Category Archives: Endorsement interviews

South of the Border

Some of y’all really hated it that I mentioned the Colombian Free Trade Agreement in the McCain endorsement — which to me illustrates the no-win situation I saw myself in with all those loyal and devoted Obamaphiles out there. Nice people, many of them, but hard to please if you don’t agree with them.

If I had just cited the usual reasons — being right on Iraq, taking a stand on doing the right thing on immigration, being a war hero, etc. — I would have been castigated for lack of original thought. So I decided to include something you might not have thought of — and something that actually helped confirm my preference for McCain — as a way of broadening the discussion. Perhaps predictably, I got the obvious response from those determined to find fault: Obviously you don’t have any good reasons, since you drag this out of left field.

No win situation.

Doug mentions back on this post that The Economist has endorsed Obama. Well, a couple of days ago I was reading something in The Economist that reminded me of why the Colombian FTA is important to me, but also why y’all might have trouble understanding that.

Blame it on my upbringing — or part of it, anyway. I spent two years, four-and-a-half months — easily the longest I lived in one place growing up — living in Guayaquil, Ecuador. From late 1962 through spring 1965. Like Obama in Indonesia, I saw a lot during that time that most nine-to-11 year olds growing up in the States don’t see. For instance, I was not only there during a military coup, but I was in the house at the time during when the plot was being hatched, at least in part. Our landlord was a captain in the Ecuadorean Navy, and my parents had left me at the landlord’s house while they went out one day. While I was there, a man came to visit the captain; they went into a room and closed the door. The next day, the president had been put on a plane to Panama, the man who had come to visit was a member of the new military junta, and our landlord had a big post in the new government. Minister of Agriculture, I think.

My guitar teacher, who had a little shop down by the waterfront where he made his own guitars by hand, was an agent for U.S. Naval Intelligence, I would later learn. And the missionary who preached at the nondenominational English-language services we attended on Sunday was working for the CIA. But not everyone was running things or plotting to run things. I remember the men who squatted in a circle in the dust of the vacant lot near our duplex as they bet on the cockfight in the center of their circle. I remember the smell of REAL poverty, the Third World kind, that arose from the poorest barrios of the city. It was different, very different, from living in this country.

I also remember people who were there working for JFK’s Alliance for Progress program. And ever since I came back in 1965, I’ve been acutely conscious of the fact that most of my fellow Americans just don’t give a damn one way or the other about these countries in their own backyards. JFK was the last.

This cultural indifference is definitely reflected in the mass media. So it is that I have to turn to such publications as The Economist to find out what’s going on in the realm of the Monroe Doctrine. It’s weird. Anyway, I got to thinking about that when I read this piece in The Economist the other day. It was about the irony that folks in Latin America seem to prefer Obama, even though it’s McCain who cares about the region enough to learn about it:

OF THE two candidates in the American presidential election, it is John McCain who knows something about Latin America. Not only was he born in Panama, he also visited Colombia and Mexico in July. He thinks the United States should ratify a free-trade agreement with Colombia and, at least until it became politically toxic, wanted to reform immigration policy. Ask him who the United States’ most important friends around the word are and he pretty quickly mentions Brazil.

And yet if they had a vote, Latin Americans, like Europeans, would cast it for Barack Obama—though without much enthusiasm. Preliminary data from the latest Latinobarómetro poll, taken in 18 countries over the past month and published exclusively by The Economist, show that 29% of respondents think an Obama victory would be better for their country, against only 8% favouring Mr McCain. Perhaps surprisingly, 30% say that it makes no difference who wins, while 31% claim ignorance. Enthusiasm for Mr Obama is particularly high in the Dominican Republic (52%), Costa Rica, Uruguay and Brazil (41%). In Brazil, six candidates in this month’s municipal elections changed their names to include “Barack Obama” in them.

In the third presidential debate, I noticed two things (well, I noticed a lot of things, but two things related to this post): That McCain had cared enough to understand what it meant to support a trade agreement with a key ally in the region — an agreement that could only be good for this country in terms of trade and jobs, and which affirmed a country that had undertaken huge sacrifices to ally itself with U.S. interests. That was the first thing. The second was that Obama seemed not even to have scratched the surface of the issue. His answer was such Big Labor boilerplate, it seemed plain that he had not looked into the issue or thought about it beyond his party’s talking points.

To me, that spoke to things that were true about the two candidates in a broader sense — experience, and the ability to differentiate between our friends in the world and those who wish us, and their own people, ill. I had been deeply impressed by the recent piece Nicholas Kristof — a guy who almost certainly will vote for Obama — had done on this issue, and the degree that Obama’s answer utterly failed to look at the issue as knowledgeably and thoughtfully as Kristof had. And as McCain had.

I sat and talked to Ted Sorensen about Obama as the heir to Camelot, and was deeply impressed. But I’ve gathered since then that aura aside, Obama seems actually less likely to take the kind of interest in Latin America that Kennedy did. McCain is more likely to do so. Ironic, huh?

So to me it was more than, here’s a little esoteric fact I know and you don’t. To me, it mattered. But to me, South America has always mattered.

McCain’s Bob Dole problem

No, I’m not saying Bob Dole personally is causing a problem for John McCain. I’m saying his problem is that in this election, he’s playing the Bob Dole part — and Barack Obama is Bill Clinton (but don’t tell him that — the way he and Bill have been getting along, he’s likely to take it as an insult).

You remember Bob Dole — the other disabled war hero who couldn’t win the White House, the one who always referred to himself in the Third Person, by his full name ("Bob Dole doesn’t do that! Why would you say Bob Dole does that? Leave Bob Dole alone…") .

Dole ran a lousy campaign, lousy primarily in that it utterly failed to present convincingly why he should have been president. McCain is doing the same thing now.

The big difference between the two, for me, is that I started out liking McCain a whole lot more than I liked the guy that the NYT once called the Dark Prince of Gridlock. Bob Dole was a much more wholehearted partisan warrior than McCain. He was no maverick, not by a long shot. You don’t get to lead your party in the Senate by rebelling against it.

So with me, he started off in a hole. And in the end, I still think McCain should be president — while I no longer thought that of Bob Dole by the end of the 1996 campaign. I had thought it for awhile, though, comparing him and Bill Clinton. I had liked Clinton in 92, but he had disappointed me in a lot of ways by 96. The bottom line was that I just didn’t trust the guy anymore, based on a number of things. (I have no dramatic personal story about that, but I know someone who does: Hodding Carter III told me of going to see Bill Clinton with a delegation concerned about Bosnia. I forget what the delegation wanted — that the U.S. get involved, that the U.S. stay out, whatever — but whatever it wanted, Clinton promised bald-faced he would do. They left feeling confident. About a week later, Clinton did the exact opposite, and it came out that he had known that was what he was going to do when he met with the delegation. Carter felt personally betrayed by that. It seemed consistent with the impression I had formed by then.)

Early in the campaign, I wrote some columns — and editorials, too, I think — that pretty clearly expressed a preference for Dole over Clinton. But when the time approached to do our actual endorsement, I went to then-editor Tom McLean and told him I could not in good conscience write it, because I had become convinced that Dole couldn’t govern his way out of a wet paper bag. I knew by then that I couldn’t convince the board not to endorse Dole, but I declined the honor of writing it. (Of course, you didn’t hear all of this at the time because it was long before I became editor and adopted the policies of extreme transparency that you see today. The board was Old School in those days; you didn’t see the man behind the curtain.)

I never got to that point with McCain, but in the last weeks I thought about it. Those of you who insist that this endorsement was fully decided long ago don’t understand how much I thought about it. But in the end, for me, John McCain may not be good at communicating via a political campaign that he would be the better president, but I still believe he’d be the better president — based on Iraq, based on the Gang of 14 and judicial selection, on free trade, on immigration, etc., all that stuff I’ve already told you.

Now here’s a postscript to the story that will cause you to do a double-take: Despite what I’d said to Tom, I voted for Dole in 96. Why? For the exact same reason I voted for McGovern in 72. You probably don’t know many people who can say that, but I can. (Never doubt my deep devotion to UnParty unorthodoxy.) And I don’t regret either vote.

Essentially, both were protest votes. I thought McGovern would have been a disaster as president. But I wanted to register a protest against Nixon, mainly because of Watergate (even based on what little was known by then). If McGovern had had a chance to win, I’d have held my nose and voted for Nixon, because on the whole I thought the gummint would be in more capable hands that way. And I’d have regretted it forever. But McGovern’s hapless candidacy gave me the opportunity to make the gesture.

Same deal in 96. If I’d thought Dole had a prayer, I’d have held my nose and voted for Clinton — much as I distrusted him by that point, I thought him more competent. (Note that Nixon and Clinton had an advantage with me that Obama lacks — they had shown their competence in office, as president.) But Dole had no prayer, so I voted for him as a protest. And it felt exactly like voting for McGovern.

By the way, torn as I was, I made both of those decisions in the voting booth. So I can, indeed, identify with Cindi’s indecision.

Endorsing Lindsey Graham

It is perhaps ironic that while his buddy McCain is struggling so, Lindsey Graham is coasting to easy re-election. Of course, if McCain only had to win South Carolina, he’d be sitting pretty, too. (Although I don’t for a moment believe he’ll win by 20 points, as that poll said the other day.)

Anyway, for your perusal, here’s our endorsement of Graham from today’s paper.

And just to give y’all a little extra something for coming to the blog, here’s a video clip from an interview we had with Sen. Graham in our offices on Oct. 6. This was just before the second presidential debate — in fact, the senator was on his way to Nashville to help McCain with debate prep — and I had just asked him about Sarah Palin. Essentially, I’d aked why her and not Joe Lieberman, and did he not think she had hurt the ticket?

You just can’t please some people

You know all the grief we’re catching from the Obamaphiles. Now this e-mail:

Dear Brad,

Please write an editorial ASAP, listing your facts that prove your assertion that Obama is smarter (such as his grades, etc) than Palin even though Palin is much more qualified, more experienced, more smarter and more capable than the scripted, Hitler and Chavez like, Obama.

If the editorial appears during the weekday, please E-mail a copy because this month we have dropped the daily delivery because my wife and I was continually to be very upset with liberal slant of the McClatchy papers.

Sheesh. Tell you what, my friend — buy the danged paper and watch for it, OK?

What do you say to somebody who needs me to prove Barack Obama is brighter than Sarah Palin, then expects me to give him a heads-up when I do so because he won’t buy the paper, and for the most bogus of reasons? I mean, really — what do you say?

As long as I’ve got out my foolishness-bashing club, and since this guy irrelevantly brought up the name of the corporation that owns this newspaper, I should say something about this comment on a previous post and others I’ve seen like it:

Just imagine what would happen if The State(less) endorsed Obama
instead of McSame: huge loss of advertising money, huge cancellation of
subscriptions. Just the way it is. For shame, but money before civics
is the way of capitalism. (duh, last 30 years of deregulation…)

You want to know what a presidential endorsement based on the newspaper’s business considerations would look like? Like nothing. As I’ve told y’all before, the only time Tony Ridder ever tried to influence Knight-Ridder editorial pages was back in January 2005, when he tried to persuade us NOT to endorse in presidential elections. On one level, his position was defensible (from my point of view), in that he believes local and state endorsements to be of much greater value. But it was also based in the fact that as a business entity, presidential endorsements can’t help you, and can only hurt. Note the high number of people whose very first response to a presidential endorsement — either way — is to say they’re canceling their subscription, or WOULD have canceled it had we gone the other way.

People read presidential endorsements NOT to help themselves decide. They’re already inundated in information about the candidates. They read them to decide what they think of the newspaper, and whether they’ll attach importance to all of the endorsements we do on the candidates they DON’T know so much about. As a businessman, Tony Ridder didn’t like that kind of exposure. He’s not alone in that.

Cindi’s ‘undecided’ column

Cindi was off on Friday when I wrote my Sunday column, but asked me to fax it to her. She promptly told me that my original draft had described her role in the endorsement discussion inaccurately. I had correctly put her statement that she might sorta kinda be leaning to Obama AFTER she asked me whether a tie would prevent us from endorsing, but I had failed to get in the cause-and-effect relationship, which was that she wouldn’t even have said that much if I had said her vote would deadlock us. So we negotiated new language. But apparently I still didn’t fully communicate the depth of her neutrality, since some folks in their comments counted her as a pro-Obama vote. She insists, in this column and in private conversation, that she is still torn and undecided.

I know from long experience with you partisans out there that you can’t possibly imagine that a thinking person could be undecided. And what’s particularly amazing in this case is that Cindi is seldom without a strongly held opinion. But be nice to her, folks. I understand her completely. I have decided whom to vote for in presidential elections more than once in the voting booth itself. So be patient with Cindi; she’s in an uncomfortable place. Also, I’ve probably already teased her about it more than a supervisor should.

Anyway, add this to the overall endorsement package, along with the endorsement itself, my column, Warren’s column, and all the stuff that’s been said here on the blog.

Undecided, and awaiting an epiphany
By CINDI ROSS SCOPPE
Associate Editor
I BOUGHT myself two weeks by copping out when our editorial board decided whom to endorse for president. For all the good it’s done so far.
One week to go, and I remain an undecided voter.
I’ve never been in this position before. Never stayed on the sidelines in an important endorsement decision before.
Oh, I’ve been undecided about what I would do in the voting booth. But that indecision wasn’t over which candidate to support; it was over whether I could hold my nose hard enough to cast my ballot for the candidate I agreed we should endorse, or whether to leave that race blank. What’s different this time is that I want to vote for both the candidates.
Neither is clearly superior in my mind. Both John McCain and Barack Obama bring an approach to politics that is sorely lacking in Washington and, increasingly, throughout our nation. They see it not as a game to win — and certainly not as an opportunity to demolish “the other side” — but rather as a way to debate issues and reach conclusions that are best for our country. Both have shown they’re willing to look beyond party labels and rigid ideologies; Sen. McCain has a much clearer track record on this score, but at the same time, he has strayed further during this campaign than has Sen. Obama. If for no other reason than their approach to politics, I believe that either man would greatly improve our nation.
I much prefer Sen. McCain’s approach to foreign policy; not a week has passed since 9/11 when I have not bemoaned how much better off our country, and our world, would be had he been elected in 2000. But over the past year, we have watched Sen. Obama grow more responsible on the topic; he has demonstrated that he will surround himself with smart advisers, and Colin Powell’s decision to endorse him certainly has reduced my worries. I believe that either candidate would greatly improve our standing in the world, which would improve our world.
I prefer Sen. Obama’s approach to domestic policy. He’s further to the left than I find comfortable, but I believe our nation has swung far too far right — dismantling regulatory systems, adopting policies that have produced the greatest wealth disparity in modern history between workers and executives; and say what you will about Sen. Obama’s health insurance plan, Sen. McCain’s would dismantle the very notion of “insurance.” (David Brooks’ fine column on the facing page does a much better job explaining where I’m coming from — on all but insurance — than I can.)
What worries me is that a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress would swing the pendulum too far left — just as the Republican president and Congress swung it too far right. I do believe Sen. McCain would be far more willing to work with a Democratic Congress to make pragmatic changes than the current president ever has been, but I also believe that if the Democrats went too far, the voters would put Republicans back in charge of the House, the Senate or both in two years.
I’m not sure that a more activist government isn’t what our nation needs right now. Both candidates have come to realize that we can no longer take such a laissez-faire approach to the financial markets. But we also need a president who believes in regulation even when the bottom isn’t falling out. One who believes the Consumer Product Safety Commission needs to actually look out for the safety of consumer products, rather than seeking to further dismantle the agency even when defective Chinese products are flooding our markets. One who believes the Agriculture Department should actually try to protect consumers from mad cow disease, rather than protecting the cattle industry from those who would protect us. I think Sen. Obama sees this; Sen. McCain, on the other hand, has a track record of pushing for deregulation, although he is much more a pragmatist than a devoted member of the Church of the Free Market.
What I am not considering in making my decision is the venom being spewed by the so-called supporters of each candidate. Every new e-mail with the doctored photos and clumsily concocted “facts” about Sen. Obama’s alleged Muslim heritage pushes me a little toward voting for him — if only to disassociate myself from the racists who peddle such lies. But there are equal and opposing forces pushing me back toward Sen. McCain — most notably those self-satisfied souls who proclaim that the only reason anyone could possibly not vote for Sen. Obama is racism; what utter nonsense.
These aren’t supporters. They are opponents of the other candidate, the other party, of anyone who doesn’t share their opinions.
When Sarah Palin speaks glibly of Mr. Obama “palling around” with “domestic terrorists,” I am turned off; she’s counting on people assuming that he really is “palling around,” and doing it with Islamic terrorists. Sen. Obama and his campaign haven’t been nearly as misleading — you don’t have to be when you’re leading in the polls — although this “third term of George Bush” nonsense is wearing.
What would help me decide? An epiphany, I suppose.
But I’m not holding my breath. The last one of those I had was the sudden realization that there aren’t a lot of epiphanies to go around, that what we have to do is make a decision and act on it — act on it as though we had an epiphany.
Fortunately, there’s no wrong decision this time around.

Ms. Scoppe can be reached at cscoppe@thestate.com or at (803) 771-8571.

McCain vs. Obama: The cognitive difference

Reading some of the e-mail responses today from those who did not like our McCain endorsement, and thinking about what those complaints had in common with some of the feedback I’d already gotten here on the blog, I suddenly arrived at the simplest theory for explaining the difference between McCain supporters and Obama supporters.

This is going to seem not only simple, but painfully obvious — but it didn’t occur to me until today to put it this way. Here goes:

McCain supporters are all about his record, NOT about what’s happened in the campaign.
Obama supporters are all about what we’ve seen in the campaign.

No, this doesn’t explain everything. For instance, for some of those on the right who never liked McCain before, but will vote for him because of Sarah Palin (rather than in spite of her), it’s about the campaign. And for those who will back Obama because of Joe Biden are looking at Joe’s record.

But for an awful lot of us who are swing voters, who are neither of the left nor the right, my little epiphany explains a lot.

It certainly explains why there’s such a divide between me and those who just can’t understand (at least that’s what they keep saying) why I don’t even get into the such subjects as Sarah Palin in the endorsement. Basically, I’ve watched McCain over the years, and have liked what he actually does in office. If I didn’t have that to go by, I’d probably be for Obama, too. There’s no question that Obama is the better campaigner, far better at presenting himself in a positive light than McCain is. McCain the campaigner has been a pretty sad spectacle, compared to his proven record in office.

And that’s a good thing for Obama, because the campaign is about all the voters have to go by with him. Basically, there’s that, and the fact that he picked somebody with the experience he lacks to be his running mate, and that’s it. And because it IS about that for Obama supporters, they just don’t get how it’s not all about that for ME. But for me, what’s happened in the last few months (or even, for those focused on the general, the last few weeks) can only have a limited impact upon an impression based on a decades-long record.

Would it make y’all happier if I said that I’d be with you if it were all about (for me) Sarah Palin, or McCain’s message in his recent ads? But for me, it’s actually about having been right about Iraq (which is a genuine point of disagreement between me and some of you), and the demonstrated ability to work across the aisle on judicial appointments, the willingness to take huge political risks to act intelligently on immigration, years of fighting against the undue effect of money in political campaigns, and so forth. Not to mention having proved he puts "country first" in ways that few living men have, in ways so profound that it vastly outweighs the carelessness about his country’s future that so many see in his choice of Sarah Palin.

So it is that I can laugh at Tina Fey’s send-ups of Gov. Palin, but endorse McCain — something that seems to perplex some of y’all no end.

More feedback on McCain endorsement

Just in case you didn’t get enough with the comments on this post or this one or this one or this one, here are a few that I’ve received via e-mail. I didn’t keep the attributions because some of these people probably wouldn’t mind and some would, but I don’t have time now to sort them out:

Hi,

Your recent Sunday column concerning John McCain neglects to mention that John McCain has lied about his military record on several occasions. I was eleven years old and watched the U.S.S. Forrestal as it arrived at Subic Bay in the Philippines — minus John McCain. The writer of this article has performed a valuable public service, while you and the rest of the McCain worshippers continue to go AWOL.

_________________________________________

His pick of Sarah Palin–that kind of blows the doors off the "experience"
argument.

You also failed to mention that he graduated 4th from the bottom of his
class at Annapolis, which makes him dumber than George Bush, who you also
endorsed, twice.

Do you suppose he’s also dumber than Mark Sanford, who you also endorsed?

Why don’t you just say, "At The State, we endorse dumbasses, and McCain’s
pick of Palin as well as his graduating 4th from the bottom of his class at
Annapolis leaves him as the only candidate that we can endorse."

You did good back in the poker machine days, and I still like reading your
stuff some times–some great sentences you can come up with at times–in
fact, i’d even say kind of incredible, and i even quote the stuff from time
to time, giving you the attribution, of course. The problem is you have
quite a few loose screws that find expression in the endorsement of
candidates who have trashed this state and this country. yes, you have a
track record.

Fortunately, I’m not going to be able to rub it in your face a few years
from now when you’re writing about what an idiot McCain is, that you
endorsed him (like I have done with Bush and Sanford) because McCain is not
going to win. Hopefully, you’ll never endorse another winner. For the good
of this country, let’s hope not.

_________________________________________

Brad

You are a barrel of laughs. It is truly funny how you are trying to convince yourself and others that you are open minded and not a closed minded, dyed in the wool, Republican. The Republicans could literally run this country into the ground and you would still endorse a Republican. (Oh, I guess that has already happened.)

The rationale for your endorsement was pitiful. It wouldn’t get a B from a friendly 10th grade Social Studies teacher. I can imagine the red pencil comment "To endorse McCain because he supported the Surge is not a very deep analysis of the Iraq situation."

__________________________________________________

Mr Warthen,
I’m sitting here typing, deleting & retyping all the reasons why I find it incredulous that you’ve endorsed McCain for president.
I finally realized that I need not struggle to put it into words – Warren Bolton has already done that, very succinctly.
I will just say that I am extremely disappointed in your decision. And the reasons given to support it do not resonate with me.
Your, in my opinion, fool hearty endorsement is one that will remain in the back of my mind & forever color my perceptions of future positions presented by The State.

__________________________________________

Mr. Warthen,

I am an Obama supporter and I was disappointed that The State endorsed Sen. McCain. We are all entitled to our opinions, however, and I attempt to be open to views that are different from mine. I must say, though, that your written justification for the endorsement of Sen. McCain in this morning’s edition was as weak as water.
Thank goodness for Mr. Bolton’s very thoughtful editorial this morning, it was proof to me that there continue to be people on your staff that reason and think independently. That piece and my husband’s insistence on reading every comic strip everyday is the only reason that I did not cancel my subscription to your paper on the spot.

_______________________________________________

After reading your editorial and the editorial page this morning, I called your paper and terminated my subscription, even though I have been a subscriber since I moved to South Carolina in 1977. Through the years, I have agreed and disagreed with your editorials, but I have never considered the disagreements as serious as I do today. I cannot disagree more with your conclusion that John McCain is better qualified. I can’t believe that you truly see John McCain as "exhibiting fierce integrity, principled independence and awe-inspiring courage as he has put his country first."

I have seen nothing but a self-centered, spoiled man who is very angry and who has over and over put himself first. For you to say that choosing Palin is not a factor for making a decision astounds me since it is such a clear example of McCain’s lack of judgement. I thank Kathleen Parker for giving me the first reasonable explanation of why McCain made such a choice.

I know that one subscriber will not break your newspaper, I just wish I could get everyone in the state who is supporting Senator Obama to also cancel their subscriptions and then maybe you would wake up!

____________________________________________

To quote John McEnroe “are you serious!!!” I guess I really shouldn’t be that surprised.

Even though, like John McCain’s support of 90% of George Bush’s policies, I generally agree with The State’s editorial positions and the issues so eloquently addressed by Cindi and Warren and Brad (heck I even got the paper’s endorsement when I ran for Columbia City Council in 2000); I must say I was very disappointed at the endorsement of John McCain.

I realize we all see the world and life through our own “lenses,” but, come on, you folks have blindfolds, or at best blinders, on for this one. I do compliment you on putting the best possible spin on your choice by limiting your reasons and the issues discussed. Especially interesting was your total avoidance of other issues like temperament, and judgment in the choice of Sarah Palin. Guess you don’t see any concerns/negatives in a McCain administration. I could go on. You and most informed citizens/voters know the litany on both sides.

I can’t cancel my subscription over something like this. I am grateful to even get The State delivered out at Lake Wateree. I did have to express my disappointment. You coulda/shoulda picked the best candidate, and likely winner, as have over 200 other publications, four times the number who agree with you/The State.

I’ll still respect you after the election.

__________________________________________

To: StateEditor, Columbia
Subject: to Mr. Warthen

Dear Mr. Warthen:

I am disappointed in your endorsement of Sen. McCain. Not surprised, as you observed. Rather, I am dismayed at the rationale you used in choosing an endorsement for our next president. In a state thirsty for demonstrable fruits of education, we need leaders (including newspaper editors) who apply sound reasoning in decisions. Most of your reasons were poorly grounded – most notably, that the economic crisis and vice presidential selections are irrelevant to your endorsement. Many of us could not disagree more.

A sound economy is one essential key to our collective future. Each political party has a long record of economic policy – these candidates represent those parties ( I remind you that Sen. McCain may have resisted some foolish decisions by his party but he is not an Independent), so the positions on the economic condition are not a wash. Can you give us a deeper foundation for this opinion?

And as Gen. Powell recently observed, THE job of the vice president is to stand ready to be president. Our American tradition is to have two candidates running rather than a solo presidential candidate so the people can choose who the v.p. will be. Using your logic, we should just elect a president and let that person choose a successor after the election. Essentially you have endorsed Gov. Palin to be our executive, commander-in-chief, and strategist in leading us out of this economic crisis. You owe us an explanation for why you support putting our future in her hands.

_______________________________________________

To: StateEditor, Columbia
Subject: The State’s Endorsement

I was so disappointed when I read the headline that you are endorsing McCain/Palin in the Presidential race. I thought after your endorsement published in January of Obama, you were on the right track to unification for the state of South Carolina. My husband and I have been very involved with this election process and have done much research and study in making our decision for our Presidential Vote. I would think that with the resources afforded to a large newspaper, you would have come tot the same conclusion that we did. Obama is our choice, no question. We have struggled with job loss, student loans for our children in college and our sons service in the military. McCain will only continue the policies that have made living and working for middle class American families so difficult these past few years.
Your opinion in January about Obama was spot on:

"Sen. Obama’s campaign is an argument for a more unifying style of leadership," the endorsement continued. "In a time of great partisanship, he is careful to talk about winning over independents and even Republicans. He is harsh on the failures of the current administration – and most of that critique well-deserved. But he doesn’t use his considerable rhetorical gifts to demonize Republicans. He’s not neglecting his core values; he defends his progressive vision with vigorous integrity. But for him, American unity – transcending party – is a core value in itself.": The State, January22, 2008

We are so disappointed in your change of heart, and in our service with home delivery over the past year, that we will be canceling our subscription.

____________________________________________

To: StateEditor, Columbia
Subject: (no subject)

Good morning to you Mr. Warthen-

Not knowing how to work this "blog" thing, I have to e-mail you my thoughts after reading the McCain endorsement which was no surprise at all. What else could you people do in a state like
South Carolina? Your paper, which from what I hear , is losing subscribers due to over-emphasis on sports, particularly football, diminishing Book Review section, less arts, less and less in-depth coverage of national and international news (no wonder people don’t know about the Colombian Free Trade Agreement) loss of the Saturday Editorial Page and having to go to the internet to finish many stories. Can you imagine the loss of subscribers you would suffer if you endorsed Obama? Yes, you did once but not for the finish.

You state in your personal remarks that people know your mind so well. I disagree. You always seem to be self-searching, trying to put across that you are neither this or that, so how can anyone know you when you don’t yet seem to know yourself?

As for knowing McCain, the remarks in the endorsement and yours show that you only know the surface of the man and haven’t really studied him in depth. His recent acceptance of some of the most vile ads against Obama and his shameless pilfering of Obama’s campaign slogan of Change and many of Obama’s ideas show this as a man who stops at nothing to get what he wants. During rallies when folks said ugly things about Obama, he made a half-hearted attempt to stop it but later defended his audiences (note that when he tried to stop it, he was booed or given very sparce applause). He and Palin unleashed some very, very frightening elements during their campaign and this is not the kind of man who should be a leader of all the people. He has always been a panderer and will always be. He also has a nasty streak that is also frightening. Even your favorite columnist, Charles Krathammer, a former psychiatrist or something of the sort, while bashing Obama last week, stated that McCain launched a volcanic missive to Obama when he did not go along with some proposal of McCain’s. Krathammer should have spent a little more time analyzing McCain.

His military career and his time as a POW was not the glorious, self-giving time that has become an urban legend of sorts. There are many places one can go to find out who this little man really is – and I just don’t mean little in stature. He is a bellicose, uneven tempered man with a lot that he is still trying to prove and we are in danger of being his proving grounds.

Further, I would like to see a little more balance on the Editorial Page with your syndicated columnists. It is discouraging to open the paper and see either Krathammer, Will, Parker. Once in a while we get Freidman and when it snows in July, Dowd. Broder is even a change. Surely there could be a better mix and your letters more balanced.

__________________________________________________

Morning,
I just called and canceled my annual subscription(paid in advance) to The State Newspaper after 17 years and 8 months. You ask Why? Let me start by paraphrasing W.C. Fields When the world ends I want to be in SC. He was asked WHY? Because they are Fifty (50) years behind.
I do not take issue with The State/Brad’s endorsing Sen John McCain. This was expected. What I take issue is with the reasons and lack thereof.
1 "Surge" The war did not start with a "surge" The war started before the surge and Sen Barack Obama stated before the war and before the surge started that we SHOULD NOT GO TO WAR. The "surge works" not in isolation. We are paying many $$$$$$$$$, Have you heard about the "Awakening" No one on itself would be success. Please tell me now who had the better judgment and foresight from the start? Sen McCain or Sen Obama?

2. You have lost sight of what the rest of America is mainly concerned about THE ECONOMY THE ECONOMY THE ECONOMY. "Iran to North Korea"? Who cares RIGHT NOW? What most people care about is feeding their families, I guess we do not have to, My household income is over $250,000.00 per year.

3. "Columbia Free Trade Agreement"? Take a poll of your readers and I bet my re-subscription that no more than 10% knows what you are talking about. Is this the new way of not saying "BLACK"? You yourself had to ask your own guestion "WHY so many words about the CFTA. Trying to justified putting the square peg in the round hole.

4. "Judicial appointment"? If you believe what both men said about litmus test, I have a bridge to nowhere I can sell you for the price of your subscription.

5 "immigration reform" how many times did he flip flop on this issue. What about voting against a MLK holiday? You have the audacity to mentioned Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid BUT totally ignore Sen McCain’s first decision Gov. Sarah Palin Oh so now you are worried about the majority in Congress? What happen to the last six years?

6. Is Country first involve KEATING FIVE, wrecking three planes, jumped out of one that was destroyed, shot down at 3,000 feet when he should have been flying at 4,000 – 10,000 feet?

7. "Why didn’t ( I prefer "did not") mention Sarah Palin"? You are still trying those pegs. How could you consider one without the other ? All thing been equal Sen McCain should die before Sen Obama. Are you telling me that is the former is elected president and dies 4 months in his term Gov. Palin is suited to run the country and the world for the next 3 years and 8 months? What are you drinking? I do not want even a tea spoon of that, and if you are sneaking some in your paper I do not want to touch same again.

8. "We could go on and on, and we will" I will not. If I want to read you paper I can go to Refdesk like I do every day. Where I read at least 3-5 national, and 3-5 international newspaper seven day per week.

________________________________________________

To: StateEditor, Columbia
Subject: McCain endorsement

I gave all my information upfront because I mean this when I say the editorial board has two straight-up wimps, Brad Warthen and Cindi Scoppe. How can you not know who to endorse at this point in time? I realize Ms Scoppe has the right to make her decision anytime she feels like but as educated and bright as Ms Scoppe is, it just seems like she’s afraid to endorse Obama in South Carolina and I say the same thing about Warthen. Please, the reason people assumed the editorial board would endorse McCain is because they knew you would come up with some wimpy reason to endorse the republican candidate. I do believe that the publisher and owner of the state is not a wimp and I feel like Warren Bolton is not a wimp and the reason I feel that way about those two is that they’re consistent, especially Bolton but endorsing John McCain in South Carolina is not progressive and saying you’re not sure as an educated person when the election is less than 10 days away is not courageous and it’s patronizing to your readers because both candidates have had websites up and running with information on their plans. My issue is not that the State endorses a republican candidate but that they put their circulation ahead of any real effort to change the country or be progressive and after reading Warthen’s commentary over the past year I don’t think he’s very progressive when it comes to race at all. You see when it’s time to do something courageous don’t complain all year long then do the opposite or say I don’t know.

_______________________________________________

I am so very glad that McCain has been endorsed. I supported him in 2000. I feel his loyalty and dedication to the welfare of the United States is far above his opponent. McCain actually cares about this great country and what he can do to protect it. Obama is more concerned over his "Kingship" of the country.

He is the most arrogant and elitist person who has ever ran for president. He refuses to answer the "tough" questions and has ran a most negative and dishonest political race. He is guilty of what he accuses his opponent of. I feel so much better knowing that The State Paper and you have endorsed the best candidate we have. Bless You.

So there you have it.

I haven’t had time to respond to more than one or two of these folks, and need to turn to putting out tomorrow’s page now. But at least I could give their views a wider airing by posting them here.

More about the McCain endorsement

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
MANY WHO KNOW my views — and between my columns and my blog, readers probably know my mind better than they do any other editor’s of their acquaintance — assumed all along that we would endorse John McCain.
I’ve made it clear many times that I thought we should have done so in 2000 (in the GOP primary). And my belief in his suitability remains undiminished, despite much that has happened in this general election campaign. (I found both Sen. McCain and Barack Obama more appealing running against the angry elements in their respective parties, rather than as their standard-bearers.) My judgments tend to be cumulative, based on years of observation more than the spin cycle topic of the day.
But to assume this endorsement was inevitable is to presume to know more than I did.
First, I am not the editorial board; I merely preside over it. Associate Editors Warren Bolton (whose strong, eloquent dissenting opinion is on the facing page) and Cindi Ross Scoppe both have their say, as does my boss, President and Publisher Henry Haitz. To absurdly condense a two-hour discussion: Henry and I favored McCain, Warren preferred Obama, and Cindi wasn’t sure — and she is seldom unsure about anything. She asked me whether a tie meant no endorsement, or whether Henry’s and my votes outweighed hers and Warren’s. I acknowledged that if it came to that, yes — our votes counted more. (In 2000, the board was evenly split between Bush and McCain, with our then-publisher on one side and me on the other, so I lost.) Only when she thought the matter was thus settled did she say she thought she was leaning ever so slightly toward Sen. Obama. She remains torn. (She plans her own column on the subject for next week.)
So this was not a foregone conclusion. But lest you think we’re terribly divided, remember that we unanimously and enthusiastically endorsed both McCain and Obama in their respective primaries in January. We just split over which we like more.
Even if I had had to decide all alone, I would have struggled with not endorsing Barack Obama. I meant every word that we said in praising him in January. Also, ever since I became editorial page editor in 1997, I have looked forward to the day that we could break the paper’s long pattern of endorsing Republicans for president, if only because in some people’s minds, that makes us a “Republican newspaper,” and I find it deeply distasteful to be identified with either party. Yes, I can point to the fact that in my tenure, we have endorsed slightly more Democrats than Republicans — and we spend far more time on those state and local races than we do on the presidential. But people attach huge importance to the presidential endorsement — many don’t pay attention to anything else. So I’ve hoped for years that the national Democratic Party would give us a nominee we could support.
Barack Obama is that Democrat. We would happily endorse him over Mitt Romney, or Rudy Giuliani, or Mike Huckabee — and certainly over the current occupant of the White House.
But he was up against the one Republican who happens to be the national political figure I respect and admire most, and have wanted to see in the White House for at least a decade. So his timing couldn’t have been worse.
I don’t regret endorsing John McCain one bit; I’m proud to see this day. But I hate missing the chance to endorse Obama.
Beyond that, let me briefly address several questions that came up on my blog after we posted our endorsement online Friday (I answer them more fully on the blog itself):
Why does the endorsement not talk about the current economic crisis? Because it doesn’t figure in our preference for Sen. McCain. Both senators backed the $700 billion rescue plan, which I think they were right to do. Beyond that, I remain unconvinced that either of them has a better idea what to do next than the other. I wish I did, but I don’t. So I consider their positions on this critical issue something of a wash, and therefore out of place in the endorsement.
Why so many words about the Colombian Free Trade Agreement? Because it has broader implications that do illustrate a clear, dramatic difference between the candidates, and one that points unequivocally to McCain. Besides, it is an issue you may not have heard as much about (meaning it took a certain number of words merely to explain), and if an endorsement accomplishes nothing else, we hope it helps you think of things you might not have thought about otherwise.
Why didn’t you mention Sarah Palin? Because the endorsement was about why we did choose McCain, not about why we “shouldn’t have.” I don’t think Sarah Palin is ready to be president. She has about as much experience in government as Barack Obama, but let’s face it — he’s smarter. If I were choosing the president solely on the basis of his choice of a running mate, I’d pick Obama, because I like Joe Biden. But I’ve never picked a presidential preference on that basis before, and see insufficient reason to start now. Bottom line: For me, the reasons to favor Sen. McCain outweigh my misgivings about Gov. Palin.
We could go on and on, and we will. Please come to my blog and continue the conversation.

Go to thestate.com/bradsblog/.

Warren Bolton: ‘Why I prefer Obama’

Since it’s an essential part of the overall presidential endorsement package, I thought it would be a good idea to post Warren’s dissenting column on the blog as well. I don’t know about you, but I thought he did a good job with it. — Brad

By WARREN BOLTON
Associate Editor
WHO WILL lead us through these extraordinary times — John McCain or Barack Obama?
Which of these men — both uniquely qualified to be president — can not only return confidence and stability to a country shaken at its foundation, but get Americans to see and embrace a future beyond today’s challenges?
The top question Americans confront as foreclosures rise, credit dries up, jobs are cut and financial markets free-fall is: Are you better off today than you were yesterday? We’re engaged in two wars — one of which was an ill-timed war of opportunity that has distracted us from the war on terror. Other threats and hot spots dot the globe.
While America remains a beacon of hope, our light doesn’t shine as brightly. The next president must shoulder the dual burdens of strengthening the home front while leading globally.
Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama are both capable, but only one possesses extraordinary qualities to shepherd our country through these extraordinary times.
That’s Sen. Barack Obama.
Under Mr. McCain, I see an America that’s safe, stuck and satisfied. The middle class would remain stuck, while only the wealthy would be satisfied.
But Mr. Obama’s a game-changer. He’s a gifted leader who possesses the right judgment, leadership skills, temperament and steadiness. He has a consistent, coherent vision for America, whereas Mr. McCain has been all over the place.
Mr. Obama’s health care plan is far superior and will actually expand the number of people covered. And if we’re going to have tax cuts, it should be for the many working people who have seen their wages stagnate, their plans for their children’s future endangered and their lifestyles dwindle.
Mr. McCain has lots of experience in national politics and a record of legislative and diplomatic leadership. He’s worked across party lines and is rightly hailed for his service to this great country. But there are questions about his temperament as well as his ability to craft a cohesive vision.
The John McCain of 2008 isn’t the stalwart leader many admired in 2000. He walked away from some of his independence in exchange for a shot at the White House. He embraced positions straight from the Bush playbook, including wanting to continue tax cuts he once denounced.
For a man who said he would rather lose an election than a war, he has gone to great lengths to win, even to point of saying that if he is elected and something happens to him, Gov. Sarah Palin, who is clearly not ready, is the one he would choose.
That irresponsible choice says a lot about Mr. McCain’s judgment. A number of things he’s done or has allowed to be done on behalf of his campaign suggest that he’ll do anything to win.
Mr. McCain’s unrelenting support of the Iraq war and inability to clearly articulate the “victory” he speaks of is troubling. Yes, he was right about the surge. It brought violence under control. But now what? Where’s the victory? Where’s the political progress in Iraq? It’s time we get out and allow Iraqis to run and defend their country.
Sen. Obama would be much wiser about getting out of Iraq. He would focus us back on the dangerous situation in Afghanistan, the war on terror and Osama bin Laden.
One of Sen. Obama’s greatest strengths is the fact that he thinks. Wow, a thinking president. I know. Wild isn’t it? Many who have sat with him — including me — notice quickly he doesn’t give stock answers, and genuinely considers questions and issues.
As intelligent as he is, Sen. Obama won’t hesitate to surround himself with other smart people who will challenge him. He would build an experienced, credible and bipartisan Cabinet. He’s already given us a glimpse of the kind of choices he would make by selecting Sen. Joe Biden.
Some have mocked Mr. Obama’s rhetorical prowess as being “just speeches.” Powerful oratory has built nations and reshaped civilizations. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s “speeches” transformed the soul of America. John F. Kennedy’s “speeches” united America to do the extraordinary — to go to the moon.
Sen. Obama has energized millions of all races, ages and socio-economic backgrounds. People are engaged, waiting for the messenger to lay out the vision. He’s shown he can and is willing to talk about tough issues with Americans when he gave his speech on race.
Mr. Obama is one of those rare leaders who come along too seldom. His bi-racial background and multicultural experiences give him a unique lens through which to see an America that is becoming more like him. He represents where America is headed, and might be the one who can convince a broad range of people to help mend our fractured country, already the greatest on earth, and make its light shine brighter both at home and abroad.
His well-organized, record-setting campaign has been well-managed, features an awesome army of staff and volunteers in nearly every state and hasn’t suffered the infighting that characterizes — and kills — so many campaigns. Mr. McCain’s campaign has been woefully disorganized and has done a pitiful job of capturing who Mr. McCain really is and why he should be elected.
Has there been anyone more unflappable, more consistent, more thoughtful, more engaging — when he speaks, the nation listens — than Sen. Obama? Has anyone been more presidential?
No. That’s why we need an Obama presidency.

Reach Mr. Bolton at (803) 771-8631 or wbolton@thestate.com.

Watch for the rest of the endorsement package Sunday

Finally, I’m wrapping up my day. It’s been a long one, but I’m reasonably pleased.

Today, Warren and I completed the rest of the endorsement package — my explanatory column, and his column dissenting from the McCain endorsement. I’m reasonably pleased with what I was able to do and still keep my column to a normal length, instead of my double-length pieces last week and the week before.

But I’m even more pleased with Warren’s column, which gives readers a fuller picture of the range of opinions on the board. I’ll post it on the blog Sunday along with my own.

Together, the four elements — the endorsement editorial itself, my column about the process, Warren’s dissent, and the discussions we’ve already had here on the blog and will continue to have — present a fuller and more thought-provoking package than you will find in the endorsement of any newspaper in the country. I’m quite proud of it.

As I’ve said so many times before, the point of an endorsement is to help the reader think more deeply about his decision. Whether you agree with us in the end or not, my hope is always that your vote will be better thought-out, more fully contemplated and informed, because of having read the endorsement. In that regard, I believe this package, considered as a whole, accomplishes the goal far better than usual.

When you’re done looking at all of this (and I hope you will), you’ll have a much better idea of where we’re coming from, and be better equipped to decide what you think in light of it, than, say, the confusing package put out by the Philly paper the other day, for instance. Not to cast aspersions (perish the thought).

Today’s ‘other’ endorsement — Elise Partin

The McCain endorsement, being released early today, was sort of predestined to make a splash to the exclusion of readers noting anything else. So I call your attention to the endorsement that actually ran in today’s paper — that of Elise Partin for mayor of Cayce.

Certainly I want to make sure readers who live in Cayce see it. But beyond that, I see that race as being of at least passing interest to others in the Midlands — which is why we decided to interview and endorse in that race to begin with. The decision of the current and immediately past city administrations to pursue Lebensraum even to the point of going into a neighboring county — combined with such ongoing cross-jurisdictional issues as riverfront development, the regional transit system and such — made this election worth thinking about. In fact, the very first among several people who urged us to look into this race actually lives in Columbia (although others were actual Cayce voters).

Giuglianopaul_035_3
Ms. Partin is an unusually engaging candidate who presents a sharp contrast to status quo incumbent
(Robert Malpass, shown below), and offers a better course for the future than the third candidate (businessman Paul Giugliano, right). It’s an interesting race.

Anyway, I just wanted to make sure this endorsement didn’t get ignored entirely.

Malpassrobert_053

Commenting on the endorsement

Before I turn my attention completely to writing for Sunday’s paper, I’ll respond briefly to some of the comments offered this morning with regard to our McCain endorsement. I’ll start with something Phillip said (actually, his was the last comment when I started this response; several others have come in since then, but I’ll have to read them later):

P.S. Since Editor and Publisher’s latest count has not included the State, the State now becomes the 50th newspaper in the US to endorse McCain. 127 have endorsed Obama. In 2004 the count was virtually even between Kerry and Bush, and now nearly 30 papers that endorsed Bush in 2004 have endorsed Obama, whereas only a handful that endorsed Kerry 2004 have endorsed McCain. Again, more evidence that Obama’s appeal is broader across party and ideological lines and holds the greater promise of bipartisan leadership and unity.

Posted by: Phillip | Oct 24, 2008 9:10:17 AM

I should have added "the State’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge that reality notwithstanding" to that last sentence.

Posted by: Phillip | Oct 24, 2008 9:12:46 AM

Phillip, I don’t understand why you would say that last part. Scroll to the lower part of this original post. The "reality" you say we "stubbornly refuse to acknowledge" is something I have cited over and over. It’s THE biggest reason why we strongly preferred Obama over Hillary Clinton. It’s what we mean in the endorsement you read today when we say, "Barack Obama is an inspiring and even transformational figure." What did you think that referred to?

And yes, I’m perfectly aware that most newspapers are endorsing Obama. In the rough draft of the editorial (before I cut it down to fit the space awaiting it on the Sunday page), I wrote "Like the many newspapers that have endorsed him, we, too, find him to be an inspiring…" But that was one of the more superfluous lines among the many that had to go in cutting out four inches from the piece. What other newspapers are doing is neither here nor there.

I do find it amusing that someone commenting on the previous post thinks it would have been more "courageous" to endorse Obama. Hardly. Going along with the crowd, particularly when they’re lining up behind someone you like very much, and who you fully believe is going to WIN, is the path of least resistance. Just think of all the very nice people, people whom I would love to please, who would be singing our praises now, while a few trolls under the bridge mutter inaudibly about how they knew we were "socialists" all along, and what do you expect from the "liberal media." We’d be praised for being "bold," for making an "historic break with the past," etc. Never mind that there would be nothing bold about it; it would just feel that way to a lot of people.

Add to this the fact that I gave up something very tangible and palpable, to me. Ever since I became editorial page editor in 1997, I have longed for the day that I could break the pattern of endorsing Republicans for president, if only because in some people’s minds, that makes us a "Republican newspaper," and I find it deeply distasteful to be called such names. Yes, I have been able to comfort myself by pointing to the substantial, documented falsehood of the label — most notably the fact that if you consider all of our endorsements (and we spend vastly more of our time on state and local races than we do on the presidential), more than half of them are for Democrats. But people attach an inordinate amount of importance to the presidential endorsement — so many people don’t pay attention to anything else — and there we have been trapped. We like SOUTH CAROLINA Democrats, not the national kind. People like John Kerry and even Al Gore, in running for national office, define themselves in ways that put them far to the left of the consensus of our editorial board, which is generally reflective of the political center in our state. (Ironically, in Gore’s case, he had earlier been a far more centrist politician, to the point that I enthusiastically supported an endorsement of him when he ran for the Senate in Tennessee.)

But Obama presented the chance I had awaited for so long. Here was a Democrat we could happily endorse, something we unquestionable would have done had he been up against Mitt Romney, or Rudy Giuliani, or Mike Huckabee — and certainly if he’d been facing the current president (something he likes to pretend he’s doing as we speak).

But he was up against the one Republican who happens to be the national political figure I respect and admire most, and have wanted to see in the White House for at least a decade. So his timing couldn’t have been worse.

Now, as to those of you who find it unthinkable that we didn’t write about the current economic situation, or that we DID spend a long paragraph on the Colombian Free Trade agreement, let me see if I can help you understand: First, I don’t give either candidate a leg up on the economic crisis. I haven’t been impressed that either of them has a better idea than I do of what to do going forward. Both of them backed the $700 billion rescue plan, and while I think they were right to do so, I just haven’t seen much to jump up and down about either way on this. Frankly, I worry that neither of them is up to the challenge, but that worry is poorly defined in my own mind. While economic policy was discussed in our board debate of this endorsement, it did not occur in a way that caused us to coalesce around a position. In other words, I could have spent precious words on the economy, but it would have been a digression from the points that actually contributed to our endorsement, and everyone would have found it unhelpful. Yes, I understand that people who favor Obama are somewhat more eager to discuss the economy than those of us who end up where I do on the question. Democrats love talking about the economy. And they will. But we endorsed McCain neither because of nor in spite of the candidates’ positions on the economy.

On the contrary, the Colombian Free Trade Agreement — which required a certain number of words even to explain to the reader, since it’s gained so little attention — had the virtue of being a sort of microcosmic way of explaining the sort of differences between the candidates that DID contribute to our endorsement. We were able to tell readers something they didn’t know, to examine the contrast between the candidates in terms of a subject that hasn’t been done to death. And for me, the moment when that came up in the third debate was a critical moment, a sort of epiphany, one in which my preference for McCain over Obama was clarified. As an explanation of an important difference between the candidate, one that bears upon their governing philosophies with regard to the global economy and their relative devotion to party orthodoxies, the portion of the editorial dealing with Colombian trade was far more explanatory than spending a comparable number of words rehashing the economic crisis, only to say in the end that on that issue, for us, it’s a wash.

If you haven’t figured this out about me and my leadership of the editorial board, let me state it overtly now: I see little point in telling you things you already know. To the extent that I am able, I wish to ADD to the conversation, not parrot what others are saying. Hence this countercultural blog, in which I fight against the tide of the Blogosphere as a place where polar opposites shout at each other. Similarly, my exploration of Colombian trade as opposed to platitudes on the economy sought to explore uncovered ground, to give people something additional to think about.

As for whether I should have cut something out of the editorial to make room for a digression about Sarah Palin (the omission of which Phillip found to be "astonishing" and "shoddy journalism") — well, I can perfectly understand why someone who thinks we should have endorsed Obama would want to bring that up. But since Sarah Palin did NOT contribute to the decision to endorse McCain, it’s hard for me to see why I would bring that up, explore the problems that she brings to the ticket, and then explain why we would endorse McCain anyway for those of you who don’t get it (and even after doing that at the expense of not giving you the reasons why we did endorse McCain, those of you who disagree would remain unsatisfied). Besides, it would have been a departure to say we’re endorsing someone because of, or in spite of, the vice presidential pick. I can’t think of when we’ve done that before (if you can, please point it out). Sarah Palin looms very large in the minds of two sets of people — the conservative Republican base that loves her, and the people who despise her and see her as sufficient reason NOT to vote for McCain. We are in neither category.

And by "we," I mean the official position that we ended up with as a board. As I write this, Warren Bolton is working (at my behest) on his column for Sunday expressing his dissenting opinion. He may explore the economy or go into the failings of Sarah Palin at length. I don’t know. But a column saying we SHOULD have endorsed Obama seems to me like a better part of the overall package in which to explore those avenues. The endorsement of McCain explores one part of the overall subject. Warren’s column explores another. My column — which I need to go write — will explore yet another.

In the end, the overall goal is to provoke thought — hopefully, thoughts you might not otherwise have had — among our readers regarding the presidential election. That’s what we strive for.

Look for our endorsement at 7 a.m. Friday

Our presidential endorsement will be posted at thestate.com/opinion at 7 a.m. Friday. It should also, if we did our coding right, show up on our Endorsements page. If for any reason it fails to show on one, try the other.

The endorsement won’t actually be published in the paper until Sunday, but folks seemed to enjoy seeing our McCain and Obama endorsements back in January early, so we decided to do this.

What WON’T be posted Friday (you’ll have to wait until Sunday) is an extra column or two both explaining our decision, and expressing a dissenting opinion — mainly because they’re not written yet. I decided we should do the dissent thing before we made our decision because I knew it would be tough — and it was — and because I really sort of hate that we can’t endorse both of them again. Yeah, I know a lot of y’all think that’s weird, but I haven’t really changed my mind since January — I still like both of these guys.

I’ll try to explain. Truth be told, I’m a little less enchanted with both of them after watching them as their respective parties’ official nominees. I liked them better when the Republican "base" still hated McCain, and the most angry Democratic partisans were backing Hillary. As standard-bearers they are both somewhat less appealing. But the day-to-day spin cycle stuff that people attach SO much importance to — this campaign ad, that malaprop, this or that candidates’ dig at the other one — doesn’t add up to a whole lot for me.

I had formed my opinions of these guys way back, and by the time Labor Day had rolled around, my impressions were only subject to change around the edges, barring something more significant than anything that actually happened. Think of it this way: My pre-general election campaign impressions were the size of planets, and the day-to-day spin-cycle stuff was just like so many beachballs bouncing around on the planets’ surfaces. Or to use the Rorschach theory I mentioned in the comments on this post, I had already decided what I thought the inkblots looked like; obsessing about the crenellations around the edges were unlikely to change that much.

In light of that, consider what we said about the candidates in January. First, an excerpt from the McCain primary endorsement:

Experience, certainly. Integrity, even more so. But John McCain’s
most conspicuous virtue
is courage. He is a brave and tough man who
unlike some candidates has no need to bluster, but is able to speak
with humility and generosity to those with whom he disagrees. A McCain
presidency would do much to restore confidence in American leadership,
at home and abroad.

There is of course the extraordinary physical
and moral courage that he displayed as a prisoner of war in Vietnam,
where he withstood nightmarish torture for years rather than let his
country or his comrades down. But he also possesses the kind of
political fortitude that keeps him from giving up on any worthwhile
quest. He evinces a wisdom born in pain, a confidence earned in many
battles. When others despair, John McCain knows he has seen worse, and
keeps striding forward.

Then, a snippet from the Obama primary endorsement:

Sen. Obama’s campaign is an argument for a more unifying style of leadership. In a time of
great partisanship, he is careful to talk about winning over independents and even Republicans. He is harsh on the failures of the current administration – and most of that critique well-deserved. But he doesn’t use his considerable rhetorical gifts to demonize Republicans. He’s not neglecting his core values; he defends his progressive vision with vigorous integrity. But for him, American unity – transcending party – is a core value in itself.

Can such unity be restored, in this poisonous political culture? Not unless that is a nominee’s goal from the outset. It will be a difficult challenge for any candidate; but we wait in the hope that someone really will try. There is no other hope for rescuing our republic from the mire.

Can you see how the hardest thing about this for me would be NOT endorsing one of these guys?

That ‘unrepentant’ Colin Powell

You may recall that recently, I made the argument that William Ayers should not have been paid to come to a public university in South Carolina, that in fact he should be considered persona non grata in our fair state.

The crux of my argument was the fact that Ayers, by his own account, is an unrepentant terrorist.

So you can imagine my great sense of irony when someone on the anti-war left objected to Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama on the grounds that the general himself is "unrepentant:"

As CNN reported yesterday, Powell remains totally unrepentant both about his own critical role pushing us to war. For instance, he claims to have tried to stop the war, five years after giving the single most important (and discredited) speech in building the public case for war. He now claims he wants to see the war end, but it’s difficult to trust the integrity of a man who denies even the most basic facts of his public involvement in creating the crisis in the first place. That Obama now seems to reflexively trust Powell suggests not foreign policy prudence from the Democratic nominee, but knee-jerk ignorance — and worse, a potential to abdicate the very antiwar themes he’s run on for so long.

So what do you make of that?

While the two groups by no means correspond precisely, I imagine that there is a significant overlap between people who are untroubled by Ayers being unrepentant for plotting to bomb the Pentagon and those who ARE troubled that Gen. Powell is "unrepentant" about his role in the run-up to Iraq. In fact, some of our friends here on the blog may reside in that overlap.

But perhaps I’m wrong about that. I hope I am.

Speaking of which, I thought the general did a good job in his endorsement of Sen. Obama. It was better reasoned than the Tribune‘s.

Philadelphia’s weird endorsement(s)

When we sat down Monday to begin our discussion about whom to endorse for president, someone remarked that The Philadelphia Inquirer (which in Knight Ridder days was a sister paper of The State, but no more) had done an unusual thing — run an endorsement of Obama, and a dissenting opinion favoring McCain.

At that point, not knowing yet where we would end up but sensing that we’d be divided (I was right, by the way), I said that was quite a coincidence, because I had been about to suggest that wherever we ended up, we should run a same-day column from a board member favoring the candidate who did not receive our endorsement.

As of this moment, we plan to do that.

But what we’ll be doing will be wildly different from what Philly did, I realized when I actually went and read those pieces online. They didn’t have an editorial endorsement of one candidate and then a column from an individual dissenter. (For those of you who don’t understand the difference, an editorial is the institutional opinion of a newspaper, an opinion arrived at by the editorial board; it is therefore unsigned. A column is the opinion of the individual who signs it. Big difference, as far as we’re concerned.)

Instead, they had TWO SEPARATE editorials. At least, that’s the way it looks online. I’d be interested to see a copy of that day’s paper to see how it was presented.

First, they endorsed Obama, and did a pretty good job of it. It was better reasoned, I thought, than the much-ballyhooed Tribune endorsement (I came away from the Trib one thinking, Folks, if you’re gonna make history, do a better job of explaining the thinking that went behind it. You left me with the impression that you were "making history" just to say you did so.)

THEN, they had a separate editorial endorsing McCain, and the only explanation offered was this editors’ intro: "The Editorial Board’s endorsement of Barack Obama was not unanimous. Dissenters said:…" That was it. What followed was not only a differing opinion, but one seemingly based on alternative interpretations of reality. Like the first one, it was well reasoned, and even MORE strongly worded than the Obama endorsement. But the disconnect between them is weird. The first editorial complains of McCain’s "persistent deceptions in this campaign." The other one says flatly of McCain, "His word is good," and goes on:

Ask people to describe McCain and the first response often is, "He’s honest." What you see is what you get. There are no mysterious associations to dance around. No 20-year attendance of a church whose pastor preached anti-American sermons. No serving on an education reform panel with a domestic terrorist. No financial support from a convicted felon. No ties to a group currently under investigation for possible voter-registration fraud.

Those two thoughts — faith in McCain’s essential integrity and disappointment over the way he’s conducted his campaign — CAN be reconciled; they CAN be held by the same person or the same board. But reconciling them requires a coherent effort to do so, not starkly opposite statements.

Folks, I understand that choosing to endorse one or the other is not easy. It hasn’t been easy for us, and we did consider alternatives. But we have chosen, and will present the result this weekend, along with plenty of both supporting AND dissenting info. But what we say will be straightforward (I hope; we haven’t started writing yet). Philly was just confusing.

When I heard that someone had explained what happened at Philly in a blog post, I went eagerly to read it. But I was disappointed. It was just something from a former reporter at the paper — someone who would have known little of the editorial board’s workings even when he worked at the paper — offering little more than his uninformed guess about what happened. Basically, the paper has left a information vacuum that invites such speculation.

MY uninformed impression is that this is an editorial board in disarray, probably from too many leadership changes in recent years. The paper has had four editorial page editors that I can recall in the time I’ve been in this job, and I wasn’t trying to keep up with them — it could be more. (And that’s sad. At the last meeting of Knight Ridder editorial page editors in January 2005, the two people I remember being most impressed by were the two Philly editors, Chris Satullo of the Inquirer and Frank Burgos of the Daily News. Both are out now; Chris has stayed with the paper as a columnist, but Frank left.)

But then, I’m just guessing, too. The one thing I do know is that it was weird.

The Trib’s endorsement of Obama

Phillip reminds me of something that I heard about yesterday, and meant to go read and share with y’all. In the middle of one of the worst Fridays I’ve had in a while — my efforts to write the long piece about McCain (the companion to the Obama one last week) were constantly interrupted by minor problems that nevertheless had to be dealt with. One thing about the Obama piece last week that frustrates me is that I thought it was good, and I think I could produce a lot more work like that if I had the time, if I weren’t constantly having to deal with the minutiae of publishing that I no longer have the staff to do. But this is the way things are.

Anyway, at a particularly bad moment in the day, Robert stuck his head in to say "The Chicago Tribune has endorsed Obama," and I said "unh-huh," and he said "it’s the first time they’ve endorsed a Democrat," and I said, "yeah OK thanks."

Anyway, by the time I got away a little after 9 p.m. I had forgotten it, and so I thank Phillip for reminding me.

Here’s the link to the Tribune‘s endorsement. It’s pretty good. It’s got strong points and weak ones. It’s strongest point is that it gives its word, as an editorial board I trust, that we don’t have to worry about Obama, untested as he may be:

Many Americans say they’re uneasy about Obama. He’s pretty new to them.

We can provide some assurance. We have known Obama since he entered politics a dozen years ago. We have watched him, worked with him, argued with him as he rose from an effective state senator to an inspiring U.S. senator to the Democratic Party’s nominee for president.

That might not be persuasive to a lot of people, but it carries weight with me.

Its weakest point is that it keeps going on about the "history in the making," etc., what with "the obstacles that he faced as an unprivileged black man in the U.S." That latter bit of quote is one I could deconstruct all day, but I gave you some idea what I thought about it last week. I don’t think of him a "black man," and it’s a bit tough for a graduate of public Radford High to see a graduate of Punahou as "underprivileged" (we won’t even get into Columbia and Harvard).

Beyond that, I’ve always held a dim view of identity politics. I think choosing this ticket because a "black man" is on it, or the other ticket because a woman is on it, would be irresponsible.

Speaking of that, the Trib criticizes the Palin choice in the strongest terms, and I gather that played a large role in the paper’s decision. I think it’s going to be the deciding factor for a lot of people. Personally, I think it’s the biggest mistake McCain has made since he failed to "jink" when he knew a SAM was locked onto him over Hanoi.

On the whole, though, while I think it’s a good endorsement, I was disappointed that it didn’t help me more with the decision we’ll have to make next week. I’d feel good about endorsing either McCain or Obama. What I’d have a problem with is NOT endorsing the other one. This endorsement was neither so strong that it made me feel OK about not endorsing McCain, nor so weak that it made me feel OK about not endorsing Obama. Ah, well.

Watch for the McCain opus Sunday

And this time, I’ll try to remember to make sure it posts on the blog before Monday.

This piece will have several things in common with the "Barack Like Me" column:

It will be just as long (sorry, but it took a good bit of trimming even to get them down to that length).
It will be based on a number of things that cause me to feel a personal connection to the candidate and as a result enable me to say some things I hope you will find at least somewhat original.
It will be written right after reading an autobiography about the candidate, although much of it will be based in experiences I had long ago.

Beyond that, I’m afraid I don’t think this column is quite as good as the first one. With McCain, the "like me" thing breaks down at a certain point, which is ironic because of the greater superficial similarities in our backgrounds. But while we’re both Navy brats, that’s all I was — a dependent. I never served, much less serving heroically, and that creates a crimp in the whole identification thing.

But I think it still rises above my usual columns in what it offers. I was just very satisfied with the way I was able to tie a lot of disparate observations within a single defensible theme in the Obama piece; and that didn’t work quite as well with this one. Maybe it’s just that I’m really tired (after reading late into the night the last two weeks) and struggled with the writing this time. Or maybe it’s just as I will say in the column: the thesis broke down.

By the way, I’ve gotten a lot of kind comments about the "Barack" piece — and some not so kind. But they all had something in common — all (or most, now that I think back) seemed to assume I was choosing sides in the election, and meant to laud Obama accordingly. That misses the point. So I sent variations on this message to several people who wrote to me about it in the past week:

Thank you so much; you’re very kind.

On Sunday, please watch for my companion piece about McCain.

A caveat: Neither of these columns should be seen as an endorsement, or even an attempt to assess the suitability of either man for the presidency. If you go back and read more closely, you’ll see they don’t even get into that.

What I was trying to do is just raise some thoughts that you might not have seen elsewhere about the formative experiences of both men.

I just say all that because some seemed to take my Obama piece as pro-Obama (some were happy about that; some angry), but that’s not what it was meant to be. The potential exists for some readers to assume the same about the upcoming McCain piece.

We WILL be endorsing, but haven’t yet made the decision whether it will be McCain or Obama. We’ll be deciding that next week.

What you need to remember as you read is that I like BOTH of these guys a lot; our endorsements of them in January were quite enthusiastic. The general election endorsement will be made all the tougher because of that. I know some of you think you know how we’re going to endorse, and you have a 50-50 chance of being right. But you’re wrong if you think the decision is already made. And as the days have gone by, the decision has loomed tougher and tougher. I’m dreading the discussion next week, and still trying to decide how to lead it. I will really be missing Mike Fitts, because as I described in this column and this one, he did a masterful job of helping walk us through these decisions.

This could be a ‘bad’ year for our endorsees

Turning away from the presidential endorsement to the endorsements that we here on the board actually spend more of our staff time on — the state legislative and county races — this may not be a good year for our endorsees.

Now mind you, "not… a good year" is a relative thing. Typically, close to 75 percent of the people we endorse in general elections in South Carolina win. A "bad" year for our endorsees is 50 percent. There is a chance that this year, it may be even lower than that.

I should pause at this point to say, as I always do, that our endorsements aren’t about naming the person we think WILL win, but the person we think SHOULD win. You might say, "Duh!," but the fact is that a lot of people don’t seem to understand that. How else does one explain the people who say, when one of our endorsees loses, that we got it "wrong?"

But that doesn’t keep me from thinking about whether someone is going to win or not. I’m usually conscious of a candidate’s chances as we’re making the decision, and we tend to know when we’re backing a Don Quixote and when we’re not.

But the other day Cindi said something I hadn’t thought of — that we may be backing more losers than winners this time. That was based on the endorsements we had decided on up until that point (we’ve decided some more since then). If so, so be it. That won’t change our decisions. But I thought I’d share the thought with y’all.

Consider the ones we’ve done so far:

Jim Nelson — LIKELY TO LOSE — Conventional wisdom heavily favors the incumbent, Chip Huggins, in House District 85. This is the Irmo area, and Rep. Huggins is the Republican. Of course, the Irmese are quirky and can surprise you. Also, a Democrat could benefit from the Obama Effect, which is expected to pull up down-ballot Democrats even though Obama will lose the state himself. But not a Democrat who, like Mr. Nelson, is given to going up to strangers and telling them he thinks his taxes are too low. Not in this district.
Michael Koska — LIKELY TO LOSE — There is no incumbent in this race, which should make it more of a toss-up. But Mr. Koska’s opponent in House District 77 is the closest thing you’ll find to an incumbent — Richland County Council Chairman Joe McEachern. Mr. McEachern is a strong candidate whom we’ve endorsed multiple times, including in the primary for this seat. Add to that the fact that Mr. Koska is a little-known white Republican in a district long held by a black Democrat (John Scott), and the usual math of elections in South Carolina runs against him. Mr. Koska has the ability to win over voters who sit down and listen to him at length as we did, but few voters ever do that. No, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that Mr. Koska will pull this off, but he would need greater-than-usual help from his national ticket to do so, and that’s just not happening this year.
Nikki Haley — ALMOST CERTAIN TO WIN. I could have told you before our interviews that Rep. Haley would hold on to her District 87 House seat. After talking to her and opponent Ed Gomez, it was a dead certainty. Yes, the McCain-Palin ticket may be imploding, but not so much as to deny re-election to this highly engaging Republican incumbent, not in Lexington County.
Anton Gunn — DON’T KNOW, although I suspect GUNN HAS THE EDGE — What makes this one uncertain for the better-known and stronger candidate — Mr. Gunn — is that this has been a Republican district. In fact, Democrat Gunn lost to the incumbent, Bill Cotty, two years ago. But Mr. Cotty isn’t running, and the district has been evolving. Most of all in Mr. Gunn’s favor is the fact that if anybody is going to benefit from the Obama Effect, it would be him. He was Obama’s state political director. So I think he has the edge, but it’s just impossible to know without polling info, which I haven’t seen. All we know for sure is that we prefer Mr. Gunn to his opponent, David Herndon.

As always, you can look at all our endorsements from this year (going all the way back to the presidential primaries in January), plus columns related to endorsements, on this Web page.

About the upcoming presidential endorsement…

One of my regulars said on a previous post, and not for the first time:

But I’m sure the endorsement is ready to go…

Since I responded at length to that assertion, I’m turning it into a separate post, for the edification (or something) of all…

No, the endorsement is not "ready to go." I wish. That is, I wish it was done and behind me. In fact, I haven’t even set the meeting to discuss it. We have scrupulously avoided discussing it, but that will be at an end soon. Sometime in the next week to 10 days, we will sit down and do that. (On Monday, we had a brief discussion about HAVING the discussion, but even that was inconclusive.)

It promises to be a difficult decision, and however we end up, we’ll be somewhat divided by it — as we were in both 2000 and 2004, both in the primaries and the general. Endorsements by their very nature — you’re choosing one or the other, and there’s no room for compromise on that point, although there’s lots of room for compromise on the explanation — strain the consensus that we try to achieve on all issues. The presidential endorsement tends to do so more than usual. It’s why some newspapers don’t do presidential endorsements. Or rather, it’s related to why some newspapers say they don’t do presidential endorsements. Personally, I think they’re copping out and trying to rationalize it.

I had my break from that in January. It was wonderful. We were completely unanimous in our support for both McCain and Obama. But I knew then, as I know now, that IF we got our way and they won their respective nominations, our decision in the fall would be far more difficult. It will be.

I appreciate that y’all think you know me and my mind. The purpose of the blog is to help you do so, so it’s nice in a way that you feel comfortable extrapolating my decisions from what I’ve written in the past. But you ignore something very important: I’m the only person on the editorial board who blogs. And even the person you know through the blog has a very serious responsibility to lead a group of people you DON’T know as well through a very delicate decision-making process.

Hopefully, those of you who actually READ THE PAPER know Warren and Cindi better than you would know the board members at most newspapers. That’s the result of a deliberate policy that I instituted when I became editorial page editor in 1997 — we started writing fewer editorials (the unsigned pieces that speak for the full board) to give people time to write signed columns, so that you could get to know the people who participate in setting editorial policy. My blog is a continuation of that, taking the transparency thing to the nth power.

I don’t know how much management experience you have — "you" referring to those of you who believe our endorsement is set and everyone knows what it will be — but even if you’re the greatest manager in the world, it’s highly unlikely you’ve ever been in the situation that I deal with every day: Bringing a group of people with a variety of opinions and life experiences — very opinionated people — together in a consensus around controversial issues. Sometimes legislative leaders cry the blues to me about how hard it is to bring their members together around a piece of legislation over the course of a session, and I have little sympathy. I have to bring people together around definite positions, on deadline, every day. (Add to that the fact that it involves managing up as well as down, since the publisher is always a member of the board. The publisher stays out of most of our decisions, but he or she always participates to some degree in the presidential ones.) It’s not easy. And the presidential endorsement carries with it such baggage that it’s one of the toughest. And it’s a decision that is never gone. If y’all out there remember it (and you do), rest assured that we remember these internal struggles very vividly. And we’re very conscious of the tension going into the next such discussion.

Our first endorsement ran today

A couple of weeks ago, I came up with the idea of doing something different with endorsements this cycle. Back during the campaigns for the June primaries, I became frustrated that we had so many candidates, and so little time and space, that we didn’t serve readers as well as we should have. After hours and hours and hours of interviews, research and discussion, in some cases our explanations of endorsements were absurdly abbreviated, in extreme cases amounting to less than a sentence. And as I’ve always said, to me the endorsement is ABOUT the explanation, so I was very dissatisfied. All of that work, and so little of it shared with readers.

So I said to my colleagues at the time, we either needed to do better in the future, or quit endorsing altogether. Our staff is too small to spend that much time on something that produces such thin gruel for readers.

Of course, being obsessive, we resolved to keep doing it, but do it better. Fortunately for that purpose, we had far fewer contested races to deal with in the fall. This fact is UNfortunate for democracy — the fact that primary contests are far more numerous than general election ones is a testament to the power of incumbency and partisanship in redistricting. But at least it offered us a chance to be somewhat more thorough in our presentation, to make it more reflective of our preparation.

A couple of weeks ago, I thought of a way to do even better: Do our endorsements earlier. In the past, we’ve held them as long as we can, given the number we have to do — the theory being that that’s when voters are paying the most attention. Also, it meant we had as much information as possible, preventing post-endorsement "surprises" about the candidates.

But I proposed to Warren and Cindi that we start doing them as soon as we can. It keeps them from being jammed up, thereby allowing us more space. It also frees us up as commentators. Increasingly, I have found it hard to write the summaries of interviews without going ahead and saying "this is the guy for us" or "no way on this one." You’ll note that I haven’t written anything from the interviews with the candidates in today’s endorsement of Anton Gunn, because the choice was so clear, and I hate to scoop my colleagues. Now, I’m free to go back and write those blog entries from the interviews — which I will, perhaps today — as well as to write columns. I suspect that Cindi and Warren will find additional things they want to say about their candidates once the ice is broken with an endorsement. Maybe not, but we’ll see.

In any event, I’ve been pleased with the first two endorsements (one running today, the other tomorrow), even if that’s all that is written. They flow better, they’re less cramped and hurried in their style. They’re more thoughtful. And that’s supposed to be the point — provoking thought.

Anyway, here’s the endorsement of Anton Gunn. More commentary on that contest will be forthcoming.

bradwarthen.com

All The News That Gives You Fits