Category Archives: In Our Time

More on op-ed pages’ ‘slant’

You may recall this post from a while back, from a group calling itself "Media Matters" which set out to prove that set out to prove that newspaper editorial pages favor conservative over "progressive" columnists, and (gasp!) found just that — as do all such groups, whatever they are setting out to prove. (For a group that will always magically find just the opposite of what this group finds, click here.)

Anyway, "Media Matters" has separated its data out state-by-state, and (gasp again!) found the same thing on the state level:

Washington,
D.C. – Media Matters for America today released
South Carolina data for its new report “Black and White and Re(a)d All
Over: The Conservative Advantage in Syndicated Op-Ed Columns,” a
comprehensive and unprecedented analysis of nationally syndicated columnists
from nearly 1,400 newspapers,
or 96 percent of English-language U.S. daily newspapers.

If you care about this at all, you’ll probably care most about the paper-by-paper breakdown, so here is that:

Newspaper                State Circulation Conservatives Progressives
Aiken Standard                      15,856                100%          0%
Anderson Independent-Mail 36,781                100%          0%
Beaufort Gazette                   11,994                   25%       25%
Charleston Post and Courier 97,052                   75%       13%
The State                            116,952                   50%       17%
Florence Morning News          33,078                   0%          0%
Greenville News                   88,731                   58%          33%
Greenwood Index-Journal    14,243                   79%          14%
Hilton Head Island Packet    19,514                   60%          20%
Myrtle Beach Sun News          51,303                   60%          20%
Orangeburg Times and Dem. 17,016                100%             0%
Rock Hill Herald                   31,428                   0%             0%
Seneca Daily Journal/Msgr.    7,661                   50%          50%
Spartanburg Herald-Journal 48,514                   0%             0%
Sumter Item                         20,187                   75%          13%
Union Daily Times                   5,447                   57%          29%

But there will be no surprises in that for you. Since I already analyzed our pages for you using this group’s assumptions (something that I’m guessing they assumed I wouldn’t do), you knew where we’d end up.

So now you have it again. Are you gasping yet?

Hillary vs. Katon: All right, who started this?

Privacy, schmeivacy

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Our editorial board is a carefully constructed balancing act; we tend to be all over the place on a lot of issues, and the key to coming up with a position is to prove daily that we can work together — despite our differences — in ways that legislative bodies seem to find impossible. (Back when he was speaker, David Wilkins once said I couldn’t understand how hard it is to get people to rally around a bill — I scoffed because every morning, we go into a meeting and can’t leave the room until we’ve passed out several bills, so he does not have my sympathy.)

One of our widest divides is between me and Cindi Scoppe on privacy. She is always concerned about protecting it; my own attitude can be represented, with only slight exaggeration, as "privacy, schmeivacy."

So it was that, in an effort to probe the bounds of my extremism, Cindi copied a news story to me, topped with her question, "too un-private even for you?" An excerpt from the news story:

A COMPANY WILL MONITOR PHONE CALLS AND DEVISE ADS TO SUIT
{By LOUISE STORY}=<=
(This article is part of TIMES EXPRESS. It is a condensed version of a story that will appear in tomorrow’s New York Times.)<
{c.2007 New York Times News Service}=<
Companies like Google scan their e-mail users’ in-boxes to deliver ads related to those messages. Will people be as willing to let a company listen in on their phone conversations to do the same?<
Pudding Media, a start-up based in San Jose, Calif., is introducing an Internet phone service on Monday that will be supported by advertising related to what people are talking about in their calls. The Web-based phone service is similar to Skype’s online service _ consumers plug a headset and a microphone into their computers, dial any phone number and chat away. But unlike Internet phone services that charge by the length of the calls, Pudding Media offers calling without any toll charges.<
The trade-off is that Pudding Media is eavesdropping on phone calls in order to display ads on the screen that are related to the conversation. Voice recognition software monitors the calls, selects ads based on what it hears and pushes the ads to the subscriber’s computer screen while he or she is still talking.<
A conversation about movies, for example, will elicit movie reviews and ads for new films that the caller will see during the conversation….

My reply to Cindi, kept brief because it was sent from my Treo, was:

No, it’s too PRIVATE for me. I prefer to leave such things to Big Brother.

You just can’t give an inch to these privacy freaks, you know.

Mike Huckabee on the obligation to govern

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Huckabee1
By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
THERE’S A PRINCIPLE that I long thought was a given in American politics. As long as it held true, it didn’t matter so much if the “wrong” candidate won an election. No matter what sort of nonsense he had spouted on the stump, this stark truth would take him in its unforgiving grip, set him down and moderate him.
Mike Huckabee, who is seeking the Republican nomination for president, made reference to this principle when he met with our editorial board Thursday:
“One of the tough jobs of governing is, you actually have to do it.” That may sound so obvious that it’s foolish, like “One thing about water is, it’s wet.” But it can come as a cold shock.
Think of the congressional class of 1994. Newt Gingrich’s bomb-throwers were full of radical notions when they gained power. But once they had it, and used it, however briefly, to shut down the government, they quickly realized that was not what they were elected to do.
Or some of them realized it. More about that in a moment. Back to Mr. Huckabee.
Mr. Huckabee is a conservative — the old-fashioned kind that believes in traditional values, and wants strong, effective institutions in our society to support and promote those values.
Many newfangled “conservatives” seem just as likely to want to tear down as build up.
If Mr. Huckabee was ever that way, being the governor of Arkansas made him less so. “As a governor, I’ve seen a different level of human life, maybe, than the folks who live in the protected bubble of Washington see,” he said. And as a governor who believed he must govern, he was appalled when he saw government fail to do its job. He points to the aftermath of Katrina: “It was one of the more, to me, disgusting moments of American history…. It made my blood boil….”
Perhaps I should pause again now to remind you that Gov. Huckabee is a conservative: “I’m 100 percent pure and orthodox when it comes to the issues that matter to the evangelical or faith voter, if you will,” he says.
“But as a governor, I spent most of my time improving education, rebuilding the highway system, reforming health care in Arkansas” — things that are not inconsistent with conservatism.
“And for that I had the right — had earned the right, if you will — to pass some pro-life legislation, Huckabee2
and strong pro-marriage and pro-family legislation. But I didn’t spend 90 percent of my time pushing that….”
OK, let’s review: As a conservative, he has a certain set of ideals. But he knows that being governor isn’t just about promoting an ideology, whatever it might be. Being governor, if the job is properly understood, is the most pragmatic form of life in our solar system — except for being mayor.
People expect certain things of you, and you’ve got to do them. Successful governors realize that, whether you’re promoting ideals or paving the roads, “The wrong thing to do is to go and to try to stick your fist in the face of the Legislature that you know is not necessarily with you, and create a fight.” (Gov. Huckabee had to deal with a Democratic assembly.)
So what’s the right way?
“You positively share your message, you communicate it… . If you can’t do that, I don’t think you can lead. Just… quite frankly, I don’t think you have a shot at it.”
I know someone who needs to hear that. Remember the class of ’94? The only lesson Mark Sanford learned from shutting down the federal government was that it was worth trying again. So last year, he vetoed the entire state budget when lawmakers failed to hold spending to the artificial limits he had decreed.
Of course, they overrode him. And he knew they would. For him, it was about the gesture, not about governing. It’s about ungoverning. It’s about the agenda of the Club for Growth.
Gov. Huckabee, being conservative fiscally as well as otherwise, has been known to turn down taxes, but that’s an area where pragmatism can outweigh ideals:
“… We had a Supreme Court case where we were forced to deal with both equity and adequacy in education,” said Mr. Huckabee. “There was no way to do that without additional revenue.”
Still, he refused to sign the tax bill Democrats gave him.
“I didn’t think we were getting enough reform for the amount of money. It wasn’t that I didn’t support additional revenue, because I did, so I’ll be honest about that. But… we weren’t pushing for enough efficiency out of the system.” What sort of efficiency?
“I wanted a greater level of school consolidation in order to fund the efficiency, which was a very unpopular thing.”
Our governor has said he’s for school district consolidation (as am I), but he’s never done anything effective to achieve it. That would require building a constructive relationship with the Legislature.
Another time, Gov. Huckabee actually opposed a tax cut. Why? That governing thing again: “Well, I supported the elimination of the grocery tax, but not the timing, and the timing would have meant we literally would have closed nursing homes, had to slash Medicaid. I mean, it’s one thing to trim the fat off the bone, it’s another thing, you know, to start going into the bone itself.”
That wouldn’t worry the Club for Growth, about which Gov. Huckabee says, “They hate me. I call ’em the Club for Greed. That’s part of why they don’t like me… If people don’t have the courage to run for office, they can just give money to them and they’ll do the dirty work for you.”
“I think it’s a sleazy way to do politics.”
The Club for Growth loves Mark Sanford.
I don’t know what sort of president Mike Huckabee would make, but I wonder whether he’d do another stint as governor….

For video, go to http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/.

Huckabee3

Here are two froods who really know where their towels are

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This is wonderful. These two guys have come up with a way to unify our fractured country, and everybody can take part:

It seemed to them that the nation was more divided than ever over the war and politics, not to mention immigration, race and abortion. So the two of them — Bruce Johnson, a former disc jockey who delivers local fruit and vegetables, and John Maielli, who has a silk-screening and painting business — came up with a wildly ambitious plan for national reconciliation.
What the country needs, they thought, was a unifying, rally-like event that would be free from politics and in which everyone could participate. Waving a towel seemed perfect…. "A certain amount of energy is released when you wave a towel," explains Mr. Johnson. It’s democratic. It doesn’t require skill or money. Wavers feel kinship with fellow wavers.
As the event was envisioned, millions of Americans across the country would participate in a National Wave, simultaneously twirling above their heads a red, white and blue towel called the "Official Uniting Towel of America." Organizers picked Friday, July 4, 2008, when people are more inclined to feel patriotic. It would take place at 9 p.m. Eastern time, before most local fireworks go off on the East Coast and at a decent hour in the West. To give enough time for stragglers to join in, the National Wave would last 15 minutes.

It’s simple, to the point that one could easily call it stupid. But its very simplicity, its utter lack of inherent meaning, makes it a blank slate upon which we can all write our hopes and dreams for the country, and most of all express our desire for brotherhood in spite of all our bitter differences.

I’ve got my towel, and I know where it is, and I’m more than ready to use it as a means of reuniting my country. With your help, I hope to keep track of this growing movement, and promote it as the chance arises.

Bruce Johnson and John Maielli — now there’s a couple of froods who really know where their towels are.

Bush vs. Congress: How low can they go?

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The contest between the President of the United States and the U.S. Congress to see which can plunge lower in the esteem of the American people is a depressing spectacle, yet morbidly fascinating:

President George W. Bush and the U.S. Congress registered record-low approval
ratings in a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday, and a new monthly index
measuring the mood of Americans dipped slightly on deepening worries about the
economy.

Only 29 percent of Americans gave Bush a positive grade for his job
performance, below his worst Zogby poll mark of 30 percent in March. A paltry 11
percent rated Congress positively, beating the previous low of 14 percent in
July.

And yet, watch: Democrats will point to Zogby’s results as proof that they should have the White House, and Republicans will cite the figures as proof that Congress should be turned back over to them. Neither will own up to being aware of the beams in their own respective eyes.

As I said, depressing.

Take the civics quiz

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Doug Ross brings to my attention this rather well-crafted test that measures how well the taker understands the foundations of our society and how it works. He adds his own facetious suggestion in passing it on:

Maybe you could use this civics test (mentioned on NRO online) as a
way to qualify posters to your blog:
http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/resources/quiz.aspx

Doug also shared his score with me, but I’ll leave it up to him as to whether he shares it with you. Here’s how I made out:

You answered 56 out of 60 correctly — 93.33 %

Average score for this quiz during September: 74.5%
Average score since September 18, 2007: 74.5%

I was reasonably happy with that, because a number of questions in the last third or so of the test dealt with economics, and I was making some guesses on those, educated and otherwise. This test will lull you. The first 10 or 20 or so are so easy as to make you think you’re going to get a perfect score, but then it gets trickier.

I’m not sure whether the questions are the same for each taker, but on the version I took, I missed questions 19, 27, 43 and 58. All of them were questions I was unsure of, so it’s not like I thought I knew something that wasn’t so.

As for Doug’s suggestion — it’s tempting. Of course, it’s also tempting to require such a test before people are allowed to vote. And as long as we’re fantasizing, I’d want to present it to people just as it was presented to me — as a real test, out of the blue, of what I just plain know after 50-plus years in this country, not something you could cram for.

But we know that such things have been abused. Still, when you reflect how very little all too many people know going into voting booths, it’s discouraging.

I’d be curious to know how y’all do, if you take the time to take the test. And please play fair — give us your first, unrehearsed score — not your "do-over."

My own libertarian impulse kicks in

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Regulars will know that I seldom find common ground with libertarian sentiment. I have even asked for guidance in helping me understand the "libertarian impulse," because it seems to be an emotion or drive that I utterly lack — possibly some difference in brain chemistry.

When libertarians fulminate about how "high" their taxes are, or fret about their loss of privacy because the government screens telecommunications for signs of terrorist traffic, I am left cold. I simply do not feel whatever it is that gets these folks worked up.

But finally, I can embrace my libertarian brothers, even though, being the rugged individualists that they are, they aren’t into that sort of thing. Perhaps my libertarian sisters will allow it. I’d prefer that anyway.

Where was I? Ah, yes.

When I read about this in yesterday’s WSJ, I was immediately afire with the violation of our fundamental rights. Under the headline "The Right to Dry:A Green Movement Is Roiling America," was a story that stirred me the way (some) libertarians are stirred by the Patriot Act. An excerpt:

The regulations of the subdivision in which Ms. Taylor lives effectively prohibit outdoor clotheslines. In a move that has torn apart this otherwise tranquil community, the development’s managers have threatened legal action. To the developer and many residents, clotheslines evoke the urban blight they sought to avoid by settling in the Oregon mountains.
"This bombards the senses," interior designer Joan Grundeman says of her neighbor’s clothesline. "It can’t possibly increase property values and make people think this is a nice neighborhood."
Ms. Taylor and her supporters argue that clotheslines are one way to fight climate change, using the sun and wind instead of electricity. "Days like this, I can do multiple loads, and within two hours, it’s done," said Ms. Taylor. "It smells good, and it feels different than when it comes out of the dryer."

Amen I say to you, Ms. Taylor! And what, pray tell, could be the objection of her neighbors? A bit of background:

The clothesline was once a ubiquitous part of the residential landscape. But as postwar Americans embraced labor-saving appliances, clotheslines came to be associated with people who couldn’t afford a dryer. Now they are a rarity, purged from the suburban landscape by legally enforceable development restrictions.

I submit that America was a better country when our moms and grandmas decorated our backyards with a hundred highly individualized freedom flags every Monday.

In my own case, it’s not just moms and grandmas. When our older children were small and my wife was at home with them, she used to hang out their little garments in our backyard, and my memory of coming home from the office at lunch time and finding her out there in the sun and the fresh air is a warm and fond one. It was a statement of where we stood with regard to the Earth — we also used real, cotton diapers — but it was also esthetically pleasing. And no static cling.

Since then, we have wasted many a kilowatt/hour on the dryer. It’s a convenience, but one that I don’t feel good about. And you know, as founder of the Energy Party, I think it’s time that we all ran our BVDs up the clothesline pole, and said "Bring ’em on!" They don’t have to salute our undies, but they’d better not try to lower them. I mean… well, you know what I mean.

Before we join the movement at my house, I’ll have to run home and check with the Executive Committee. But whatever she says, it should be our — uh, her — decision, and not that of some busybodies.

How dare anyone suggest that I don’t have the right to do that in my own yard? And for such petty, ugly reasons as not wanting to look like you live next to someone "who couldn’t afford a dryer." That’s disgusting.

And it warms my heart to be with the libertarians for once on a property-rights issue. Normally, they’d be sticking up for the right of the individual property owner to have a factory hog farm, and I’d be for the right of the neighbors not to live next to such, if that’s their decision. I think the property values of the many outweigh the most-profitable use by the one.

But there’s a world of difference, in terms of "harm" done to the neighbor, between a lagoon of hog waste and the colorful display of jogging shorts. And the good done for the environment is reversed in the two instances.

Yeah, I know that most of these things involve private property owners’ covenants "freely" entered into, but how many of you really scrutinized your neighborhood’s esoteric rules and regs before buying the house you wanted?

Don’t send me snail mail!

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Being a fan of history and an instinctive traditionalist to boot, it pains me to say this. There is a certain elegance and grace to the written letter, a quality that says, "You were important enough for me to go to this much trouble," that is the exclusive domain of the handwritten letter.

But while I appreciate the compliment, I simply don’t have the time to deal with Snail_002
it. As a matter of fact, I am removed by about five degrees of separation from even being able to think about having the time to deal with it. I used to have a staff person to open the mail, deal with most of it on the front end, place in my IN box the very, very few pieces that absolutely needed my attention, and then do with it whatever I decided with it (respond, file, forward) after I glanced through it and then placed it in my OUT tray. And even then I didn’t have time to deal with it. The virtual mountains of e-mail, the press of constant meetings, the obligation to occasionally, when I could get around to it, do a wee bit of journalism, kept me from keeping up even in that system.

Now, I don’t have any of that support, so mounds of snail mail — most of it bound for the wastebin, but some of it actually in need of my attention — pile up on my desk, until such time as some emergency causes me to plow through it in search of something, and I push aside all more urgent matters just long enough to reduce the pile in one mad surge — and I promise you, if you sent me something, I don’t spend one percent of the time you spent sending it. And this makes me feel guilty, but I don’t know what to do about it.

And then, finally, there’s the problem that increasingly, I find it very hard to read. I find it hard even to read enough to determine whether I should read further. I go to the end to see the signature, go back, try to read it again, and just can’t make it out.

I don’t know whether this is because I’ve been spoiled by type, or I’m getting older and lack the mental elasticity to intuit meaning from few clues, or what.

But if you want me to read it, type it. And as long as you’re going to type it (since "type" these days means on a word processor; RARE is the note written on typewriter, and that is usually from some clinically insane person from the other end of the country), please send it electronically. Then I might, at some point, be able to get to it. I’ll do my best, anyway.

NOTE: The illegible (to me) sample I’ve included here is from someone from out-of-state; I didn’t wish to to embarrass a regular reader or anyone identifiable.

My not-so-secret identity

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This post will serve as both a daily (sort of) contact report and a reflection on my changing image, as determined by the blog.

Twice this week I was contacted by people who apparently thought of me primarily as a blogger. Since I have a well-over-40-hour-a-week job that puts me in the public eye much more prominently than the blog (so I thought), and seeing as how the blog is just something I do when I can grab a minute — much of it late at night and on weekends — this sort of blows my little mind.

First, there was Peter Hamby, reporter/producer with CNN, who produced this story this week.

Peter had wanted to talk with me about the campaign — I thought because of my position as editorial Hamby_2
page editor, because I’m used to that — so I asked him, as I did Doug, to meet me for breakfast Wednesday at the Cap City Club. I ran late, but when I called Peter he was late, too, and as it happened I was the first one there. I settled in to read the paper in the club’s foyer, and looked up each time the elevator let another passenger off on the 25th floor. Once, I saw this kid with the beginnings of a beard get off, start into the foyer, then turn back, and start pacing like he was waiting for somebody. I went back to the paper. Several minutes later, my cell phone rings. It’s Peter. He said he had arrived at the Club, but realized he was wearing sandals, and that that might not be appropriate. Where are you now? I asked. "At the entrance, next to the elevators." Peter was the "kid" with the beard. I told him we’d muddle through somehow, flip-flops or no, and we went on in.

I learned that he was living here until after the primary, that he had time on his hands because the candidates were spending their time in Iowa and New Hampshire these days, so he was trying to write a piece about how McCain was doing. He had found that several of the people he talked to seemed to expect McCain to do better here than conventional "wisdom" — that I wasn’t the only one, in other words.

But the thing that got me was that at one point, when I had been speaking of candidates who had visited with us, Peter asked whether was a member of the editorial board of the paper. And then I remembered that, going by his initial e-mail to me, he had first come to me through the blog:

My name is Peter Hamby … I moved to Columbia 2 weeks ago to cover the
primaries for CNN. I’ll be here until January writing, reporting, shooting
video, etc …
Anyway, I dig your blog, and wanted to use you for some analysis in a piece
I’m writing for CNN.com about John McCain’s chances of winning in South
Carolina, in advance of his visit next week…. What do you think?

So I explained who I was. It was weird.

Then, today, I got this e-mail:

Hi Brad,

I’m working on putting together a blog guide of the most
influential political blogs in the early primary states and delegate-rich
states. Anyway, your blog comes highly recommended, so I will most likely be
including it. What are some of your biggest coups (picked up by national media?
breaking news? causing someone to resign?) on the blog, and what,
approximately, is your average daily hits? I’m on deadline, so I hope to hear
back from you soon.

Best,
Theodora
—
Theodora
Blanchfield
Associate Editor
Campaigns & Elections magazine

I responded (and failed to save the response), making sure to drop in the fact that I actually have a job Bcboard_021_2
on the side at the newspaper. I mentioned the recent noise over my Edwards column (190,000 page views on the version on thestate.com, which is the version Drudge linked to), and the week when Thomas Ravenel was indicted (heaviest blog traffic yet). And she wrote back and asked me for a picture, and so I sent her the one shown here, which I thought made me look newspapermannish, rather than like a blogger — even though I’ve never used that photo in the paper, but only on the blog.

Theodora wrote back to say "Love the bowtie!"

Yet another reason why we need the draft

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A colleague just brought this to my attention:

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — An unflinching John McCain was told Tuesday by New Hampshire high school students he might be too old to be president and too conservative to be respected.
McCain, the Arizona senator whose presidential bid has stumbled through the summer, countered the Concord High School students with humor.
"Thanks for the question, you little jerk," McCain joked back to one student who asked the 71-year-old about his age. "You’re drafted."

The evolving standard: Is this comment worth approving?

1 Reply

Lying fallow among the unapproved comments down in the engine room of the blog is an offering from someone who styles himself (or herself) "bud’s friend."

Come on — I have long been torn about whether to allow anonymous comments in this forum, and up to now have let them in, but subjected them to greater scrutiny than those from folks with the courage and integrity to put their names behind their opinions. But I’m afraid that "bud’s friend" is a bit too much to ask. What sort of credential is that — you don’t know me, but I’m a friend of this other guy you don’t know. That wouldn’t get you in to a speakeasy. It’s not going to get you in here.

Now might be a good time for an update on the evolving standards for comments on this blog. We’ve been through several stages:

For the first year or so, I let in anything, and rejected nothing.

After it became clear that the nasty atmosphere of ad hominem bullying and partisan name-calling was running off the very kind of thoughtful readership I sought, I set a "double standard:" If you weren’t willing to stand behind a comment with your own, verifiable name, your comments were subject to summary deletion.

A few of our anonymous troublemakers made such insistent nuisances of themselves that I banned them from the blog.

Some of the exiles began a ridiculous game of repeatedly coming back (with a frequency that was shocking, in terms of the amount of time they were spending on the site) with slightly changed names, to get around the automatic blocking.

So after a false start or two ("authentication" was a bust), I drew a new line: For your comment to appear on the blog, I have to approve it. I really, really hated this step — and still do (if only for the extra work) — but what are you going to do in a world filled with the Web equivalent of vandals?

That development has given me a much more intimate acquaintance with individual comments. As long as they appeared without any effort on my part, the standards could remain pretty low. Basically, I don’t have time to spare to do this blog at ALL, much less to chase down every comment that lowers the bar. But when I have to spend time on it anyway — when no comment appears without a positive action on my part — a new question enters my mind: "Why should I approve this?" What does it add? In what way does this comment make the dialogue on this blog better?

Once I start thinking along those lines, pretty much all anonymous comments are endangered — by which I mean they are in danger of sitting right where you left them, because I am not inclined to throw MY back out leaning over to pick them up and publish them.

And while I continue to grant much, much greater latitude to those of you using verifiable real names, you are not completely immune. As I announced just over a year ago, those who stand behind their comments "will be free to post pretty much whatever they want." That "pretty much" means there are standards, even for you.

I say all this because I’ve been getting sidebar complaints from some folks who use bogus handles complaining that they don’t always get approved. And once or twice, I’ve heard from NAMED people who didn’t approved. (Those, at least — on the rare occasions that they occur — will get a reply.)

Everyone should remember: The question is no longer, why would I REJECT this comment? Now, it’s why would I approve it. That really moves the line.

Oh, and not to seem inhospitable or anything, but anyone who doesn’t like these conditions can go start his own blog, and say whatever he likes. There are a number of sites where you can do so for free.

Waitin’ at the train station, singin’ the ‘Airport Blues’

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By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
“NEWS IS whatever happens to, or interests, an editor,” a wise colleague named Jerry Ratts once said. Actually, he said it more than “once,” which is why I remember.
I would insert a corollary: “… or to the editor’s wife….”
For the past year, my wife has traveled a lot back and forth between here and Pennsylvania. So have I, for that matter. She and our youngest have been up there so that our daughter can study ballet with extreme intensity. My wife has worked up there as a pre-school teacher to help pay for keeping two households, not to mention all the travel.
She’s spent a lot of time in airports — enough that when she comes home this week, it will be by train.
A trip back up there in May was the last straw. She recounted her ordeal in an exclusive interview with this correspondent:
She had to fly out of there early Mother’s Day afternoon, and given the airlines’ rule about early arrival, there was no chance to celebrate the day over lunch. She intended to have a nice dinner with my youngest up in the Keystone State, but that was not to be, either. She wouldn’t get home until after 1 a.m. Monday.
Miraculously, she left Charleston on time. But she had to make two connections to get to Harrisburg. Things seemed fine when she arrived at the gate for the first connection. They still seemed fine — the sign at the gate still brightly proclaimed that her flight would be on time — when she and other passengers noticed that the flight after theirs was boarding, and they weren’t.
Somebody had the temerity to ask, and was told, “Oh, we canceled yours.” No apology, and apparently no intention of making an announcement.
It was either on that leg of the trip or the next (“Can’t remember… so exhausting…”) that she found herself wandering about a terminal after having received no helpful advice at the gate. She learned by chance that another passenger was going to Allentown, with a promised 75-mile bus ride to Harrisburg. She went back to the apathetic agent at the gate to ask about that, and was told yeah, we could get you there that way if that’s what you want.
The alternative was a flight to Harrisburg at noon the next day, so yeah, she’d like a bus ride. She reached her bed about four hours before time to get up and go herd 4-year-olds all day.
“So I’m not flying any more,” she said with that dangerous emphasis that I know not to contradict. “They don’t care how much they inconvenience you, or how much they lie to you. I’m just not doing it any more.”
Of course not, dear. Especially since, between her experiences and my own, this was the third trip in a row that could have been completed more quickly by driving. That haul up interstates 77 and 81, passing through six states, is a stroll in the park compared to these aeronautic nightmares.
I’ve been on the verge of writing this column a number of times in recent months, but have held back, remembering what Jerry Ratts (the Sage of Wichita, quoted above) said about editors and their sense of perspective.
Besides, I wasn’t sure it was right for the opinion pages. It had happened to us several times, and the Sage was also known to say: “That’s twice. Once more and it’s a trend, and we can send it to Lifestyles.”
Then I saw Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, which had a bona fide news story about how many passengers had become fed up with air travel and were taking Amtrak: “Airplanes are getting stuck in lots of traffic jams this summer, but Amtrak is on a roll.”
Then I realized USA Today — the paper whose only “home town” is the nation’s airports — had been all over it: “By virtually every measure, this is shaping up as the worst year ever for air travel. (That is, if you’re a passenger. Some of the airlines are actually making profits for a change.)”
Good thing my wife swore off air travel in May, because things have only gotten worse since:
“There’s really something different this summer,” said a frustrated traveler who blogs on the subject (at TakingtheKids.com), which is almost as authoritative as being an editor. “Not only can’t you count on the airlines giving you anything to eat, but you can’t count on a three-hour flight actually being a three-hour flight. It’s a whole new paradigm.” (Journalists find it soothing to describe their personal frustrations with words like “paradigm.”)
And if you’re the old-fashioned sort who wants facts rather than anecdotes, USA Today supplies this: “In June, 462 aircraft sat for at least three hours awaiting takeoff after leaving the gate, more than tripling the 137 such delays during May. DOT says it’s the highest monthly number since at least 2000.”
Why has all this happened? Disgruntled scribes differ on that. There’s an air traffic control system that isn’t using the latest technology. There’s the increased number of short-hop flights, taking up more gate time and creating more chances to get tangled up. There’s the cutbacks in airline personnel, who are getting cranky and increasingly unlikely to give you the time of day, much less fluff your pillow.
But who cares about the why when the answer to when is, “Not any time soon, so sit down and shut up or we’ll call security”?
In any case, it’s clear that my better half swore off air travel just in time. So I won’t mind a bit hauling myself out of bed at midnight to drive my pickup down to the railway station and wait for my woman to come home. I’ll take along a notepad and a harmonica, ’cause if that don’t get me halfway to a country song, I ain’t got one in me:

Well, I went down to the station;
I was feelin’ kinda sore…
Yeah, I went down to the station, mama;
I was feelin’ mighty sore…
Mah woman, she done tol’ me,
She ain’t gonna fly no more… (Honka wonka waw-waw-wahn)…

For guitar chords and more, go to http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/.

‘ED in ’08’ calls out the NEA

6 Replies

This is weirdly close to the recent related post, so the people who like to accuse will claim that I’m paying extra-special attention to this because ED in ’08 advertises on my blog, but since Cindi passed it on to me, I’ll show just how much I care for such folks’ opinions by passing it on to you (wait — did I say that out loud? how do I let them know because of the unfreezing process, I have no inner monologue?):

WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 //PRNewswire-USNewswire// — Today Marc Lampkin, Strong American Schools’ ED in ’08 executive director, posted a blog entry on the Huffington Post criticizing a recent release from the National Education Association that responded to the recent Democratic debate and the candidates’ positions on performance pay for teachers.
"Instead of celebrating the dawn of a true education debate, some groups want to end it. For example, the National Education Association released a press statement that seems to imply all the candidates answered the question the exact same way — they were against it.
"Now that’s just mystifying to me. Anyone who watched Sunday’s debate should have seen a difference of opinion among the candidates. Yes, two candidates came out firmly against it. But when Stephanopoulos said ‘no one on the stage is for merit pay for teachers,’ one candidate jumped in to say that he definitely is for it. A second then asked for more time to clarify that he is for performance pay under certain circumstances. And a third offered his own version of performance pay-providing competitive salaries to compete with fields like engineering for top college students.
"That’s exactly the kind of education debate we should be having — and the kind Americans deserve! Maybe the NEA just wasn’t watching closely. Maybe they simply missed the point. With American schools needing to hire 2 million new teachers over the next decade, we should all be discussing how to attract America’s best and brightest to teach our students-presidential candidates included. Let’s not squelch that important debate just as it’s getting started."

Cindi sent me that because I was thinking about writing in my Sunday column about all these groups that are making their presence felt in S.C., from AARP to ONE, and Mike and I had been expressing thoughts about how the limitations, and even deleterious effects, of such blogs (Mike’s quote: "a question of Astroturf replacing grass roots") and Cindi stuck up for them, saying they were, too, having a good effect, and she sent me the above release as her way of saying, See? So there.

I will say that in this case, this particular rep of the Bill Gates-funded group is doing a good thing. Readers of our pages will know that we favor merit pay, so how dare the NEA try to squelch debate, via the time-honored dishonest tactic of convincing everyone it’s already squelched. This does no service to the kids in public schools, it certainly doesn’t help the Democratic candidates with us swing voters, and, believe it or not, it does the NEA no good either — at least, it does them no good when their fannies are exposed like this.

Here’s hoping the NEA takes out advertising on my blog, too, so I can demonstrate my independence by kicking them some more over merit pay… (wait! did I say that out loud, too…?)

Obama’s right about Pakistan. But who would follow?

24 Replies

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
BARACK OBAMA was right to threaten to invade Pakistan in order to hit al-Qaida, quite literally, where it lives. And as long as we’re on this tack, remind me again why it is that we’re not at war with Iran.
OK, OK, I know the reasons: Our military is overextended; the American people lack the appetite; the nutball factor is only an inch deep in Iran, and once you get past Ahmadinejad and the more radical mullahs the Iranian people aren’t so bad, but they’d get crazy quick if we attacked, and so forth.
I can also come up with reasons not to invade Pakistan, or even to talk about invading Pakistan. We’ve heard them often enough. Pakistan is (and say this in reverent tones) a sovereign country; Pervez Musharraf is our “friend”; we need him helping us in the War on Terror; he is already politically weak and this could do him in; he could be replaced by Islamists sufficiently radical that they would actively support Osama bin Laden and friends, rather than merely fail to look aggressively enough to find them; fighting our way into, and seeking a needle in, the towering, rocky haystacks of that region is easier said than done, and on and on.
But when you get down to it, it all boils down to the reason I mentioned in passing in the first instance — Americans lack the appetite. So with a long line of people vying to be our new commander in chief, it’s helpful when one of them breaks out of the mold of what we might want to hear, and spells out a real challenge before us.
Most of us believe that the baddest bad guys in this War on Terror have been hiding in, and more relevantly operating from, the remote reaches of western Pakistan ever since they slipped through our fingers in 2001.
The diplomatic and strategic delicacy that the Bush administration (contrary to its image) has demonstrated with regard to the generalissimo in Pakistan has been something to behold. Now we see this guy we have done so much, by our self-restraint, to build up on the verge of collapse. We could end up with the crazy clerics anyway, or at least a surrender to, or sharing of power with, Benazir Bhutto.
But even if all the conditions were right abroad — even if the mountains were leveled and a new regime in Islamabad sent our Army an engraved invitation along with Mapquest directions to bin Laden’s cave — we’d still have the problem of American political shyness.
Same deal with Iran. In the past week a senior U.S. general announced that elite Iranian troops are in Iraq training Shiite militias in how to better kill Americans — and Sunnis, of course.
So it is that the United States is asking the United Nations to declare the Revolutionary Guard Corps — less a military outfit than a sort of government-sanctioned Mafia family, with huge legit covers in pumping oil, operating ports and manufacturing pharmaceuticals — a terrorist organization.
What is the response of the Revolutionary Guards to all this? Well, they’re not exactly gluing halos to their turbans. The head of the Guard Corps promised that “America will receive a heavier punch from the guards in the future.”
General Yahya Rahim Safavi was quoted in an Iranian newspaper as adding, “We will never remain silent in the face of US pressure and we will use our leverage against them.”
And the United States is engaged in debate with other “civilized” nations over what names we will call these thugs. The world’s strongest nation — its one “indispensable nation,” to quote President Clinton’s secretary of state — ought to be able to work up a more muscular response than that. If we hadn’t gained a recent reputation for shyness, all we’d really have to do with those muscles is flex them.
The one thing I liked about George W. Bush was that he was able to convince the world’s bad guys (and a lot of our friends, too, but you can’t have everything) that he was crazy enough to cross borders to go after them, if they gave him half an excuse. This worked, as long as the American people were behind him.
If only the next president were able to project similar willingness to act, and be credible about it. A saber rattled by such a leader can put a stop to much dangerous nonsense in the world.
But does the will exist in the American electorate? Not now, it doesn’t. When Obama said his tough piece, the nation sort of patted its charismatic prodigy on his head and explained that he was green and untested, and was bound to spout silly things now and then. (Rudy Giuliani, to his credit, said Obama was right. Others tut-tutted over the “rookie mistake.”)
While we’re thinking about who’s going to lead the United States, maybe we’d better think about whether America will follow a leader who says what ought to be said — whether it’s on Iraq, Pakistan or Iran, or energy policy. Will we follow a president who tells us we should increase the price of gasoline rather than moaning about how “high” it is? How about a president who says we’re going to have to pay more for less in Social Security benefits in the future?
Winning in Iraq and chasing down bin Laden are not necessarily either/or alternatives. This nation is large enough, rich enough and militarily savvy enough to field a much larger, more versatile force. Can you say “draft”? Well, actually, no — within the context of American politics with a presidential election coming up, you can’t. Not without being hooted down.
That crowd of candidates is vying to lead a crippled giant. And the giant, sitting there fecklessly munching junk food and watching “reality” TV, can only blame himself for his condition.

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

6 Replies

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/.

Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike communication

My week in the ‘phony’ Spin Cycle

16 Replies

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
HAD YOU asked me on Monday what I would be writing about for Sunday, a second column dealing — even peripherally — with presidential wannabe John Edwards would have been the last thing I would have guessed.
Yet here I am. What choice do I have? I’ve spent so much time this past week dealing with the reaction from the first one that I haven’t had time to develop anything on another topic.
It was just a midweek column, not worthy of a Sunday slot, a back-burner thing I had promised to address several months earlier on my blog, after readers challenged me for calling the man a “phony” without explaining the series of experiences that had led to that impression — which is all it was.
(And in case you didn’t read that column and are wondering what those experiences were, I have neither the space nor inclination to repeat them here. They took up a whole column the first time. You can find it on my blog. The address is below.)
But without ever intending or wanting to, I got caught up in the Spin Cycle of national politics. My musings had become, for that brief moment, Topic A — or at least B or C or D — and believe me: You don’t even want to be Topic Z in that alphabet.
Subsequent events didn’t follow each other in any way that made sense, so I’ll just throw them out in no particular order:

The Drudge Report picked up my column Tuesday morning, which launched the craziness as much as any one thing.
The New York Post called asking to reprint it, which it did the following day under the headline, “POOR LITTLE PHONY: JOHN EDWARDS’ FAKE EMPATHY.”
Dennis Miller of “Saturday Night Live” fame interviewed me on his radio show Thursday.
I got mocked by the “Wonkette”: “Brad Warthen of the South Carolina’s The State has a controversial opinion about John Edwards! His controversial opinion, which he, Brad Warthen, thought of himself, and which he is going to share… with you now, is as follows: John Edwards is a phony! A big fat phony!”
After two more radio shows called — one from Charlotte (for Thursday), another from Canada (for today), I called Andy Gobeil so that S.C. ETV wouldn’t miss out, and he had me on his show Friday morning.
My column was the lead political story on the Fox News network Tuesday night. Or rather, the response the Edwards campaign felt compelled to produce — and I do feel sorry for them for that — was the lead story. The story posted online began: “John Edwards’ campaign scoffed Tuesday at a new effort to depict the Democratic presidential candidate as phony after an influential columnist for a newspaper in Edwards’ birth state wrote that his personal experiences only reinforce his image of Edwards as plastic.”
My blog had its third-biggest day ever Tuesday with 5,825 page views, and its fourth-biggest on Wednesday. The biggest ever had been in June, when state Treasurer Thomas Ravenel was indicted. That made sense. This did not.
ABC News National Senior Correspondent Jake Tapper wrote on his blog about my “rather nasty op-ed” in these terms: “I personally find the evidence rather thin for such a scathing verbal attack.” Hey, if I had meant to mount a “scathing verbal attack,” I would have come up with some thicker stuff.
Someone named Pamela Leavey, writing on “The Democratic Daily,” said I was “Spewing Right-Wing Talking Points About John Edwards,” and thereby providing “a classic example of what’s wrong with our media.”

Obama_detail
I guess I had been spewing “Left-Wing Talking Points” when I said nice things about Barack Obama the week before. Of course, Ms. Leavey wouldn’t know about that, because she had probably never heard of me before Tuesday. That was true of most of the people commenting.
And yet, they seemed to think they knew an awful lot about me. Their confidence in passing judgment was far greater than my own. All I had done was describe impressions I had formed from actual experiences in my life. I didn’t consider them any better than anyone else’s experiences. When Zeke Stokes wrote in saying that when he worked on the Edwards campaign earlier this year he had formed a very different impression, I urged readers to take what he said every bit as seriously as what I had said.
But folks out in the blogosphere or in the 24/7 political spin cycle don’t have time for reflections upon personal experience. They have a convenient short-hand vocabulary for passing judgment instantly upon anything and everything, and all of it is based in childishly simplistic, partisan labels: “He’s one of them! I don’t like them!” or “He’s one of us! Everything he says is true!”
Among the more than 1,500 unread e-mails awaiting me Tuesday morning were quite a few from across the country praising or damning me for having expressed my opinion. Many were as shallow as Ms. Leavey’s “reflections.”
But here and there were messages from someone who got the point, which was this: We all form subjective impressions, often unconsciously. In my column I tried to determine exactly when and where I had picked up the bits that formed my overall impression of this one guy among many running for president. I thought that such an airing would be mildly interesting to readers, who often wonder what sorts of gut “biases” inform what we write in the paper, and where they come from.
A few readers appreciated that, saying that there had been something about Edwards that had nagged at them, and my column had helped them define it: “You hit something in me that I had not been able to figure out,” wrote Glenice Pearson. “Thanks for explaining what was wrong with him,” wrote Nancy Padgett. “I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t enthuse even though he is a SC boy.”
In turn, I appreciate those few readers who got it. The rest of it I could have done without.

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.

Obama, the young, and the magic of Making a Difference

20 Replies

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
HOW’RE YOU gonna keep ’em down on the blog after they’ve heard Obama?
For an old guy, I have a lot of ways of keeping in touch with the young, idealistic and enthusiastic — my kids, my kids’ friends, my friends’ kids… and Weblogs.
But these kids today — they need to learn to stick to something. Law student Laurin Manning was really cooking with her LaurinLine, one of the foremost political blogs in the state. Then she quit to Max2_2
politick for real, rather than just writing about it.
Then there’s Max Blachman [at right],
son of my friend Moss, who started “Democrats in the South” just over a year ago and was cooking along fairly well for a while. He last posted on March 3.
Both Laurin and Max have gone to work for Barack Obama.
And they are far from alone. Thursday, I met Elizabeth Wilkins [below left], originally from New York, who’s down here as youth vote director for the Obama
campaign. What pulls Elizabeth so far away from home? “It’s not
every 23-year-old who gets to work on a campaign Wilkins for a man who might be the first black president.” True, but there’s more than that.
Poor John McCain is laying off members of the Pepsi Generation left and right, but his Senate colleague from Chicago seems to have an employment agency going for the kids. (Not that they’re all paid. Most aren’t.)
Yes, campaigns in general tend to be youth-heavy. The rest of us have family responsibilities; we seek job security more lasting than the next news cycle.
But there’s something about Obama that makes the youthfulness of his supporters seem more apt, something that reminds me of my own youth — and not just because the first time I saw him in person was when he spoke to the College Democrats of America over at the Russell House on Thursday. It was there that I heard him, among other things, reassert (to applause) that he would rush right out and have meaningful talks with the thugs who run Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea and, by logical extension, pretty much any other regime that would be tickled magenta to be handed such a great propaganda photo-op.
It’s easy for a graybeard like me, or that crusty old neocon Charles Krauthammer, or Hillary Clinton for that matter, to dismiss such promises as “irresponsible and frankly naive” — as did Sen. Clinton to anyone who would listen last week after her chief rival gave her that opportunity to sound mature, tough and sane.
But beyond the fact that young people think mean people suck, and it’s mean not to talk to people, and that we should have done more of that before going all Angry Daddy on Saddam, there’s a positive reason why Obama has a particular appeal to the young: He describes public service as something you can engage in and still feel clean.
Poor Joe Biden, who’s even older than I am, got into all sorts of trouble for calling Obama “clean,” but that’s just what he is. And for those who are focusing on details of the latest 24/7 news cycle’s scandal or whatever, it’s easy to forget how appealing “clean” can be to the fresh-faced.
It can be a compelling issue, and it belongs completely to Obama. Bill Clinton’s wife, late of the Rose Law Firm, can’t touch it. Nor can the $400 haircut who wants to be the nation’s trial lawyer. And those old guys over on the GOP side — forget it.
The 23-year-old who still gasps somewhere within me is convinced that Barack Obama is completely for real when he channels JFK via Jimmy Carter. Remember Jimmy Carter — not the old guy with the hammer who shakes his finger at us like Miz Lillian when we fail to be sweet to other nations, not the Grand Incompetent of Reagan Revolution lore, but the original, the one whose green bumper sticker I had on my orange 1972 Vega back when even I was 23?
He was never going to lie to us. He would lead us from the partisan, crooked, nasty cesspool of Watergate and the angst of Vietnam. He would help us to be the kind of country that JFK had promised we would get to be, back before Everything Went Wrong.
Well, I do. And it wasn’t about Democrat or Republican or liberal or conservative or black or white or money or any of that stuff embraced by the people who had messed things up. It was about Clean. It was about Meaning.
I first spoke to Barack Obama — very briefly, because of cell phone problems while I was traveling through mountains — a month ago. He only wanted to talk about one thing: Clean. He was unveiling his plan for “the most sweeping ethics reform in history,” — “Closing the Revolving Door,” “Increasing Public Access to Information,” and other Clean Government 101 stuff.
But with that overflow crowd of college kids providing better reception than my Treo, I realized that for this candidate, such yadda-yadda basics were more than just the talking points of that one day.
“Here’s the point,” he told them. “I wanted you to know that I’ve been where you are. I loved the world as a young man, and I wanted to make a difference. I’ve often been told that change wasn’t possible, but I’ve learned that it was. I believe that it still is. And I’m ready to join you in changing the course …”
Not just the course of war, or the wicked oil companies, or me-first politics, or meanness, but changing the lousy way that things are, period.
He invoked “an image of young people, back in the civil rights movement, straight-backed, clear-eyed, marching for justice…” and told them they could be those young people. They were those young people.
He reaches across time, across cynicism, across the sordidness of Politics As Practiced, offering to pull them in to the place where they can make a difference.
You can see how, to someone who’s 23, he’d be worth ditching the blog for.

bradwarthen.com

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