Category Archives: History

McCain certainly winning the hubris contest

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Going through my e-mail earlier today, I ran across this one from the Obama campaign:

Election Night Media Website Now Open

CHICAGO – The Obama-Biden campaign today opened a website to collect media credential and coverage resource requests for our Election Night event in Chicago.  Credential and media resource requests will be accepted … through midnight on Saturday, October 25, 2008.  Late requests will not be accepted.  Space is limited.

The website provides two options for news outlets to request credentials to cover the Election Night event in Chicago…

And you know what struck me about that? It’s modesty. The standard such release touts a "Victory Celebration," and this one didn’t. Yeah, it’s to the media and not to a list of supporters (or, some would say, overt supporters), but I still found myself thinking: How cool can Obama get? He’s not going to take anything for granted, and certainly not get excited prematurely — if ever.

I had almost forgotten that release when I got this one from McCain, headlined "Two weeks to Victory." Never mind that that’s almost maniacally optimistic. Consider that Obama is widely seen as the heir to JFK, whose administration, at least in retrospect, made "hubris" a household word. But ironically enough, The One is the one playing it modest.

Faith of our Fathers

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H92607

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
One day in late summer 1970, I was playing tennis on the courts next to the Officer’s Club at Pearl Harbor. I was 16. My opponent, a long-haired boy whose name I now forget, was younger. He was a visitor from the mainland, the little brother of the wife of a junior officer on my Dad’s ship.
    Suddenly, a gnarly bantam rooster of a man rushed onto our court through one of the gates, followed by an entourage of followers who could only be senior naval officers, despite the fact that all were in white shorts, conspicuously devoid of insignia.
    Without pausing in his stride, the first man commanded, “You boys get out of here! I’ve got this court.” Taken aback, we nevertheless immediately moved to obey. I knew active-duty officers had precedence over dependents on Navy courts, and although this man looked old for active duty — at 59, he seemed ancient — we could not doubt his authority. As we moved to collect our gear, he noticed my father — at that time the executive officer of the USS Kawishiwi — sitting on the bench where he had been watching us play. The man went immediately to Dad and spoke to him briefly, then came quickly over to us boys. I was unprepared for what came next — an apology.
    Introducing himself, he explained that he was extremely busy, that he reserved the court for this time and that it was the only recreation he had, so he had been in a hurry to get to it, which explained but did not excuse his brusqueness, and he hoped we would understand.
    No problem, admiral, I said. Don’t mind us. We’re moving. Enjoy your game.
    The man was John S. McCain Jr. Had he been in uniform, he would have worn four stars — the same rank his father had attained in World War II. He was CINCPAC — the Commander In Chief Pacific Command — a title that to a Navy brat had the same ring as the words “the king” would have had to someone in Medieval Europe. Except that no king of old ever had authority over as much military power. He commanded all U.S. forces in and around the Pacific and Indian Oceans, from the U.S. west coast to the Persian Gulf. The American forces fighting the war in Vietnam were only a portion of his responsibility.
    Among the hundreds of thousands of men under his command was a lieutenant commander being held as a prisoner of war in Hanoi. The naval aviator was nearing his third anniversary in captivity, most of that time in solitary confinement in a tiny, stifling cell, his monotony relieved only by brutal interrogations. His body, and at one point even his spirit, broken, he would be there for another two-and-a-half years.
    I didn’t know any of that at the time. Only years after Sen. John McCain had risen to national prominence did I connect him to the admiral I’d met that day. But even among the many who knew about the connection, few ever heard CINCPAC speak of it. Only those closest to him knew about the ritual with which he would mark each Christmas: Every year, he would go to Vietnam and visit troops stationed closest to the DMZ. At some point he would go off by himself to the edge of the base and stare silently northward, in the direction of his son.
    Last week, you read (I hope) a column headlined “Barack Like Me,” in which I explained my sense of identification with elements of Barack Obama’s personal journey of self-definition. If you missed it, I urge you to go to my blog (the address is at the end of this piece) and read it. This column is a companion to it. I wrote the earlier piece after reading Sen. Obama’s autobiography about his youth.
    This past week, I read Faith of My Fathers: A Family Memoir, by John McCain and Mark Salter. It’s the very different story of a young man who was far less confused about who he was or where he came from. And as much as I felt I understood “Barry” Obama, my commonality with Navy brat McCain is much more direct, and certainly simpler.
    A few months ago, I wrote another column headlined, “Give me that old-time conservatism,” in which I wrote of the values I had learned growing up in a Navy family, “the old-fashioned ones: Traditional moral values. Respect for others. Good stewardship. Plain speaking. And finally, the concept that no passing fancy, no merely political idea, is worth as much as Duty, Honor and Country.” It was written shortly after Sen. McCain won the S.C. primary, at a time when “conservatives” in his party were doing all they could to stop him.
    His autobiography is a 349-page exploration of those values.
    His grandfather was a hard-driving, smoking, drinking, gambling old salt who cried when he read casualty reports. He had less regard for his own welfare, once telling his wife he would not spend a penny on doctors, preferring to lavish all his money “on riotous living.” He commanded the fast carriers of Task Force 38 through one epic battle after another across the Pacific, stood in the front row at the Japanese surrender on the USS Missouri, then flew home that day. He dropped dead during the party his wife threw to welcome him home.
    His father was a cigar-chomping submarine commander in the same war, who over the next 25 years worked ceaselessly to live up to his father’s example. As CINCPAC, he unsuccessfully pressed his civilian superiors to let him pursue victory in Vietnam. The B-52 attacks on Hanoi (wildly cheered by his son and fellow prisoners as the bombs fell around them) and mining of Haiphong harbor helped focus the North Vietnamese on an eventual peace agreement in Paris. But Admiral McCain didn’t even get to see the war to that unsatisfactory conclusion before being relieved as CINCPAC. He retired, and lived another nine years, but was never a well man after that. His son believes that he, “like his father before him, sacrificed his life” to the strains of wartime command.
    On the fringes of this presidential campaign, one reads silly e-mails and blogs accusing Barack Obama of being less than American because of the African, Muslim part of his ancestry. Some Democrats weakly respond that John McCain isn’t an American, either, having been born in the Canal Zone in Panama. I have to smile at that, because in my life’s experience, the Zone looms as the very essence of America. During the two-and-a-half years I lived in South America in the 1960s, Panama was the place we occasionally visited to get our booster shot of home, the Land of the Big PX, a place to revel in the miracles of television and drinking water straight from the tap without fear.
    Ironically, Panama means far less to John McCain, since his family left there when he was three months old. It was the start of a routine that I know very well:

As soon as I had begun to settle into a school, my father would be reassigned, and I would find myself again a stranger in new surroundings forced to establish myself quickly in another social order.

    If it sounds like I’m complaining, I’m not. It fostered in McCain and me and thousand
s like us an independence that’s hard to explain to those who never experienced it. I suspect it contributed greatly to the characteristics that his campaign inadequately, and monotonously, tries to describe with the word “maverick.”
    But there was a constant in our lives. Growing up, I most often heard the United States Navy referred to as “the Service.” It both described what my father did and why he did it. It was the same for the McCains.
    Barack Obama struggled for identity in his formative years largely because of the absence of his father. John McCain and I both experienced the absence of fathers: “We see much less of our fathers than do other children. Our fathers are often at sea, in peace and war.” But unlike Mr. Obama, we understood exactly who our fathers were and why they were gone:

    You are taught to consider their absence not as a deprivation, but as an honor. By your father’s calling, you are born into an exclusive, noble tradition. Its standards require your father to dutifully serve a cause greater than his self-interest, and everyone around you… drafts you to the cause as well. Your father’s life is marked by brave and uncomplaining sacrifice. You are asked only to bear the inconveniences caused by his absence with a little of the same stoic acceptance.

    But as much as our childhoods were alike, John McCain the man is very different. It’s one thing to know “the Service” as a dependent. It’s far different to serve. As I type that, it sounds terribly trite. Yes, we all know John McCain is a war hero, yadda-yadda, right? But I don’t care how much of a cliche it’s become, it’s true. And it sets him apart.
    I can’t write a “McCain Like Me” column because from an early age, he was different. He always knew he would follow his father and grandfather to the Naval Academy. I knew nothing of the kind, and not just because my father graduated from Presbyterian College. There was a brief time in my late 20s when I considered giving up journalism for the Navy; I even took a written test for prospective officer candidates, and did well on it. But my father pointed out to me what I had always known: My chronic asthma would keep me out. So I dropped the idea.
    John McCain, by contrast, rebelled against inevitability, raising hell and breaking rules all the way through his four years at Annapolis, repeatedly stepping to the brink of expulsion, and graduating fifth from the bottom of his class. Even reading about the hazing he experienced as a plebe, when upperclassmen did everything they could think of to break him and cause him to “bilge out” — nothing, compared to what he would suffer as a POW — I thought, Did I ever experience such treatment? Was I ever tested to that extent? And the answer was “no.” Nor, despite all his doubts about himself, his own period of rebellion or his sense of alienation, did Barack Obama have such a formative experience. If so, he doesn’t tell about it.
    The gulf between John McCain and me would exist if he had never been captured. His heroism during those five unimaginable years — a time when he finally learned the full importance of being part of something larger than himself — only turns the gulf into an ocean.
    I say that not to criticize Sen. Obama, or myself. But it’s a fact. We never knew anything like it. Men like John McCain and my friend Jack Van Loan — his fellow prisoner at the Hanoi Hilton — will forever be imbued with an aura that not even The One can claim. Some dismiss the McCain slogan “Country First” as worn-out rhetoric. But I know that for him, perhaps more than for any candidate I’ve ever known, it simply describes who he is and how he’s lived his life.
    That almost certainly is not enough to help him win the election. As I watch him on the verge of failure, that saddens me. He’s had three decades to come to terms with the fact that the war in which he gave so much caused so many of his fellow Americans to lose their faith in their country, and he’s dealt with it admirably.
    Now this. As I watch him drift further from his goal, I can say “Barack Like Me,” but McCain — he’s on a different plane, and always has been. And increasingly, he seems to be there alone.

Go to thestate.com/bradsblog/

Ap610714012

 

Comparing McCain now with the campaign against him in 2000

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Speaking of stuff that was on today’s op-ed page, did you read the other piece, the one by the two profs — no, wait, just one of them was a prof (at Furman); the other might more accurately be termed a "writer" — about how that awful John McCain ought to "know better" than to criticize Barack Obama over his associations because of the way he, McCain, was treated in the 2000 GOP primary here? An excerpt:

Here we go again. Politicians falling in the polls are resorting to
character slurs and political smears. To the people of South Carolina
it’s deja vu — all over again.

Last
week John McCain’s campaign launched a web advertisement about Barack
Obama’s ties to a “domestic terrorist.” Sarah Palin claimed that Obama
sees America “as being so imperfect … that he’s palling around with
terrorists who would target their own country” and repeatedly commented
on Obama’s “association” with “terrorists.”

It is a chilling indictment. But false.

Such
sad irony. In the 2000 primaries, after John McCain defeated a heavily
favored George Bush by 19 percentage points in New Hampshire, the Texas
governor’s campaign was in trouble. If Bush lost the S.C. primary,
where his opponent was already popular, he had little chance of
stopping McCain. Something had to be done. Anything.

What did you think of the piece? Personally, I thought the premise was silly and way off-base. So why did I run it? Well, we run all sorts of views on the op-ed page, and I think a lot of them are silly and off-base. That’s all part of the public conversation. Specifically, I chose to leave this one on the page for two reasons:

  1. There are a lot of people criticizing McCain these days along precisely these lines, and this was practically a textbook case of it. I especially like the tut-tutting tone attesting to how very disappointed the authors were in McCain ("Such sad irony.") — that is a trait
    common to these sorts of assertions. So this was a good example of
    that, and written from an SC angle. I thought it such a good example that I even overlooked the painfully trite bit about "deja vu all over again." (If only poor Yogi had a nickel for every time, huh?)
  2. It was good to run it as a counterpoint to the Charles Krauthammer piece we ran on Friday, which stuck up for McCain over the Ayers stuff, etc., and criticized him only for having been too fussy to bring this stuff up long before.

Why did I think it silly and off-base? Oh come ON, people! Raising the subject of Bill Ayers — even in clumsy, demagogic language such as "palling around with terrorists" — is in NO WAY like making up a lie about John McCain’s adopted daughter that is specifically and particularly and reprehensibly designed to appeal to the worst racist instincts in the S.C. electorate. Say whatever else you want to say about it, but that’s an extreme stretch. It is ONLY logical if you mean that saying something that reflects poorly upon an opponent’s character is the same as any other instance of doing so. Which is silly.

The authors’ perception of moral equivalence seems to lie in the fact that they believe this, too is "false." But I missed the part where they, or anyone else, has demonstrated that. To the contrary, Obama has had dealings with Bill Ayers, and while the exact nature or extent of said relationship remains fuzzy, what little we know indicates that it was more friendly than, say, inimical. So what you’re left with is quibbling over the quantitative meaning of "palling around," and the generally incendiary, hamhanded style of the assertion by that silver-tongued wordsmith Sarah Palin, or the coarseness of crowds who eat that stuff up.

Or do you think that Bill Ayers is NOT an unrepentant terrorist? If so, I need to see the evidence. Because what I’ve seen argues to the contrary.

Tell you what. I’m going to stop being shy and tell you what I really think — I disagree both with Messrs. Manuto and O’Rourke AND with Krauthammer. I just told you why I disagree with the first two gentlemen. The part I disagree with Krauthammer over is the idea that McCain should have been hammering on this stuff all along. Personally, I wish he weren’t bringing it up NOW. It’s not going to accomplish anything positive — it just speaks to the great divide in our politics left over from Vietnam. That was a battle we didn’t think we were going to fight in this campaign.

And here’s where there is a kernel of a point in the O’Rourke-Manuto piece; they just spoiled it by grotesquely exaggerating it. And it’s this: this is not consistent with the style that has make McCain so popular with those of us who love to watch both sides in the culture wars get mad at him. There’s nothing WRONG with mentioning Ayers; it’s not a foul. But it’s not the style of play we go to McCain for.

There are better ways to say what the McCain campaign has been getting at with the Ayers stuff. For instance, it was stated fairly well in a piece in The Wall Street Journal last week (although the overall thrust of the piece, headlined "News Flash: The Media Back Obama" is in itself another tired cliche):

…Mr. Obama… is the leading exponent of the idea that our lost nation requires rehabilitation in the eyes of the world — and it is the most telling difference between him and Mr. McCain. When asked, in one of the earliest debates of the primary, his first priority should he become president, his answer was clear. He would go abroad immediately to make amends, and assure allies and others in the world America had alienated, that we were prepared to do all necessary to gain back their respect.

It is impossible to imagine those words coming from Mr. McCain. Mr. Obama has uttered them repeatedly one way or another and no wonder. They are in his bones, this impossible-to-conceal belief that we’ve lost face among the nations of the world — presumably our moral superiors. He is here to reform the fallen America and make us worthy again of respect. It is not in him, this thoughtful, civilized academic, to grasp the identification with country that Mr. McCain has in his bones — his knowledge that we are far from perfect, but not ready, never ready, to take up the vision of us advanced by our enemies. That identification, the understanding of its importance and of the dangers in its absence — is the magnet that has above all else drawn voters to Mr. McCain….

The thing is, it’s impossible to imagine a campaign event for John McCain hosted by Bill Ayers. McCain has done a great deal over the years to reach out to people who were opposed to the war in Vietnam, and even to his former captors — he has acted heroically to normalize relations with their country. But there’s no way he would have been associated with a guy who’s proud of HIS association with the bombings of the NYC police HQ, the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon.

Barack Obama HAS been associated with that guy, however fuzzy (and subject to debate) that connection may be. And that speaks to a difference in worldview. But I doubt we’ll ever have an intelligent discussion of that difference.

Wall Street’s worst week ever

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Wall_street_wart2

Well, the stock market had its worst-ever week. But you knew that this morning, didn’t you? This just confirms it.

Those hammerheads need to calm down. Somebody take them out for a good time this weekend or something, OK? Improve their outlook on life. Buy them a lot of beers, or whatever they drink. Get them… I mean, introduce them to some companionship of the opposite sex or something. Or turn a hose on them.

Somebody besides me do it, I mean. Those people drive me crazy; I don’t want to get anywhere near them.

Wall_street_wart

Why Ayers should be persona non grata

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Phillip, whom I respect as a constructive and thoughtful contributor to this blog, raises the issue of academic freedom in connection with Bill Ayers and USC:

Like it or not, for many years now Ayers has been recognized as an
authority in the field of public education, and his academic standing
as professor at the University of Chicago attests to that. That’s the
reality as it exists today. If USC is to be a place where academic
freedom exists, where students are able to be exposed to a wide variety
of competing ideas, the School of Education would be remiss in not at
least including Ayers’ writings as part of their curriculum. You can
see from the website I cited that the conflicting issues raised by
Ayers’ presence or the study of his work were indeed freely "ayred."
(sorry, couldn’t resist that one.)

Anyway, as someone who has a strong record of supporting public
education in this state, it would seem that you would want our USC
students to have the widest knowledge possible in that field, as they
grapple with the challenges they will face in that terrain.

It’s not up to USC to make political/law enforcement judgments above
and beyond what our courts and domestic institutions have arrived at.
The University’s only role is to judge the academic worth of what a
scholar has to offer. There are no outstanding criminal charges against
Ayers; beyond that, if he is good enough to be a tenured professor at U
of C, you can (to borrow another 60’s phrase) bet your sweet bippy that
he’s good enough to give a visiting lecture or two at USC. In those
situations, if a student wants to walk out, or picket, that is also
absolutely appropriate and their right to do so.

Here’s the thing about that: William Ayers has placed himself beyond such bourgeois considerations. Academic piety is insufficient to excuse the man who, in an interview published in The New York Times on Sept. 11, 2001 (yes, that date is correct), said "’I don’t regret setting bombs. ‘I feel we didn’t do enough.” In the same interview, he said he did not recall having said in 1970, explaining the Weatherman philosophy, "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the
revolution home, kill your parents, that’s where it’s really at." But he acknowledged, "it’s been quoted so many times I’m beginning to think I did.” He further explained that ”It was a joke about the distribution of wealth.”

In my book, that makes him persona non grata. The private sector can do what it will, but NO taxpayer-supported institution should employ him for any reason, even temporarily, even in an arms-length relationship. It should be the duty of a public institution to divest itself of any such involvement, however tenuous.

Palling around with terrorists in S.C.

27 Replies

Ap801203024

A lot of y’all think I’m way harsh on our gov. Well, the guy deserves to have someone stick up for him on this one. Barack Obama’s campaign has done him a rather grave, although ridiculous, injustice.

As Sanford says, the attempt to tie him to Obama’s old friend Bill Ayers (that’s him above with Bernardine Dohrn in 1980, and below in 1981) is "bizarre." From the story in the Greenville News:

Obama’s campaign responded in recent days, noting in a fact-check release to reporters this week that Ayers "is currently a distinguished scholar at the University of South Carolina where Republican Gov. Mark Sanford, who supported Sen. McCain’s campaign as far back as the 2000 primaries, serves as an ex-officio member of the board of trustees. By Gov. Palin’s standards, that means Gov. Sanford shares Ayers’ views."

In an interview with Fox News, Bill Burton, Obama’s press secretary, said Sanford "employs" Ayers.

"He’s the governor of the state and he’s in charge of the board, so that means he employs Bill Ayers," Burton said, adding that, "We don’t think that Mark Sanford or John McCain share the views or condone what Bill Ayers did in the 1960s, which Barack Obama said were despicable and horrible."

Gosh, where do we start?

  • First, if supporting John McCain is a crime, then Mark Sanford is as innocent as a lamb. Did he, years ago (as, once upon a time, Obama associated with Ayers)? Yes. But he basically gave the McCain campaign the big, fat finger this year. Sanford was the only leading Republican in the state (and in his case, one uses the term "Republican" loosely, which is one thing I’ve always liked about the guy, but even that can wear thin) NOT to take a stand as to who should win the primary in S.C. As one McCain supporter complained to me, Sanford never so much as invited McCain to drop by for a cup off coffee during the primary campaign; his disdain was breathtaking. His post-primary "endorsement" came through a spokesman, in answer to a question.
  • Next, and this is the most telling point, one must have a staggering ignorance of South Carolina to hold the governor of the state responsible for ANYTHING that happens at a public college or university. Should he have such say? Absolutely. Sanford thinks so, and we’ve thought so for a lot longer. But the higher ed institutions continue to be autonomous fiefdoms answering to boards of trustees appointed by the Legislature — one of the powers that lawmakers guard most jealously. USC and its fellows are famously, notoriously independent of executive control, which is one reason why we lag so far behind such states as NORTH Carolina, which has a board of regents. You say the gov is an ex-officio member of the trustee board? Yeah, with the emphasis on the EX, in the original Latin meaning. He’s also an honorary member of my Rotary Club, but I can’t remember seeing him at any meetings.

So I’ve defended Sanford, who in this case was most unjustly accused. But what the silly Obama allegation DOES do, however, is raise this very good question: What on Earth is USC doing paying stipends to an unrepentant terrorist?

Dohrnayers

‘Boogie Man:’ Atwater film coming to Cola

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Atwaterlee_2

You probably already read in the paper that "Boogie Man," the documentary about Lee Atwater, is coming to the Nickelodeon. A fresh reminder came in via e-mail from Judy Turnipseed:

This movie which starts this week at the Nickelodeon about
the famous Lee Atwater features Tom Turnipseed with a lot of other South
Carolinians.  Tom will be on a panel about the movie on Friday night. 
 
Here is a review of
it in the New York Times
 
 
Here is a link to a trailer of the movie and how to buy
tickets at the Nick if you want to see the movie.

http://www.boogiemanfilm.com/ 

 

Tom, of course, was the object of one of the most outrageously mean things Atwater ever said. Here, from a 1991 story by our own Lee Bandy, is a short version of that bit of history:

Tom Turnipseed, a liberal Democrat who ran for Congress in South Carolina, once accused Atwater of engineering a survey of white voters in which they were pointedly informed of Turnipseed’s membership in the NAACP. Atwater denied the charge, but also said that he did not want to deal with allegations made by someone who had once been "hooked up to jumper cables," referring to shock treatments Turnipseed had received years before as a suicidal teenager.

He said that in 1980, when Turnipseed was running against Floyd Spence.

Earning that first piece of plastic

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By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
Credit used to make sense to me, and now it doesn’t. Here’s the way it once worked, according to my sepia-toned memories:
    When I got out of college in 1975, I went to work for The Jackson Sun in West Tennessee as a copy editor for the lordly sum of $130 a week. That’s $6,760 a year. After a three-week trial period I got a $15-a-week raise, which was quite a thrill at the time. I was married, my wife was in graduate school, and our first child would arrive about a year later.
    My first week, a woman who also worked on the copy desk, taking me under her wing, told me her husband worked at one of the banks, and to contact him if I needed help in that line. As it turned out, I did soon need a loan to pay for a used Vega (yes, I know, a bad call there).
    After the baby came, we decided we needed a credit card to help us through the weeks when my pay (by then $160!) didn’t meet the necessities. So I went to see Paul at the bank, but he said I couldn’t get one until I had established more of a credit record. The car loan helped, and so did the fact that we paid the hospital for the baby in installments. But that wasn’t enough to get a BankAmericard.
    Paul suggested I go to Sears, because they’d give a credit card to anybody. So I did (after which we rewarded Sears’ faith in the proletariat by buying most of the children’s clothes, and all tools and appliances, from there for years to come). Once I produced my Sears card at the bank, I got my “real” credit card.
    My wife, who handles the accounts and pays the bills at our house, now curses the day that piece of plastic came into our house — she has told me more than once in the past week, and apparently will keep telling me until it sinks in, that at our current rate of payment, we will not live long enough to pay off our credit card debt, according to all the actuarial tables or something like that (in one ear, out the other).
    But back then the card was helpful, and actually earning the privilege of having one seemed a sort of milestone. I was now someone deemed worthy of credit.
    In the intervening years a lot has changed. For instance, the Sears card morphed into a Mastercard that I no longer use (under threat of bodily harm) because the usurious rate is high even for a credit card, but that I carry in my wallet for sentimental reasons: It still says “member since 1976.”
    That’s a distinction that wore off long, long ago, though. Today, on the rare occasions when I get to the mail before my wife does, there is always at least one offer of a new credit card, and usually more than one. My children have been getting those come-ons at our house since they entered their teens. Even with all of them moved out, they still come. And my wife still throws them away.
    But that’s credit cards. Let’s talk mortgages.
    My understanding of mortgages does not extend beyond the explanation offered by George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which Robert Ariail lampoons in his cartoon today. Here’s the original dialogue:

    No, but you’re… you’re, you’re, you’re thinkin’ of this place all wrong, as if I had the money back in a safe. Th-th-the money’s not here… why, your money’s in Joe’s house, that’s right next to yours, and in the Kennedy house, and Mrs. Maitland’s house, and, and a hundred others…. Why, you’re lending them the money to build, and then they’re gonna pay it back to you as best they can, now what’re you gonna do, foreclose on them?

    That I understand. And while my mortgage might not be with ol’ George down the street, I did take it out with a very nice person in an office that I could go to and ask questions later if I needed to. But before long my mortgage and yours got bundled up with a thousand others and turned into a financial product that greedheads would buy and sell back and forth across the country as though the biggest contract I’ll ever enter into were merely another drop in a barrel of oil.
    Meanwhile, mortgages were being extended as casually and promiscuously as those credit card solicitations, without regard to the buyers’ ability to pay back, which eventually, as near as I can make out, led to this bizarre situation in which the president of the United States went on the TV last week to tell us that if we don’t come up with $700 billion in one quick hurry, we’ll all soon be living in Pottersville instead of Bedford Falls.
    Apparently, this happened in part because as a nation we decided that everybody ought to have a mortgage, whether they could afford one or not. That sounds really nice and egalitarian and everything. It also sounds just like the arguments I hear from the payday lending industry — that they have to exist because everybody needs to be able to take out loans, and you don’t want to be all paternalistic and tell them they can’t afford it.
    But I’m of the paternalistic school, I guess, if that’s what you want to call it. For years, I was on the local Habitat for Humanity board, and we didn’t sell those houses to just anybody. We made sure that while the families were low-income enough to need our service, they had enough income to make their payments. We provided counseling. We required that they pile up sweat equity by working to build other people’s houses before their own foundation was laid.
    Those hurdles existed to keep the unwary from getting into debt over their heads, just as Paul’s bank once required certain demonstrations before I could have that card.
    And now, apparently the whole nation is being sucked into a vortex of bad decisions chasing each other ’round and ’round.
    And to me, that just doesn’t make sense. But that’s because I don’t understand credit. Not anymore, anyway.

Go to thestate.com/bradsblog/.

What we need

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Fdr

You’ll note that in my Sunday column, I said I found it somewhat reassuring that both John McCain and Barack Obama seemed humbled by the scope of the looming national crisis on Wall Street. It was sort of the point of the column (hence my headline, "Beware excessive certainty about Wall Street crisis").

But I also said, at the end:

    At some point we’re going to need some FDR-like self-assurance
mixed with pragmatic solutions. And in this election that is suddenly
about the economy, it’s unclear which candidate will pass that part of
the audition.

That remains unclear. I mean, the only person on either ticket who has a cocky grin anywhere approaching that one is maybe Joe Biden.

And we need that kind of optimistic confidence in a leader at this time.

Half a trillion? Whoa! That’s more than I make in a YEAR

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OK, I realize that’s an old joke, but I just basically wanted to give y’all a post on which to react to the Bush administration’s proposal for dealing with the crisis on Wall Street:

WASHINGTON — Struggling to stave off financial catastrophe, the Bush administration on Friday laid out a radical bailout plan with a jaw-dropping price tag — a takeover of a half-trillion dollars or more in worthless mortgages and other bad debt held by tottering institutions.

Relieved investors sent stocks soaring on Wall Street and around the globe. The Dow-Jones industrials average rose 368 points after surging 410 points the day before on rumors the federal action was afoot.

A grim-faced President Bush acknowledged risks to taxpayers in what would be the most sweeping government intervention to rescue failing financial institutions since the Great Depression. But he declared, "The risk of not acting would be far higher."

Here are several versions of the story:

I’m still scrambling here to get the weekend editorial and op-ed pages out, but in the meantime, what do y’all think? The market seems to like it, but those folks are easily excited…

From our political family album

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Edgarfritzstrom

Searching the AP Archives (a dangerous thing to let me do, given that I’m the World’s Most Easily Distracted Man) for a suitable picture of Fritz Hollings for the Sunday op-ed page (which in the end I didn’t use; Robert volunteered a caricature instead), I ran across the one above, which has the following caption:

State Sen. Edgar Brown, D-Barnwell, left, Sen. Ernest F. Hollings, D-S.C., center, and Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., leave the Darlington Presbyterian Church, Sept. 20, 1972, after paying their final repects to the late state Sen. James P. Mozingo. (AP Photo/Lou Krasky)

Note the hats — evidently, Strom and Sen. Brown had still not received the JFK memo.

Riffing on that as I am wont to do, just out of curiosity to see what an Edgar Brown search would turn up, I found the one below. I like it as a sort of alternative moment from the convention for which Abbie Hoffman and Richard Daley pere are better remembered. The caption:

South Carolina Gov. Robert McNair, right, listens as he and Sen. Edgar Brown, left, and Gov. John West hold a private conference on the fire escape of their Chicago Hotel on Monday, Aug.26,1968 in Chicago. The three men are part of the South Carolina delegation to the Democratic National Convention which gets underway Monday. (AP Photo)

No, this post doesn’t have any point; I’m just sharing…
Brownwestmcnair_chicago68

So everything’s OK on Wall St. now? No?

4 Replies

Tradergrin

So this morning, for the fourth day in a row, The Wall Street Journal spreads the collapse of major financial institutions across six columns — which, to a guy who used to be a front-page editor, is more alarming than any numbers you might throw at me.

And as if that weren’t enough, a one-column headline below and on the right-hand-side of the page, said "Worst Loss Since ’30s, With No End Yet in Sight." What a way to start the day, huh?

But now I go to the WSJ site and see a grinning trader (one Theodore Weisberg, above), and the headline "Stocks Soar; Banks Lead the Way."

OK, that’s nice. I don’t know why this is happening, and I don’t think it reverses all the bad news, but it’s nice. I’ll resist trying to analyze it. I see it had something to do with an action by the Fed and other central banks, which tempts me react like a history major and say something some thing like, "Nothing like a strong central bank — take that, you Jeffersonians!" But I won’t. I’m aware of how little I actually understand….

The passing of Yuri Nosenko

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Boy, we really have been preoccupied in this country with this presidential election, haven’t we? Me included.

Somehow, I had missed the fact that Yuri Nosenko had died, way back on Aug. 23, until I finally saw the obit in LAST week’s Economist.

Two things to say about Comrade Nosenko’s passing:

  1. Did you ever see the 1986 made-for-TV movie about him (I think it was on HBO), starring Tommy Lee Jones? Excellent.
  2. I often think of Mr. Nosenko when I hear from the antiwar people who talk about mistaken WMD intel as having been "lies," rather than a case of the administration simply believing the wrong intel.

The Nosenko case is a classic example of the fact that in intelligence, you often have to choose WHICH intel you are going to believe. After we locked up Mr. Nosenko for years, interrogating him under horrific conditions that one might choose to call "torture" without stretching the meaning of the word, believing him to be a KGB plant meant to discredit another defector (and to absolve the Kremlin of the JFK assassination), we finally rehabilitated him, said he was OK, gave him a check and a new identity.

But to this day, one can probably get a fierce debate going among folks with high security clearances as to which set of assumptions about Mr. Nosenko was the one based on lies.

In fact, the only reason we say he is dead is because the authorities TELL US he’s dead. We don’t even know what name he was living under "somewhere in the Southern United States." As the NYT reported:

Claire George, a former C.I.A. deputy director of operations, told The
Washington Post, which first reported Mr. Nosenko’s death on Wednesday,
that Mr. Nosenko’s treatment “was a terrible mistake.” But, he added,
“you can’t be in the spy business without making mistakes.”

How are we feeling about the Electoral College?

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Back on my post about recent polls, I agreed with Phillip that what matters is NOT these national popular-vote numbers we’re seeing, but how the candidates are stacking up in the battleground states. Then, I asked:

Taking that to another level — while Phillip and I agree that the state-by-state is what matters, can we agree that the state-by-state is what SHOULD matter?

That one was a tough question to get folks to agree on in November 2000, but right now, when we don’t know how this one is going to come out, how are we feeling about that old Electoral College?

So how about it. Without knowing yet how the popular vote comes out — and it could go either way at this point — how do YOU feel about the Electoral College? Good? Bad? Indifferent?

Personally, I think it’s a fine thing. It forces a candidate to have appeal across the country, rather than just in a few population centers. At least, it’s fine in the abstract.

What’s Bill Moyers talking about?

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Last week and this week I’ve been watching PBS because it’s been covering more of the conventions than the networks (did I mention I didn’t go to the conventions this year?).

So I’ve heard, over and over, this promo from Bill Moyers in which, speaking of the 2008 election (I think), he says, "The stakes have never been higher."

Really? How about 1932? Or 1800, when we didn’t know whether a peaceful transition of power from one party to the other was possible in this revolutionary republic until we actually DID it, and after an election that still stands as being as vituperative as any?

How, pray tell, about 1860? Pretty doggoned high stakes there, I’d venture to say.

Yep, this is an extremely interesting election offering starkly different choices for the nation’s future. It is more exciting than any in my adult life (and not, I think, just because I like both McCain and Obama, which is a first for me). But the stakes have been higher.

Not up to KGB standards

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Waiting for Palin — Huckabee’s talking now — I got to thinking about the other side of the world. Have you read about the Russians’ lame attempt to pin the Georgian conflict on this guy Michael Lee White, who they claim is some sort of CIA master spy?

They base this on a passport White lost in 2005, and had replaced. They claim they found it at an outpost used by Georgian special forces.

From what I’ve read, if this guy’s a spy, he’s SO good, and so successful at NOT looking like a spy, that it seems unlikely he’d leave his passport lying around.

Look, if Putin wants to pin it on this guy, at the very least he could live up to the KGB tradition and make it look GOOD. They would have CAUGHT the guy, and turned him up at a press conference.

Why back in the day, the Rooskies could shoot down an ACTUAL U2 pilot, complete with a frickin’ poison needle hidden in a frickin’ silver dollar, and catch Ike lying about it.

Those were the days. Whatever happened to standards?

What’s with the tieless look?

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Obamabiden_2

As I noted earlier, the masculine equivalent of Sarah Palin’s specs and tied-up hair is to wear a coat and tie. The effect in both cases is to project seriousness of purpose.

So what are we to make of the fact that, all of a sudden, the male candidates for president and vice president are, quite deliberately, showing themselves in public without neckties?I don’t mean as a sort of occasional thing for a barbecue, but all the time. And don’t try to tell me this is just happening without somebody thinking about it; campaigns think about everything these days, as Peggy Noonan noted the other day (writing about Obama’s acceptance speech, the last time he was seen wearing a tie).

This has been coming for some time. As far back as 2006, Joe Biden was regularly appearing here in S.C. with a jacket, but no tie… sort of the Paul-McCartney-on-the-cover-of-Abbey-Road look. Here’s proof of that.

Then, I started noticing Obama doing the same. And McCain, too. And Huckabee and even Romney.

Here’s what worries me about this… those of you who are old enough to remember will recall how JFK killed men’s hats. There are some authorities that dispute it, but then there are many who believe Oswald didn’t act alone. Suffice it to say that before JFK, men wore hats. Afterwards, they didn’t.

Obama could do the same with the necktie. Biden and McCain aren’t so much of a threat, because when they go tieless, they just look like they’re been playing with their grandchildren and didn’t want them chewing on their ties. They don’t look natural that way.

But there’s been altogether too much loose talk about Obama’s charisma. No less an authority than Ted Sorensen has sat in my board room and pronounced Obama the rightful heir to Camelot. He’s already known as The One. How long can it be before he’s dubbed The Tieless One? (Note the picture above — while Biden just looks like he’s on his way to play golf, Obama is making that "early-60s, Best-and-Brightest" statement again with the white dress shirt, sleeves rolled up).

So, if the necktie industry, moribund as it is, wants to save itself, it had better do what it can to elect McCain. Because if Obama’s elected, every day will be casual Friday.

Or at least, he would get the "credit." The fact is that, as I have noted twice in recent columns, Gallup has found that only 6 percent of American men wear a tie to work every day. I, of course, am of the 6 percent, and am determined to wear the thing every day until I retire. I mean, I have to now — it’s a statement. Before, it was conformity. Now, it’s a statement of adherence to traditional values and seriousness of purpose. I’ll have you know that I bought on of the last bow ties at Lourie’s — in fact, it may have been the last bow tie they actually sold.

I also still have a Wilson Jack Kramer Autograph wooden tennis racket, although I don’t use it any more. I do use my old persimmon 4 wood, though. When I’m hitting it right, it’s the best club in my bag; the ball flies like a rifle shot. Which reminds me, I’m not working today…
Mccainhuck

Nick Clyburn? or, ‘Hey, Buddy…’

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One thing jumped out at me when I read the piece about Jim Clyburn on today’s front page:

"…Then, he disappears down the restaurant’s narrow stairway, his three-man security detail in tow…."

Apparently, Rep. Clyburn is channeling the Nick Theodore of 20 years ago. This is from a Lee Bandy story of July 20, 1988:

SIX-MAN GUARD RIDICULED
A top state Republican is ridiculing Lt. Gov. Nick Theodore’s security contingent at the convention, but a Theodore spokesman said the six-person contingent is needed.

"While we don’t dispute the need for basic security even for a part-time job, Theodore needs a half-dozen bodyguards like Dolly Parton needs a body lift," State Republican Party Chairman Van Hipp said.

Four SLED agents and two state troopers are in Atlanta with Theodore, SLED Chief Robert Stewart said.

Theodore normally has two SLED agents, but "whatever is requested by the governor or lieutenant governor, we’ll send it," Stewart said.

Theodore spokesman Lyles Glenn said long hours and admission restrictions necessitated the extra manpower.

Spokesman Tucker Eskew said Gov. Carroll Campbell would have three or four bodyguards at the Republican National Convention next month in New Orleans.

Ah, those were the days. I was with Lee at that convention (did I mention that I’m not at this one?), and I well remember Nick’s "command post" in a room on the ground floor of the Days Inn there in Buckhead, from which his ongoing security operation was coordinated via radio.

Poor Nick never did quite live that down. Echoes of his armed force reverberate today through consideration of Andre Bauer’s security expenditures.

Anyway, that was the last part of Mr. Clyburn’s day that grabbed me. Somehow, I think I had more fun following Lindsey Graham around at the GOP shindig four years ago. After all, I got to meet Biff Henderson.

Imagining an old JFK

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You know what I kept thinking last night when Ted Kennedy was talking, and not for the first time? I wasKennedys
thinking how impossible it is to imagine any of his older brothers as old, feeble men, being lionized in the winter of their years. Not Jack, certainly not Bobby, and absolutely not Joe Jr.

And yet here was the baby of the family, fabulously old and famously ill. It’s weird.

Something else occurred to me: He doesn’t have nearly the heavy accent that Jack and Bobby did. It’s there, but his manner of speech is much more whitebread America. I found myself wondering if this has happened over time and I’m just noticing it, or did he always speak this way? Is it that he has lived through a time of greater homogenization of the culture, a time his brothers didn’t survive to live through, or is it just an individual difference?

I’m always thinking stuff like this, instead of paying attention to the words…