing gaps and getting things done. Mitt Romney wasn’t waiting around for details: “I strongly oppose today’s bill going through the Senate. It is the wrong approach.”
    Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s campaign put out a statement purporting to address the proposal that was, to say the least, oblique: “The recent Fort Dix plot is a stark reminder that the threat of terrorism has made immigration an important matter of national security. We need to know who is coming in and who is going out of this country if we are going to deal with those who are here illegally.”
    As Sen. McCain had said during the debate, the Fort Dix plotters didn’t all sneak into the country illegally. The issues are completely unrelated.
    I don’t know what to do about illegal immigration. I want to see the laws enforced. I also want the laws to recognize reality.
    In a different context, I asked former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee about the difference between being a governor and existing inside the Beltway: “You actually are going to have to do something” if you’re a governor, he said. “You don’t have the luxury of being an ideologue.”
    Some inside the Beltway want to do something, too. They’ve made a dramatic effort in that direction with this immigration bill. I don’t know whether it’s the way to go or not. But I suspect that the biggest barrier facing it will be Republicans who prefer to luxuriate in ideology.

How was your Confederate Memorial Day?

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S.C. political culture
keeps flag up,
DOT unreformed

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
RECENTLY, I said state lawmakers refuse to find the time to deal with the Confederate flag’s implications for our state.
    I was wrong. They’ve saved so much time by not reforming the Department of Transportation this session that they managed to take off a whole day Thursday to honor the flag and all that it stands for. They also paid state employees several million dollars to do the same.
    They know just what they’re doing. They don’t declare state holidays for every failed insurrection that comes along. There’s no Stono Rebellion Day, for instance. That was when some black South Carolina slaves rose up violently to assert their right to live as they chose, and lots of people died horribly, and the rebels suffered much and gained nothing. Whereas the War Between the States was when a bunch of white South Carolina slave owners rose up violently to… OK, well, the rest of it’s just the same.
    But you see, we have a Confederate Memorial Day holiday because the General Assembly had to do something for white people after it gave black folks Martin Luther King Day.
    It was a tradeoff. Our leaders think in those terms. Something for you people in exchange for something for us people. The idea that Martin Luther King might be worth a nod from all of us just didn’t wash.
    The Legislature’s refusal to reform the Department of Transportation is actually related. That agency is governed according to the principle of something for you people in exchange for something for us people, leaving out the needs of the state as a whole.
    The power lies in the Transportation Commission. The governor appoints the chairman; the other members are chosen by legislators. Not by the Legislature as a whole: Each member represents a congressional district, and only the legislators who live in that district have a say in choosing that commissioner. Therefore the people in a position to set priorities on road-building have parochial notions of what roads need to be built — all except the chairman, who can’t vote unless there’s a tie.
So how are priorities set? Something for you people in exchange for something for us people — the balancing of narrow interests, rather than a statewide strategy.
    Lawmakers as a whole aren’t even seriously considering giving up that commission. Even the idea of giving greater power over the commission to the governor — who in almost any other state would be running that executive agency outright — is utterly shocking to some of the most powerful legislative leaders.
    “This Senate would rue the day that you turn that billion-dollar agency over to one person,” said Sen. John Land, who represents a rural district.
    The scandal at the Transportation Department didn’t arise from former Director Elizabeth Mabry being a bad administrator. She was a bad administrator, but she was part of a system. A job for your relative, commissioner, in return for indulging the way I run my fiefdom ….
    Something for you in exchange for something for me. It didn’t even have to be stated.
    When I say the “Legislature” is like this, it doesn’t apply to all lawmakers — just to the decisions they make collectively.
    There are some who want to fix the agency, and others who want to take down the Confederate flag. But the status quo runs right over them without breaking stride.
    Sen. John Courson proposed to do away with the commission and put the governor in charge. He got support, but not enough; the idea was dropped.
    After I wrote about “the Legislature” not wanting to talk about the flag recently, Rep. Chris Hart called to say he wants to talk about it, and that he and Reps. Todd Rutherford, Bakari Sellers and Terry Alexander have a bill that would take the flag down — H.3588. But it’s sat in committee since Feb. 27.
    My grand unifying theory is not a simple matter of good guys and bad guys. Sen. Glenn McConnell is a champion of the monument for you, flag for me system. But he’s pushing the plan to give the governor more say over the Transportation Department.
    What  matters is how it comes out, after everybody votes. This legislative session will end soon. Significant reform of the Transportation Department is looking doubtful, while action on the flag is politically impossible.
    Rep. Rutherford has some hope for next year on the flag, especially after recent comments from football coach Steve Spurrier, and the protest by United Methodist clergy. If that blossoms into a movement of the breadth of the one that moved the flag in 2000, H.3588 could have a chance.
    But he warns that if it does start to gain support, a moribund proposal to declare a Confederate Heritage Month will likely be revived. Something for you people, something for us people.
    The Transportation Department won’t be reformed until the culture changes, until the notion that there is such a thing as statewide priorities replaces the traditional balancing of the interests of narrow constituencies.
    The flag won’t come down unconditionally until the notion sinks in that it’s not about whether your ancestors were slaves, or slaveholders, or neither. This is the 21st century, and the Confederacy hasn’t existed since 1865. “I’m not trying to disrespect anybody’s heritage,” Rep. Rutherford said on Confederate Memorial Day. “It just shouldn’t be there.”
    That’s true no matter who your kinfolk were, and no matter what day it is in the year 2007.

Democratic Debate Column

52 Replies

Debate

Orangeburg debate just
a start, but a good one

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
AS BOB COBLE walked out of a breakfast meeting Friday, the bearlike New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson placed him in a loose, amiable headlock and asked what he would have to do to get him to support his bid for the presidency.
    “You’ll have to squeeze harder than that,” I thought. As the governor knew, the Columbia mayor is a John Edwards man.
    But for those who had not made up their minds, the “debate” in Orangeburg Thursday night was a better-than-expected opportunity to begin the winnowing process.
    Eight candidates in 90 minutes is patently ridiculous. But those who planned and executed it, from South Carolina State University to MSNBC, can take pride in making the most of the situation.
National media, as expected, focus on which of the “two candidates,” Hillary or Obama (like Madonna, they no longer need titles or full names), came out on top. Some stretch themselves and mention ex-Sen. Edwards.
    OK, let’s dispense with that: Sen. Clinton presented no surprises, rock star Obama came across as pretty stiff playing in this orchestra — nothing of his usual, charismatic rolling thunder. Ex-Sen. Edwards did his usual shtick.
    But some of us tuned in to learn something new. I did. And I didn’t care which of the overexposed, anointed titans of fund-raising would be a more ideologically pure party standard-bearer. Those of us who spurn both parties — in other words, those of us who actually decide national elections — were looking for someone we might vote for (if such a person survives the partisan gantlet far enough to give us the chance). We’ll be looking for the same when the Republicans meet at the Koger Center May 15.
    I don’t think any of us got any conclusive answers. But the questions posed were good enough to provide some impressions, however scattered, that at least made the event worth the time invested:

Best new impression: I had heard good things about Gov. Richardson, but not met him before. The debate, plus his call-in to a radio show I was on Friday morning, made me want to find out more. I liked the fact that he was real, honest and unscripted, perhaps the result of being a governor and actually dealing with real problems instead of living in Washington’s 24-hour partisan echo chamber.

Best old impression: Could Sen. Joe Biden contain his gift of gab well enough to play well with others on such a crowded stage without his head exploding? “Yes.” Since I’ve heard him speak in our own board room for two hours almost without pause, this was a pleasant surprise. I’ve always liked the guy, but this is one Irishman who didn’t just kiss the Blarney Stone; he took it home with him.

Commander in chief? I expected the candidates to compete to see who was most against our involvement in Iraq and for the longest time. But if it’s fairly judged, Dennis Kucinich wins that pointless contest hands-down. It’s also a barrier to me, since I consider giving up in Iraq to be anathema. So I looked to see who was leaving themselves any room to present a more credible position in the general election, when it’s no longer necessary to court moveon.org. The winners of that contest: Sen. Biden, followed by Sen. Obama.

Second funniest moment: The look in John Edwards’ eyes when he acknowledged being filthy rich, just before going into his nostalgic boilerplate about having been poor once upon a time. This is a much-rehearsed look for him, intended to look like wide-eyed candor. But it struck me like, You bet I’m rich, and lovin’ it, too. Probably an anomaly in the camera angle.

Making Kucinich sound reasonable: A writer on Slate.com summed it up better than I can, as follows: “When the candidates were asked who owned a gun, (Ex-Sen. Mike) Gravel was one of those who raised his hand. ‘I was worried that he meant he had one with him at the moment,’ said a senior adviser to a top candidate.” I hadn’t gotten around to including a link to this particular candidate on my blog. After Thursday night, I don’t think I’ll bother.

Common sense: You could tell who really wanted to be president. They raised their hands to say they believed there’s such a thing as a global War on Terror, and didn’t raise their hands to support Dennis the Menace’s move to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney. Outside of partisan blogs there’s something we call the real world; everyone except Rep. Kucinich showed that they live in it at least part-time.

The most enduring litmus test: Even after all the times I’ve seen and heard this, the grip of the abortion lobby on the Democratic Party still strikes me as astounding. Is there any greater demonstration of the power of party uber alles than hearing a Roman Catholic such as Sen. Biden emphatically saying, “I strongly support Roe v. Wade,” and asserting complete faith in the existence of a right to privacy in the Constitution?

South Carolina’s shame: Only one thing was mentioned all night that let you know this took place in South Carolina — the Confederate flag at our State House. So much for our wish to build a new image based on hydrogen research and the like.

    The event helped me begin to focus on this process, which has been easy to ignore with everything going on in South Carolina. There will be many debates, interviews and other opportunities before the winnowing is done. Whether this newspaper will support, or whether I personally will vote for, any of these candidates is a question that it is far too soon to answer.
    But this was a start.

Column on the Nazis and South Carolina

88 Replies

Nazis_111

Thanks to the flag,
we’ve got Nazis on our steps

By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
HERE IS HOW one decent, earnest, sensible South Carolinian responded when I asked what he thought should be done about the Confederate flag flying on the State House grounds:
    “On the flag, it’s such a tough issue. I do think there’s some wisdom in the old adage: ‘The best thing about a compromise is that nobody’s happy.’ …. I’d hate to have a renewed flag debate suck all the political oxygen out of the state. I’m afraid that could happen, and there are many issues that need/require attention. So… my instinct would be not to revisit the issue at this time.”
    To which I impatiently reply, What political oxygen?
    What exactly are we getting accomplished in South Carolina these days? What are we doing to catch up to the rest of the country? We compromise on compromises until we accomplish nothing — witness the DOT “reform” staggering its pitiful way through the General Assembly. If we can’t even reform that, what can we do in this state?
    I’m sick of compromises. You know what the compromise on the flag brought us? Nazis, who believe, because of that flag, that we’re their kind of people.
    I have video on my blog (the address is below; please go check it out) of American Nazis standing on our State House steps and congratulating white South Carolinians for having the “guts” to fly that flag and tell anybody who doesn’t like it, especially those whiny black people, to go to hell. They are very happy with the compromise. Before, the flag was a little hard to see up on the dome. Now, as one speaker says in the video, it’s “in your face,” and the Nazis are loving it.
    One thing you have to hand to those pathetic losers who paraded around in silly costumes “Sieg Heiling” to beat the band on our state’s front porch Saturday: They just go ahead and say things that most South Carolinians won’t say out loud.
    Personally — and I hope you won’t think less of me for saying this — I’ve always kind of hated Nazis. Until this past weekend, that seemed like a fairly pointless emotion, sort of like hating Phoenicians. But it was sincerely felt. Neo-Confederates have their way of living in the past; this was mine. I felt that I had been born too late to fight the one thing that got my blood boiling more than anything.
    And yet there I was Saturday, surrounded by marching, shouting, racist, Jew-hating, uniformed jackbooted Brownshirts — and I had not the slightest urge to shoot any of them, except with my little Canon digital camera. I had a new urge, a powerful need to share what I was seeing with the world — particularly with my fellow South Carolinians, whose insistence upon flying that flag is what brought these guys out of their sad little holes of rejection all over this vast nation. They thought they were finally at home.
    “Look at the flag, guys!” said one as they marched under it, thrilled at having his fantasy come true. He had never expected to see such a thing on public, government-mandated display. He was like a pimple-faced guy who’d never had a date, suddenly presented with the most gorgeous woman he’d every dreamed of, naked and willing. The situation was positively pornographic.
    He had evidently never felt so welcome before. This was obviously a place that loved and valued white people. Oh, springtime for Hitler!
    He was pathetic. They were all pathetic. Needy, too. Their messages of racial hatred and division were interspersed with plaintive entreaties to onlookers (the white gentiles, of course) to join them, accept them, see them as brave and praiseworthy.
    I guess Hitler was sort of pathetic, too, seen in isolation — all those silly, over-the-top gestures at the podium. It was when you saw the thousands of perfect, ordered rows of mad followers willing to do anything he said that he succeeded in terrifying beyond imagination.
    John Taylor Bowles, the Nazi “presidential candidate” who spoke at the rally Saturday, is no Hitler. No oratorical panache at all. He looked like what he was — a pudgy, middle-aged, mild-voiced notary public who just happened to have a few extreme ideas about people who didn’t look like the kind of Master Race that he wanted to see himself as part of. (His Web site describes him as “a devoted fun loving father of three daughters” and claims membership in the AARP.)
    Sure, he’s one little whacko surrounded by two or three dozen “re-enactors” who like to play dress-up. But is he really that alone, that aberrant? How unusual is it today to hear indignant native whites talk about illegal immigrants the way he did?
    Bowles was so ordinary, so banal, so nonthreatening. He had no army of storm troopers before him that I could see. But as far as he was concerned, he did have an army. He was there because he thought he could see two or three million white South Carolinians who were very receptive to a message like his. What else was he to gather from the presence of that flag?
    One of the speakers said they would be back next year, and the year after that. They liked it here. Maybe we could do something to make them feel a little less welcome. Can you think of anything? I can.

See and hear Nazis praise South Carolina for flying the Confederate flag at http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/2007/04/confederate_fla_1.html.

Nazis_005

Lawmakers dodge flag issue

27 Replies

Everybody thinks the flag’s an issue
except those who can act on it

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
‘I JUST WANTED to touch base with you and let you know I enjoyed your editorials this morning,” said the phone message. “You don’t have to call me back, but read ’em and thought you did a great job. Thanks.”
    Pretty routine, except that it was from a Republican S.C. House member, Ted Pitts — my own representative, as it happens — and the column and editorial were asserting the need to remove the Confederate flag from the State House grounds.
    Assuming this wasn’t just constituent service, I called to ask why he liked them. He was a little vague, saying “it’s a very interesting issue” with “an interesting dynamic,” but not taking a position.
I think he was feeling a little odd because after he had called me, he had found that he was about the only person in the State House who wanted to talk about the subject at all.
    “I just walked around and said, ‘Are we gonna talk about this?’ and to a man, there was just no interest,” he said. “There just seemed to be no appetite around here, from African-American members” or anyone else.
    “They don’t think it’s an issue right now.”
    But apathy has always been the Legislature’s way on the flag issue. Contrary to popular impression, it did not spend the 1990s (before Mr. Pitts was elected) discussing the issue — everyone else did. The apathy was even apparent during the all-too-brief debate in 2000 that left the flag in our faces, although it was removed from its position of false sovereignty.
    If the House hadn’t been in such an all-fired hurry, lawmakers could have dealt with the issue once and for all. A lot of people from all over the political spectrum were pushing them to get something done, and some of the main advocates — such as the S.C. Chamber of Commerce — believed that the put-it-behind-the-monument approach qualified as “something.”
    So they did that, quickly. If the House had discussed the issue more than one day, a proposal to strike the flag for good might have had a chance, but the leadership wasn’t willing.
    If you ask lawmakers about the flag, they’re aghast: Why ask them, of all people? Yet thanks to a law passed by the Legislature in 1995 (in response to an abortive attempt by then-Gov. David Beasley to exercise some leadership), only the Legislature can do anything with the flag. But they don’t even think it’s an issue.
    USC football coach Steve Spurrier thinks it’s an issue, but what does he know? All he knows is that the flag should not be there, and that it projects an absurdly and unnecessarily negative image of our state to the entire world.
    I heard from other people who don’t know any more than the old ball coach.
    One said,

   “I am one million percent behind you on the flag issue…. We should not be putting down anybody, just like your column says, we should just be doing it because it’s the right thing to do. I’m born, bred South Carolina, go back generations … but I could care less. I do miss ‘Dixie,’ now, it did make my skin crawl, but the flag doesn’t mean a damn’ thing… I think you’ll be surprised at the momentum can get going now. Good job.”

    As for e-mails, there was a problem: The special lowertheflag@thestate.com address I had set up malfunctioned for the first two days. But during that time, 39 people were determined enough to look up my personal address. Thirty were for taking the flag down; only nine seemed opposed to our message in any way — and a couple of those were fairly indirect in saying so. Not all, of course, were so shy: 

  “You know as well as I that this is not about the Confederate flag, it is about blacks — period! If removing that flag from the Statehouse grounds would cure the 70+% illegitimacy rate, children having children, the over 50% dropout rate and the substantial crime and incarceration rate within the black community, I would say remove it now but it will not and you and Spurrier know it!… You are simply using the flag issue as a diversion from the real issues I mentioned above.”

    More typical is this one:

    

“I grew up in this state and I am proud to be from here, but I am embarrassed by that flag and the people who support it. I travel all over the country for my work and every time someone asks me where I am from and I say SC, they bring up the flag. I have to defend myself and my state by saying not all of us are backwards and ignorant…. It is an insult to the troops fighting for our freedom today…. I will say it as plainly as I can: It is un-American to support the flag and what it stands for.”

    As of midday Friday, my blog had received 253 comments on the subject since Mr. Spurrier’s remarks. Few were vague.
    Rep. Pitts remains sort of, kind of uncommitted. “I feel kind of like an outsider looking in on this,” he said — which sounded odd for one of the 170 insiders who have the power to act on the issue. He explained: “It’s an issue that means very little to me — and, I think, to my generation.” Mr. Pitts is 35.
    “Our state shouldn’t promote anything that offends a large block of its people,” Mr. Pitts said, in his strongest statement one way or the other. “In 2007, we’ve got a lot of other issues to talk about, but why can’t we talk about this?”
    “It’s almost like we’re hiding from the issue.” I would have added that it’s exactly like it, but he was on a roll. “Let’s defend why it’s still flying there” if lawmakers believe it’s justified.
    “But let’s not just not talk about it.”
    If you’d like to let Mr. Pitts know that it’s an issue to you, let him know. Or better, let your own representatives know.

    Find out how to reach your representatives here and your senators here. If you don’t know who represents you, check here.

Civility 2007

17 Replies

Imus3

A society relearning how to behave

    Free speech is enhanced by civility.
                — Tim O’Reilly,
                who recently proposed a
                “Bloggers Code of Conduct”

Here’s what David Brooks of The New York Times, a writer I usually respect highly, had to say in defense of the fact that he, and others I admire, had been an enabler of trash over the years:

    “You know, most of us who are pundits are dweebs at some level. And he was the cool bad boy in the back of the room. And so, if you’re mostly doing serious punditry, you’d like to think you can horse around with a guy like Imus.”

    ImusPerhaps, having been the sort who sat in the back of the class and created distractions while the dweebs were grinding away trying to get into Harvard, I don’t have that deep-seated need. I got it out of
my system. Some of it, anyway. Enough that I don’t need to match “wits” with anyone who makes a living off suckers who tune in to see how creatively he can trash other people.
    But the weakness of Mr. Brooks and others caused media critic Philip Nobile, who once authored something called “Imus Watch” on TomPaine.com, to observe that “Imus had made cowards and hypocrites of some of the best minds in America. I hope they do penance….”
    I’m not proposing to add to the already-considerable body of commentary on the downfall of an infamous loudmouth. I’d rather reflect today on a culture that would make such a pathological creature marketable.
    I mean a culture that holds its breath to find out which “man” among multiple possibilities fathered the child of a dead former stripper — not whispering about it among the guys at the bar, but treating itImus5
as mainstream, matter-of-fact fodder for polite conversation in front of the kids.
    I’m talking about “reality” shows peopled by sad morons whose every utterance contains something that, even today, gets bleeped — not because the producers are sensitive or think that you are, but because the jarring “bleeps” themselves, audible from any room in the house, make content that would bore a brain-damaged goldfish seem titillating. Ooh, that must have been a good one, we’re supposed to burble.
    I’m referring here to a political marketplace in which most participants long ago ceased to listen in order to reach practical consensus with those who disagree, preferring to gather into ideological tribes that huddle in the darkness, patting each other on the back for the rocks they heave at that other tribe, the “enemy” who will always lack legitimacy.
    In other words, this is a happy upbeat, “good news” sort of column. I thought you could use that to cheer you up on this fine April morning (disregarding the thunderstorms forecast as I write this.)
    Really. There is good news out there. In fact, we may even be seeing a trend. I once worked with a labor-averse assistant metro editor who loved to see news repeat itself to the point that he could say: “That’s twice that’s happened. One more time, and we can call it a trend and send it to ‘Lifestyles’.”
Jerry, this one’s almost ready to go to the Features Department.
    A few months back, I boldly asserted in this space that “Standards are making a comeback. We may be able to get a civilization going here after all.” As evidence, I cited the facts that Rupert Murdoch himself had just canceled plans to publish a book by O.J. Simpson giving the details of how he “didn’t” kill his wife; the Michael “Kramer” Richards apology; and a column in The New York Times by a doctor bemoaning the low-cut tops and miniskirts worn by some of her younger colleagues. (Yes, that last one was weak, but I enjoyed the pictures. And it was a legitimate trend, because it was in a feature section.)
    Well, the trend continues. The Imus dismissal, although it came decades too late, was yet another positive sign. This jaded society of ours got up on its hind legs once again and said “enough.”
    The best, the very choicest thing I saw last week containing the word “Imus” was a column in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, which began, “And so it came to pass in the year 2007 that a little platoon came forth to say unto the world: Enough is enough.” There I read once again about a new phenomenon, known as the “Blogger’s Code of Conduct,” that in draft form begins:   

We celebrate the blogosphere because it embraces frank and open conversation. But frankness does not have to mean lack of civility.

    Those who read all my hand-wringing last year about the nasty trolls on my blog will know why such a statement, and such a code, would appeal to me. I’m farther along in my quest for civility now. I don’t wring my poor, dry digits so much any more; I just take action. I banned another of my more unruly correspondents on Friday.
    You polite souls who stay out of that forum (you who tell me, “I read it, but I don’t leave comments”) for fear of being abused, fear not. I don’t think the bad boys are the least bit cool, and I won’t let them pick on you.
    This is all good news — a good trend. Come to thestate.com/168/ and read all about it, before it gets shoved to Lifestyles.

Imus2

Classy disagreement

19 Replies

After all my efforts to foster constructive dialogue that can promote understanding on issues here on my blog, some of the most thoughtful people still respond via e-mail. Here’s an example of someone I’ve corresponded with since Sunday on my abortion column.

If that subject can’t generate incivility, what can? So it is that I deeply appreciate someone who can disagree with someone so completely, and yet so reasonably:

From: Kathryn Braun Fenner
Sent: Monday, April 02, 2007 5:07 PM
Dear Mr. Warthen:
    I have yet again been touched by the thoughtfulness of your writing about the proposed ultrasound viewing requirements for those seeking abortions. I would like to suggest you consider two additional concerns you did not acknowledge: one, everyone does not believe life in the sense of a human being, rather than a clump of living cells with the potential to be a whole human being when and if born, begins at conception. I believe that fetal cells are living only insofar as cancer cells are or the healthy tissue excised along with the cancer cells. None of these cells can live independent of the host body. I truly respect your views, though, especially as they are consistent — if a fetus is a life, no rape and incest exceptions–even if a family member of someone powerful is involved. Many of our legislators and anti-abortionists waffle on this point, implying that they do not truly equate the fetal cells with a fully born human, such as their wife or daughter. Kudos to you also for pointing out the lack of legislative concern for the afterborn lives!
    Two, I do not know that an ultrasound is medically necessary or advisable, especially in the first trimester. If it is, giving the patient the option to view it is fine, but requiring it — I was not required to view the results of my prehysterectomy ultrasound, nor did I desire to do so….If it is not medically advisable, we should not require anyone to pay for it — there is enough life being wasted because of inadequate medical funding, don’t you think?

Kathryn Braun Fenner
Columbia, SC

From: Warthen, Brad – External Email
Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2007 2:27 PM
    Well, as I said, I don’t feel strongly about it one way or the other.
    As for the medical advisability — I just had sinus surgery last month, which only involved going about two inches up my nose, and didn’t even involve cutting anything, just widening the passage with a balloon. Yet I had to have multiple CT scans, and I made sure to see them, to help me decide whether I thought the procedure is worth doing.
    And I deeply appreciate the kindness of your note, especially since we obviously view this very differently. You don’t see the fetus and a person, and I can’t imagine how anyone could see anything else. I certainly can’t see a logical analogy to cancer cells. Cancer is a serious dysfunction in which cells grow wildly in a manner that will kill the individual if not stopped. Pregnancy, from the very beginning, is not only a healthy, normal process, but one that is essential to life’s very existence.
    I was present each time my wife gave birth to our five children. Six years ago, she developed breast cancer that spread to her liver before being discovered. Only the most aggressive attacks on the tumors that were trying to kill her have kept her alive.
    What I’m saying is that I can tell you without any doubt that there is an enormous, night-and-day difference between a baby and a tumor. Our children, when they were growing inside her for nine months, were not the moral equivalent of tumors.
    One other point, take that term, "baby." Under our current system, we give one person — the mother — absolute godlike power to determine whether what is inside her is a "baby." If she wants it, it’s a baby. She and her family will speak constantly of "the baby" — when the baby will come, how the baby’s room is coming along, the baby shower, baby names, etc.
    If she doesn’t want it, it’s "just a fetus," and can indeed be treated legally as a tumor.
    That makes no sense in the world. It’s either a baby or it isn’t. Its existence does NOT depend upon the attitude of anybody toward it. It is or it isn’t. That’s the nature of reality.
    Well, you got me started. What I mean to say is, thank you for your kind note, and for the opportunity for dialogue.

— Brad Warthen

From: Kathryn Braun Fenner
Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2007 2:50 PM

Brad-
    I am so sorry about your wife’s illness. My thoughts and prayers are with her and your family. Please forgive my apparent trivializing of the pain of cancer by comparing a tumor to a fetus–although as you acknowledged in your piece, to some, a fetus may be a death threat.
    I am glad you have five welcome children. People like you and your wife should have enormous love-filled families. I have done a lot of work with juvenile offenders and with DSS "clients." I do believe abstinence is the best option for those who are not going to have loved, two-parent children. The Supreme Court notwithstanding, everyone does not have a fundamental right to sex, or to have children; it is a privilege at least as worthy of respect and control as driving! I bemoan our sexualized society. However, it is what it is, though courageous journalists like you are certainly speaking up to try to change this. Given our culture, and the many generations of "lost children" from DSS-land, can we at least agree that maybe teaching and making available alternatives to abortion that are more likely to avoid pregnancy than abstinence is advisable, the Pope notwithstanding.
    BTW, pregnancy is not always a healthy normal process. Ectopic pregnancy is one obvious example. Is that a baby, absolutely not a baby or something in between?
— Kathryn Fenner

From: Warthen, Brad – External Email
Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2007 5:06 PM
    Well, you exceeded my vocabulary on that one. I had to look it up to learn that "ectopic" referred to what I think of as "tubal."
    Indeed, given the complexity of life, particularly in the higher animals, many things can go wrong with otherwise healthy processes. For instance, it’s a good thing to have a strong immune system. But if it becomes TOO reactive, you end up like me, spending thousands a year treating allergies.
    I see the Church’s teaching on artificial birth control as something to be embraced by the faithful, NOT to be imposed on a pluralistic society. I would not, for instance, seek to have civil law ban the eating of meat on Fridays in Lent.
    But life or death, once the process of life has begun — that’s a different matter. The state has a legitimate interest there; it just depends upon how we decide to define that role. Unfortunately, Roe forbids us even to discuss it, placing the issue of life and death absolutely in the hands of the most interested, least impartial party. That’s not a standard we would apply in any other area of the law where the stakes are so great.
    Thank you again for the kind exchange. Do you mind if I post it on my blog?
— Brad Warthen

From: Kathryn Braun Fenner
Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2007 5:59 PM
    I exceeded your vocabulary? Wow!
    Process of life….What about fertilized in vitro eggs? When is something "living" –in the independent "life" sense (rather than the "my fingertip is living but my fingernail tips are dead" sense) as opposed to merely potentially able to live on its own?
    Roe does not forbid US or anyone else from discussing abortion (God bless America–freedom of speech is what makes this country great) I’m not planning on being arrested for this e-mail exchange, are you? We can even publish it (post it on your blog, if you must–I’m not keen on being identified to the nut-jobs like Fetus Man–does he really think he will change anyone’s mind with baby dolls pinned to his jacket?–, but I will stand behind what I say–though my brother, the copy editor, would surely fix up the language!).
    Roe says, basically "Congress shall make no law" impeding on an adult woman’s right (with her doctor), during the first trimester, and possibly the second, to decide when the cells in her are a fetus and when they are a baby. (BTW–why do we have a good old word "fetus" but no "old" word for "post-birth baby" as opposed to just "baby." Historically, I believe we have been ambivalent at best about when an independent life begins.)
    Absolutely I agree that IF abortion is murder, if a fetus is a baby is a fully protectable legal person–indeed far more so than a corporation, say– then the State has an interest, indeed an imperative, in outlawing abortion. I do not believe that a fetus is the same as baby. You do, and as I said, I applaud the strength with which you stand for that. I truly respect that. I believe that, God forbid, if one of your loved ones were raped, you would protect that fetus with the same fervor as the child of a lawful marriage.  Many "pro-life" advocates would not, which makes me think they are a lot about punishment and enforcing morality on a wayward woman, rather than protecting a potential life…and as you say, they pro-life movement is not overly concerned about the welfare of the "afterborn"….
    Oh and the Legislature, backed by at least one court, won’t let us outlaw cigarette smoking in the workplace, —which is proven to kill lives-in-being–and as you have written, prevent the allergic/asthmatic among us from fully participating in public life. There are 
other "no go " zones besides abortion….but that is a discussion for another day.

Peace–
Kathryn

Peace, indeed. I think I’ll leave it there with her having the last word. No, I’ll let Stephen Wright have the last word. I love this postscript Kathryn tagged onto her last message:

If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate.

— Steven Wright

 

Abortion column

54 Replies

Abortion in America:
the antithesis of consensus

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
THE SOUTH Carolina General Assembly did a number of important things last week:

  • A House panel slam-dumped a proposal to keep the Barnwell nuclear waste facility open past 2008, sending a clear, 16-0 signal that our state does not want to be seen as the nation’s trashcan.
  • The full House dramatically rejected the latest attempt to slip tuition tax credits for the affluent and vouchers for everybody into the new superintendent of education’s public school choice bill.
  • The House missed a chance to meaningfully reform the state Department of Transportation, passing a bill that leaves an accountability-diffusing commission in the driver’s seat. The Senate did something much worse.
  • The House sent 4K back to a committee for further consideration. Remember last year, when it seemed we had a consensus that the state had a critical role to play in early education for the neediest children? That’s in danger now.

    Lawmakers did other things, such as move toward some improvements in DUI law, ditch the idea of a Confederate Memorial Month, and discussed requiring that women be shown an ultrasound before they get an abortion.
    That last one certainly caused a lot of talk. But our editorial board didn’t take a stand on the subject, and probably won’t. Why? We adopt editorial positions on the basis of consensus, and on abortion, our board is like America: We have no consensus. Abortion in America is the antithesis of consensus.
    Witness the insanity that Roe v. Wade imposed on our politics: You can’t be a Democratic nominee for president unless you’ll stack the Supreme Court to protect it, and you can’t be a Republican nominee unless you’ll stack the court to overturn it — as though there were nothing else to being president. And hardly anyone pipes up to say the court shouldn’t be stacked.
    Even if I believed abortion should be available on demand, I wouldn’t think it worth this price. But I don’t. For me, the only ethical position is that it should not be available at all except in a question of a life for a life.
    That doesn’t mean I’m for this bill. Or against it. Logically, it shouldn’t be causing all the fuss it is. But logic is out of bounds in abortion “debates.”
    Why do other abortion opponents bother with this? Do they really think the woman seeking an abortion doesn’t know what she seeks to do? Yes, they do.
    I’ve heard that said critically by opponents of this measure, which is ironic, because they have no more respect for the woman’s intelligence than advocates do. They not only think these images will give the woman information she doesn’t have, they don’t want her to have it. Feminists can be quite paternalistic.
    The measure doesn’t seem to me very likely to produce the effect that advocates seek and opponents fear. The ultrasound, the showing of the pictures, the hour’s wait, and the abortion itself would all occur at the same place — the abortion clinic. I imagine it being treated by all parties present rather like those stupid HIPAA documents we’re required to swear in writing we’ve examined:
    “OK, well, you’ve got to sign these — you’re over 18, right? Here are some brochures we have to give you, and some pictures we took you have to see. I’ll be back in an hour and get you to sign some more forms and we’ll be ready.”
    The fuss is even less logical when you look at the law being amended. Anyone seeking an abortion already must receive brochures about organizations that offer alternatives to abortion, and then wait an hour. Logically, anybody who wasn’t swayed by that is unlikely to be turned around by fuzzy images. But it’s not about logic, is it? There’s something about pictures.
    Given the irrational power of the graven image, it might save some lives, and for that reason I have no particular objection to the bill. I give little credence to arguments that it’s “coercive” or “burdensome.” I would hope that any medical professional about to perform an abortion would want to do an ultrasound anyway, as basic pre-op. If not, maybe “safe, legal and rare” isn’t so much about safe. Or rare. But if an ultrasound is done, why not show the images to the patient? You would with any other kind of procedure.
    If it does save a few lives, some will be miserable. If your mom can be persuaded whether you should live or not on the basis of some odd pictures, she’s not likely to be what you’d call a rock-steady nurturer — especially when you give her affection reason to waver, as even the best children do. That can make for a hell of a childhood. It’s no reason to have an abortion — there is a moral emptiness in saying that because a life is likely to be unhappy, that life should not be.
    But if you advocate for that life, if you pass a law in a frank bid to save that life, you have a burden of responsibility to do what you can to see that child has a chance for something better.
    If the state intervenes to urge that life into being, the state can’t just wait for these kids to show up at its prison gates.
    Any lawmaker who advocates this ultrasound measure should therefore be just as strong a proponent of early childhood education. He should beef up child protective services, and increase Medicaid coverage. Etc.
    Pro-choicers are so obnoxious when they sneer, “They don’t care about the child after it’s born.” What’s more obnoxious is that it’s so often true. In the second trimester, it’s lawmaker to the rescue; 10 years later, it’s “That’s not my child.”
    Why do “bleeding-heart liberals” not care about the most powerless? Why do anti-government types want government intervention at this time and this time only? You would think things would be the other way around.
    But nothing about the whole left-vs.-right divide in this country makes any sense. And it hasn’t, for the past three decades.

DOT reform column

17 Replies

Would-be DOT reformers
need to start pulling together

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
THE GOOD GUYS really need to pull in the same direction if we’re to get anything that even the most easy-going person in the world would call “reform” at the S.C. Department of Transportation.
    That hasn’t been happening:
    Last week, Sen. John Courson proposed an amendment that would simply have done the right thing:Courson
Put this executive agency in the governor’s Cabinet, making it directly accountable, without any frustrating filters or buffers of any kind, to the chief executive elected by the people of our state.
    He proposed “a clean, a very clear, a very simple bill.” It would have fixed the thing that is wrong with DOT — its commission — by doing away with it.
    If you try to run an agency through a group, a committee, a commission, you will once again get what we have: an entity with multiple entry and exit points for decision-making, so that you can’t track how something happened or didn’t happen and do something about it. Lawmakers who want this agency to continue to be their personal candy store are dead set on keeping this structure, preferably appointed by them. They might let the governor appoint the commissioners, as long as he can’t remove them.
    A commission can’t turn efficiently when it’s on a bad course. The inertial center of the General Assembly dreads changing direction more than anything.
    The House, and Senate committees, have tinkered and argued over the best way to continue to keep a commission and make it look like reform.
    Sen. Courson said to forget all that and make the agency accountable. Setzler_2
Twelve senators voted with him: Kevin Bryant, Chip Campsen, Ronnie Cromer, Mike Fair, Larry Grooms, Wes Hayes, Larry Martin, Harvey Peeler, Jim Ritchie, Greg Ryberg, Nikki Setzler and Lewis Vaughn — all Republicans except Sen. Setzler.
    That means the proposal was defeated, 26-13.Hayes

    Sen. Courson says he’ll try again Tuesday. Unless more reform-minded people work with him, the status quo will win.
    Sen. Vincent Sheheen wants reform. He is a sincere advocate of good government who comes from a line of good-government advocates. But he voted against the Courson proposal.
    “I try to approach government in a very pragmatic fashion,” he said. “Not in terms of what would be ideal.” He’s had the chance to observe South Carolina government his whole life, and he knows what an alien concept “ideal” can be to our state’s decision-makers.
    Besides, he’s not convinced that a Cabinet is “ideal.” If you make it too easy to change the agency, he believes it will lose “stability” and professionalism. He envisions a parade of political appointees passing through the director’s job.
    He would keep the commission for continuity’s sake, but let the governor both appoint commissioners and fire them at will.
    I tried to get him to convince me that you can’t have a parade of hacks with a commission, with the added problem of not knowing whose hacks they were, and I’m afraid he didn’t succeed.
    We agreed on one thing, though: “There are a lot of people who’d like to see nothing happen.” There are more of them than there are people like him. In fact, more people voted for the Courson plan than there are people like Vincent Sheheen.
    Patty Pierce lobbies for the Coastal Conservation League, which has taken a lead role in a broad coalition of groups “calling for real reform, including: making the agency accountable to the public, requiring that road projects meet a real public need and making sure that the most important projects are funded first.”
    That’s a lot to try to get at once, so the league and its allies have concentrated more on the public-need-and-priority stuff than on pushing an accountable structure.
    They would keep a commission, but insist on rational procedures for setting road priorities.
These good people have worked hard at this — through the House and Senate committees and now out onto the floor — and they were much taken aback by Sen. Courson.
    “His amendment completely struck the bill that we had been working on for four months,” said Ms. Pierce.
    As one who’s pushed the Cabinet approach for 16 years, I started asking why she thought any priority-setting criteria that they were promised would ever last past next legislative session, and various other cynical questions, so she referred me to Elizabeth Hagood, the league’s director of conservation programs.
Hagood_005
    She said it’s less a matter of the four months of work, and more a matter of the coalition having decided early to stay out of the politically divisive issue of who runs the agency, and concentrate instead on how it’s run.
    That seemed a shaky approach to me. If you have the wrong who, you’re much less likely to get the how that you are seeking. Wouldn’t a Cabinet appointee be far more likely actually to implement and stick to a rational set of priority-setting procedures? Isn’t it much easier for good-government types to nag, argue and embarrass a governor into doing the right thing? You can’t embarrass a commission.
    “I understand what you’re saying,” said Ms. Hagood. “Personally, I agree with what you’re saying.”
    Unfortunately, the league’s coalition consists of too many diverse partners who have agreed upon the course they are on: “We’re not set up to change direction in the 11th hour.”
    In other words… dramatic pause here… the league can’t change its direction and support the right plan because it’s run by a commission.
    I rest my case.

Elizabeth Hagood on DOT reform

Leave a reply

A couple of months back, Elizabeth Hagood of the SC Coastal Conservation League came to talk to the editorial board about DOT reform.

Hagood
As my column today indicates, her coalition takes a different tack from ours on the subject. We’re about changing the governing structure to make it accountable. The League and its allies are about trying to nail down new procedures for deciding road priorities as part of the reform.

I continue to hold that you create an accountable structure before you trust it with specific policy approaches. Ignore structure for the sake of the Legislature’s promises on future policies, and you can’t hold either the agency OR the Legislature accountable for actually carrying such policies out.

Anyway, here you’ll find video of Ms. Hagood explaining the five points that they consider essential in changing the way DOT does business.

Keeping us safe from common sense

19 Replies

Vigilant S.C. lawmakers keep
us safe from common sense

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
IF YOU THINK lawmakers are going to do the sensible thing and ban smoking in restaurants statewide, you must not have lived in South Carolina very long.
    OK, but surely they’ll at least get out of the way of local governments and let them respond to the great majority of voters who want to dine smoke-free, and deliver waitresses, cooks and bottle-washers from having poisonous gases crammed down their lungs in their workplaces?
    You think they’d at least do that much, right?
    Where are you from, boy? Russia? London? New York City? I never heard such innocent foolishness. Let me lay some facts of life and slow, lingering death on you. I should start by debunking a myth or two.
    First, this absolute refusal to use common sense and protect the public from a ubiquitous carcinogen is not a Southern thing. It’s a South Carolina thing.
    I discovered this detective-style, which is always the best way. I went into a Longhorn Steakhouse in Savannah last month and asked for a seat in the nonsmoking section. The hostess brushed off my request with a dismissive, “There’s no smoking in Georgia, silly.” All right, she didn’t actually say “silly,” but she was probably just too busy, or trying to be nice, or something.
    It seems that back in 2005, Georgia lawmakers decided that kids who get dragged to restaurants by their parents, which for kids is enough of a bummer, shouldn’t also have to die of lung disease. So the state banned smoking in public venues that serve children. (At least one joint responded by banning children, but you’ll always have a few like that.)
    The proposal was introduced by a state senator who also happened to be a family physician, and he told everybody breathing smoke was bad for kids’ health. That seemed to do the trick.
    That would never sway our lawmakers, who are made of sterner stuff. Secession was bad for kids’ health, too, but what was that compared to our iron determination that nobody was going to tell a South Carolina white man what he could do with his property. No sir, not ever.
    FYI, you can’t smoke in restaurants in Arkansas, Florida or Kentucky, either, or in 18 other states, according to the Web site of Smoke Free USA.
    Our lawmakers aren’t going to let that happen here, though — not even on the micro level. They made sure of that more than a decade ago, when Spartanburg had the temerity to ban smoking in its restaurants.
    They knew they would never give in to common sense, but with the Spartanburg example out there, those other weak-kneed local governments, being so close to the people and all, would start caving left and right, giving votgers what they wanted.
    So they passed a law that said henceforth cities would not be allowed to ban smoking. Stupid and evil as it may be, you’ve got to admit this move was forward-looking, given the rash of attempted bans recently.
    Why don’t they want people to be allowed to ban smoking in their own communities? Is it self-interest; is it greed for the tobacco lobby’s money or anything like that? No, that’s another myth.
    Rep. Ralph Davenport, R-Spartanburg, showed how selfless backers of the pre-emption were when he indicated at the time (1995) that even though his asthmatic daughter was “crippled” any time she so much as walked through smoke, he saw no reason to be “eroding the free enterprise system.”
    You see, in South Carolina, smokers and business owners have rights; employees and other nonsmokers don’t. Never mind that there are a lot more employees than business owners, and three times as many nonsmokers as smokers. Think about it: If South Carolina started handing out rights to just anybody — such as duly elected local governments trying to protect the public health — there’s no telling where it would stop.
    But prophetic vision isn’t quite enough if one is going to keep protecting the prerogatives of a privileged minority — and if the Legislature knows how to do anything, it knows how to do that. You also need eternal vigilance.
    A couple of weeks back, a really wild and crazy thing happened — wild and crazy by Palmetto State standards, I mean. Sen. Vincent Sheheen, an idealist who, despite his youth, has been around enough to know the futility of such gestures, nevertheless proposed to revoke pre-emption. He proposed, as an amendment to a bill banning smoking on school grounds, the following:

    Notwithstanding any other provision of state law, a county or municipality may enact ordinances prohibiting or restricting smoking in businesses or establishments open to the general public.

    It didn’t ban smoking, or tell anybody to ban smoking. It merely got state government out of the way so that Greenville, Columbia, Sullivan’s Island and all those other communities could do what they have been trying so hard to do in response to demand from their citizens.
    The wild and crazy thing was that the amendment actually passed. But that was a moment of weakness by the rank and file. Before final passage of the overall bill, Senate leaders — and we call them that without a shred of irony, because the rest of the state follows where they lead — let it be known that the overall bill would be doomed if the amendment stayed. So it went away.
    What do you do with people like this? They not only won’t act in the public interest; they take extraordinary steps to make sure nobody else does so.
    In South Carolina, what we do with them is keep electing them. But I can’t tell you why.

S.C. mayors thinking globally, acting locally

36 Replies

Joe_riley2

“The great thing about democracy is, that in time the people get it where they want it to go, you know, and I think this movement is… we’re gonna see that happen…. The movement is HERE.”

— Charleston Mayor Joe Riley,
on rising public demand
to address global warming

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
Everyone from South Carolina’s governor to the U.S. House speaker to the president talks about how important it is to do something about global warming. But will they?
    The Economist, the British newsweekly, took note of how both Nancy Pelosi and George W. Bush have been resonating to public concern over the issue:

    “But this common interest in environmental issues will not necessarily translate into resolute action.” Why? “Neither the pressure groups nor the Democrats who control Congress have much interest in defusing an issue that might stir up voters and their money before the next election. Instead, they are likely to push for small, symbolic measures that underline their concern for the environment without jeopardising their future plans.”

    In other words, in Washington, the politics come before the Earth. Nothing personal about the Earth, of course. This pattern plays out on one critical issue after another. Take health care.
    Patients know we’re getting to where we can’t afford our health care, with or without insurance. Business executives certainly know it. And increasingly, physicians are thinking they’d like to get to where they can hire a couple of nurses instead of 10 accountants to run their offices.
    But let one presidential candidate say “single-payer,” and within minutes an opponent or an interest group will cry “socialized medicine.” Before the 24-hour news cycle is over, the candidate is spending all his time fielding questions about whether he once said that Marx’s Das Kapital was “a real page-turner.”
    Our republic is dysfunctional — and the higher you go, the more fouled up it is. We want to solve our problems in this country, but our politics keep getting in the way.
    It’s not just Washington. Consider our own State House, which increasingly yearns to emulate the D.C. model. Gov. Mark Sanford authored a Feb. 23 op-ed piece — which, appropriately enough, appeared in The Washington Post — advocating quick action on global warming. Not to save the Earth, mind you, but to keep the “far left” from using government to do anything about it.

    “(I)t’s vital,” he wrote, “that conservatives change the debate before government regulation expands yet again and personal freedom is pushed closer toward extinction.”

    Government, he warned, “will gladly spread its regulatory reach,” even unto lightbulbs! And automobiles!
    Meanwhile, the rest of us worry about Columbia becoming the next Myrtle Beach. It’s not so much that I would mind surfing in the Vista, but all those souvenir shops are just so tacky.
    So who’s listening to us? The mayors — the leaders closest to the people, the ones who know what we want and are determined to provide it. The kind of elected officials who get up in the morning thinking, I’d better get that pothole filled, not What can I do today to stir up my base?
    When we got fed up with choking to death in restaurants, who responded? Mayors and city councils, all across South Carolina. Meanwhile, you can’t get the Legislature to lift a finger on that point — even to remove its gratuitous, inexcusable statute forbidding local communities to make such decisions.
    So what can mayors do about global warming? Well, when Mayor Riley and Spartanburg Mayor Bill Barnet came to see us about this last week, they spoke of things larger than potholes:
    “The U.S. Conference of Mayors has now close to 500 mayors who have signed a commitment to meet or beat the Kyoto accord, which is a 7 percent reduction in 1990 CO2 emission levels by the year 2012 — in our communities,” said Mayor Riley. Charleston is already reaching for that goal —  using less wasteful vehicles and more efficient streetlights, designing new buildings to conserve more energy.
    For Mayor Barnet, it’s about economic development, about building the kinds of communities that people want to live in. It’s about “the values that will attract human beings to come and live in our environment.”
    But the mayors also hope to set an example for the state and federal levels. They are careful not to criticize the holders of larger offices. They praise the governor for appointing an advisory committee on “Climate, Energy and Commerce” to study the issues and make recommendations (preferably ones “consistent with the administration’s conservative philosophy and commitment to market principles,” as he specified in his executive order setting up the panel).
    And indeed, there are reasons to hope. It’s not just the Bushes and Pelosis talking climate in Washington; it’s also the less partisan likes of Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman (see last week’s column).
    On the state level, Sen. Jim Ritchie, R-Spartanburg, is heading up an impressive bipartisan group pushing energy independence. They want to require the state to make its future schools and other buildings more efficient, and to shop for hybrid and biodiesel when it buys vehicles.
    So maybe the movement is on, finally. Maybe the time has come when the people get democracy to go where they want it to. If so, it needs to hurry. Like the man says, that window’s closing fast.

Bill_barnet

Pontificating Putin piece

32 Replies

Graham_032

Pontificating Putin pushes Graham

toward energy platform

“Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations — military force…. Primarily the United States has overstepped its national borders, and in every area…. They bring us to the abyss ….”
                    — Vladimir Putin

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
VLADIMIR PUTIN is pushing Lindsey Graham toward the Energy Party, and I feel fine.
    Sure, that anti-American diatribe at the Munich security conference on Feb. 10 was the biggest step back toward Cold War since Nikita K. took off his shoe, but I like to look at the bright side.
Putin_munich
    “The biggest threat to everybody in the room wasn’t al-Qaida, or Chechen rebels, it was the United States,” our senior senator said in an interview last week, marveling at the neo-Stalinist’s international demagoguery. “It was a blatant pitch at trying to divide Europe and the United States, because he sees us as weak.”
    “Which takes us to energy independence,” I said.
    “Which takes us to energy independence,” he nodded.
    I like the way this guy thinks.
    As regular readers know, I recently called for the creation of a new political party, one that would get serious about our greatest strategic vulnerability, while saving the world from global warming at the same time.
    Sen. Graham’s still a Republican, but we might have to nominate him anyway.
    He had thought plenty about this stuff before Munich, but that one intemperate speech (followed immediately by an Iranian dissertation on democracy that seemed to come from some other planet) jacked up his resolve. “Whatever doubts I had about us being energy-independent were put away,” he said. “I don’t think he ever made that speech unless he sensed weakness.”
    So how do we get strong?
    He says the United States government must use economic incentives to encourage hybrid technology, biofuels, hydrogen, nuclear power — pretty much any viable alternatives that we can embrace that neither strengthen the worst bad guys in the world nor pump out more greenhouse-promoting carbon dioxide.
    He would promote the transition to hybrid cars — and eventually hydrogen — on three levels:

  1. Research. Grants for improving the technology.
  2. Wholesale. Tax incentives to encourage manufacturers to make the new vehicles.
  3. Retail. More tax incentives for individuals to buy them.

    He makes sure to point out that South Carolina can play a pivotal role in all this. We’re well positioned to help develop the technologies for a hydrogen economy. Meanwhile, we can grow and process switchgrass and other plants for biofuels.
    He sees “a whole economy in energy-efficiency,” one that South Carolina could help lead.
Beyond that home-team advantage is the bigger picture: “It is in our long-term national security interest to get people thinking about alternatives.”
    It’s not just cars. We need to make more efficient, cleaner refrigerators, computers and every other item that uses electricity.
    As for that, “Most of our power comes from coal-fired plants.” We need to “give nuclear power the same tax advantage we give solar and wind.” Like those usual green suspects, nukes don’t emit CO2, either.
    Expensive, yes, but he’s convinced that the economic cost of global warming is far greater than the 1 percent of gross domestic product that a full transition away from emitters would cost.
    So how do we pay for it?
    Well, he said, we can’t do it by “cutting waste” in the discretionary budget — what most people think of when they say “federal spending.” There’s just not enough there.
    You have to go where the  real money is: entitlements. “Change the structure of our debt,” he said. “Give people like me and Joe Lieberman and others some breathing room on Social Security,” room to do the kinds of politically unpalatable things that are necessary to save it without pulling us further into the fiscal black hole.
    Can we produce our way out? No. “Yes, there’s gas and oil, but it’s a drop in the bucket,” he said, no matter how deep you drill in the ANWR or offshore. “They’re sort of just one more drink” for the hopeless alcoholic.
    What about increasing the gas tax, to promote conservation and raise money for incentives? No. “Gas taxes will put some businesses at a competitive disadvantage with China and India.” Besides, “it’s not progressive.” It hurts the poor.
    “The next president of the United States should declare a war of energy independence,” he said, evoking the usual metaphors such as the Manhattan and Apollo projects. We had such a war once against a king. Now we should “declare a war of independence from the dictators and sheiks.”
    The next president? So he’s given up on this one? He didn’t say that, but I will. He said President Bush has addressed the issue, but only in a “piecemeal” fashion.
    As for Lindsey Graham, he says he’s doing what he can, such as working “with McCain and Lieberman to strengthen the conservation part of their global warming bill.”
    But ultimately, he’s just one of 100. “The real megaphone is for the person who’s going to be president.” Does that mean John McCain, his preferred candidate for the GOP nomination? Yes, partly: “He’s led on global warming like no other Republican.” But “I’m urging all the candidates.”
    OK, so I didn’t start this discussion. Mr. Putin did. But that doesn’t mean the Energy Party’s not going to grab the opportunity thus created to strengthen national security and save the Earth.
Neither should you. So go ahead. Jump right in.

Graham_002

Pelosi column

19 Replies

The deep, dark secret of politics:
They’re all just people

BUSH: Is this movie gonna be called “George and Alexandra”; is that the name of this movie?
PELOSI: I don’t know. What do you think it should be called?
BUSH: Uhh… I don’t know — “Geourneys with George?” Pretty good one, huh? You can spell it with a G?
PELOSI: G, yeah! (laughs)

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
CONSIDER this to be a last kind word before the madness begins. OK, so it’s already started. But it’s never too late for a kind word.
    Joe Biden’s been hanging out here a year or two. I’m not sure John McCain ever left in 2000. We’ve seen Christopher Dodd, Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee, Tom Vilsack. I haven’t actually seen Bill Richardson, but he spoke to one of my colleagues on the phone, so I know he’s thinking about us. Mitt Romney was here last Wednesday. Then Barack Obama on Friday and Saturday, and the other media darling, Hillary Clinton, Monday.
    Rudy Giuliani today, ex-Gov. Romney back on Thursday, and some guy named Duncan Hunter Friday.
    With 18 contenders between the two major parties, I know I’m forgetting somebody. Oh, yeah — John Edwards was down in Charleston the other day, and his experience was a good example of the madness I’m talking about.
    He came to talk about health care. The State’s reporter actually wrote about that. But the traveling press corps only wanted to know about a couple of kids he had hired to blog for him. Really. Not that it was in any way important, but that was The Story of the Day, as decreed by 24-hour cable TV “news” and the always-on-message partisan blogs.
    Brace yourself for a lot of this. Gather your strength. Sit back, relax. Rent a movie, and watch it. Specifically, this one: “Journeys with George,” a documentary about George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign for president, made by Nancy Pelosi’s daughter.
    No, really, it’s good. I was worried, too. I had ordered it from Netflix in late November, thinking it was something I ought to see. Then I let it sit on top of the TV until last week.
    Bush according to Pelosi, I thought each night. Too much like work. Tired. Watch “House” episode for third time instead.
    I broke down last week, at the behest of one of my daughters. Two minutes into it, I called another daughter who was upstairs, told her she had to see this, and started it over. It was that good.
    What was so good about it? Well, certainly not the production values. It was shot with a camcorder by Alexandra Pelosi as a home movie of her year as an NBC producer, traveling with the Texas governor as he sought the presidency. You’ve seen YouTube? Like that, only longer.
    What was good about it was that everybody in the film came across as a human being. If you don’t find that surprising, you need a quick unreality check: Put this down, watch a couple of hours of TV “news,” then visit a few of the more popular blogs.
    See what I mean?
    In this movie, the president-to-be is neither the warmongering demon nor the stalwart defender of all that’s right and true.
    He’s just this guy. The joshing, never-serious, somewhat condescending uncle to the young woman who keeps sticking a camcorder in his face for reasons that aren’t entirely apparent. A little on the goofy side, but no idiot.
    And Ms. Pelosi is neither the Spawn of the Liberal She-Devil nor what you think of when you say “NBC Nightly News” either. She’s not the former because, brace yourself, Nancy Pelosi is actually a human being, too. She’s not the latter partly because she’s a producer, not the on-air “talent” you’re used to. Producers are the ones behind the scenes who get actual work done — arranging travel, lining up interviews, soothing hurt feelings — while the ones you know are checking their hair. Think Andie MacDowell to Bill Murray’s weatherman in “Groundhog Day.”
    She comes across as what she apparently is — a bright, friendly young woman who is very tired of getting up at 6 a.m., herded to airplanes and fed turkey sandwiches all day.
    The two of them are practically friends. When she gets interested in a smiley guy from Newsweek (who later turns out to be a cad), Gov. Bush teases her, then offers semiserious advice. When she reports a little too accurately on her fellow media types and they all refuse to speak to her, George steps in to make peace.
    In other words, they act like people. Likable people, no matter what you think of their politics. So do the others on the bus, including some familiar faces. Nobody took the camcorder girl seriously, so they forgot to put their masks on. Sure, the candidate is deliberately trying to charm the press. What will surprise his detractors is that he’s so good at it. Karl Rove still comes across as a creep, but that’s because it’s real life.
    This brilliant little ditty of a film reveals a deep, dark secret: Like Soylent Green, politics is actually made of people. Real people, whom you are not required by law either to hate or to love. You just hang with them, and see them as they are in the tedium of daily coexistence. People, living their lives. Not symbols, not abstractions, not caricatures.
    I ordered the movie because Columbia attorney Jim Leventis, a perfectly normal guy who belongs to my Rotary Club, is Alexandra Pelosi’s godfather. He describes the speaker of the House as “just a wonderful mom and just a wonderful friend.” Really.
    You should see it if you can, and remember the lesson it teaches. It might ground you enough to preserve your faith in people over the next 12 months.
    I’ll try to remember it, too, as those 18 candidates posture for the extremists in their respective parties. If I forget, remind me.