Category Archives: John McCain

Congratulations to President Obama!

Obama’s done the expected, and done it on deadline, which certainly warms my heart toward him.

Here’s hoping his leadership as president is on a par with the highest notes he struck during the presidential campaign. And he has struck some fine ones, such as on the night of his triumph in S.C. I certainly had an undivided mind about his victory on that night.

He’s shown he can inspire; let’s all hope and pray he can unite the nation. We need it. No, I’m not as happy about this as I thought I would be several months ago. But I’m hopeful, so call me audacious.

I now turn the floor over to you, the reader — I’ll have more to say in the coming days, but I’m going to go get some sack time now.

Obamawin6

My predictions

Here are my predictions as to what I think will happen on the contested races that we dealt with in our endorsements. As always, endorsements are about who should win, not who will win. To fill that vacuum — and to help you see the difference — here are my prognostications (in which I place far less faith, because they are not nearly as carefully considered):

Obama will win the presidential election — the real one (electoral college, with at least 300 electors) as well as the popular vote. He’ll win it decisively enough that we’ll know by midnight. BUT McCain will win in South Carolina, probably 55-45. We endorsed McCain.
Lindsey Graham will easily win re-election. No prediction on the numbers; I have no idea. In fact, I’m only doing numbers on the presidential, because I really have no idea on any others. We endorsed Graham.
Joe Wilson will win against Rob Miller, but it will be close. We endorsed Wilson.
Jim Clyburn will have a blowout victory over his GOP opponent. We endorsed Clyburn.
John Spratt will win with a margin somewhere between Wilson’s and Clyburn’s. We endorsed Spratt.
Nikki Setzler will survive the challenge from Margaret Gamble, and thanks to the Obama Effect, it will be the first time it helped him to be a Democrat in 20 years. We endorsed Setzler.
Anton Gunn will beat David Herndon, but it will be fairly close. We endorsed Gunn.
Joe McEachern will cruise to victory over Michael Koska. We endorsed Koska.
Chip Huggins will roll right over Jim Nelson, who will NOT benefit appreciably from the Obama Effect. We endorsed Nelson.
Nikki Haley will win big, again in spite of Obama. We endorsed Ms. Haley.
Harry Harmon will again be Lexington County coroner. We endorsed Harmon, although we again made the point that this should NOT be an elective office.
Elise Partin will — I hope I hope — win the Cayce mayor’s office (this is the one I have the LEAST feel for, since we’ve never endorsed for this office before). We endorsed Ms. Partin.
Gwen Kennedy, despite being best known for a Hawaiian junket the last time she was on Richland County council, will ride the Obama Effect to victory over Celestine White Parker. We endorsed Ms. Parker.
Mike Montgomery should prevail (note my hesitation) over challenger Jim Manning, who seems to be running as much as anything because he felt like there should be a Democrat in the race with Obama running. We endorsed Montgomery.

Oh, and Ted Pitts will roll to victory over his last-second UnParty challenger. We didn’t endorse in this one, but if we had, we would have endorsed Ted.

The creeping sense of letdown

This feeling has been creeping up on me in recent weeks, and it’s just emerged into my consciousness in the last days. I hesitated to mention it, and it seems particularly inappropriate given the fact that people are turning out in droves to vote, but…

The election has been a real letdown for me. And I didn’t expect that.

Remember back in January, when I said that if our two endorsees for the major party nominations both made it to the November ballot, it would be a win-win proposition for the country? Well, I did say it, and I meant it. But somehow, between then and now, my enthusiasm has just dissipated, like air slowly but steadily leaking from a balloon.

Part of this is just due to the fact that I was never going to enjoy the general election campaign as much as I did the primaries, nor would I appreciate these two candidates as much as party standard-bearers. They were SO much more appealing as insurgents — McCain running and prevailing against all the diehard GOPpers, over their vehement protests, and doing it even after his candidacy was declared dead. Obama running as the alternative to continuing the vicious, pointless partisanship of the Clinton-Bush years. But the climax of this drama seems to have occurred when they triumphed over their parties’ orthodoxies. Nothing has seemed that fun or that inspiring since then.

McCain picking Sarah Palin to please the base was bad, but Obama leading the charge of the crowd pretending that John McCain was some sort of incarnation of George W. Bush was, if anything, worse. All of it was dispiriting. I first noted that during the Democratic Convention; and while there were moments in McCain’s acceptance speech where he was almost the guy he needed to be to keep me applauding, he fell short of the mark.

Beyond those factors, three things contributed to my present political ennui:

McCain utterly failing to put his best foot — or even his second-best foot — forward. Every time he opened his mouth, I kept hoping he would explain clearly, in a way undecided voters couldn’t miss, why he was the guy. I still thought he was the guy myself, but it would have been nice if he had helped others see it. It’s like he was going through the motions ever since he upstaged himself with the Palin selection. This is a weird and unfair thing to say, but… you know those appearances he did on SNL Saturday and Monday nights? He was game, and I give him that, but… he just fell flat. It wasn’t funny. No, he’s not a professional comedian, but he can be funny — one moment when he was his old self, but I think too few people saw it, was at the Alfred E. Smith dinner. He was hilarious. His timing, and his feel for his audience was impeccable. But the SNL appearances were a letdown. Blame the writing if you will, but it was sort of symbolic to me of the way he generally failed to connect throughout the fall. Sometimes you click; sometimes you don’t. Yeah, I know that seems stupid, but what I’m trying to say is that he no more clicked as a presidential candidate during these weeks than he did on SNL. If you don’t know what I mean, go back and watch the debates. He was saying the right things, but not clicking. As I mentioned in a previous post, our endorsement was about his record, not about what we saw in the campaign. I’d endorse him again given the chance, but next time I would hope he’d help himself out more.
That shouldn’t have mattered given the "win-win" situation I had predicted back in January. With one guy faltering, that left us with Obama. But I found myself less and less enchanted with him as the campaign wore on. He, unlike McCain, never missed a step. He was on his game at every moment of every day, with a steadiness and discipline that seemed superhuman. That wasn’t the problem. The one real up-side I saw to the future, contemplating the future with a President Obama, was that he has consistently shown such stellar abilities with the intangibles of leadership, from his general unflappability to his rhetorical talents. The problem was that I started paying more attention to what he actually had to say about some issues, and started doing so in a more critical fashion, as I pondered our upcoming endorsement. And, as I’ve said in recent days, I got really, really disturbed about some of the things he said, because they were SO off-the-shelf, liberal Democratic dogmatic. (Ironically, the debates had a big impact on me here — even as I was disappointed at McCain’s political skills on those occasions, I became more and more disturbed by precisely what Obama was saying so smoothly.) Before, I had just accepted that he and I wouldn’t agree on abortion, for instance — something I had to accept in backing Joe Lieberman or practically any other Democrat. But then I started peeling the layers, and each new layer worried me more. First, his lack of concern for the moral value of the unborn seemed to go beyond most Democrats, and I just started fully noticing that near the end. Then there was his unwillingness to consider judicial candidates who didn’t agree with him on the issue. Then there was his equating the nebulous "right to privacy" with the right to free speech. Then there was his utter dismissal of the rights or duties of the political branches to decide such issues with that "state referendums" nonsense. Then I saw similar patterns on free trade, and there was a disturbing willingness to be doctrinaire on Big Labor’s agenda, not a transformative figure at all. Combine that with the inevitability of bigger Democratic majorities, and instead of a post-partisan president, you’ve got textbook Democrat, and that set us up for more partisan warfare in the coming years, not less.
Finally, there was the staggering economic news of the last couple of months. On a pure electoral plane, this as much as anything is what has delivered the election to Obama. But I gotta tell you, I sure wish I could be as sanguine as the Obamaniacs are about his ability to lead us through this. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t think McCain could, either. It’s just that I have seen little to make me think Obama has a better idea of how to approach this. I wasn’t kidding when I said, several weeks back, that what we need is another FDR. And neither of these guys fills the bill, the way I see it. This factor has done as much as anything else to grind down my enthusiasm, day after day. Did you see the lead story in The Wall Street Journal today? That’s our reality, folks. I really, really hope that the Obama supporters are right and I’m wrong, and he WILL have what it takes to lead us to turn back the tide. But I remain worried.

Maybe I’m just tired. Maybe this is just physical exhaustion. Maybe it’s the wild ride of the past two years, all the excitement — all the fun we’ve had here on the blog, for that matter, with page views now essentially double the year before. And so on pure adrenaline, I’m due for a letdown. But I think it’s more than that.

In the last few weeks, I’ve said a bunch of times that I looked forward to this being over. But I just realized today that I won’t feel that way at all. Instead, I fear, the letdown will be complete rather than merely imminent, and I’ve just come to realize that. No, not because "my guy" lost the presidential election. It’s more because I thought it was win-win, and then I realized that it wasn’t, and that whoever won, we were going to have a mess that we still have to get through. The economy will still be a mess. We’ll still have the same problems with Iran, Russia, Venezuela, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, China… and ourselves. We won’t even be poised to solve our health care crisis, because even with a bigger Democratic majority and a liberal Democrat in the White House, no one will say "single-payer." The irony of that is palpable to me. (We’ll get the BAD stuff of liberal Democratic ideology — the activist judges, the intimidation of unwilling workers into unions, trade isolationism, and the like — without a National Health Plan. Sheesh.)

Basically, I realized fully, on an emotional level, that neither McCain nor Obama was going to deliver us from all that. And once the election is over, we no longer have the luxury of pretending that they might do so. So I think that’s why I’m down.

Sorry to rain on the parade. Y’all go ahead and have a nice time, though …

Of presidents, courts and the rule of law

By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
AT THE OUTSET, John McCain had a great head start with me — on experience, national security, foreign affairs, bipartisanship, and his oft-demonstrated willingness to do the right thing regardless of political consequences.
As Labor Day approached, I began to doubt. First, he picked Sarah Palin. I don’t have as low an opinion of her as many seem to, but she’s no Joe Lieberman. Then, Sen. McCain ran a particularly ham-handed fall campaign, one that simply did not communicate his virtues clearly to the voters. As I had with Bob Dole in 1996, I wondered: If he can’t run a campaign, how can he run the country?
But my doubts ended during the third debate. Sen. Barack Obama “won” on style, on cool, on demeanor, much as John Kennedy did in 1960. But I was paying attention to what they said. That’s when I decided I had to stick with McCain.
Let’s consider several things they said about one subject, judicial selection.
This column is not about abortion. I knew already that I disagreed with Obama about abortion. I’m a Catholic, and I’m not a Joe Biden kind of Catholic. But I’ve supported Democrats (such as Sen. Lieberman) who didn’t challenge their party on abortion; I’m not a single-issue voter.
Aside from abortion itself, I find Roe v. Wade appalling in two ways: I don’t find a “right to privacy” in the Constitution. Secondly, the ruling has had a devastatingly polarizing effect on our politics. My respect for the rule of law is such that I’d be willing to put up with the political division for a ruling rightly decided, but this one didn’t qualify.
So the sooner Roe is overturned, the better. Obama strongly disagrees. And in rationalizing what he sees as the imperative to protect Roe, he turns against several other important principles that I believe a president should respect, from the separation of powers to the proper role of politics.
I’ll review each of these points briefly, starting with the one that concerns me least:
Sen. Obama seems to judge court rulings based more on their policy effects than on legal reasoning. In his autobiography, Dreams from My Father, he wrote, “The answers I find in law books don’t always satisfy me — for every Brown v. Board of Education I find a score of cases where conscience is sacrificed to expedience or greed.” That hinted to me that he cares more about good outcomes than law. But I forgot about it until I heard him say in the debate that “I will look for those judges who have an outstanding judicial record, who have the intellect, and who hopefully have a sense of what real-world folks are going through.” That third qualification disturbed me because it seemed to demand a political sensibility on the part of judges, but I wasn’t sure.
Much harder to overlook is the hard fact that despite his opposition to Roe, John McCain voted to confirm two Clinton nominees, Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Why? “Not because I agreed with their ideology, but because I thought they were qualified and that elections have consequences.” Senators should respect the president’s prerogative to the point that they should refuse to confirm only those nominees who are obviously unqualified. “This is a very important issue we’re talking about,” he added. Sen. Obama has had two opportunities in his brief Senate career to confirm highly qualified nominees — Samuel Alito and John Roberts — and voted against both. Yes, confirmation is different from nomination, but I would rather have someone who has demonstrated McCain’s relative freedom from ideology doing the nominating.
Perhaps worst of all, Sen. Obama was dismissive and misleading regarding the proper roles of the states with regard to the federal government, and the political branches with regard to the judiciary. Regarding Roe, Sen. McCain said, “I thought it was a bad decision…. I think that… should rest in the hands of the states. I’m a federalist.” He was saying abortion law should be returned to state legislatures, where we make most of our laws, rather than having it in a special, hands-off category.
In answering, Mr. Obama shocked me in two ways, saying “I think that the Constitution has a right to privacy in it that shouldn’t be subject to state referendum, any more than our First Amendment rights are subject to state referendum, any more than many of the other rights that we have should be subject to popular vote.”
If a right to privacy exists, it is at best inferred from the Constitution. The author of the “right,” Justice William O. Douglas, found it in “penumbras” and “emanations.” And yet Sen. Obama equated it to the very first rights that the Framers chose to set out in black and white, and subject to ratification. That a Harvard-trained attorney would do that may not boggle your mind, but it surely does mine.
Then there’s that bit about not subjecting such a hallowed “right” to “state referendum,” or “popular vote.” Sen. McCain had suggested nothing of the kind. In a representative democracy, such questions are properly decided neither by plebiscite nor by judicial fiat, but by the representatives elected by the people to make the laws under which we will live.
There are many issues to consider in this election, from national security to the current economic crisis. I can’t go into all of them in this column. But in just those few moments in that one debate, John McCain clearly demonstrated to me a far greater respect for the proper roles of the president, the Congress, the courts, the states, and the people themselves in making us a nation of laws and not of men.

Go to thestate.com/bradsblog/.

Kagan’s right: Security trumps all

Frederick Kagan has it exactly right in today’s Wall Street Journal: "Security Should Be the Deciding Issue." An excerpt:

As the scale of the economic crisis becomes clear and comparisons to the Great Depression of the 1930s are tossed around, there is a very real danger that America could succumb to the feeling that we no longer have the luxury of worrying about distant lands, now that we are confronted with a "real" problem that actually affects the lives of all Americans. As we consider whether various bailout plans help Main Street as well as Wall Street, the subtext is that both are much more important to Americans than Haifa Street.

One problem with this emotion is that it ignores the sequel to the Great Depression — the rise of militaristic Japan marked by the 1931 invasion of Manchuria, and Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933, both of which resulted in part from economic dislocations spreading outward from the U.S. The inward-focus of the U.S. and the leading Western powers (Great Britain and France) throughout the 1930s allowed these problems to metastasize, ultimately leading to World War II.

Is it possible that American inattention to the world in the coming years could lead to a similarly devastating result? You betcha.

A couple of things to note: Mr. Kagan doesn’t express a preference for either Obama or McCain. Of course, folks likely to vote for McCain are more likely to agree with him that security overrides such considerations as the economy. Democrats love it when the economy is the one thing on the table; just ask James Carville. And of course, I’ve had arguments with bud here about the relative importance of foreign affairs vs. the domestic economy. He thinks the economy is everything, and to me it’s less important (not to mention simply being something I hate to spend time talking or thinking about, because it has to do with money).

And, yeah — I trust McCain more on national security. At the same time, I don’t think Obama would be all that bad. Yes, he continues to insist upon being wrong about Iraq. But I think he has calculated that he has to be consistent there; his views on the rest of the world aren’t nearly as MoveOn.orgish.

But set all that aside, and the main thing I’m saying here is that I agree with Mr. Kagan: For us we turn inward fretting over our pocketbooks at the expense of ignoring our proper role in the world would be extraordinarily dangerous. Yeah, we can do both. But not the economy at the expense of international security.

Helen Alvaré on Obama and abortion

Tomorrow, I plan to write a column for Sunday about how the remarks of the candidates on judicial selection in the third debate solidified my preference for John McCain, on several levels.

It won’t be about the abortion issue. Obviously, Obama and I disagree about abortion. But so do most Democrats, and I’ve supported plenty of Democrats in my day. What I plan to get into is the less emotional aspects of that debate, those that deal with bipartisanship, pragmatism, the Constitution and the proper roles of the respective branches of government. For instance, as I’ve mentioned here, I was rather shocked to hear a Harvard-trained attorney equate the inferred (and I believe, nonexistent) "right to privacy" to the all-important First Amendment, deliberately stating that the first is just as sacrosanct a principle to him as the latter.

Here’s my text from which I’ll be working. It’s this passage from the transcript of the third presidential debate:

SCHIEFFER: All right. Let’s stop there and go to another question. And this one goes to Senator McCain. Senator McCain, you believe Roe v. Wade should be overturned. Senator Obama, you believe it shouldn’t.

Could either of you ever nominate someone to the Supreme Court who disagrees with you on this issue? Senator McCain?

MCCAIN: I would never and have never in all the years I’ve been there imposed a litmus test on any nominee to the court. That’s not appropriate to do.

SCHIEFFER: But you don’t want Roe v. Wade to be overturned?

MCCAIN: I thought it was a bad decision. I think there were a lot of decisions that were bad. I think that decisions should rest in the hands of the states. I’m a federalist. And I believe strongly that we should have nominees to the United States Supreme Court based on their qualifications rather than any litmus test. Now, let me say that there was a time a few years ago when the United States Senate was about to blow up. Republicans wanted to have just a majority vote to confirm a judge and the Democrats were blocking in an unprecedented fashion.

We got together seven Republicans, seven Democrats. You were offered a chance to join. You chose not to because you were afraid of the appointment of, quote, "conservative judges."

I voted for Justice Breyer and Justice Ginsburg. Not because I agreed with their ideology, but because I thought they were qualified and that elections have consequences when presidents are nominated. This is a very important issue we’re talking about.

Senator Obama voted against Justice Breyer [sic — he meant Alito] and Justice Roberts on the grounds that they didn’t meet his ideological standards. That’s not the way we should judge these nominees. Elections have consequences. They should be judged on their qualifications. And so that’s what I will do.

I will find the best people in the world — in the United States of America who have a history of strict adherence to the Constitution. And not legislating from the bench.

SCHIEFFER: But even if it was someone — even someone who had a history of being for abortion rights, you would consider them?

MCCAIN: I would consider anyone in their qualifications. I do not believe that someone who has supported Roe v. Wade that would be part of those qualifications. But I certainly would not impose any litmus test.

SCHIEFFER: All right.

OBAMA: Well, I think it’s true that we shouldn’t apply a strict litmus test and the most important thing in any judge is their capacity to provide fairness and justice to the American people.

And it is true that this is going to be, I think, one of the most consequential decisions of the next president. It is very likely that one of us will be making at least one and probably more than one appointments and Roe versus Wade probably hangs in the balance.

Now I would not provide a litmus test. But I am somebody who believes that Roe versus Wade was rightly decided. I think that abortion is a very difficult issue and it is a moral issue and one that I think good people on both sides can disagree on.

But what ultimately I believe is that women in consultation with their families, their doctors, their religious advisers, are in the best position to make this decision. And I think that the Constitution has a right to privacy in it that shouldn’t be subject to state referendum, any more than our First Amendment rights are subject to state referendum, any more than many of the other rights that we have should be subject to popular vote.

OBAMA: So this is going to be an important issue. I will look for those judges who have an outstanding judicial record, who have the intellect, and who hopefully have a sense of what real-world folks are going through.

I won’t get into the right or wrong about abortion per se in my column except to acknowledge that yes, I’m pro-life, so there’s a fundamental disagreement there, and I think Roe has been enormously destructive to the politics of our nation. Then I’ll move on to the more abstract stuff, where I believe I will make points that someone should be able to relate to regardless of their position on abortion itself.

Other Catholics have taken on the ethical issue head-on, however, and are actively appalled at the idea of a "President Obama." A few minutes ago, I got an op-ed submission from Helen Alvaré, as follows:

(Helen Alvaré was the planning and information director for the pro-life efforts of the nations’ Catholic bishops for 10 years. She is now an Associate Professor at the George Mason University School of Law. The opinions expressed herein are purely personal, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of either of these institutions)

My name has been closely associated with Catholic Church pro-life efforts for almost two decades. For that reason, and because I believe ardently that religion cannot be reduced to politics, I have studiously avoided public commentary about particular candidates over the course of 18 years of pro-life work. It still offends me at three or four levels when a minivan sporting a political bumper sticker arrives at carpool at my kids’ Catholic school, or parks for Sunday Mass. I will not have one.

But Barack Obama has pushed me over the edge of anonymity. Whatever else is true about the dangers of appearing to claim (wrongly) that God has a horse in this race, it is more dangerous to pretend that I’m less than horrified at the prospect of an Obama presidency.

For here is a man who has publicly thrown his considerable influence behind the idea that it is acceptable to let newborn infants die if their mothers wanted an abortion and the child was mistakenly delivered alive. Here is a man who can countenance doctors partially-delivering living unborn children, and then stabbing, suctioning and crushing their heads – all in the name of preserving “abortion rights.” His public record is unambiguous in this regard, despite attempts by the some to torture the meanings of Senator Obama’s voting record. The facts are simple. While an Illinois state senator, Senator Obama led the opposition to a law that would have protected children who were accidentally born alive after an abortion-attempt. He also worked with the nation’s leading chain of abortion clinics, Planned Parenthood, to strategize the defeat of bills that would have given parents information about their minor girls’ abortions. As a U.S. Senator, he denounced an overwhelmingly popular law to ban the killing of partially-born infants. And as a presidential candidate, he told Planned Parenthood’s Action Fund on July 17, 2007 that the “first thing I’d do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act.” For emphasis, he repeated: “That’s the first thing I’d do.” This is overwhelming on its face. Among all the first statements about the meaning of his historic presidency a President Obama could choose, it would be this: an expanded abortion license.

What can be made of such a man? It is no good to say he is simply acting to champion women’s rights when most American women would outlaw or more stringently regulate abortion (New York Times, April 19, 2007 Megan Thee, Public Opinion on Abortion). Or when even Obama concedes the possibility that abortion is killing, which of course makes it a forbidden “means” to any end – woman’s rights or any other. He cynically leaves it to others at a higher “pay grade” to determine the exact moment when life begins, but we all know the instrumental purposes of this utterance: appear to maintain common ground with both sides of the ever-churning abortion debate.

Some readers will say of my position: “She is a single-issue voter, and those people don’t care what becomes of the rest of us.” To the exact contrary, I am suggesting that when Obama supports allowing a parent to kill a child, at perhaps the most defenseless moment of his or her life, and when he refuses to see this killing as an intrinsic wrong, but calls it rather a cherished right, we should understand that none of us is safe. For where does his “reasoning” leave other defenseless persons? What does it imply about all of the decisions a “President Obama” will make?

Some will say that the good Obama will do for some people simply outweighs the harm he will do to others. Even this calculus is absurd; Obama’s judicial appointments will ensure that legalized abortion continues to be forced upon every state, as it has been since 1973 when the U.S. Supreme Court in one fell swoop overturned laws against most abortions in every state in the Union. We’re talking millions more abortions during our lifetimes and the lifetimes of our children. Obama has even declared himself opposed to continued funding for “crisis centers” offering pregnant women a way to support the children they wish to keep.

But even were the above calculus somehow measurable and correct, it is never acceptable to endorse killing as a means to any end. By endorsing it, then, candidate Obama has demonstrated that he doesn’t have a conscience that functions in a way Americans should even recognize. Rather, his is a “conscience” which surely comprehends what it must be like to die violently, or by means of starvation and dehydrations; yet he votes to allow these to continue. Elevating such a man to the most important legal and social bully pulpit in the nation is unthinkable. Worse, it is a national tragedy.

For these reasons, and for the first time in my life, I have to speak out. An Obama presidency would be a moral nightmare.

.
Professor Helen Alvaré is an Associate Professor of Law at the George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Virginia.

I certainly understand where Ms. Alvaré is coming from on this, even though I’m going to be tackling this from another angle.

Personally, I haven’t been as shocked by Obama’s positions on this as she is. I say, you want to be shocked? Look at Joe Biden. He’s a Catholic; he should know better. And yet, as I’ve said plenty of times before, I like Joe. And I’m not horrified by the idea of an Obama presidency, he is after all my strong second choice. But pieces such as this make me wonder about myself: Maybe I’ve allowed myself to accept too much about the "political realities" of being a Democrat in America. There is an alternative — pro-life Democrats such as Bob Casey in Pennsylvania DO get elected nowadays, even with NARAL fighting tooth and nail to stop them. Obama and Biden have a moral alternative. So what excuses their position, from my own Catholic point of view?

But that’s not what my column’s going to be about.

South of the Border

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

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

No win situation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Flame of Alaska?

The things you learn about candidates from reading their books. Despite the length of those columns I wrote after reading Barack Obama’s and John McCain’s chronicles of their early years, obviously there was much I didn’t have room to get into, including a lot of stuff that each candidate’s respective detractors like to point to.

Obama had his dope-smoking years, a period of rebellion in which I think he was self-consciously trying to emulate Malcolm X in his wild, self-destructive period — although being careful not to go too far, of course. (We both read the Autobiography in high school in Hawaii. I found it interesting; Obama saw it briefly as a guide to being a "black man in America," something he had to practice to learn.)

John McCain, having been a Naval Aviator, was less inhibited. He had Marie, the Flame of Florida. And others; that name just stood out. She apparently was an exotic dancer who performed for the fliers at Trader John’s, their favorite Pensacola after-hours locale. Ensign McCain dated her for awhile. She was "a remarkably attractive girl with a great sense of humor." He made the mistake once of taking her on an impulse to a party given by a married officer. (The single junior officers seldom socialized with the married couples. There was a good reason for this.) She was "a good sport" about it, but was clearly out of place among the Eastern Establishment-educated wives:

The young wives she was about to meet would be decorously attired and unfailingly genteel. Marie was dressed somewhat flamboyantly that evening, as was her custom.
… Marie sensed that the young wives, while certainly not rude to her, were less than entirely at ease in her presence. So she sat silent, not wishing to impose on anyone or intrude in the conversations going on around her. After a while, she must have become a little bored. So, quietly, she reached into her purse, withdrew a switchblade, popped open the blade, and, with a look of complete indifference, began to clean her fingernails.
… A short time later, recognizing that our presence had perhaps subdued the party, I thanked our hosts for their hospitality, bid goodbye to the others, and took my worldly, lovely Flame of Florida to dinner.

I like that line, "as was her custom…"

Kathleen Parker believes the crusty old sailor who once romanced the Flame of Florida had a similar motivation for choosing Sarah Palin — another remarkably attractive girl with a great sense of humor — to go with him to the party those Republican stiffs held up in St. Paul. Only this time, the date was the hit of the party. They particularly liked the part where she took out her switchblade and sliced and diced the Community Organizer with it.

But perhaps we’re reading too much into this.

You, too, can use irony — no experience required

Wow. As cool as Barack Obama is — and he IS cool, all the time — some of his supporters are VERY emotional.

Two of them — Jennifer and Pam — got so worked up by my very mild use of irony on this previous post (referring to their guy as "The One") that they mistook me for a Republican. To wit:

I don’t understand why Republicans continue to call Senator Obama
"The One" – none of his supporters has ever used that term. Why do you
rely on mocking the man and spreading lies about him? Is it maybe
because you are obviously wrong on the issues? Crawl back into your
caves, please, and let us get to work cleaning up another one of your
messes.

Posted by: Jennifer Mullen | Oct 29, 2008 9:13:15 PM

_____________________________________

When a party has no good ideas or solutions you slander your
opponent. Just like Brad , you know " the one " comment. The consistent
theme from the RNC and the McCain campaign is fear and hate . And ,
this paper’s editorial board enforces that theme. Sad to think that
some in this state are unable to look to the future .

Posted by: pam,greenwood | Oct 30, 2008 9:58:27 AM

Talk about letting emotion override the higher faculties…

p.m., thanks for pointing out the painfully obvious:

Jennifer, Oprah Winfrey introduced Obama as "The One" years ago. I
have seen the videotape. If you would Google it, you could probably
find it….

Posted by: p.m. | Oct 29, 2008 10:43:00 PM

Yes, I got the thing about "The One" from that font of Republican bile, Oprah… We "Republicans" always go to her for our marching orders, talking points, swastika armbands, etc.

Folks, where are we when we can’t even use the smallest bits of irony in our public discourse without somebody getting all offended?

Come on, folks — Phillip gets it. He’s for Obama, and he can josh about the cheesiness:

Naturally, my biggest complaint was the syrupy Saving-Private-Ryan-ish background music.

Posted by: Phillip | Oct 30, 2008 4:40:54 AM

And I didn’t even notice the music — leave it to Phillip; he’s our music guy. I just noticed the cheesy set, which someone was careful to make ALMOST exactly like the Oval Office, but enough unlike it to allow for plausible deniability. I mean, LOOK at it, people. Now that’s artistry.

Folks, cheesy is cheesy. Joe the Plumber — cheesy. Pandering with a gas tax cut — cheesy. Picking Sarah Palin — cheesy (although, to quote from the movie Phillip cites, I find myself "strangely attracted…"). Maverick this, maverick that — cheesy.

Now, you Obama supporters — make some ironic comments about your guy. Come on, you can do it. Look, this guy’s going to be the president, and I just won’t be able to stand four years of y’all being so deadly earnest. Loosen up.

My biggest hit ever: McCain on ‘that little jerk’ Graham

The kind words some of y’all offered about my video on this last post — which featured Lindsey Graham talking about Sarah Palin — reminded me of something I noticed just the other day.

Remember how I used to bore y’all with my Top Five Lists of which of my video clips were getting the most play on YouTube? Well, I sort of got out of the habit there for awhile (partly because I was tired of being depressed by the fact that three of my Top Five were clips of neoNazis at the State House), but the other day I looked, and lo and behold, the above clip from more than a year ago had come out of nowhere to top my list.

The last time I’d taken any notice of my stats, my top videos were at around 20,000 views. All of a sudden, the clip I shot in the Vista on the night of the first GOP presidential debate in South Carolina — way back in May 2007 (is it possible it was that long ago) — had shot up from nowhere to the top spot, at 45,000 views! It’s the one in which John McCain, standing on a podium with Henry McMaster and Bobby Harrell, looks out into the crowd and says,

… and I know that little jerk Lindsey Graham is around here somewhere.

Of course, being all about giving y’all the full story, I also posted the full, unedited context of that joke, in which McCain went on to say nice things about his buddy. But that context — which is sort of worth watching for the way my shaky handheld style captures the confusion and crowd excitement, although inadvertently — isn’t nearly as popular. It’s been viewed less than 1,000 times.

Obviously, on YouTube, brevity sells. So does irony.

One last note: I’m happy to say that my critically acclaimed "Who Resurrected the Electric Car?," probably my finest job of video editing ever (considering the low-res images I work with), stays in the number three spot at 28,000 views — right behind the not-so-acclaimed "Sieg Heil at the State House" and "Hillary’s Heckler."

Anyway, enjoy.

Cindi’s ‘undecided’ column

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

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

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

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

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

McCain vs. Obama: The cognitive difference

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photos I did NOT use with ‘Palin and sexual attraction’ column

Being a responsible editor and all, I resisted the temptation to choose any of these pictures when I was looking for art to go with Kathleen Parker’s column on the theory that McCain picked Palin because… well, because guys can’t think straight in the presence of a good-looking woman.

An excerpt from the column in question:

As my husband observed early on,
McCain the mortal couldn’t mind having an attractive woman all but singing arias to his greatness. Cameras frequently capture McCain beaming like a gold-starred schoolboy while Palin tells crowds that he is “exactly the kind of man I want as commander in chief.” This, notes Draper, “seemed to confer not only valor but virility on a 72-year-old politician who only weeks ago barely registered with the party faithful.”

It is entirely possible that no one could have beaten the political force known as Barack Obama — under any circumstances. And though it isn’t over yet, it seems clear that McCain made a tragic, if familiar, error under that sycamore tree. Will he join the pantheon of men who, intoxicated by a woman’s power, made the wrong call?

Had Antony not fallen for Cleopatra, Octavian might not have captured the Roman Empire. Had Bill resisted Monica, Al Gore may have become president and Hillary might be today’s Democratic nominee.

Palinsex3 But they didn’t — resist those women, that is. Guys seldom do. Certain things make us stupid, and
Kathleen maintains this was one of those things.

Hey, but at least I resisted using these pictures, right? That shows that there’s still such a thing as decorum in a family newspaper.

Of course, I did save them, to share with y’all. Don’t tell the ladies, though, guys…

Palinsex4

More feedback on McCain endorsement

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

Hi,

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

_________________________________________

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

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

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

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

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

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

_________________________________________

Brad

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

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

__________________________________________________

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

__________________________________________

Mr. Warthen,

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

_______________________________________________

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

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

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

____________________________________________

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

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

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

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

I’ll still respect you after the election.

__________________________________________

To: StateEditor, Columbia
Subject: to Mr. Warthen

Dear Mr. Warthen:

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

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

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

_______________________________________________

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

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

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

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

____________________________________________

To: StateEditor, Columbia
Subject: (no subject)

Good morning to you Mr. Warthen-

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

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

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

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

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

__________________________________________________

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

________________________________________________

To: StateEditor, Columbia
Subject: McCain endorsement

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

_______________________________________________

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

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

So there you have it.

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

More about the McCain endorsement

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

Go to thestate.com/bradsblog/.

Warren Bolton: ‘Why I prefer Obama’

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

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

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

Watch for the rest of the endorsement package Sunday

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

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

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

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

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

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

Commenting on the endorsement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do you believe the AP poll saying it’s a dead heat?

The AP has reported a poll putting McCain in a dead heat with Obama:

WASHINGTON — The presidential race tightened after the final debate, with John McCain gaining among whites and people earning less than $50,000, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll that shows McCain and Barack Obama essentially running even among likely voters in the election homestretch.
The poll, which found Obama at 44 percent and McCain at 43 percent, supports what some Republicans and Democrats privately have said in recent days: that the race narrowed after the third debate as GOP-leaning voters drifted home to their party and McCain’s "Joe the plumber" analogy struck a chord.
Three weeks ago, an AP-GfK survey found that Obama had surged to a seven-point lead over McCain, lifted by voters who thought the Democrat was better suited to lead the nation through its sudden economic crisis.
The contest is still volatile, and the split among voters is apparent less than two weeks before Election Day….

Do you believe that? I don’t think I do. Other polls, such as this one, show tightening, but nothing THAT close.

Just yesterday, The Wall Street Journal found Obama opening up a double-digit lead, which seemed more consistent with what my gut was telling me.

But who knows? What do y’all think?

Philadelphia’s weird endorsement(s)

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

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

As of this moment, we plan to do that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

bradwarthen.com

All The News That Gives You Fits