Category Archives: Leadership

It appears she’s not Mark Sanford after all (at least, not on this). Good for Gov. Haley!

At least, not on this point.

Assuming that Nikki Haley actually does sign the ATV safety bill today, she deserves a huge “Huzzah” from rational South Carolinians everywhere.

His repeated vetoes of this bill stand as the most malicious, harmful instances of his bloodless application of ideological abstractions to governance. His stance shocked the sensibilities of even some libertarians.

It’s ridiculous that something so common-sense as this bill should be “progress” in this state, but it is. And we must celebrate what little we get in that regard, because sometimes we go backwards.

Case in point: Myrtle Beach expects to be flooded with bikers this year because it has rescinded its “controversial” ordinance requiring that helmets be worn.

Where else would such a no-brainer (pun intended) be regarded as “controversial”? OK, maybe some places out West. Or wherever large numbers of bikers gather. But it’s still very us.

Changing my mind — maybe we DID get Osama because of Obama

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This is one of the problems with new media. Sometimes you spout off before you have taken in enough information and processed it. After the Obama administration analyzed intel for eight months, and STILL only had a little better than a 50-50 supposition that bin Laden was in the house, maybe I should have taken a little more time to pass judgment. After all, my original training was in a medium when I could take all day, or — in the case of my columns — all week to make up my mind. Consequently, I can only think of one or two columns ever that I later regretted writing.

Blogging is different. I try to make sure I really mean what I say here, too, but sometimes my interlocutors get my dander right up, as Professor Elemental would say, and I give ill-considered answers.

Such is the case with my reaction to a comment by our old friend Bud the other night. Here I was very pleased with President Obama’s performance in the bin Laden case, and saying so, when I read this by Bud:

Let’s not forget the tireless work the president did as commander in chief to bring this operation to a successful conclusion. It really does matter who our leader is. Thankfully we have someone competent in charge.

… it tapped me on a sore spot. The comment itself was pretty innocuous by Bud standards, but in it I read the ghosts of so many other comments by Bud along the lines of EVERYTHING George W. Bush ever did was wrong, especially invading Iraq, and so I responded:

Bud, we should all give President Obama full credit for playing his leadership role well. But don’t make the political mistake of thinking this happened because he is president. This is more about stellar work by nameless, ground-level people in our military and our much-maligned intelligence services.

There is one sense in which Obama was a critical factor, though. It’s complicated. I think I’ll do a separate post about it…

That separate post was the one in which I argued that it was Obama’s laudably bellicose attitude toward going after our enemies hiding in Pakistan that made a positive difference here….

And as I was writing that, my sense that Obama being president WAS critical to the way this happened started to take hold. Not that Bud was right or anything; I still object to the way he characterized it, especially later when he said, “I find it so refreshing to have a competent, bright, hard-working leader in charge. He’s not rashly going in to places like Iran and Libya. Not sure why we still have troops in Iraq but otherwise Obama is doing an outstanding job keeping our foreign involvements to a minimum.”

But that’s quibbling over personal quirks.

Bottom line is, the more I’ve thought about it the last couple of days, then more I have decided that on the MAIN, unadorned point, Bud’s right: There are elements to what happened that are uniquely Obama. Not that it wouldn’t have happened under other presidents — JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. — but maybe not exactly this way, or this successfully.

I was thinking that this morning when reading The Wall Street Journal’s detailed story on how the raid unfolded, “U.S. Rolled Dice in bin Laden Raid:”

An early favorite: a bombing raid. That approach would minimize risk to American troops and maximize the likelihood of killing the residents of the compound. But it might also have destroyed any proof bin Laden was there.

A helicopter raid would be more complex, but more likely to deliver confirmation. Some officials were wary of repeating a fiasco like “Black Hawk Down” in Somalia, when U.S. forces were killed after a botched raid on a warlord… [By the way, one quibble on this story: That last sentence was inaccurate. The raid was NOT on the warlord, but to grab some of his lieutenants, and it was successful, not “botched.” The lieutenants were neatly grabbed and the operation was essentially over when the militia managed to hit two helicopters with RPGs.]

On April 19, Mr. Panetta told the president the CIA believed bin Laden was there. Other advisers briefed Mr. Obama on preparations for an assault, including the outcomes of the dress rehearsals. Mr. Obama told them to “assume it’s a go for planning purposes and that we had to be ready,” an administration official said.

That same day, Mr. Obama gave provisional approval for the commando-style helicopter assault—which was launched from Jalalabad, Afghanistan—despite the added risk. Senior U.S. officials said the need to get a positive identification on bin Laden became the deciding factor.

You’ll notice that Bill Clinton wasn’t on my list above. That’s because I’m practically certain that he would have opted for the bombing. And the more I think about it, the less I’m positive about the other presidents.

Whereas Obama made exactly the right call. The Seal raid was the way to go. And the president was completely right not to tell the Pakistanis — another point where I have my doubts about some of those earlier presidents (for instance, Bush pere was all about some multilateralism). There is a certain confidence — something important in a leader — in Obama’s choosing the riskier option in the absence of certainty, and then, once HE was satisfied that this was bin Laden who was killed, having the body buried at sea. The president was saying, LET the conspiracy theorists claim it wasn’t him — I know it was, and I’ve eliminated his body or his grave becoming an object for our enemies to rally around.

The president may be a lousy bowler, but he makes good calls in a tough situation. That is my considered opinion — now that I’ve taken time to consider.

By the way, I might not have decided to write about this change of mind — it happened sort of organically the more I read, rather than in a “Eureka” moment — if I hadn’t read two other items in the WSJ this morning. As it happens, they were opinion pieces by people who are as firmly entrenched on the right as Bud is on the left. But whereas Bud’s reflexive anti-Bush rhetoric put me off from being convinced of his point (that, and the fact that I just didn’t have enough info yet to reach that conclusion), their unadulterated praise of someone they usually criticize really drove the point home in a way that not even I could miss it.

Bret Stephens’ piece was headlined, “Obama’s Finest Hour:”

Thane’s point isn’t that vengeance is better than justice. It’s that there can be no true justice without vengeance. Oddly enough, this is something Barack Obama, Chicago liberal, seems to better grasp than George W. Bush, Texas cowboy.

The former president was fond of dilating on the point, as he put it just after 9/11, that “ours is a nation that does not seek revenge, but we do seek justice.” What on Earth did that mean? Of course we sought revenge. “Ridding the world of evil,” Mr. Bush’s other oft-stated ambition, was nonsense if we didn’t make a credible go of ridding the world of the very specific evil named Osama bin Laden.

For all of Mr. Bush’s successes—and yes, there were a few, including the vengeance served that other specific evil known as Saddam Hussein and those Gitmo interrogations that yielded bin Laden’s location—you can trace the decline of his presidency from the moment he said, in March 2002, that “I really don’t care [where bin Laden is]. It’s not that important.”…

Good points, although I may not be totally with him on the virtue of “vengeance” alone. Note that he makes a point similar to one I made yesterday, as my mind was starting to change (sometimes, and this may be hard to understand, I change my mind as I’m writing something — on the blog, you can sometimes see it happen, as I argue with myself) — that when it comes to Pakistan, Obama is more of a go-it-alone cowboy than Bush. Which to me is a good thing.

Then there was William McGurn’s column, which was about how Republican candidates (obsessed as they are with fiscal matters) have a long way to go to catch up with Obama on foreign policy:

It’s not just that Barack Obama is looking strong. For the moment, at least, he is strong. In the nearly 10 years since our troops set foot in Afghanistan, a clear outcome remains far from sight, and many Americans have wearied of the effort. As President Obama reminded us Sunday night, getting bin Laden doesn’t mean our work there is done—but his success in bringing the world’s most hunted man to justice does reinvigorate that work.

It does so, moreover, in a way that few of Mr. Obama’s recent Democratic predecessors in the Oval Office have matched. The killing of bin Laden was no one-shot missile strike on a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory suspected of making chemical weapons, as ordered by Bill Clinton. Nor was it a failed hostage rescue in Iran à la Jimmy Carter. Instead, it was a potent combination of American force and presidential decisiveness.

First, Mr. Obama authorized a ground operation with Navy Seals far inside Pakistani territory. Second, he did not inform the Pakistanis.

These are the kinds of hard decisions that presidents have to make, where the outcome is likely to be either spectacular success or equally spectacular failure. For taking the risks that would paralyze others, and for succeeding where others have failed, the president and his team have earned the credit they are now getting.

Also good points. And hearing such good points made by people who don’t like the president nearly as much as I do made a big impression on me.

So in the end, I find myself agreeing with those guys, and with Bud, on this point: Having Obama as president made a big difference in this case.

The Obama Doctrine, and the end of the Kent State Syndrome

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Back on the initial post about the death of bin Laden, I got into an argument with some of my liberal Democratic friends about the extent to which “credit” is due to President Obama for this development.

Don’t get me wrong — I thought the president performed superbly. I was in considerable suspense last night between the time we knew bin Laden was dead and the president’s speech, wondering how he would rise to the moment. I needn’t have worried. He met the test of this critical Leadership Moment very well indeed.

Also, he seems to have made the right calls along the way since this intel first came to light. That’s great, too.

Where I differed with my friends was in their assertion/implication that this success was due to Obama being president, as opposed to He Who Must Not Be Named Among Democrats. Which is inaccurate, and as offensive as if this had happened on Bush’s watch and the Republicans claimed it was all because we had a Republican in the White House.

ANY president in my memory (with the possible exception of Bill Clinton, who had a tendency to resist boots on the ground and go with cruise missiles, which would have been the wrong call in this case) would have made more or less the same calls on the way to yesterday’s mission, although few would have delivered the important speech last night as well. (Obama’s the best speaker to occupy the White House since JFK — some would say Ronald Reagan, but his delivery never appealed to me.)

That’s the thing — Obama, to his great credit, has generally been a responsible and pragmatic steward of national and collective security. As most people who actually get ELECTED president tend to be. The continuity that his tenure represents may frustrate some of his base, but I deeply appreciate it, and have from the start. (I first made this observation before he took office.)

But I hinted that I thought that maybe there was ONE way that they were right, although it was not for a reason they were suggesting…

Here is that one way: Obama has been far more aggressive toward going after the bad guys in Pakistan. Which I think is a good thing. I’ve always thought it was. In fact, I first wrote about that in August 2007. At the time, Obama was criticized by many — including Hillary Clinton — for this:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obamaissued a pointed warning yesterday to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, saying that as president he would be prepared to order U.S. troops into that country unilaterally if it failed to act on its own against Islamic extremists….

The muscular speech appeared aimed at inoculating him from criticism that he lacks the toughness to lead the country in a post-9/11 world, while attempting to show that an Obama presidency would herald an important shift in the United States’ approach to the world, particularly the Middle East and nearby Asian nations…

I applauded it.

And now we see that proposed doctrine translated into reality. Actually, we’ve seen it for some time. Pakistan has gotten pretty testy with us for our across-the-border strikes, which have been far more common under Obama than under his predecessor.

On Sunday, convinced that our most prominent individual enemy was “hiding” practically in the open in a Pakistan suburb, Obama sent in the troops and got him — and didn’t bother telling the Pakistanis until it was too late for them to interfere.

For THIS he deserves great praise. But folks, that’s not the sort of things that folks in his Democratic base praise him for (aside from some nodding that he was right to say Iraq was the “wrong war” — just before they demand we get out of what Obama terms the “right war” immediately).

This was not Obama being sensitive, or multilateral, or peaceful, or diplomatic, or anything of the kind. This was Obama being a cowboy, and going after the guy in the black hat no matter where he was. This was out-Bushing Bush, to those who engage in such simplistic caricatures.

This is not a surprise to anyone who has watched Obama carefully, or even halfway carefully. But it should be a HUGE shock to the portions of his base who are still fighting the Vietnam War, the ones who backed him because they thought he was an “antiwar” candidate.

I’m reminded of Kent State. First, don’t get me wrong — the killing of those students was a horrific tragedy, that was in no way justifiable. I, too, feel chills when I hear Neil Young’s song. Shooting unarmed civilians is never excusable. I felt the full outrage of my generation when that happened. But I’ve always thought the tragedy was deepened by the fact that the protest that led to the shootings was to an extent wrong-headed.

Folks in the antiwar movement were SO angry that Nixon had pursued the enemy into Cambodia. This, to them, was a war crime of extreme proportions.

Me, I always thought it was sensible and pragmatic. You don’t let people shoot at you and then “hide” by crossing a political barrier, not unless you like having your own people killed with impunity.

Yeah, I realize there are important differences in the two situations (the most obvious being that the Cambodian incursion was on a much larger scale). But I think it’s very interesting that some of my most antiwar friends here — antiwar in the anti-Vietnam sense — are even more congratulatory toward our president than I am, when he, too “violated sovereignty” to kill Osama bin Laden. What if Nixon had sent troops to a mansion outside Phnom Penh to kill Ho Chi Minh? The antiwar movement would have freaked out — more than usual. Again, not quite the same — but you get the idea.

One of my antiwar friends recently was arguing with me that the antiwar movement has, indeed, faded away. I had said it had not. But the more I think about this, the more I think Phillip was right. I try to imagine how the antiwar left would have reacted to such a move as this 40 years ago. And yes, we have changed. Then, college students rioted in outrage. Today, they gather outside the White House and party down with American flags. Both reactions seem to me inappropriate, but I’m hard to please.

One thing does please me, however: I do approve of President Obama’s performance on this (as I do, increasingly, on many things).

Osama bin Laden is dead. So what happens now?

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I originally wrote this BEFORE the president’s announcement. As you can see, I’ve now updated it with the video…

Waiting for President Obama to make the announcement that Osama bin Laden is dead.

And wondering what happens now. I’ve wondered that for 10 years: If bin Laden is dead, what does it change? Does the struggle end? Of course not. He’s now a martyr. But it’s still a huge moment.

And what will the president tell us it means, as he sees it? This is so un-Obama — Under my leadership, we have killed our enemy — what will he say? And what will he tell us to expect next? What will he say HE intends to do?

What does this mean NOW, against the context of the turmoil, the rise of democracy, sweeping through the region?

If I were the president, I’m not sure what I would say. So I’m preparing to watch, and listen.

I expect you are, too.

If you’d like to react, here’s a place to do it…

Is our governor politically clueless, or does she know EXACTLY what she’s doing?

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Either way, it’s not good for South Carolina.

If you expect her to be mindful of the opinions of South Carolinians, you have to be puzzled by this behavior:

Gov. Nikki Haley said Thursday that a sales tax exemption Gov. Mark Sanford’s administration promised to Amazon, if granted, would destroy her economic development message.

While speaking in Charleston at the Free Enterprise Foundation awards luncheon, Haley addressed the Internet retailer’s decision to cancel a planned distribution center in Lexington County after the S.C. House of Representatives on Wednesday rejected the promised sales tax exemption.

The planned facility would have brought about 1,250 jobs to the Midlands.

Haley described the tax break that her predecessor promised as a “distraction” and said it is dangerous. She drew a distinction between the retail-related jobs Amazon would have brought and manufacturing jobs such as those Boeing Co. is bringing.

When talking to companies about coming to South Carolina, Haley said she tells them, “We are going to give you a fair, competitive marketplace to do business, and we are always going to take care of the businesses we already have.”…

So you ask yourself, why would she bother coming out and saying thing like this NOW, when the debate is over? When the issue was in doubt, she studiously avoided taking responsibility for any position. (She made it clear she didn’t LIKE the incentive, but promised to do nothing to stop it — while standing by as her Commerce secretary lobbied for it.) She didn’t want her fingerprints on whatever happened in any way.

So why make a speech about it NOW, when it’s moot? After all, the people who wanted Amazon to get the break are really unhappy now — as I can attest, having had to explain my own position to some of them the last couple of days. Why further antagonize them? Why not be quiet, or just say it’s a shame it didn’t work out, without going on about how jobs that aren’t manufacturing jobs are no good? (“Retail by nature is a lower-priced job. And retail by nature is not solid and invested. It is not a Boeing. It is not a BMW. Manufacturing, high technology is very different.”)

The only explanation I can see is that Nikki Haley has never been about trying to get things done here in South Carolina. She’s always been about appealing to what she sees as a potential national constituency — the kind of ideologues elsewhere who couldn’t care less about jobs in SC, but who DO have a marked prejudice against economic incentives. With them, badmouthing the Amazon proposal is win-win. She was, after all, speaking to the Free Enterprise Foundation.

Which do you think it is? Is she clueless? Is she, as David Woodward suggested, just that much of an amateur? Or is it all on-message calculation — a calculation that leaves us in SC out completely?

Phil Noble on ‘The Brad Show (Guerrilla Edition)’

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Welcome to the cinéma vérité version of “The Brad Show.” Just to give it a fancy name.

Scheduling time with Phil Noble, candidate for SC Democratic Party chair, wasn’t quite as easy as getting together with Dick Harpootlian. Dick’s office is right down the street and around the corner, whereas Phil is based in Charleston.

So we went back and forth, back and forth, via email and phone, trying to get together. On Good Friday (while I was taking a three-day break from the laptop), Phil wrote to tell me he’d be in town on Monday. So when I got that on Monday, I got back to him and left a message. He called me back during Monday’s Rotary meeting, proposing to meet me in a couple of hours. I checked with Gene and Jay, and that we too short notice for a full studio session.

So I improvised. I asked Phil to come by the office anyway, and interviewed him with my little Canon A1100 set on my cheap little tripod I got from Walmart.

The video quality really isn’t all that bad, considering the gonzo, guerrilla way in which it was shot. Of course, to get that kind of resolution, you’re talking about a freaking HUGE file — like, 770 MB. Transferring it from the camera to the laptop was an hour. Converting the format was another hour. Uploading it to blip.tv was more like four or five hours (I don’t know how long, because I finally went home and left it running).

And now, to you.

Why couldn’t we wait for studio time? Because the state Democratic convention is Saturday. Which reminds me — if I’m going, I need to see about whether I need credentials or something.

As for what Phil had to say — what, you think I’m going to sit here and type it out for you? I went to enough trouble getting it to you; the least you can do is watch it.

Warning — it’s the longest Brad Show ever, at more than 34 minutes. Another drawback from not having a pro like Jay handle it (and boy, do I appreciate him more than ever now) was that there was nobody to give me significant looks that meant “wrap it up!”

If you’re interested at all in who should be the chairman of the state Dems, you should find this interesting. So WATCH it. (And go back and watch the Harpootlian one, too, if you haven’t — as Kevin Fisher recommended…)

Best way to get a good grade — have a great relationship with the teacher…

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Did you see that our governor has taken a break from writing her memoirs to grade her performance in the few days she’s been in office:

By Dawndy Mercer Plank – bio | email

COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) – Governor Nikki Haley is touring the state talking about her first 100 days in office, and her hits and misses so far.

The governor is boasting of changing the leadership of the Budget and Control Board, getting Medicaid reform passed, on-the-record voting permanent law, changes to the budget and getting agency directors approved within six weeks time.

We asked Governor Nikki Haley to grade herself on her first 100 days in office. “Effort, absolutely A+++!” she said. “I sleep and breathe this every day. I want everything done yesterday. For accomplishments, I’d honestly give myself an A. We are so excited for what we’ve done in 100 days. We really, really are.”…

Actually, I only heard her say “A-plus,” not “A-plus-plus-plus.” But still…

So now you know what it takes to be a great governor. That, I suppose, is why our past governors haven’t been as “fabulous” as we might have liked: they weren’t “great” wives and moms.

At least, they haven’t been as wildly fabulous as Nikki. Which she has been. Just ask her, she’ll tell you.

I tell you, folks, I’ve encountered a lot of manifestations of ego and narcissism in my going on 4 decades of closely following politics. But I’ve never encountered anything quite like what Nikki Haley has become.

Some of this might actually be a gender thing: Women can get away with a certain over-the-top enthusiasm, even about themselves, that would brand a man a major jerk. Things that a man could NOT get away with can sometimes be seen as charming when said by a woman with a nice smile.

Or maybe I’m completely off-base. I’m just groping here, trying to figure out why she gets away with this stuff…

The most absurd thing I’ve ever heard a president of the United States waste time talking about

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After a breakfast meeting this morning, as I was about to get out of my car to go into ADCO, I heard, live on the radio, the most insane presidential press conference I’ve ever heard in my life.

Barack Obama was actually taking time out of his day to address the insane birther “issue.”

Above is the image he posted on Twitpic. Here’s a story on it:

Obama’s ‘Long-Form’ Birth Certificate Is Released

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

President Obama on Wednesday posted online a copy of his “long-form” birth certificate from the state of Hawaii, hoping to finally end a long-simmering conspiracy theory among some conservatives who asserted that he was not born in the United States and was not a legitimate president.

The birth certificate, which is posted at the White House Web site, shows that Mr. Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, and is signed by state officials and his mother.

“The President believed the distraction over his birth certificate wasn’t good for the country,” Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, wrote on the Web site Wednesday morning. Mr. Pfeiffer said on the site that Mr. Obama had authorized officials in Hawaii to release the document broadly.

In a statement to the news media Wednesday morning, Mr. Obama said he decided to release the document in an effort to end the “silliness” about his birth that threatened to distract from the serious issues facing the country.

“Over the last two and a half years, I have watched with bemusement,” he said in brief remarks. “I’ve been puzzled by the degree to which this thing just kept on going.”…

Yeah, ditto, Mr. President.

And today in the paper, I see that 41.2 percent of GOP voters in SC belief that Obama was definitely or probably born in another country. Which tells me that 41.2 percent of GOP voters should be barred from ever entering a voting booth again. Yeah, I know that there are certain constitutional problems that raises, but come on. When we talk about the drawbacks of democracy, the fact that people who would believe something like this about a guy, just because they don’t like him (for reasons that don’t bear a lot of close scrutiny, if you’re at all squeamish), get to vote just like everybody else is one of the biggies.

Oh, and for those of you who want to spend more of the precious moments you have remaining in your lives on this “issue,” here’s the president’s correspondence with the state of Hawaii Department of Health, seeking the document he posted today.

Nikki Haley doing right thing (I think) for wrong reasons

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The other night, I went to a reception for new Commerce Secretary Bobby Hitt, my old shipmate at The State. Bobby was near the front door, and we exchanged pleasantries. Standing there with him and Mike Briggs from Central SC Alliance was the head guy from Amazon, whose name escapes me at the moment — and he didn’t have any cards with him, or I’d have it in front of me. (If this were a newspaper, I’d hold this report until I got the name, or rather, got a reporter or editorial writer to get the name for me. But it’s not a newspaper, it’s a blog; and you’re not paying for it, so get outta my face.)

Anyway, having said “Welcome” to Bobby (a bit ironically, since I’ve seen and chatted with him numerous times since he came back to town), I said an even more fervent “Welcome!” to Mr. Amazon, and we, too, exchanged pleasantries. I thought, “I really should ask this guy some questions,” but didn’t have any on me. At that point, I spotted the bar. I needed to be somewhere else in about 20 minutes, so if I were going to have a free beer, it was now or never. So goodbye, Mr. Amazon (Yes, interviewing a source when you have the chance is important, but there are other immemorial traditions of journalism that must be honored as well.)

On the way to the bar, though, I saw Lanier Jones, president of ADCO, and said, “Lanier, you should go over and meet the Amazon guy.” Which he did.

A couple of days later, this came out:

Amazon’s 1,200-job project in jeopardy

Online retailer Amazon.com pressed S.C. lawmakers Wednesday for a sales tax break for the distribution center that it is building near Cayce, amid concern that denying the incentive could jeopardize the $100 million project.

Amazon executives warned refusing the tax break is a deal-breaker for the project, projected to employ 1,249 full time by 2013 and provide up to 2,500 part-time jobs, some legislators and Lexington County officials said.

“The implication is if they don’t get it, they’ll pull out,” said House Majority Leader Kenny Bingham, R-Lexington. “That’s clearly an option they will look at if they do not get it.”

That day, Lanier said something about the fact that we knew about that. I didn’t know about it, I said. Lanier said that when he spoke to the guy, Mike said something about a tax problem, and the Amazon guy said, “It’s a dealbreaker.” Lanier figured I’d heard the same.

So maybe I should have hung around a tad longer. I just didn’t know that at the time… Oh, well.

Bottom line, what should SC do about this?

Nikki Haley has chosen, like Pontius Pilate, to call for a basin of water:

Gov. Nikki Haley on Thursday washed her hands of an effort to lure more than 1,000 jobs to Lexington County.

Haley said she does not support a tax incentive designed to entice online retailer Amazon.com to Lexington County, making clear her opposition a day after company officials said they will pull the plug on a planned distribution center unless they get the tax break.

But Haley said that if lawmakers — who are waiting to follow the governor’s lead — approve the tax break, she will not veto it….

So basically, whatever happens, it won’t have her delicate fingerprints on it.

Not that I mean to cast aspersions with the Pontius Pilate thing. Actually, Nikki’s right (I think; I’m still cogitating on this) not to support the tax break. And she’s right (although not what you’d call courageous, or a leader) to recognize that this is a hot potato.

But she opposes (kinda) it for the wrong reasons. She opposes it because of a Policy Council-style ideological objection to using incentives in economic development. Hey, I think a lot of incentives are a bad idea, but not all of them. That’s the problem with ideology; you don’t make distinctions between bad and good, you just always bet on black. Or red. Depending on your ideology.

The actual PROBLEM with the tax break is that businesses should not be allowed to skirt the sales tax. Not only do we have too many exemptions in the sales tax as things stand, but allowing Internet businesses to do that places other SC businesses, such as the proverbial Mom and Pops, at a terrible disadvantage.

Not only that, but it’s unfair to Walmart and others that have asked for such a break, and been turned down. So you have an equal protection problem.

But Nikki Haley isn’t going to put it in those terms. So I did.

All of that said, I don’t relish the idea of turning away those 1,200 jobs. Policy abstractions are one thing; actual jobs for South Carolinians is another.

So I’m a bit torn about it still. As the governor seems to be. So we have that in common.

This is an issue that I would have had a lengthy discussion with the editorial board about, to develop and sharpen my own thoughts before saying anything in the paper.

I don’t have an editorial board now. So what do y’all think?

Welcome to the Energy Party, Mr. Obama (I hope)

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Hope. Change. Energy Party... /2008 file photo

Heard an encouraging report on the radio this morning that I can’t seem to find now online, but there’s this from the WSJ:

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama, under pressure to respond to rising gas prices, will outline Wednesday a series of initiatives to cut the nation’s reliance on foreign oil, including new initiatives to expand oil production, increase the use of natural gas to power vehicles and increase production of ethanol….

The political heat over energy policy is rising in tandem with the price of gasoline and diesel fuels at filling stations, in a ritual that has become familiar in Washington since the oil price shocks of the mid-1970s. “We’ve been having this conversation for nearly four decades now,” Mr. Obama said during a March 11 news conference. “Every few years, gas prices go up; politicians pull out the same old political playbook, and then nothing changes.”

The White House will cast the new effort, a combination of new ideas and previously announced initiatives, as an effort to deal with the nation’s long-term energy challenge, not just the high gas prices of the moment.

Mr. Obama will put forward an overall goal of reducing oil imports by one third over a decade, with half the reduction from decreasing consumption and half from increasing domestic supply, according to two people briefed by the White House…

And this from the NYT:

WASHINGTON — With gasoline prices rising, oil supplies from the Middle East pinched by political upheaval and growing calls in Congress for expanded domestic oil and gas production, President Obama on Wednesday will set a goal of a one-third reduction in oil imports over the next decade, aides said Tuesday.

The president, in a speech to be delivered at Georgetown University, will say that the United States needs, for geopolitical and economic reasons, to reduce its reliance on imported oil, according to White House officials who provided a preview of the speech on the condition that they not be identified. More than half of the oil burned in the United States today comes from overseas and from Mexico and Canada.

Mr. Obama will propose a mix of measures, none of them new, to help the nation cut down on its thirst for oil. He will point out the nation’s tendency, since the first Arab oil embargo in 1973, to panic when gas prices rise and then fall back into old gas-guzzling habits when they recede.

He will call for a consistent long-term fuel-savings strategy of producing more electric cars, converting trucks to run on natural gas, building new refineries to brew billions of gallons of biofuels and setting new fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles. Congress has been debating these measures for years.

The president will also repeat his assertion that despite the frightening situation at the Fukushima Daiichi reactor complex in Japan, nuclear power will remain an important source of electricity in the United States for decades to come, aides said.

He will respond to members of Congress and oil industry executives who have complained that the administration has choked off domestic oil and gas production by imposing costly new regulations and by blocking exploration on millions of acres of potentially oil-rich tracts both on shore and off.

The administration is not prepared to open new public lands and waters to drilling, officials said, but will use a new set of incentives and penalties to prod industry to develop resources on the lands they already have access to…

Wish I could find the radio report, because it pretty much painted what the president will have to say as being VERY Energy Party. As you may recall I took both Mr. Obama and John McCain to task in 2008 for being unworthy of Energy Party support, however many other virtues the two may have possessed (and as you know, I liked them both — it was the first time ever that both parties nominated my first choices in their respective fields).

But increasingly, Mr. Obama seems to GET IT — that it’s not about keeping gas prices low; it’s not about pleasing the left or the right. It’s about freeing this country from its dependence from foreign oil, for all sorts of economic and geopolitical reasons. Nothing we could do would be more likely to make the nation stronger and healthier.

It’s about being a grownup, and taking the long view.

NYT Mag: “Nikki Haley, the governor of South Carolina, doesn’t care what you think.”

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Of course, we knew that — I’ve noted it before (most recently with regard to the Darla Moore affair). But it’s interesting that any national media have noticed it, given the hagiographic coverage she usually receives outside the state.

The State took note of the New York Times Magazine article several weeks back. They saw the “Comet” headline, and noted her wildly hubristic statement that “I don’t lose.”

But they apparently missed the subhead — probably because whoever was doing The Buzz for that edition looked at the piece online, rather than in print.

And that was the best part.

Above is a shot from a PDF of the print edition, which an alert reader shared.

By the way, that little pun — Haley the Comet — reminds me of something I saw in Oxford during my recent visit.

It seems that when Edmond Halley, famous for having first charted the path of the comet, was at Oxford (The Queen’s College), he decided to knock a hole in the roof of his top-floor flat so that he could watch the stars from there. The landlord was VERY accommodating — even though he wasn’t yet the famous Halley of the Comet — and a little observatory structure was built onto the roof.

At least, that’s the way our guide on the walking tour told it. The story may be apocryphal (a few minutes on Google just now failed to confirm it).

But if it’s true, it occurs to me that Halley didn’t care what people thought, either. With him, it turned out all right in the end. With our own Haley, the Comet… that definitely remains to be seen.

Below is the picture I took on Jan. 4 of the building where Halley lived:

Darla Moore makes her voice heard, at the 5 million decibel level

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When she spoke to students and others at the Russell House today (and yes, the turnout for this was SRO huge, unlike at the rally yesterday), Darla Moore acted with the class you would expect. No whining or moaning or pointless lashing out.

But boy, did she make her voice heard. You can watch the whole speech here. After thanking those present, particularly the students (and she made it clear on multiple occasions that her message was for the students rather than the media and university honchos on hand) for their “encouragement, your kind sentiments and your support,” she went on to “reaffirm my love for the USC, my support for the USC and for the state of SC,” and to speak of the “shared obligation to move this institution forward not only for ourselves but for generations to come.”

Saying she was not there to talk about “the wonder of me,” and adding, “This is also not about money,” she went on:

By your reaction, you have ignited what I believe is the collective consciousness of this state to an issue that is far more fundamental to the state’s future than any other challenge that we face. And this is about having the courage, and the singular focus to understand the critical importance of a strong, progressive and properly resourced higher education system — and I mean from technical colleges to research universities — and the role it plays in securing a bright and productive future for all of us….

We can compete at the highest level.

Just because I no longer serve on the board does not mean for one second that I will be deterred in my efforts to expand our reach for excellence.

And I’m sure y’all have noticed that I don’t need a title or a position to speak out; I just need a voice, my vision and a forum to be heard.

Just like you did this week…

Then, in her one directly defiant statement toward the governor — and by implication, toward her replacement, whom the governor said she picked because he shared her “vision,” she said:

I’ll not allow our university to become a discounted graduation mill. I want you to be proud of your degree; I want you to be first in line for the best jobs available. And I want you to stay in South Carolina, to be a part of our effort to make our state great.

Excellence is our standard, and it must be maintained even if there are those who would offer policies that would dumb us down….

Finally, she said:

This is very personal: There’s been speculation that I would take my checkbook and go home. I want you to know that my commitment to USC is as strong as ever.

She then demonstrated that by hauling off and giving another $5 million:

Ousted trustee Darla Moore told USC students today that she does not plan to take her check book and go away. Instead, Moore – removed from USC’s board by Gov. Nikki Haley – said she would give the school $5 million to start an aviation research center named after Ronald McNair, killed in the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.

Like Moore, McNair was a native of Lake City.

USC had sought the money from the state to, it said, capitalize on Boeing’s plans to build 787 Dreamliner aircraft in Charleston.

However, House budget writers, faced with a $700 million shortfall in state money, killed the request, which Haley opposed as premature.

Moore is USC’s largest single benefactor ever. Her removal by Haley, who named a campaign donor to the USC board, has angered many USC students and graduates.

Key to photos below:

There were plenty of honchos on the front row, but Ms. Moore repeatedly said she was there to speak to, and take questions from, the students.
The view from the back of the ballroom.
The view from the front (hey, you’re not paying extra for captioning here).
Taking questions from students.
President Harris Pastides was slightly mobbed by media afterward. He was very diplomatic, as I would expect him to be. He said he appreciated that the governor called to explain her decision — which was the first time I’d heard that she had (and marks the first thing I’ve heard of her doing properly — the first thing I’ve seen of her showing respect to anyone involved — in this whole affair).
Yep, that’s Will Folks, all dressed up. I don’t recall having seen him this way. By the way, he said that while he sides with the governor on this issue, he was favorably impressed by the way Ms. Moore handled it.

Another middle-aged white guy heard from about Kitzman letter

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And the thing is, this one is one of Eleanor Kitzman‘s bosses — House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Cooper, 50.

This came in over the transom yesterday, and I suppose it’s the letter that John O’Connor (oh, and happy birthday today, John) referred to in this story.

Of course, I kid about the “middle-aged white guy” thing, because I find Identity Politics (particularly as practiced by Ms. Kitzman) so wonderfully goofy. But the real issue is how unprofessional it is to play the defensive toady to ONE of your bosses in such a public manner.

So I can see how Rep. Cooper would not approve.

Pretty scathing, huh?

Surging sea of rage (not): The ‘Reinstate Darla Moore’ rally

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Well, that was a bust. As I Tweeted when I arrived at the “Reinstate Darla Moore” rally at the State House on this sunny day:

@BradWarthen
Brad Warthen

The big protest over Darla Moore being unceremoniously dumped by Nikki Haley looks like a bit of a bust so far. They DID say noon, right?

As I said again at 12:43, it was still a bust. Which is a shame. Because Nikki Haley insulted all of the 30,000 or so students on the Columbia campus alone with her petty patronage move — not to mention the way she dissed the other 4 million of us who have a right to expect a governor to exercise some modicum of responsible stewardship at our most important state institutions. Instead of, you know, what she did.

Old New Left Activist Tom Turnipseed grumbled about these kids today who don’t know how to stage a protest: They think they do something with social media, and it’s done, he says. Well, yes — the “We Support Darla Moore” Facebook page has attracted 4,703 people who probably think they’ve made a statement by “liking” it.

But that doesn’t mean that Martha Susan Morris, the 22-year-old economic and poli sci senior who started the “Students for the Reinstatement of Miss Darla Moore” FB page, lacks seriousness in her convictions.

After all, she showed up, and spoke at the rally — once it finally got around to getting started. And she understood why she should be there, and why thousands of others should have been there with her:

Gov. Haley cited that her main reason for replacing Mrs. Moore with Mr. Cofield was the fact that Mr. Cofield’s vision was more clearly aligned with her own.

Martha Susan Morris

And we the students ask ‘What vision?’ What vision is not aligning with Gov. Haley…?… Mrs. Moore’s vision for years has been one of high expectations, increased educational funding, and increased standards for universities, research and development in our state…. and we could not be more grateful to her…

Our university is on the upswing, and we want her to be a part of it. She’s been an amazing benefactor… since she was appointed to the board in 1999…

Amen to that, Martha Susan. She said afterward that she started the FB page at 4 a.m. after having hearing about Ms. Moore being dumped. When she next looked at the page later that morning, there were 400 fans. There are now 2,495.

Too bad more of them didn’t show up. Because although we know Nikki Haley loves her some Facebook, she’d have been a tad more impressed to look out her window and see some folks show up to protest her action. Not that she’d have changed her mind, but it would have made an impression.

One of the people I chatted with before leaving was Candace Romero, communications director of the South Carolina House Democratic Caucus, who observed how much of the crowd were media types, and she complained that that there was no media turnout like that for the “Rally for a Moral Budget” back on March 12. (I asked her, and her Senate counterpart Phil Bailey, whether they were in any way involved in this rally. No, and no. They had just dropped by. That’s the answer I got from all the usual suspect-types I found.)

Well. As one who didn’t even thinking about going downtown on a Saturday for that particular quixotic gesture, I must accept service. But I will add that good-government-type rallies tend not to draw multitudes. Have it about something people get passionate about, such as the Confederate flag, and you can get a crowd (5,000 or so if it’s pro, as many as 60,000 if it’s anti).

Which is a shame. Today’s rally was for good government — or at least, against grossly irresponsible government. (I enjoyed hearing a speaker who followed Martha Susan say he and his fellow protesters were there to “change the usual business of government.” You know, what Nikki Haley is always saying she wants to do — right before she does something as old-line political Business-As-Usual as dumping a highly respected board member in favor of someone whose only known qualification is having contributed to her campaign.)

But it was a bust.

Oh, one more thing — it was announced, late in the rally, that Darla Moore herself will address students “in a town-hall meeting at 12:15 p.m. Thursday, March 24, in the Russell House.”

I wonder whether that will be better-attended.

: Martha Susan Morris

Is Gov. Haley doing something responsible on health care? (If so, ssshhhh! I don’t want to get her into trouble with her base!)

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Down in this story about how Jim DeMint is putting hurting Barack Obama ahead of good health care or saving millions of dollars (and is it supposed to be news that DeMint places ideology over sound policy?), was this bit:

S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley has shared DeMint’s national spotlight in opposing health care reform, challenging President Obama, first, to repeal the legislation and, later, to speed up a judicial review of its constitutionality.

Outside the spotlight, Haley also is using a $1 million federal grant to see how South Carolina might enact the law if it has to.

Wait, run that by me again? She’s doing what?

But even as she pushes against the health care law, Haley has instructed key agency heads to get ready for its implementation.

“We don’t know what the outcome will be, but for the citizens of South Carolina, we have to be prepared for whatever happens,” said Tony Keck, Haley’s new director of the state Department of Health and Human Services.

“Right now, the law of the land is health care reform,” Keck said. “Although we’re fighting it and looking to produce our own alternatives, we also have to prepare to implement it to meet the deadlines. The risk of not preparing for any eventuality is simply too high in the form of penalties from the federal government and interruption to care.”

The state is using a $1 million grant under the law to evaluate whether it will set up and run its own health insurance exchange or turn that function over to Washington, an option under the law.

Keck and new S.C. Insurance Commissioner David Black are heading up a task force, formed by a Haley executive order and to include members chosen by the General Assembly.

With its first meeting scheduled for April 15, the panel will call in experts from states that already have insurance exchanges, among them California, Massachusetts and Utah….

Normally, this would not be news, either. Away from the TV cameras, most elected officials — regardless of the wacky ideological stuff they may crank out publicly — quietly go about their duty, obeying the law and administering the government as responsibly as they are able.

It’s just that with Nikki Haley, she has gone so far out of her way to irresponsible that are NOT consistent with good stewardship — the Darla Moore fiasco comes to mind — that I find this tidbit reassuring. It may not be much, but I take comfort where I can.

Good for you, governor…

Here’s why “left” and “right” are all one to me

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Actually, what this is is ONE reason why the distinctions between left and right — which seem to mean so much (and of course, I would say far too much) to so many in this country — are of little concern, and NO appeal, to me:

The Few, the Proud, the Anti-Libya NFZ Republicans

Posted Monday, March 21, 2011 12:31 PM | By David Weigel

The Republicans who out-and-out oppose attacks on Libya without congressional authorization are few, and their names are not surprising anyone who follows debates over war funding. Here’s freshman Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich, who was backed by Ron Paul last year.

It’s not enough for the President simply to explain military actions in Libya to the American people, after the fact, as though we are serfs. When there is no imminent threat to our country, he cannot launch strikes without authorization from the American people, through our elected Representatives in Congress. No United Nations resolution or congressional act permits the President to circumvent the Constitution.

I love that libertarian indignation in “as though we are serfs.” He means it, too. To people of certain ideological stripe, we are all right on the verge of serfdom, every minute.

Here’s the president’s letter ‘splaining things to Congress, by the way. The 119th such letter sent by a president.

Beyond the serf stuff, do some of those phrases sound exactly like the antiwar left to you? Yeah, to me, too. But there’s nothing surprising about it. I think I shared the story with you recently of one of my wife’s leftist professors who supported George Wallace because he’d never get us involved in a Vietnam.

Now, for you Paulistas: Do I not care about the Constitution? Of course I do. And before this nation actually goes to real WAR with an actual other NATION, the kind of debate that leads to the declaration of war is a good thing, and the Framers were wise to include the requirement — particularly given how weak and vulnerable this nation was in those days, and how ruinous a war with one of the great powers could have been.

But of course, that very generation, and the first president of the limited-national-gummint party, Thomas Jefferson, did not see such a declaration as necessary to deal with the Barbary Pirates. You know, the shores of Tripoli?

They DID think it meet for Congress to authorize the president to act — as Congress did before the Iraq invasion, and before the Gulf War.

If anything, the issue here is whether Obama should have paused long enough to wait for such a formal authorization in this case. Did he act too soon? Did he cave too quickly to Hillary telling him to “man up” and act? I don’t think so, given the circumstances — the dire situation on the ground in Libya, the fact that the Brits and the French (yes, the French!) were ready to go. But frankly, I didn’t think about it before just now. Should we have had a big national debate between the UN resolution and action (regardless of whether it then would have been too late)?

What do y’all think?

Graham grateful for Obama’s “strong women”

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Check out Political Wire’s Quote of the Day:

“I don’t know how many people have died as we wait to do something. Thank God for strong women in the Obama administration.”

— Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), quoted by NBC News, on how it was President Obama’s female advisers that prevailed in arguments to take military action in Libya.

Here’s more from the item that came from:

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported Saturday night on the internal debate about the decision to go into Libya. “In the end, it became the women foreign policy advisers against the men. Although Hillary Clinton initially resisted the idea of a no-fly zone, she was persuaded at the beginning of this week by the Arab League’s endorsement of military action, and she had intense meetings with the Arab League leaders and a Libyan opposition leader this week. She actually joined U.N. ambassador Susan Rice and two other women in the National Security Council, who had been arguing for some time for more aggressive action in persuading the president on Tuesday. This is a rare instance, by the way, of Clinton going up against Defense Secretary Bob Gates and the National Security Adviser Tom Donilon among other men in the White House who were much more cautious about this.”

To that point, here was more Lindsey Graham on FOX: “I don’t know how many people have died as we wait to do something. Thank God for strong women in the Obama administration.”

Presumably, since he’s for strong women, Lindsey won’t get any overwrought letters from Eleanor Kitzman…

The “polls” (such as they are) run against Nikki’s “idiotic” move to replace Darla

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First and foremost, a thing where you go online and click “yes” or “no” to a current-events question is not a POLL, in any meaningful sense. It has no statistical significance. If you don’t have a properly constructed sample, with the right elements of randomness and screening questions (“are you the head of household, etc.”), you cannot extrapolate that the result you obtain indicates what you would get if the entire population, or electorate, answered the question.

A self-selected sample doesn’t cut it, not by a long shot. It’s a great way to invite readers/viewers to sound off — they like that — but it doesn’t generally give you much, if anything, to base conclusions on.

Still… my eyebrows raised when I saw this “poll” result over at the WLTX Facebook page:

Yeah, I know — 244 respondents, which makes a self-selected survey even MORE meaningless. But it still surprised me. Because for the last few days, any time someone says “This is going to cost her,” I say they are totally wrong, that Nikki made the calculation that her base wouldn’t care (or would even applaud, being so anti-elitist), and therefore she’s fine — from her perspective (certainly not from South Carolina’s).

It’s one thing for all the folks I run into at the Capital City Club to be shocked and appalled. One expects that, and Nikki Haley couldn’t care less. But this kind of populist thing should draw out the Haley fan club. For that matter, particularly with such low participation, it would be so easy to stack (which is the biggest reason you don’t regard self-selected “polls” as serious).

This result has NO statistical significance, but it’s SO lopsided. At the very least, it indicates a lack of eagerness on the part of her peeps to jump out and defend her. (I mean, did even ardent fan Eleanor Kitzman vote?) The way they rushed to back her on the WACH-Fox thing. What happened to that default mode of “If the elites and the media say it about our gal, it’s WRONG! And we’re gonna run out and shout it!”?

By the way, for what it’s worth… the latest WLTX nonpoll asked, “Should the U.S. have used force in Libya?” So far, this is how it’s going:

Yep, a dead heat. So far. And I figured that would be a blowout on the “yes” side. Because, you know, that’s something it looked like we had some consensus on before we went in. Of course, that consensus was among elites — including leading liberals who might otherwise oppose military action — and this is far from that. But that’s the factor that I thought would help Nikki on such a “poll” — at least to even things out for her. And it didn’t.

Once again, you can throw all of this out and you will have lost nothing of value — no methodology, tiny numbers. But it DID strike me as interesting, because it was such a blowout. And that’s all it is — interesting.

So I greeted this item from Columbia Regional Business Report in much the same spirit:

Staff Report
Published March 21, 2011

Gov. Nikki Haley made a grave misstep by removing philanthropist Darla Moore from the University of South Carolina’s board of trustees, said a vast majority of the people who responded to a two-day poll on the Daily Report.

Haley had few supporters of her move with only 7.1% saying they approve of her decision to replace Moore with Lexington attorney Tommy Cofield, who financially supported Haley’s campaign.

However, 78.8% want Moore back on the board; 44.2% of the respondents said Haley needs to admit her mistake and reinstate Moore, while 34.6% said the General Assembly should rectify the situation and by electing Moore to the board.

The remaining 14.1% asked who Tommy Cofield is.

Comments were fairly consistent, with the majority saying the move was “idiotic.”…

There was no methodology mentioned, so I figured this was an informal survey. I double-checked with CRBR Publisher Bob Bouyea, and he confirmed, “Informal poll.” Of course. No one in SC media has money to run real polls on the spur of the moment these days.

But I did find some of the comments interesting. Of course, they were fairly typical of what I’ve been hearing among the business movers and shakers, which is the same circle CRBR moves in.

As I say, interesting. Thought you might find it all interesting, too.

Graham’s modest proposal: Let’s be as bold as the French

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This just in from our senior U.S. senator:

Graham Presses Obama Administration to Establish Libyan No-Fly Zone

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) today made this statement on the establishment of a No-Fly zone over Libya and what United States inaction means for our own national security. Graham is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“One test in foreign policy – at least be as bold as the French. Unfortunately, when it comes to Libya we’re failing that test.

“The French and British are right to call for a no-fly zone over Libya, and they are correct to recognize the forces opposing Gaddafi. I’m very disappointed by the indecisiveness of the Administration in the face of tyranny. They are allowing the cries of the Libyan people to fall on deaf ears.

“Allowing Gaddafi to regain control over Libya through force – without any meaningful effort to support the Libyan people – will create grave consequences for our own national security.

“The biggest winner of an indecisive America refusing to stand up to dictators who kill their own people, will be the Iranian regime. The Iranian regime has already used force against their own people when they demanded freedom. If we allow Gaddafi to regain power through force of arms, it is inconceivable to me that the Iranians will ever take our efforts to control their nuclear desires seriously.

“The world is watching, and time is beginning to run short. The Obama Administration should join with the international community to form a no-fly zone while it still matters.

“Then-Senator Obama relished the opportunity to label Iraq as President Bush’s war. If he does not act decisively in Libya, I believe history will show that the Obama Administration owned the results of the Gaddafi regime from 2011 forward.

“Their refusal to act will go down as one of the great mistakes in American foreign policy history, and will have dire consequences for our own national security in the years to come. I truly fear the decisions they are making today will come back to haunt us.”

#####

Yeah, that’s kind of what I thought the other day, when I saw that the French and the Brits were taking the lead on trying to coordinate an international response to try to stop Qaddafi from continuing to kick the stuffing out of the Libyan people who have risked their lives to fight our enemy for us (and, of course, for themselves and their country).

I don’t know what the right thing to do is — such things are complex — but the no-fly zone certainly seems like a measured response that would carry some likelihood of doing good. Unlike, say, boots on the ground, which Sen. Graham draws the line at.

Let’s get our money down, now: Who will be the first to criticize the senator’s common-sense assertion? An antiwar liberal Democrat, or one of those extremists in his own party who are pleased to trash the “RINO” at every opportunity. Cue the Jeopardy music…

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