Category Archives: Immigration

Lay off Dennis the Menace. Hillary, too

At last night’s debate, Tim Russert sought to have fun at Dennis Kucinich’s expense, and succeeded.

"Did you see a UFO?" asked the immoderate moderator. "I did," said Mr. Kucinich, and the place burst into laughter. He struggled on to explain, "It Dennis
was (an) unidentified flying object, OK. It’s like — it’s unidentified. I saw something."

If you see an object in the sky and you don’t know what it is, it’s an unidentified flying object. But you see, Superficial America — the version of America that exists on television, on blogs, at press conferences, and throughout political campaigns — has officially decided that Dennis the Menace, whom we all know as flaky to begin with, has duly outdone himself by admitting that he saw a UFO at (and this is the really rich part) Shirley Maclaine’s house. Everybody laugh now.

Yeah, Dennis is a fringe kind of guy, but this is unfair. It’s part of the dumbing-down and oversimplifying function of mass media, and people who live their lives as extension of said media. Call them the Blathering Classes. This shorthand culture demands that everyone fit into an assigned cubicle, preferably one of two choices in each case: Left or Right, Democrat or Republican, winner or loser, conservative or liberal, black or white, yes or no.

We saw the same foolishness at work in the way the other candidates jumped on Hillary Clinton for having answered a question about Gov. Spitzer’s immigrant driver’s license proposal pretty much the way I would:

"You know, Tim, this is where everybody plays ‘gotcha.’ It makes a lot of sense… what is the governor supposed to do? He is dealing with a serious problem. We have failed, and George Bush has failed. Do I think this is the best thing for any governor to do? No. But do I understand the sense of real desperation, trying to get a handle on this — remember, in New York; we want to know who’s in New York, we want people to come out of the shadows. He’s making an honest effort to do it; we should have passed immigration reform.

John Edwards, who would never be accused of holding a nuanced or complex few of any emotional issue, pounced:

"Unless I missed something, Sen. Clinton said two different things in the course of about two minutes, uh, just a few minutes ago. And, I think this is a real issue… for the country. I mean, America is looking for a president who will say the same thing, who will be consistent, who will be straight with them.

To my view, a person who explains that this is not an issue with a simple answer, and explains why — which Mrs. Clinton did — is the one who is being straight with us. To expand on something I’ve said before, anyone who thinks there’s a simple answer on this one is either not really thinking, or is NOT being straight with us.

Obama was no better:

I was confused on Sen. Clinton’s answer. I, I, I can’t tell whether she was for it or against it, and I do think that is important. One of the things that we have to do in this country is to be honest about the challenges that we face.

Excuse me? She just did that.

Joe Biden said he wasn’t running against Hillary Clinton; he was running to be leader of the free world, a job he’s actually prepared for over lo these many years. Maybe that’s why he’s doing so poorly; Superficial America has no patience for that sort of thing.

Since when are we in Albany?

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Keeping to my policy of putting any extended e-mail exchange on my blog so it reaches a wider audience, I share this one from this evening. It begins with my receipt of this:

Mr. Warthen,
I would like to know whyThe State has not ran anything as far as I know, regarding NY Governor Elliott Spitzer’s decision to demand that illegal immigrants be issued NY drivers licenses? I have noticed that The State ran several articles about a variety of other issues in NY but seemed to have chosen to ignore a major story in which the governor is suing defiant DMV employees who have refused to issue the licenses and they in turn are suing him for alledgedly breaking federal law and a possible recall could even be in the works.I for one believe that since his decision could directly impact not only NY residents but the entire nation since the illegals could obtain a "valid" license in NY and exchange it for a "valid" SC license. It also has the potential for massive voter fraud since it is connected with "motor voter" states which I do believe SC is one. It is also important because a potential Presidential candidate and Senator from NY , Hillary Clinton, has been conspicuously quiet on this matter and the public should be made aware of her stance on this very important issue.
Remember, "homeland security?" (LOL) Well, what about it Mr. Warthen?

I responded as follows:

Well, first of all, you’re asking the wrong guy. I have zero, zip, nada to do with what appears in The State‘s news pages.

Second, in spite of that, I’ll venture a guess as to why precious news hole wouldn’t be devoted to this: This Spitzer guy is the governor of New York, and we’re in South Carolina. I appreciate your effort to draw a line of relevance to S.C., but compared to all the stuff that affects S.C. directly that it would be good to have more news on, it seems thin.

Third, since like all such inquiries, this is no doubt one of those ridiculous "you’re suppressing news in accordance with your political views on the matter" things, I should tell you that personally, I don’t have an opinion on the matter. I say that despite having thought about it a great deal back when I was a member of the S.C. Hispanic Leadership Council. I can see the advantage of having a way to keep track of an "underground" portion of our population, but I can also see the disadvantages of issuing such licenses. One thing I DID decide: Anybody who quickly arrives at a clear preference on this issue is somebody who isn’t thinking.

Fourth, there’s no way on Earth I or anyone else could suppress news of this. I just started working out again the last couple of days, which means I’ve been exposed to Cable TV down in our gym (I don’t have it at home). Both nights, I heard some doofus named Lou Dobbs who would not shut up about this. To him, it seemed to be the only thing worth talking about in the known universe. I say "doofus" because he had an uncanny ability to respond to anything anybody else said in a way that lowered the intellectual tenor of the discussion another notch or two. His main mode of communication seemed to be the repetition of childishly unimaginative insults and name-calling, mostly aimed at Spitzer for being a spoiled rich boy or some such. Even for TV, it was remarkable.

Finally, as I do with all such extended responses, I’m going to post this one on my blog. If you’d like to respond, please do so there.

GOP leaders really going out on a limb on this one

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You will have noted by now that Bobby Harrell has joined the GOP establishment types officially aligning themselves behind Lindsey Graham’s re-election (if you want to call our governor, whose hobby is infuriating fellow Republicans, an "establishment type.").

Normally this wouldn’t even be worth the sort of by-the-way blurb treatment S.C. newspapers are giving it. For the first time in a very long time, one of the brightest, most visible, most quoted members of the U.S. Senate is from South Carolina. Of course officeholders of his party would line up behind him.

But one gets the idea they do so with a slight nervousness, like covered-wagon settlers holding hands around the campfire, trying not to notice the faint sound of war drums in the distance. (It’s the natives — they’re restless.)

All of that said, with all of this visible support, does Lindsey really need to be warding off the evil spirits with all these incantations he keeps reciting?

Lindsey’s ‘hard pander’ on immigration

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A colleague brings my attention to what he refers to as "a hard pander on immigration from Lindsey." Mike goes on to say:

Not
only is it a reasonable bill he would otherwise support, but he also lapses into
cartoonish military-speak about our southern border. "Boots on the ground" …
"force multiplier" … "unmanned aerial vehicles" … "operational
control."

You’d
think these people were surging over the border with assault rifles, instead of
sneaking in to pick our fruit and prepare our chickens.

Pretty
chickenhearted, from a man with $4 million in campaign funds and no known
opponent.

Anyway, here’s the release he was referring to:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:    Contact: Wes Hickman or Kevin Bishop
October 24, 2007

Graham Opposes DREAM Act
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) today voted against invoking cloture on the DREAM Act. Sixty votes were necessary to move to consideration of the legislation and the vote in the Senate was 52-44. He made this statement following the vote:
   “First, we must show the American people we are serious about securing our nation’s borders.
   “I have twice introduced and passed legislation through the Senate providing $3 billion for improved border security. There is no doubt we need more boots on the ground, more miles of fencing, better technology which acts as a force multiplier, additional detention beds, and unmanned aerial vehicles at the border. I have and will continue to push for adoption of the Graham Amendment until it is signed into law by President Bush.
   “Regaining operational control of our nation’s borders is a gateway to further reforms of our broken immigration system.
   “I’m sympathetic to the concerns expressed today on the floor of the Senate, but I believe the legislation was poorly drafted and in need of further amending. Additionally, Majority Leader Reid made clear that he was not going to allow any meaningful changes to the DREAM Act, a legislative process I found to be very unfair. Without assurances border security would be addressed, I would not vote to proceed to this matter.
   “There is no reason to abandon our border security efforts at this critical moment in time. We need to be focused on securing our borders to ensure people who come into the country do so legally.”
               #####

I’m with Mike about the chest-thumping in this release. I will say one thing in Lindsey’s defense, though: He and McCain always couched their immigration efforts in terms of "securing our borders." When I asked Sen. McCain why on Earth he wanted to beat himself up with this issue in the midst of a presidential campaign, when the only people who see this as an urgent issue are the ones who will hate him for not being mean enough to the Mexicans, he said he couldn’t see putting off such an important Homeland Security issue. In other words, it’s not the Mexicans he’s worried about keeping out.

All that said — yeah, Lindsey’s going out of his way, once again, to win hearts and minds among our latter-day Know-Nothings.

Joe Biden on having the juice to get thing done

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Biden_001
By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
Why should voters in South Carolina’s Democratic primary skip the front-runners to pick Joe Biden as their nominee for president?
Because, he explained to our editorial board last week, he’s the guy with the juice. He’s got the experience to have the knowledge, he has sound ideas based on that knowledge, and he’s got the credibility to sell the ideas.
Today, he says, there’s no juice in the White House.
Take the immigration issue. Why, we asked, did the recent comprehensive bill fail?
“Bush,” said Sen. Biden.
“That’s not a criticism,” he added.
“I think Bush was more right on immigration than he’s been on any other national issue. But he had no Biden_019
credibility. He could not carry any of his base.”
He said it was a failure of presidential leadership. “You’ve got the lamest lame-duck president in modern history now. And it is actually a shame. No fooling. Because the few things where you could generate a consensus with him, he’s not of any help.”
So who has the juice? Joe Biden does, as he had demonstrated a few days earlier.
The previous week, he had pulled off the apparent miracle of getting 75 members of the U.S. Senate — which meant getting a bunch of Republican votes — to vote for the centerpiece of the Biden platform: A plan to divide Iraq into three semi-autonomous regions under a loose federalist system.
After all those pointless votes about timetables and such that other Democrats kept pushing, in full knowledge that they would not find their way into law, all of a sudden a consensus approach had emerged.
How did that happen?
First, “I don’t think there are 12 Republicans that support this president’s position,” which can be summed up in two sentences: “Stand up an Iraqi army so American troops can stand down. Two, strong central democratic government in Baghdad that will act as the first domino to fall through the middle east, generating the end — if not the end, a fatal blow — to terror.”
Under that approach, the purpose of the surge was “to give the warring factions breathing room… to make a political accommodation.”
Biden_007
But there’s no such accommodation. Sen. Biden says a lot of senators have been over to Iraq and talked to real people. And what have they learned?
“Nobody — nobody, nobody, nobody — thinks there’s a possibility of establishing a strong unity government that can gain the support of the Iraqi people and bring security and economic prosperity to Iraqis. Nobody.
“Every success that exists in Iraq has been at the local level. That’s where the successes come.”
The only ways the surge has worked, he maintains, is where it has enabled local, homogenous authorities to run things their way, without interference from Baghdad.
Last year, only 1,000 Sunnis stepped forward in Anbar province to join the national police force run by the Shi’a-led government in Baghdad. “The national police force is corrupt,” says Sen. Biden. “It is zero; it’s worse that zero. They’re death squads.”
“Eliminate it.”
The surge worked when Americans “said to the tribal leaders, look guys, you can patrol your own streets. You mean we don’t have to have the central government here? Absolutely. Good.” So “10,000 people show up from the tribes…. They’re patrolling the streets. They still haven’t gotten it under control. But it’s a lot further down the road, and no one’s talking about a national police force.”
Look at Kurdistan, he says, which has had local autonomy for some time. “And so everyplace you look to, it comes down to devolving power, where there’s any possibility of it working.”
How did he sell the Senate on this? First, “I’ve been working these guys and women for a year on it; I’m like a broken record on it.” He sold it on the merits, but it was also appealing because it didn’t involved the constitutional problem of trying to tell the commander in chief how many troops he can send where when.
But it also came down to juice, to credibility: “I think if you ask Lindsey or you ask other Republicans, they trust me; I don’t ever play a game with them. I think that they think I know something about this Biden_022
issue, and I have not been one who is saying things that they know is not rational.”
As opposed to certain other people seeking the Democratic nomination: “How can you say on stage, almost to a person, that I will not withdraw troops; I’ll have to have troops there, combat troops there for X amount of years, maybe to 2013, and by the way, I’m voting to cut off funding for those troops, yesterday?”
So unlike certain people named Clinton, Obama and Edwards, “I have some credibility with these guys that I’m not playing a political game with them.”
What about bringing troops home? “What I don’t want to do is fly under false colors here. I don’t want to tell the American people that if this plan is adopted, all Americans come home,” he said.
“If this plan were adopted, it’s the only way in which you could justify keeping American forces there.”
But if it weren’t adopted, unlike his rivals, he’d get the troops out right away.
“I would not withdraw from the region. But I’ll be damned if I’m gonna continue to have my son’s generation stuck in a position where they’re on the fault line, and the only thing they’re there to do is keep things from getting worse,” without any prospect of them getting better.
So that’s his deal: He’s the guy with the plan, and the juice to get it done. And last week, he had the cred to make folks believe it.

For video from this editorial board interview, click here.

Biden_031

What happens after you get rid of the illegal immigrants?

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Someone — OK, a Graham staffer — brought this to my attention this morning:

September 26, 2007
Towns Rethink Laws Against Illegal Immigrants
By KEN BELSON and JILL P. CAPUZZO
RIVERSIDE, N.J., Sept. 25 — A little more than a year ago, the Township Committee in this faded factory town became the first municipality in New Jersey to enact legislation penalizing anyone who employed or rented to an illegal immigrant.
Within months, hundreds, if not thousands, of recent immigrants from Brazil and other Latin American countries had fled. The noise, crowding and traffic that had accompanied their arrival over the past decade abated.
The law had worked. Perhaps, some said, too well.
With the departure of so many people, the local economy suffered. Hair salons, restaurants and corner shops that catered to the immigrants saw business plummet; several closed. Once-boarded-up storefronts downtown were boarded up again.
Meanwhile, the town was hit with two lawsuits challenging the law. Legal bills began to pile up, straining the town’s already tight budget. Suddenly, many people — including some who originally favored the law — started having second thoughts.
So last week, the town rescinded the ordinance, joining a small but growing list of municipalities nationwide that have begun rethinking such laws as their legal and economic consequences have become clearer…

That’s sort of a two-edged story, really. It supports my, and Sen. Graham‘s position, by suggesting that our economy would suffer if you just boot the illegals out. But part of the problem is manufactured by the ACLU. And I don’t believe you should avoid a certain policy position because somebody might sue you; to me that’s a poor argument.

As to the merits of the lawsuits — well, I don’t know, because the story doesn’t address WHY they have succeeded in court. I don’t know the grounds.

Lookee, y’all! Ah’m being mean to the Mexicans! See?!?

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Just received this e-mail:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 13, 2007

Graham Votes to Restrict Mexican Trucks on American Roads

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) voted to end a NAFTA pilot program that allows Mexican trucks to transport goods throughout the United States. The Senate voted 72-24 to cut off all funds from the program.
“This problem has been brewing for a decade and now it has finally come to a head,” said Graham. “There are very serious safety concerns about Mexican trucks on American roadways. The pilot program has holes that will make important safeguards unenforceable. In America, we have standards and those standards are not being met. Until I am convinced the safety of Americans can be protected, I can not allow this program to continue.”
The Mexican truck program was created by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the pilot program began September 6. According to a recent report from the Department of Transportation Inspector General the pilot program has not developed and implemented complete, coordinated plans for checking trucks and drivers participating in the demonstration project as they cross the border. There also remain questions about the program relating to insurance, equipment defects, driving time and environmental impact.    The provision passed as part of the Fiscal Year 2008 Transportation Appropriations Bill. The bill must now go to conference with the House of Representatives before it can be sent to President Bush.
                     ####

‘Bout TIME we got US some free trade, ‘stead o’ wastin’ it on them furriners…

That infuriating John McCain, or, How do you pitch to a hero?

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Mccain1

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
HOW ARE YOU supposed to do your job with professional detachment when every time you see one of the main guys running for president, every time you read about him, every time he opens his mouth or takes an action in public, you think, “Hero”?
How are you supposed to keep your rep when you keep thinking, I admire this guy? Of all things, admire! It’s embarrassing.
On top of that, how do you do it when so many of the smart, hip, unfettered, scalpel-minded professionals around you snort when the hero’s name is mentioned, and use terms like “has-been” and “loser” and “that poor old guy”?
It’s not easy. Maybe it’s not even possible. It wasn’t possible on Monday, when John McCain visited our editorial board.
I presided as usual, asking most of the questions and so forth. But I never quite hit my stride. I was uneasy; I stumbled in bringing forth the simplest questions. It was weird. I’d pitched to this guy a number of times before with no trouble, even in post-season play. And here he was stepping up to bat in my ball park, where the rubber on the mound has molded itself to my cleats, and I can’t put a simple fastball over the plate, much less a curve.
I kept remembering our last formal meeting with him, in 2000, on the day that we would decide whom Mccain3
to endorse in a GOP primary that would either slingshot him onward toward victory, or enable George W. Bush to stop his insurgency cold. I wasn’t out of sorts like this. I had stated my case — my strong belief that we should endorse Sen. McCain — several days before in a 4,000-word memo to my then-publisher, a committed Bush man. I was fully prepared to make it again to the full board once the candidate left the room. And I was ready to lose like a pro if it came to that. Which it did.
But now, 9/11 has happened. The nation is at war, and bitterly divided, even over whether we’re “at war.” And I keep thinking — as I sit a couple of feet from the candidate, aiming my digital camera with my left hand, scribbling the occasional haphazard note with my right, glancing from time to time at the audio recorder on the table to note how many minutes into the interview he said such-and-such, so busy recording the event that I don’t really have time to be there — this is the guy who should have been president for the past seven years.
The odd thing is, a lot of people who now dismiss the McCain candidacy also believe he should have been president — that we’d be less divided at home, more admired abroad, more successful at war. But they talk like the poor old guy missed his chance. It’s like candidates have “sell by” dates stamped on them like bacon, and his was several years back. Too bad for him, they say. But I think, too bad for the nation — if they’re right.
The best thing for me, as a professional critic, as a jaded observer, would be for those people to be right. I have no trouble assessing the relative merits of the other candidates in either major party. I even like some of them. Life could be good, professionally speaking, if that old “hero” guy really did just fade away.
But he doesn’t. There he is, sitting there, being all honest and straightforward and fair-minded and brave and admirable. Dang.
Go ahead, get mad at him. He’s let the moment get away from him. You can’t take a man seriously as a leader when he’s blown all that money only to lose ground, when he can’t stop his hired rats from diving overboard. Focus on his mottled scars. Murmur about how even the best of men slow down with age.
But then you think about how this guy aged early. You look at his awkwardness as he holds his coffee cup, and you think about how the North Vietnamese strung him up by his broken arms, and all he had to do to end it was agree to go home. But he wouldn’t.
That was then, of course, but it’s just as bad now. Think about how you asked him several months ago why he thought he had to do something about immigration now, when the only people who cared passionately about the issue and would vote on the basis of that one thing were the ones who would hate him forever for being sensible about it. He had no excuse; he just thought it was the right thing to do.
Mccainstarbucks
You think of all the Democrats and “moderates” who egged him on when he was Bush’s No. 1 critic (which he still is, if you actually listen), but who now dismiss him as the president’s “lapdog” because he (gasp!) — supports the surge and actually, if you can stand it, thinks it’s working! These political goldfish forget that their favorite maverick criticized Bush for not sending enough troops, so of course he supports a “surge” when the president knuckles under and implements one.
Oh, but don’t speak of such people dismissively. This ridiculously admirable guy at the end of the table, who long ago forgave both his communist torturers and the protesters at home who would have spit on him given the chance, won’t have it. When I speak less than flatteringly of the impatience of Americans on Iraq, he corrects me, and relates a list of perfectly good reasons for them to be fed up.
So when it’s over, you try to produce a McCain column for Wednesday, but you can’t. Wednesday, Sam Brownback steps to the same plate, and your arm is fine. You interrogate the guy, assess him, reach a conclusion, and slap a column on the Thursday page. Three up, three down. You’ve got your stuff back.
But Sunday’s deadline draws nearer, and it’s gone again. Desperate, you think: How about a bulleted list of what he said Monday? There’s plenty of it. Naw, that’s a news story, not an opinion column.
And you know, you just know, that the one thing you can’t write is the truth, which is that you just admire the hell out of this infuriating old guy. The fans won’t stand for it. You can hear the beer bottles clattering around you on the mound already.
But it’s no use. You just can’t get the ball across today.

For actual information regarding the McCain interview, and more, go to http://blogs.
thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/.

John McCain videos

Rudy speaking in Columbia on immigration, health care

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Rudy Giuliani was playing to a very small crowd — the seats immediately behind him were (as often the case with such events) stacked with some of his best-known local supporters, such as Rusty DePass and Gayle Averyt, hardly "faces in the crowd" in this town — but he was in fine form as he addressed his "town-hall" meeting at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center.

On both immigration and health care, he managed to slip in the idea that America is one heck of a great place (which it is). On immigration, that’s why all those bothersome illegals want to come here. On health care, the fact that folks who have a choice come to this country for health care rather than vice versa is in his book (but not in mine) evidence that we do, too have the best system among advanced countries.

Anyway, enjoy my rough videos from this afternoon’s session. (By the way, with regard to what I said about it being a "small crowd" — note that in the second clip, many of the seats in the not-so-well-lit sections were empty. I should add that at least a couple of those that were not empty were taken up by those lazy freeloaders in the working press.)

Yeah, I like Joe Lieberman. So?

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As readers of this blog know, I’m a big Joe Lieberman fan. I’m big on John McCain, too. And Lindsey Graham. I like people who take principled stands — in favor of fighting terrorism even when it occurs in Iraq, or instituting rational immigration reform even when it means being fair to Mexicans — and stick to those stands, even when the ideological nutjobs in their respective parties are skinning them alive for doing so.

So I had to smile when somebody who works for Edwards — feeling compelled, to my surprise, to respond to my column, which turned out to be a WAY bigger deal than I would have expected — dismissed my obserrvations by saying we endorsed Lieberman in 2004:

Edwards spokesman Eric Schultz suggested the editorial is a farce and noted that columnist Brad Warthen of The State newspaper, based in Columbia, S.C., endorsed Joe Lieberman a day before the Connecticut senator dropped out of the Democratic primary race in 2004.

I smile because I essentially browbeat my colleagues into endorsing Joe, in a three-hour talkathon in which I just plain wore them down, on the very day we had to write our endorsement and put it on the page (John Kerry had not come in until that day, and Howard Dean had requested a second meeting — the one mentioned in the anecdote in my column — so we couldn’t have our discussion until then).

And you know, some of those colleagues drew the same connection as Mr. Schultz — they said the fact that Lieberman was going to get creamed in the S.C. primary had something to do with whether we should endorse him. As I respect my colleagues, I respect Mr. Shultz’s observation. But the two fact had nothing to do with each other in my mind. To me, it didn’t matter whether Joe got a single vote, as long as he was the best candidate in the field. And he was.

Anyway, for your nostalgic pleasure, I hereby copy the column I wrote explaining that editorial decision. I wrote it to exculpate my colleagues as much as anything. I didn’t find endorsing Joe embarrassing after his loss, but I sensed that they did. So I explained how it happened. I do stuff like that. I was doing that this morning — and everybody freaked. I guess that’s because it became a national story and the national folk don’t know me. Anyway, here’s that column:

The State (Columbia, SC)
February 8, 2004 Sunday FINAL EDITION
HERE’S WHAT WE LOOK FOR IN A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE
BYLINE: BRAD WARTHEN, EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. D2
LENGTH: 972 words

IN THE COUPLE of months leading up to last week’s Democratic presidential primary here, most of the candidates came by our offices for interviews with the editorial board. In chronological order, they were Dick Gephardt, Carol Moseley Braun, Joe Lieberman, John Edwards, Howard Dean and John Kerry.
The moment John Kerry left – on the Friday afternoon before the primary – we gathered to make a decision on our endorsement, which would run that Sunday. Present were Publisher Ann Caulkins, Associate Editors Warren Bolton, Cindi Scoppe and Nina Brook, Editorial Writer Mike Fitts and yours truly.
It took us almost three hours. For much of the first hour, no one mentioned any candidate by name. Instead, we spent that time discussing the criteria that we should use in making our decision. The points we set out are worth relating because they are relevant not only to the decision we make in the fall on the presidential race, but in some cases to other endorsements we make.
Mike Fitts, who has had primary responsibility for tracking this race for us, started us off, and pretty much mentioned all the main parameters. With the caveats that some criteria would militate against others, and that no candidate was likely to be the best on all counts, he said that based on what we have written and said in the past, anyone we endorse for president should:

Be someone that we, and a consensus of South Carolinians, would be comfortable with philosophically. We have well-defined positions on most issues; so do the candidates. Intellectual consistency would demand that we look for as close a match as possible.

Recognize that national security, while not everything, is certainly the first and foremost responsibility of the job. More particularly, given our position, we wanted someone who would be fully committed to bringing positive change to the parts of the world that most threaten national and collective security.

Think for himself rather than adhere to any party’s narrow ideology. We favor people who work across lines and are intellectually diverse.

Have relevant experience in elective office, which is particularly valuable in itself. A candidate might be a natural-born leader and have all the vision in the world, but probably would not achieve much in office without having mastered the give-and-take of politics.

Finally, Mike raised a question: In a primary, to what extent do we take into account whether someone would be the best standard-bearer for his party?
As we went around the table, Warren gave probably the best answer to that one: "We ought to be thinking about who can be the president of the United States, regardless of party affiliation." Nina and Cindi said much the same, with Cindi adding that everyone should feel free to vote in our state’s open primaries. (This was before we knew about the loyalty oath, which fortunately was dropped at the last minute.)
Warren wanted to make sure we agreed that no one criterion should be a disqualifier, noting that while elective experience is worth a lot, it’s not everything. "People bring other things to the table," he said.
To Mike’s list, Nina added that we should also not be afraid to be a conscience for the state, even when we’re a little alone.
I thought Mike and the others had summed it up fairly well, but added two criteria that have long guided my own thinking:

Endorsements should always be about who should win, not who will win. We should endorse the best candidate, even if he or she doesn’t have a chance.

Presidential endorsements are a different animal. With most local and state races, readers have few or no other reliable sources of information on the candidates. With the presidential contest, they are inundated. They will usually come to our endorsement with a well-informed opinion of their own. Therefore our endorsement takes on a more symbolic value; readers can use it as a guide to see whether they want to trust our judgment on the candidates and issues they know less about.

Finally, of course, we got around to discussing the candidates themselves. We quickly narrowed it down to Sens. Edwards, Kerry and Lieberman. That’s when the hard part started.
Once again, Mike helped define the dilemma before us, logically and mathematically.
He divided the field of three into three overlapping sets of two, with each pair having advantages over the remaining candidate. That sounds complicated. Here’s what I mean:

Sens. Lieberman and Kerry had the distinct advantage on experience.

Sens. Kerry and Edwards had more dynamic leadership skills – important in a chief executive.

Sens. Lieberman and Edwards were closer to us and South Carolina politically.

A three-way stalemate.
Still, to me at least, it seemed clear that Joe Lieberman came out ahead on most of Mike’s criteria – good philosophical fit, sterling national security credentials, by far the one most willing to work across party lines, and a distinguished 30-year record of public service.
The sticking point in our discussion was over one of my criteria: The one about who should win versus who will win. We all knew Sen. Lieberman had little chance of surviving beyond Tuesday, and there was considerable sentiment for using our endorsement to boost someone with a better shot. That would have taken the form of either affirming Sen. Edwards’ front-runner status or giving a boost to Sen. Kerry.
In the end, we stood by Joe Lieberman. I’m glad we did.
I share all of this because, even though our guy is out of the race, the same criteria we used will be applied as we look toward November. And while many readers say they just know who we’ll endorse, they’re ahead of me. Based on the criteria we use, it remains a very open question.

Lindsey Graham, stand-up guy

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Immigration

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

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

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

Your Graham alternatives thus far

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Here are your two available, declared candidates who are opposing Lindsey Graham for re-election to the U.S. Senate at this time:

John J. Cina, who styles himself as an "everyday citizen, an hourly wage earner," and a "grass-roots right-wing conservative with unwavering principles."
Tim Carnes, whose Web site includes on its "issues" section includes 101 words about Iraq, and 571 words about immigration.

It is, of course, highly likely that other candidates will emerge. But for now, these are the alternatives for the "anyone but Graham" folks.

That’ll show ’em!

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It’s not enough for some hard-liners that the immigration bill was defeated in the U.S. Senate last week. In some parts of the country, retaliation is the order of the day.

To get even with Mexico for having a lousy economy and forcing all its poor to stream across our border, the Oregon legislature has decided to start sending our politicians down there.

That should stop the flow of illegal aliens quicker than any old wall. Anyway, here’s the Associated Press caption to the picture:

Oregon Senate President Peter Courtney is joined by his wife, Margie, on the Senate floor in Salem, Ore., Thursday, June 28, 2007, after receiving a gift trip to Mexico from fellow Senators as the legislature works to wind up this year’s session.

This might be more devastatingly effective than the time we sent the Marines down to Montezuma’s place.

The courage of John McCain

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Meanwhile, a fellow admirer of John McCain shared this with me, so I share it with you.

An excerpt:

National Review
McCain’s Courage
A rare American politician

By: Tom Coburn
As the American people, elected officials, and commentators reflect on the heated immigration debate that came to a temporary close in the Senate this week many will ask, and have asked, why U.S. Senator John McCain (R., Ariz.) staked out a position that may, in retrospect, be seen as devastating to his presidential ambitions. I hope the American people, at least, step back from the obsessive play-by-play pre-season election analysis and reflect on Senator McCain’s actions for what I believe they were: One of the purest examples of political courage seen in Washington in a very, very long time…

I couldn’t agree more. And I’ll say the same for Lindsey Graham.

DeMint got THAT part right…

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There was one thing that Jim DeMint said about the demise of the immigration bill today that was absolutely correct:

"The people responded to this issue in a very emotional and just a very
engaged way, which changed the minds of many people here in the Senate."

Very emotional, indeed. And that is something that politicians certainly respond to, even in that most "deliberative" of bodies.

Little Italy column

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Immigration,

individualism

and Italian ices

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR

MY ELDEST daughter and her husband returned Sunday from a trip to Italy. Big deal. Her Mom and Dad walked through Little Italy in lower Manhattan over the weekend, which is just as good, and cheaper.
No jet lag. All the authentic Italian eateries you could want, from pasta to espresso to exquisite pastries. Sure, it’s a little touristy, but so is the other Italy.
And if you get tired of it, just walk a little further down Mulberry Street, cross Canal, and bada-bing! You’re in Chinatown. A whole other country, as Forrest Gump would say. Sidewalk tables with old guys
gesticulating and hurling Italian at each other give way to old Chinese guys playing chess at park benches. The sudden shift, the stark cultural, ethnic and linguistic contrast, is stunning to anyone who is accustomed to living in… well, America. No assimilation, no melting pot, no tossed salad, or any of those other metaphors that make me hungry (did I tell you about the pastries?).
But I wouldn’t have it any other way. This is what we came for, the ethnic pageantry. That, and the Italian ices. We went there to experience something we can’t get in West Columbia — unless, of course, we were to enter a Mexican tienda for one of those Cokes that taste better than the ones bottled for sale in this country (or so I’m told).
Which brings me to David Brooks’ column earlier this week, endeavoring to explain all the passion over illegal aliens.
I appreciate that he trashed the notion that this is some sort of simplistic left-vs.-right flashpoint. You can find just as much anxiety among “progressives” who worry about wages and working conditions as among know-nothings who simply don’t like foreigners.
But ultimately, when he tried to explain what the dichotomy was as opposed to what it wasn’t, he got it wrong:

Liberal members of the educated class celebrated the cultural individualism of the 1960s. Conservative members celebrated the economic individualism of the 1980s. But they all celebrated individualism. They all valued diversity and embraced a sense of national identity that rested on openness and global integration.
This cultural offensive created a silent backlash among people who were not so enamored of rampant individualism and who were worried that all this diversity would destroy the ancient ties of community and social solidarity. Members of this class came to feel that America’s identity and culture were under threat from people who did not understand what made America united and distinct.

Mr. Brooks should read the comments on my blog sometime. He’ll discover that the most adamant Goodfellas
individualists — the strident libertarians, who tend to bridle at the very word “society,” much less the idea of paying taxes — are most likely to call our senior senator “Lindsey Grahamnesty.”
What is America’s “identity and culture”? We owe a huge debt of gratitude to those English-speaking white men who drafted our Constitution. But America is also about opportunity for all. It is about bigness, and the ability to absorb. It’s about pizza and hamburgers and chili con carne. We’re not threatened by that stuff, we dig it. Bring it on! Our appetite for the big, messy smorgasbord of cultures sloshing around and swapping juices is our thing; it’s what we grow on.
OK, that sounds kind of like the first group Mr. Brooks described — except for the “individualist” part, which is key. If I can be categorized, it’s as the opposite, a communitarian. My attitudes toward the richness of the American stew arise from the same impulses that Mr. Brooks described when he wrote recently, in a piece headlined “The Human Community,” that Tony Blair’s commitment to Iraq arose from his communitarianism.
I’m surprised at Mr. Brooks.
America doesn’t define “community” in terms of everybody looking, speaking or eating alike. We Pastries
leave that kind of self-defeating smallness to ethnic cleansers in the Balkans, or traditionalist jihadists in the Mideast. We’re selling something else, and it’s so big and rich and free that you can’t stop it. Once you narrowly define a thing and say it’s this and not that, you limit it, and this country is not limited.
It’s an essential part of who we are that you can’t easily pin down who we are.
A place like Little Italy or that tienda on Sunset would seem to run counter to that, to embody ethnic homogeneity and specificity to the point of rejecting essential Americanism. But they don’t.
If we were satisfied with McDonald’s and Pizza Hut and white bread sandwiches from the chain supermarket we’d be who the French think we are, and they’re wrong about us.
We have a place like Little Italy because we can afford it. We’re big enough, and sure enough of who we are, to have it all.
Last Saturday, we continued through Chinatown and walked across the bridge to Brooklyn. On the way Bridge1
over, we kept passing Manhattanites coming back from Brooklyn carrying pizzas. It’s one thing for a tourist to make the trek, but to walk to the next borough and back for a pizza? What was that about?
When we got there, we saw where they were going. The place sat alone on a dreary block right under the bridge. There was a long line outside just for takeout. People from Asia, from Europe, from Africa, all waiting eagerly, and untroubled about the long walk to get there. Apparently, the pizza was just that good.
I still don’t know how to philosophically characterize all the passion over immigration or how to address the very legitimate concerns (beyond the passion) about the many ways our immigration “system” fails to work.
But I know that as long as the pizza is this good in this country, they’re going to keep coming.

Manhattan

Immigration most foul

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OK, now I see why everybody gets so upset about illegal immigrants from Mexico. It’s because what they have done is so thoroughly heinous. A correspondent on a previous post responded, after I had noted the absurdity of the idea that a non-police state would or could round up 12 million people and deport them, thusly:

We can’t catch all bank robbers, so let’s bring them out of the shadows
and get paper work on them too, Brad. And child molesters. And
murderers. Sure, we’ll get some paperwork on ’em, make ’em pay a fine,
and everything is OK, right? Is that your logic? We don’t do what’s in
this "compromise" for any other class of criminal, and it’s really so
ridiculous that no one even proposes it for murderers and child
molesters. Why are we even contemplating it for illegal aliens?

Let’s see — bank robbers, child molesters, murderers, mother rapers, father stabbers, and what else do we have here on the Group W bench? Oh, yes — a few people who walked across an invisible line in the desert to do menial labor for a pittance.

At that point, everybody moves away from the illegal aliens there on the Group W bench, but then they say, "And creating a nuisance," and everybody moves back and shakes their hands and they all have a fine time together talking about father-rapin’ and bank-robbin’ and pickin’ vegetables in the hot sun, and all sorts of groovy things …

What an odd crime to hyperventilate about. Kind of like jaywalking, only without the immediate threat of causing a traffic accident.

Today’s immigration editorial