Category Archives: Marketplace of ideas

Wimping out in Honduras?

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Remember when I expressed my regret that my only sources of information on what’s happening in Honduras (or anywhere else in Latin America, for that matter) were columnists with axes to grind?

Well, there was a fairly complete update on the situation on the WSJ’s news pages today, which I appreciated. For instance, I learned for the first time that the military had forced ex-President (or is he really “ex-“?; that’s sort of what the argument’s about) Manuel Zelaya was forced to leave the country “in his pajamas.” Not that that’s important; I just enjoyed learning it.

More to the point, I thought I got a better appreciation of the Obama administration’s position on the situation, in this paragraph:

Resolving the crisis would be welcome not only in Central America but in Washington, too. The U.S. has put pressure on the interim government to allow the democratically elected Mr. Zelaya to return, even though the leftist is a fierce critic of Washington and a close ally of Venezuela’s populist Hugo Chávez.

That fact, of course, is what Jim DeMint and other conservative critics can’t get over — the fact that the administration is siding with this rather obnoxious ally of someone who is so inimical and destructive toward our national interests. But in that paragraph, I could sort of appreciate that we were trying to be fair and impartial, backing the guy even though he hangs with folks who aren’t our friends.

You know, sort of the way I’ve bent over backward to accommodate and be “fair” and nonjudgmental toward some of the bullies who have run off nice people on my blog. And I wrung my hands and fretted over the implications of cracking down. I hesitated to just ban someone because of past behavior — after all, in this country, doesn’t a person always have the opportunity, nay, the right, to redeem himself?

Oddly, it was one of our more “liberal” Democrats on the blog who, in sidebars, would whisper to me of how I needed to toughen up, stopping being squishy and tolerant, be the king, and cry “off with their heads.” I’m not going to name this person, in the interests of protecting the guilty, but the advice took the form of such admonitions as: “Stop trying to look like a good guy. You are a good guy.”

Which, it occurs to me, may be where Obama’s got it wrong, and DeMint’s got it right, on Honduras. Aside from the fact that the best assessment we have in hand does not support (clearly, anyway) that Zelaya was ousted in an extralegal manner, what principles are we standing up for here? At the very best, it’s a tossup whether Zelaya has a legitimate claim. So in such a situation, why would we not stand up for our nation’s legitimate interests, and more importantly, ideals (which the Chavezistas in the hemisphere scorn), without hesitation or apology?

In short, are we wimping out in the interests of being fair to all concerned, and in the process so blinding ourselves to reality that we don’t even see that it’s NOT fair to all concerned, that this guy actually doesn’t even (necessarily) have any of the rules on his side?

OK, part of it is your track record, not just what you say today

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Now that I’ve actually tried to implement the new comments policy for nearly a full day, I’m realizing something more fully than I did before. Yesterday, I wrote of my dilemma:

I see, for instance, that WordPress provides the option of “Comment author must have a previously approved comment,” which sounds nice, but what good is it really? I prefer to judge a comment by its own merits, not by who posted it. Lee, for instance (and Lee really resents being picked on, and he’ll probably see this as being picked on, but let’s face it; his name is the one my readers most frequently bring up as an irritant), sometimes posts perfectly fine comments that add to the conversation. I’m not saying it happens every day, but it happens. So, going by my own preferred standards, I would approve that one good comment — and under the “Comment author must have a previously approved comment,” he would then have carte blanche to return to his habitual ways.

See, at that point I was undecided: Under this new approach, should I reward Lee, or “Mike Toreno” or “BillC,” by posting their comments when they behave themselves? Or should I just ban them for their past sins?

When I first posted the new rules, I was leaning toward the former. But I find I’m implementing the latter.

That’s because my goal is to make this a more comfortable place for people who are not shouters or trolls or flamers or whatever to air their thoughts without being dismissed or insulted, which has kept a LOT of good people away. The three I mention above — Lee and “Toreno” and “BillC” — sometimes seem like the only readers of my blog, because of the way they dominate conversations. Especially Lee, who posts early (generally first) and often (alarmingly often). After awhile, they have more impact on the general tone and feel of the blog than I do. Which will sort of make a guy wonder why he’s bothering.

So — even though they may be trying to post some comments that provoke thought without insulting anyone, so as not to be barred, I’m reluctant to approve anything by those three. And so I haven’t. If I let them back in now, I know that gradually they’ll push a little more, and a little more, and my attention will wander, and pretty soon we’re back where we were. I’ve been here before with repeat offenders, and I know the trajectory that these things follow.

If one is of a legalistic mind, this will seem unfair. After all, the judge and jury are only supposed to consider whether the accused committed THIS crime, rather than convict him on the basis of his past offense (right? you lawyers, feel free to jump in at this point).

But folks, I am not obliged to approve anybody’s comment, ever. I don’t even have to allow comments. I do it because I want to. And if somebody has created an ugly disturbance in my living room too many times, I’m not going to invite that person any more, lest my more desirable guests stop coming (and who would blame them).

So I haven’t approved anything by the three I mentioned above, even though they have tried several times. Not for the foreseeable future. They will no doubt find this frustrating. Well, they can go start their own blogs, and dedicate them to trashing this one, if they are so inclined. And if they can get anybody to read them, then more power to them. I’m not going to let them feed off of, and undermine, my ability to draw an audience any longer. They are personae non grata.

(And yes, I know that they can always come back under a new pseudonym — actually, I suspect one of the three of having done so quite a few times before — but that’s why I’m also monitoring the content of comments, rather than simply barring those names.)

Now, for the rest of you, you’re being judged by each comment. Yeah, some others among you aside from the banned three have contributed to ugliness on this blog. So, many of you will accuse, have I. But you’ve also contributed positively, and by approving some of your comments and not others, I hope to get all of us into the habit of listening to our better angels, and reflecting that in our writing.

If it seems like I’m making up the rules as I go along, then you’re very astute. But I’m doing the best I can. If you don’t like it, again: Go to another blog, or start your own. But if you want to be part of building a better public forum, welcome.

Folks, help me help out the new readers…

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In light of the changes on the blog, I’ve got some first-timers trying to log in and leave comments, and having trouble. I’m hearing from them via e-mail.

Problem is, I don’t know how to figure out how to tell THEM how to log in, because when I try to do it for them, my browser insists upon recognizing me, and I don’t find any way to log in as someone else — or indeed, to create a new log-in. In other words, I can’t see what they’re seeing. (And yeah, I feel really stupid; good thing for me I’ve just banned insults and catcalls, huh?)

Since some of y’all have done this more recently than I have, would you mind posting instructions. Of course, with the new rules, they won’t post until I approve them.

Complicated, ain’t it?

The New Blog Order, Mark IV

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OK, I really don’t know how many “New Blog Orders” there have been; I just thought “Mark IV” sounded good.

Anyway, here’s the new deal, for now: Comments won’t appear unless I approve them. (And yes, we’ve been here before, in a previous regime change. The video above of me explaining this very same approach was shot during a family gathering at my house in July 2007. See how unhappy I was with having to take this approach? That’s the way I look now, only without the grubby beginning of a beard. Sort of amazing, isn’t it, that as fed up as I was then, I’m still trying? I’m nothing if not persistent.)

I’m going to do that for a few days at least, and then I hope to go to something less stringent, not that there are a lot of options. I see, for instance, that WordPress provides the option of “Comment author must have a previously approved comment,” which sounds nice, but what good is it really? I prefer to judge a comment by its own merits, not by who posted it. Lee, for instance (and Lee really resents being picked on, and he’ll probably see this as being picked on, but let’s face it; his name is the one my readers most frequently bring up as an irritant), sometimes posts perfectly fine comments that add to the conversation. I’m not saying it happens every day, but it happens. So, going by my own preferred standards, I would approve that one good comment — and under the “Comment author must have a previously approved comment,” he would then have carte blanche to return to his habitual ways.

Ultimately, the place where I think I’ll end up is that I’ll open the gates back up, but I’ll make a point of checking comments several times a day, and just delete anything that doesn’t contribute to this being a place that encourages thoughtful people who want to engage in good-faith dialogue.

And I know those people are out there. Just this morning, I was meeting with a prominent local attorney — a public-spirited guy who is a great public speaker and has a lot to say — mentioned to me that there was NO WAY he was going to spend any of his life wrestling in the mud with a bunch of trolls on a blog. And the bad thing about that is, he is just the kind of person I wish would join in with our dialogues here — I want lots of people like him, from across the political spectrum (and those of you on the left or right who think there are no thoughtful people with something worthwhile to say on the opposite end of the spectrum; well, you’re part of the problem).

So in this latest effort to foster the kind of place that he and other like him would consider worthy of his time, I’m going with a standard that goes beyond the mere absence of incivility. I’m going to look for posts that actually contribute something. I’m going for positive attributes, rather than just the absence of negative ones. Because serious people (or for that matter, people who like to have a little fun, just not at other people’s expense) deserve a blog that answers that description.

At this point, some of you are furiously writing to me to say, “You just want comments that agree with you!” which is ridiculous. That’s a ploy to get me to back down on enforcing standards, and post something that calls me and people who agree with me names just to prove how “fair” I am. Well, you know what? I’m not falling for that. I’ve heard it too many thousands of times from people who just can’t be bothered to disagree in a civilized manner.

I know that I’ve always given precedence to people who disagree with me. And anyone who’s followed my career and is not seriously challenged in the reading comprehension department knows that about me. But from now on, you’re going to disagree in a way that it doesn’t run off well-behaved people. You’re going to disagree in a way that makes people think, “Maybe he’s got a point” instead of “What a jerk!” I realize this is going to be a challenge for some, but I hope the rest of you will appreciate it.

And if you don’t, or if you just can’t bring yourself to meet the new standard, you are completely free to go start your own blog. This one’s mine, and I’m not going to waste time with it unless I think it’s getting better, and providing a worthwhile forum.

Wishing I had another perspective on Honduras

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Has anyone run across an objective, reasoned account of recent events in Honduras and the U.S. policy with regard to those events? Or, for that matter, an argument from a liberal or Democratic point of view supporting the Obama administration’s support for ex-President Manuel Zelaya?

The reason that I ask is that, given my background, I’m one of those rare Americans who cares about Latin America. I lived there at an impressionable age, and was particularly impressed by the short-lived Kennedy Administration efforts to at least act like that part of the hemisphere mattered. I haven’t seen anything approaching this level of interest since then. Meanwhile, over the past couple of decades, I’ve watched such nations as China deftly increase their influence in the region, much to the detriment of the legitimate interests of the United States and of the people of those countries.

Unfortunately, it’s not all that easy to keep up, given the almost complete apathy of the U.S. news media. Back when I was at the paper and got The Economist every week, I could sort of keep up — the Brits have always cared far more about all corners of the world than Americans care even about their own backyard — but even though my colleagues kept giving me the Economists that came in after I left (I was the only one in that office who read it, after Mike Fitts had left).

I still subscribe to The Wall Street Journal at home, however. And what that means is that my one regular source of information about Honduras and the rest of the countries below the Rio Grande has been Mary Anastasia O’Grady’s opinion columns. And while they are well-informed, they are written from such a strongly anti-administration point of view that leaves me wondering what it is that I’m not hearing.

Her indictments of Obama administration for perverse blindness are pretty powerful, such as this recent piece that indicts Zelaya for his connections, direct and indirect, to Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and virulent anti-Semitics in his own country. She begins this piece with a quote for one of the leading voices for Zelaya’s return:

Sometimes I ask myself if Hitler wasn’t right when he wanted to finish with that race, through the famous holocaust, because if there are people that are harmful to this country, they are the Jews, the Israelites.

Beyond the sensational stuff, though, I intuit that she may be onto something. I’ve previously noted my great discomfort at Obama’s decision to knuckle under to Big Labor rather than support freer trade with our ally Colombia. In fact, some of you who did not like our endorsement of John McCain castigated me for citing what you considered to be a side issue — although it wasn’t to me. To me, it was a disturbing portent, which would seem to have predicted a tendency to be terribly wrong on Latin America, if Ms. O’Grady is right.

But is she? I’d like to see an independent assessment, or even one from the other end of the political spectrum — if a liberal can get interest in Latin America long enough to provide one. It strikes me as passing strange that, given the recent ugly nativism we’ve seen rising on the Right in this country, that I’d only be hearing from conservatives on internal affairs in Honduras.

So it is that read with interest today a piece on the subject by someone other than Ms. O’Grady, also on the opinion pages of the WSJ. Unfortunately, it was by our own Jim DeMint — a man who has in recent years lost a lot of credibility with me, thanks to his opportunistic appeal to the aforementioned surge in nativism, his siding with our governor on the stimulus, and his execrable remark alluding to the climactic land battle of the Napoleonic Wars.

Setting all that aside, his piece seemed well-reasoned, and persuasive. Sure, members of Congress visiting foreign countries often see what they want to see, or what their hosts want them to see, but I was still impressed that he said of all the people he spoke with in Tegucigalpa, the only person who stuck up for the administration’s position, the only one who called the Honduran government’s removal of the ex-president a “coup,” was our ambassador:

As all strong democracies do after cleansing themselves of usurpers, Honduras has moved on.

The presidential election is on schedule for Nov. 29. Under Honduras’s one-term-limit, Mr. Zelaya could not have sought re-election anyway. Current President Roberto Micheletti—who was installed after Mr. Zelaya’s removal, per the Honduran Constitution—is not on the ballot either. The presidential candidates were nominated in primary elections almost a year ago, and all of them—including Mr. Zelaya’s former vice president—expect the elections to be free, fair and transparent, as has every Honduran election for a generation.

Indeed, the desire to move beyond the Zelaya era was almost universal in our meetings. Almost.

In a day packed with meetings, we met only one person in Honduras who opposed Mr. Zelaya’s ouster, who wishes his return, and who mystifyingly rejects the legitimacy of the November elections: U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens.

Of course, maybe Sen. DeMint was speaking to the wrong sources, just as I worry that maybe I’m reading the wrong sources. But he certainly seems to make a reasonable case.

By the way, both Ms. O’Grady and Sen. DeMint cite a source that sounds pretty legit to me in supporting their views: a senior analyst at the Law Library of Congress. But while you can read that report as supporting their views, it’s also a little more ambivalent than they make it sound, such as in this conclusion:

V. Was the removal of Honduran President Zelaya legal, in accordance with Honduran
constitutional and statutory law?
Available sources indicate that the judicial and legislative branches applied constitutional
and statutory law in the case against President Zelaya in a manner that was judged by the
Honduran authorities from both branches of the government to be in accordance with the
Honduran legal system.
However, removal of President Zelaya from the country by the military is in direct
violation of the Article 102 of the Constitution, and apparently this action is currently under
investigation by the Honduran authorities.50

Anyway, does anyone know of good arguments to the contrary, or is the administration just really, really wrong on this one?

Hey, guys: Just insult the president, and RAKE in the dough

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This morning I ran into Dwight Drake yet again at breakfast — I swear, all that guy does is eat — and he told me that he exceeded his goal of raising $250,000 in the past quarter, reaching $300k.

Then, at another Kaffeeklatsch in Five Points with Steve Benjamin and Jack Van Loan, Steve told me that he raised $100,000 in the same period — which he says Richard Gergel tells him is a record, although he doesn’t know for sure.

Here’s what I told both of them: Hey, guys; you’re missing the boat: Just shout an insult at the president of the United States, and you can be rolling in the dough…

Can you believe this guy? As I said this morning on Twitter:

How does Joe Wilson live with himself, KNOWING he’s cashing in on something he did that was inappropriate?

He knew he did wrong as soon as he yelled “You lie!” His first instinct, and it was the right one, was to apologize. The Joe Wilson I know, while he’s an excitable guy, is better than that.

But then he got a taste of the wages of demagoguery, and he was ruined. Now, he basks in the adoration of those who celebrate the degradation of political deliberation in our country.

It’s disgusting. And while a guy who’s unemployed like me could use $2.7 million (and think about what an UnParty candidate could do with that — he’d have the chance to really torpedo this crazy partisan system), I honestly don’t see how he looks himself in the mirror as it comes pouring in.

Obama should seize historic opportunity, say “No, thanks” to Nobel

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Barack Obama has a tremendous opportunity now to recapture lost political capital, unify this country behind his leadership and increase (if that’s possible, in light of today’s development) his international prestige — all of which would be an enormous boost to the things he’s trying to achieve:

He should say, “Thanks, but no thanks” to the Nobel Peace prize.

If he does that, everyone will think more of him. That is to say, everyone who is susceptible to being influenced. The Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks who make a good living from criticizing him will still do so, but no one but the nuttiest fringe types would still be listening. Everyone with a scintilla of fairmindedness would be impressed if he declined this honor.

If he doesn’t do it, this award will simply be another occasion for the Right to hoot and holler and deride, and the Left to dig in its heels and defend Their Guy, and the crazy polarizing spin cycle will spin on, while health care and everything else gets lost amid the shouting.

I got a foretaste of this this morning. I was about to get out of my truck to go in and have breakfast when I heard the news that had stunned the White House and everyone else: Barack Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In the next few moments, I quickly filed the following three tweets:

Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize? The White House is stunned, and so am I. Isn’t it a tad premature or something?

What did Obama win the Nobel FOR? Good intentions? I mean, seriously, the man just GOT here…

Hey, I LIKE Obama; I have hopes he’ll EARN a Nobel one day soon. But he hasn’t had the chance to do so yet…

Then, when I walked in to get my breakfast, I ran into Steve Benjamin and Samuel Tenenbaum, and asked them if they’d heard the news. They had. I expected them to share my shock. I mean, I saw one report (which I haven’t been able to confirm yet) that Obama was only sworn into office TWO WEEKS before the nominations for the Nobel had to be in. The president himself knows better than to claim he’d earned it. Here’s what he said this morning:

Mr. Obama said he doesn’t view the award “as a recognition of my own accomplishments,” but rather as a recognition of goals he has set for the U.S. and the world. Mr. Obama said, “I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many transformative figures that have been honored by this prize.”

But Steve and Samuel — especially Samuel — felt like they had to defend the president’s receiving the prize. And here’s why: While I had just heard the news and was naturally flabbergasted, with no other stimuli acting on me, Samuel gets up at 4:30 every morning, and has usually had several full cycles of spin by the time I leave my house. He had already heard right-wingers attacking the award on the airwaves, so he was in defensive mode.

This is what the whole Left vs. Right thing gets us: We can’t even agree when something wild and crazy happens. And the president of the United States getting the Nobel Peace Prize for what he MIGHT do, for what he INTENDS to do, for his POTENTIAL, is wild and crazy.

Face it, folks: The Nobel committee gave him this prize for Not Being George W. Bush. This is a measure of how much they hated that guy. I didn’t like him much either, but come on… (While I haven’t talked to my friend Robert Ariail today, I can picture the cartoon already: Obama clutching the prize to his cheek saying, “They LIKE me! The really, really LIKE me!…”

Here’s where the opportunity comes in. The president was on the right track with the humble talk, but he should go a big step further: He should decline the prize, insisting that he hasn’t earned it yet.

This would transform perception of Barack Obama both domestically and internationally. If he simply takes the award, no matter how eloquent his words, he’ll be seen as an ordinary guy who can’t resist being honored, whether he deserves it or not. The Right will go ape over it and keep on going ape over it, and the Left will ferociously defend him, making all sorts of improbable claims to support his receiving it, and those of us in the middle will see the Right as having the stronger point at the same time that we’re put off by their meanspiritedness, and nothing will be accomplished.

But turning it down, saying, “Not yet; wait until I’ve earned it” would catapult Obama to such a state of greatness that he would overarch all ordinary partisan argument. No one could say he was wrong, and most people would be blown away by such selflessness. It would give him tremendous amounts of juice to get REAL health care reform instead of some watered-down nothing, which is probably what we’re going to get.

Internationally… well, if they love the guy now, they’d be ecstatic over him if he turned it down. I mean it. Think about it: What do they love about this guy? His perceived nobility and humility. They hated Bush for what they perceived as his arrogance, and they love Obama for what they perceive as his humility before the rest of the world. If he just took the prize, the world would just shake his hand and that would be that. But if he turned it down, suddenly Iran would be negotiating with a guy with more respect than anyone in the whole wide world has had in a long time. And maybe we’d get somewhere — with Iran, with Russia, with China, in Afghanistan, in Palestine, take your pick.

As I said, I like Obama, and I want him to succeed. But I know he hasn’t earned this honor yet. And I’m firmly convinced that turning it down would afford him the greatest opportunity to succeed with his agenda that he’ll ever have.

Trying to explain Joe Wilson to France

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This morning I had a very pleasant breakfast at the usual place with Philippe Boulet-Gercourt, the U.S. Bureau Chief for Le Nouvel Observateur, France’s largest weekly newsmagazine. I forgot to take a picture of him, but I found the video above from 2008 (I think), in which I think he’s telling the folks back home that Obama was going to win the election. That’s what “Obama va gagner” means, right? Alas, I have no French, although I’ve always felt that I understand Segolene Royal perfectly. Fortunately, Philippe’s English is superb.

It was my first encounter with a French journalist since I shot this video of Cyprien d’Haese shooting video of me back in 2008, in a supremely Marshall McLuhan moment. If you’ll recall, I was interviewed by a lot of national and foreign journalists in the weeks and months leading up to the presidential primaries here. (You may also recall that a lot of them came to me because of my blog, not because I was editorial page editor of the state’s largest newspaper. Philippe, of course, also contacted me because of the blog, although he was aware of my former association, and expressed his kind concern for my joblessness.)

He had come to Columbia from New York, which has been his home for 14 years, to ask about “this summer uprising among the conservatives, peaking with the Joe Wilson incident,” as he had put it in his e-mail.

Well, to begin with, I disputed his premise. I don’t think there has been a resurgence of conservatives or of the Republican Party, which is still groping for its identity in the wake of last year’s election. What we’ve seen in the case of Joe Wilson — the outpouring of support, monetary and otherwise, after the moment in which he embarrassed the 2nd District — was merely the concentration of political elements that are always there, and are neither stronger nor weaker because of what Joe has said and done. Just as outrage over Joe’s outburst has expressed itself (unfortunately) in an outpouring (I’m trying to see how many words with the prefix “out-” I can use in this sentence) of material support for the unimpressive Rob Miller, the incident was a magnet for the forces of political polarization, in South Carolina and across the country.

What I tried to do is provide historical and sociological context for the fact that Joe Wilson is the natural representative for the 2nd District, and will probably be re-elected (unless someone a lot stronger than Rob Miller emerges and miraculously overcomes his huge warchest). It’s not about Obama (although resistance to the “expansion of government” that he represents is a factor) and it’s not about race (although the fact that districts are gerrymandered to make the 2nd unnaturally white, and the 6th unnaturally black, helps define the districts and their representatives).

In other words, I said a lot of stuff that I said back in this post.

We spoke about a number of other topics as well, some related, some not:

He asked about the reaction in South Carolina to Obama’s election. I told him that obviously, the Democratic minority — which had been energized to an unprecedented degree in the primary, having higher turnout than the Republicans for the first time in many years — was jubilant. The reaction among the Republican minority was more like resignation. Republicans had known that McCain would win South Carolina, but Obama would win the election. I explained that McCain’s win here did not express a rejection of Obama (as some Democrats have chosen to misinterpret), but simply political business as usual — it would have been shocking had the Republican, any Republican, not won against any national Democrat. I spoke, as I explained to him, from the unusual perspective of someone who liked both Obama and McCain very much, but voted for McCain. I think I drew the distinction fairly well between what I think and what various subsets of Republicans and Democrats in South Carolina think…

That got us on the topic of McCain-Bush in 2000, because as I explained to Philippe, I was destined to support McCain even over someone I liked as much as Obama, because I had waited eight years for the opportunity to make up for what happened here in 2000. Philippe agreed that the world would have been a better place had McCain been elected then, but I gather that he subscribes to the conventional wisdom (held by many of you here on the blog) that the McCain of 2008 was much diminished.

Philippe understood 2000, but as a Frenchman, he had trouble understanding how the country re-elected Bush in 2004 (And let me quickly say, for those of you who may be quick to bridle at the French, that Philippe was very gentlemanly about this, the very soul of politeness). So I explained to him how I came to write an endorsement of Bush again in 2004 — a very negative endorsement which indicted him for being wrong about many things, but in the end an endorsement. There was a long explanation of that, and a short one. Here’s the short one: John Kerry. And Philippe understood why a newspaper that generally reflects its state (close to three-fourths of those we endorsed during my tenure won their general election contests) would find it hard to endorse Kerry, once I put it that way. (As those of you who pay attention know, under my leadership The State endorsed slightly more Democrats than Republicans overall, but never broke its string of endorsing Republicans for the presidency, although we came close in 2008.)

Anyway, when we finished our long breakfast (I hadn’t eaten much because I was talking too much, drinking coffee all the while) I gave him a brief “tour” of the Midlands as seen from the 25th floor of Columbia’s tallest building, then gave him numbers for several other sources who might be helpful. He particularly was interested in folks from Joe’s Lexington County base, as well as some political science types, so I referred him to:

  • Rep. Kenny Bingham, the S.C. House Majority Leader who recently held a “Welcome Home” event for Joe Wilson at his (Kenny’s) home.
  • Rep. Nikki Haley, who until recently was the designated Mark Sanford candidate for governor, before she had occasion to distance herself.
  • Sen. Nikki Setzler (I gave him all the Lexington County Nikkis I knew), who could describe the county’s politics from the perspective of the minority party.
  • Blease Graham, the USC political science professor who recently retired but remained plugged in and knowledgeable. (Philippe remarked upon Blease’s unusual name, which started me on a tangent about his ancestor Cole Blease, Ben Tillman, N.G. Gonzales, etc.)
  • Walter Edgar, the author of the definitive history of our state.
  • Neal Thigpen, the longtime political scientist at Francis Marion University who tends to comment from a Republican perspective.
  • Jack Bass, the ex-journalist and political commentator known for his biography of Strom Thurmond and for his liberal Democratic point of view.

I also suggested he stop in at the Gervais Street Starbucks for a downtown Columbia perspective, and the Sunset Restaurant in West Columbia.

I look forward to reading his article, although I might have to get some of y’all to help me with understanding it. With my background in Spanish and two years of Latin I can generally understand French better when written than spoken, but I still might need some help…

Henry McMaster’s video on the Water War with N.C.

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You know, it occurs to me: How am I going to get people, especially political types, to buy ads on my blog (once I start offering ads on my blog) when I go ahead and put there promotional material on the blog for free? The video above being a case in point.

Well, I don’t know. But I’ll keep sharing stuff like this whenever I have something to say about it.

And what I have to say about this is: It’s a huge improvement over his initial campaign video, but still leaves much to be desired.

It’s an improvement because it isn’t a naked play on partisan resentment. In the earlier video, he blamed unemployment in South Carolina, absurdly, on Barack Obama. In this one, by contrast, his villain is those greedy North Carolinians upstream, which is more credible.

And the tone is laudable because it’s calmly and dispassionately explanatory. That’s nice for a change.

But one thing it fails to do is explain to voters why this has a bearing upon their choice for governor. It doesn’t clearly say that I, Henry McMaster, have taken a particular stand on this issue and my opponents have not, or in any other way related the Water War to the subject at hand, which is nominating a gubernatorial candidate.

You may say I can’t have both calm explanation and overt appeal for votes, but I think I can. If you’re going to take a minute to ‘splain something, ‘splain what I can do about it. It doesn’t seem like it would be that hard.

Your thoughts?

The Anglosphere considered, minus imperialism

1 Reply

Stanley Dubinsky can always be relied upon to point out things that provoke thought. I was particularly struck by this review from The Times of a book called REPLENISHING THE EARTH: The settler revolution and the rise of the Anglo-world. An excerpt:

Writing history is largely a matter of what filters you use. Different-coloured filters bring out different patterns. For most recent chroniclers and analysts of the Anglo-Americanization of the world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the filters used have been those that show up the “imperialism” of the process. The most startling novelty of James Belich’s Replenishing the Earth: The settler revolution and the rise of the Anglo-world is that it scarcely mentions imperialism at all, except to marginalize it (“with all due respect to the rich scholarship on European imperialism, in the very long view most European empires in Asia and Africa were a flash in the pan”); yet it still makes a pretty convincing job of explaining the huge and important process that is its subject. Even where it does not totally convince, it is immensely illuminating, as new filters invariably are. This is one of the most important works on the broad processes of modern world history to have appeared for years… – arguably since Sir Charles Dilke’s pioneering Greater Britain introduced a concept very like Belich’s “Anglo-world” to his Victorian contemporaries in 1868.

Dilke’s book was written before the word “imperialism” came into vogue, at least in connection with British overseas expansion. Empire carries essential connotations of power, or domination, whose major manifestation in Britain’s case was India – which again finds no place in Belich’s book, and hardly featured in Dilke’s either. Dilke was interested in something else: the migration of the British people over the globe, including North America; with the aid of some state power, certainly – the general protection afforded by the Royal Navy, occasional military expeditions to pull the migrants out of trouble, charters and treaties – but not in order to dominate anyone. Rather, the aim was to reproduce British-type “free” societies, usually freer than Britain’s own, in what were conveniently regarded as the “waste” places of the earth. Belich calls this “cloning”. It was an entirely different process from the more dominating sort of “imperialism”, representing a different philosophy, involving different social classes, and mainly affecting different regions of the world. Belich believes that it was a far more important influence than what is generally understood as imperialism on the whole course of modern history.

Consider this post a transparent effort to lure the “Anglospheric” Mike Cakora back to the blog. Haven’t heard from Mike in awhile…

Friedman plugs the Energy Party agenda

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We haven’t spoken much about the Energy Party lately, what with being obsessed with the economy and all (see, I told y’all this wouldn’t be fun before we started). Thank goodness, Tom Friedman took the time earlier this week to get us back on track by touting a key plank of the Party platform, in a piece headlined “Real men tax gas.” An excerpt:

But are we really that tough? If the metric is a willingness to send troops to Iraq and Afghanistan and consider the use of force against Iran, the answer is yes. And we should be eternally grateful to the Americans willing to go off and fight those fights. But in another way – when it comes to doing things that would actually weaken the people we are sending our boys and girls to fight – we are total wimps. We are, in fact, the wimps of the world. We are, in fact, so wimpy our politicians are afraid to even talk about how wimpy we are.

How so? France today generates nearly 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power plants, and it has managed to deal with all the radioactive waste issues without any problems or panics. And us? We get about 20 percent and have not been able or willing to build one new nuclear plant since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, even though that accident led to no deaths or injuries to plant workers or neighbors. We’re too afraid to store nuclear waste deep in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain – totally safe – at a time when French mayors clamor to have reactors in their towns to create jobs. In short, the French stayed the course on clean nuclear power, despite Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and we ran for cover.

How about Denmark? Little Denmark, sweet, never-hurt-a-fly Denmark, was hit hard by the 1973 Arab oil embargo. In 1973, Denmark got all its oil from the Middle East. Today? Zero. Why? Because Denmark got tough. It imposed on itself a carbon tax, a roughly $5-a-gallon gasoline tax, made massive investments in energy efficiency and in systems to generate energy from waste, along with a discovery of North Sea oil (about 40 percent of its needs).

And us? When it comes to raising gasoline taxes or carbon taxes – at a perfect time like this when prices are already low – our politicians tell us it is simply “off the table.” So I repeat, who is the real tough guy here?

As Friedman correctly asserts, raising the gas tax would be a “win, win, win, win, win” that would make us “physically healthier, economically healthier and strategically healthier.” But none of our politicians, of either party, have the guts even to bring up the subject, because they can hear the voters screaming at them with all the mature outrage evinced in this unrelated, but hilarious, commercial (only instead of screaming, “I want those sweeties,” we’d be hollering, “We want our cheap gas!”)

Anyway, I posted something on Twitter about the Friedman column earlier this week, and Doug Ross responded on Facebook. I’ll share our exchange here just to get the blog discussion going:

Doug Ross

Real men must like double digit inflation, high food prices, and punishing low income Americans who need to drive to work
Brad Warthen

We love all that stuff. We just don’t like quiche.
Did you read the piece?
Doug Ross

I did read the article. He says he wants to take 10 cents of each dollar and give it to “the poor” to cushion the $1 per gallon cost. What about the people who aren’t “poor” who will see their fuel costs go up by several thousand dollars a year? and the increase in cost of every single item that is manufactured and transported. it’s a recipe … Read Morefor economic disaster. Some of Friedman’s ideas go beyond “ivory tower” to the point where the people in the ivory towers have to crane their necks to see him.
We have all the money we need to do what Friedman wants currently in the federal coffers. Our political “leaders” choose to do other things.
Brad Warthen

But raising the revenue isn’t the point; it’s just a side benefit.
The point is making ourselves more energy-independent so we stop underwriting the thugs of the world.
If France and Denmark can do it, so can we.
Doug Ross

Oh, if we could just be like Denmark and France!!! Apparently that’s the new American Dream
And yeah, for those who are confused — I was using that “irony” thing again when I said “we love all that stuff.” But I was serious about not liking quiche.

Ammo!

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ammo

It was either late 2008 or the start of 2009 when a co-worker at The State mentioned that he’d had trouble laying his hands on buckshot, and that the shopkeepers he’d talked to said this started to happen at about the time of the election. It’s been so long that I forget whether he said that it was just before the election or just after that the run on ammunition started. But I do remember he said you could get birdshot; the problem was with the deadlier stuff that you’d need to take down a deer — or a man.

It was sometime after that that I noticed at a local Wal-Mart that the case where ammunition of all kinds was locked behind glass was mostly empty. Looking more closely, I saw none of the usual pistol stuff (.38-cal., 9 mm). In fact, all I saw was shotgun shells with the smaller sort of shot.

I filed this away as interesting, even ominous. And I figured I would write something about it once it became better documented and the fact was established. I assumed I’d see news stories about it soon. (As you know, in my former position I had nothing to do with news or decisions on what to cover; I was kept as separate from that as I was from advertising. Like you, I saw things in the paper when I saw them.) Then I forgot about it. I was pretty busy in those days.

So when I saw it on the front page of The State today, I sort of went “Wow,” on a couple of levels. First, that it took this long to make news, and second, that there was still a shortage.

Back when I first heard about it, I didn’t know what I wanted to say about it. Some things popped into my head, of course. One of the first was my memory of being in South Carolina when Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. I remember knowing at least one very nice white person who had never owned a gun before going out and buying one, because of fear of what might happen next. And I heard of others. I didn’t want to think this was related to that, but it did pop into my head.

Another was that Barack Obama had inspired some fairly weird Internet conspiracy theories. You know, like the one that he’s not really a citizen. I hadn’t attached importance to that — after all, the man was elected — but it popped into my head that there was something going on in the dank underbelly of the American psyche. Everything might be fine on the conscious level, but maybe some things were brewing down in the more reptilian parts of our collective brain.

But I set it aside. We had lots of other stuff to think about, what with the economy collapsing around us, and all the debates over what to do about it. The stimulus, for instance, was about as unemotional and bloodless, colorless subject as you were likely to find; it was not something to inspire dark dreams of violence.

Now that the ammunition story is documented and verified and duly reported, it comes at a time when we have additional information, and this colors our perception. We’ve seen that a lot of people are really, REALLY emotional about this president and his policies. I mean, we’ve had a lot of heated debates about health care in this country in the past, but even when it involved the polarizing figure of Hillary Clinton, people didn’t get THIS stirred up. Harry and Louise and the rest of the insurance industry’s allies simply deep-sixed reform, and it went away for 15 years.

But the last couple of months have been … weird. You might expect a guy like me, who has griped for years about our health care situation and finds himself paying $600 a month for COBRA, with the prospect of it going up to $1,200 or even $1,500 very soon) would be emotional about it, but I’m Lake Placid compared to the people who DON’T WANT reform. “Death panels.” Old folks absurdlyObama Joker Poster Popping Up In Los Angeles demanding that the gummint stay out of their Medicare. People showing up in crowds with automatic weapons. An otherwise mild-mannered congressman yelling “You lie!” at the president during what I thought was a fairly ho-hum speech. Then there’s the truly disturbing “Joker” posters. (I thought Democrats really went overboard with hating Bush, but this plumbed new depths.)

Against that background, a run on ammunition sounds really ominous.

The sunniest interpretation you can put on this phenomenon is that when the economy is collapsing, people naturally fear our devolving into a state of nature, and naturally want to arm themselves. Under that interpretation, we’d have run out of ammo whether Obama or McCain had been elected.

But there’s this other thing going on, and it has to do with some fairly unpleasant things rattling around in our collective subconscious. Some people have tried to give it a simple name, saying it’s about race. But it’s more complicated than that. Just as scary and ugly perhaps, and entangled somehow with race, but more complicated.

And frankly, I’m still not sure what to think of it.

Dealignment is the coming thing — which is good for the UnParty

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Kathryn brings this to our attention, over on Salon:

Last week, Brent Budowsky pondered the prospects for realignment in The Hill. With more than 40% of Americans identifying themselves as independents, Budowsky writes, “Realignment is dead. President Barack Obama and Democrats blew it. Dealignment has arrived. Republicans blew it, and are now so repellent that Americans increasingly reject both political parties.”

That supports something I have heard frequently — that neither party is really interested in the problems of ordinary Americans, that what politicians on both ends of the spectrum really care about is being re–elected, and a new party is needed.

So when “dealignment” occurs, who’s standing there to pick up the pieces? The UnParty, baby — the UnParty.

An early interview with Rob Miller

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The first time I met Rob Miller, he was still a captain in the United States Marine Corps. He was having breakfast at the Capital City Club with Samuel Tenenbaum and Bud Ferillo. They were talking with him about his plan to leave the Corps and run for Congress in the 2nd District. He was in civvies — a blue blazer and conservative tie, as I recall — but he was marked as a Marine by two things: His head was shaved, and he compulsively called every man he addressed “sir” in a way that made you feel like he was just barely containing himself from saluting. (Marines always do this, and I find it disconcerting. I’m a lousy civilian; I should be calling them “sir,” not the other way around.)

When next I met him, a few months later, his hair had just started to grow out, and he was both a civilian and a candidate for the 2nd Congressional District. About all I knew about him was that he had been a Marine, he was a combat veteran, having served two tours in Iraq, and he was Bobby Hitt’s nephew (I had worked for Bobby when he was managing editor of The State in the late 80s) — and that some prominent Democrats had taken an interest in his campaign, at least to some extent.

Other than that, he was a blank slate for me, so this interview did a lot to form my impression of him as a candidate. It was not a strong impression. I did not feel like he was ready to run for this office. He seemed uncertain in talking about why he was running, and had to grope for answers to questions that simply asked him to elaborate on what he had said in his opening remarks. He had this trouble in spite of having a little notebook with him, to which he repeatedly referred.

Now, in complete fairness to Capt. Miller: This was very early in his transition to civilian life. I thought he seemed more poised and confident later in the campaign, such as in the October debate with Joe Wilson that I helped moderate. (The header photo above is from that event.) Unfortunately, the link to that video no longer seems to work, and I lost everything that I had put on my laptop in September and October of that year when my laptop was stolen (although I don’t think I had anything on him from that period anyway). So the one thing I have to refer back to is this video from May of that year.

We did not endorse Capt. Miller in the primary, which is what this interview was about. We endorsed Blaine Lotz, who had had a somewhat more extensive military career than the captain (he had retired from the Air Force as a colonel), and a far greater grasp of national security issues — after the Air Force, he had a distinguished civilian career at the Pentagon specializing in intelligence, and in 1998 he was appointed by Secretary of Defense Cohen to be Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Oversight. Of course, he was still in that position under Donald Rumsfeld, for which S.C. Democrats were apparently unwilling to forgive him. Or maybe they didn’t even know that; he didn’t seem to get as much exposure in the campaign as did Capt. Miller. In any case, Miller won.

Even though he made a better impression in the fall, we still did what many of you will no doubt consider unforgivable — we endorsed Joe Wilson. It was a tepid endorsement, but an endorsement all the same. In that same editorial, we also endorsed Jim Clyburn (also unenthusiastically) and John Spratt (wholeheartedly). An excerpt:

Newcomer Rob Miller seems poised to give incumbent Joe Wilson a real contest this year. The Democrat is an ex-Marine, an Iraq combat veteran and a member of a prominent South Carolina family (his uncle used to be managing editor of this newspaper). He seemed uncertain about issues in the primary campaign, but still managed to beat a former Air Force general [I don’t know where that came from, since his bio online says he retired as a colonel] with an impressive resume. He has gained confidence in the intervening months with an aggressive, populist, anti-establishment message. Combine that with the Obama Effect, and you have a candidate with a chance.

But we endorse Republican Wilson, who demonstrates a greater command of the issues, and is much more attuned to the wishes of voters in the district’s gravitational center, Lexington County. Yes, he’s a hyper-Republican, and we’d like to see a less partisan candidate with competitive credentials. But Rep. Wilson is a hard-working, earnest representative who is truly devoted to serving his district and his country, and voters will be better served to re-elect him.

In the 6th District, we see both strong similarities and a stark difference. The similarity is that the incumbent, Jim Clyburn, is just as partisan as Mr. Wilson, and much more successful at it — he’s the third-ranking Democrat in the U.S. House, the majority whip. It’s his job to line up votes for Speaker Nancy Pelosi; he takes the job seriously and does it well.

Where this district, which runs from Richland County through the Pee Dee and down the I-95 corridor, differs from the 2nd is in the fact that Mr. Clyburn is strongly supported in every part of it. He is closely attuned to his district’s wants and needs, and passionately devoted to serving its people. Consequently, he faces weak opposition in Republican Nancy Harrelson, who is running on a populist platform in some ways similar to Mr. Miller’s.

We endorse Mr. Clyburn, a highly experienced and savvy public servant who is clearly better qualified.

By the way, about that reference to “a populist platform in some ways similar to Mr. Miller’s” — while he seemed more confident and polished by the fall, the persona he had adopted was that of the somewhat ticked-off champion of the common man, which was sufficiently at odds with his previously self-effacing junior-officer demeanor that it seemed contrived. At least, that’s the way I remember it. I wish I could find that video to check my memory.

Anyway, my point in sharing all this is to answer the question that a couple of folks have asked, which is, what do I mean when I say Rob Miller was unimpressive, and that I’m distressed that Joe Wilson’s outburst has now put so much money in his campaign coffers that it seems no other, stronger challenger is likely to emerge?

Again, I offer the caveat that this video is from very early, but this is how I initially formed my impression of Rob Miller. After that my impression was modified, but not entirely. Bottom line, I think it’s a lousy situation that here we are in the market for a replacement for Joe Wilson — a moment in which a challenger might have a chance — and the flood of money to Rob Miller (because he happened to be the guy standing there at the time) has probably precluded the possibility of a stronger candidate emerging.

See what you think.

Bob Inglis and others who broke ranks deserve our attention

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There was  no question that Joe Wilson should have apologized to the House for violating its rules and just generally for conduct unbecoming a gentleman (and unbecoming Joe Wilson, if you know him — he’s generally a gentle man). Barack Obama was not the only person insulted by “You lie!” If you insult a guest at a social occasion, you apologize to your host as well as the insulted guest.

But as soon as it became something that the Nancy Pelosis of the world were trying to MAKE Joe do, all question of right action went out the window. It became a matter of which side is going to win? That’s what everything boils down to these days in our nation’s hyperpartisan capital. Thought doesn’t go any deeper than the playground equation of whether one can be compelled to say “uncle.” And once a crowd had assembled, and members of his own gang were assembled around him urging him not to give in (and sending him $1.6 million), Joe wasn’t about to give in.

Silly and contemptible, but that’s party politics for you.

So I don’t attach much importance to the vote yesterday to express weak “disapproval” of Joe’s outburst. The outcome was predictable. Republicans voted against, and Democrats voted for, and since there are more Democrats than Republicans, Joe got “punished” — punished in a manner so insubstantial that it put me in mind of what Huck Finn said about Aunt Sally’s attempts to discipline him: “I didn’t mind the lickings, because they didn’t amount to nothing…”

I guess we all tend to choose up sides, but for my part, I tend to lump all the partisans of both parties on one side, and myself on the other. To me,  they all act alike. Not only that, but their actions so perfectly complement and support each other that it’s almost as though they were colluding. Think about it: It would have been impossible for the House Democrats to make such a production over the matter, with a formal vote of official disapproval, if Joe hadn’t cooperated with them so beautifully by childishly refusing to apologize to them. Everyone played his assigned part to perfection. Or almost everyone.

In fact, I’d ignore the whole affair, except for the fact that the vote wasn’t entirely along party lines. For instance, South Carolina Republican Bob Inglis voted for the “disapproval” resolution. Because he did that, because he thought for himself and did something that might cost him the support of many in his tribe, what Bob Inglis has to say about the subject actually matters. Unfortunately, I didn’t see much about what he had to say on the subject in the paper — just the usual ritual pronouncements from the people who voted along party lines, and you knew what they would say.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a statement on his decision to vote as he did on his Web site. But I did find his statement from the other night about the president’s speech. (That’s the video version of it above. Note his fundamentally respectful way of disagreeing with the president — something that shouldn’t be noteworthy, but is.) And because he stood up for decorum and had the courage to vote against his own party, I paid more attention to what he had to say about health care than I otherwise would have. By the way, here’s what he had to say at the time — before it had been inflated into another meaningless contest between the parties — about Joe’s outburst:

OBAMA: “The reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.” One congressman, South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson, shouted “You lie!” from his seat in the House chamber when Obama made this assertion.

THE FACTS: The facts back up Obama. The House version of the health care bill explicitly prohibits spending any federal money to help illegal immigrants get health care coverage. Illegal immigrants could buy private health insurance, as many do now, but wouldn’t get tax subsidies to help them. Still, Republicans say there are not sufficient citizenship verification requirements to ensure illegal immigrants are excluded from benefits they are not due.

Bob Inglis has always been a thoughtful guy who stands up for what he thinks is right, regardless of the dictates of the tribe. I’ve always appreciated that about him, even when I think he’s wrong — such as when he opposed the troop “surge” in Iraq. His iconoclasm causes me to care about what he says, which puts him in a lonely category in the U.S. House. A man who’s willing to pay a political price for his views deserves to be heard.

I would also like to know more about the thinking of those Democrats (Arcuri, Delahunt, Giffords, Hinchey, Hodes, Kucinich, Maffei, Massa, McDermott, Moore, Taylor and Teague) who voted against the mild “disapproval” resolution. I haven’t seen anything from any of them, but if any of my readers would kindly provide a link, I’d like to read what they had to say. It interests me far more than the ritual pronouncements of party orthodoxy…

Let me tell you about Joe Wilson…

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Wilson,Joe06

A lot of folks are presuming to explain Joe Wilson, based on the impression he made last week in his Tourette’s Moment (or the far worse impression he’s made since then trying to leverage the moment to his political advantage). Some, such as bloggers from the left, are explaining it as just the sort of thing you expect from those idiot Republicans. Voices on the right, meanwhile, hail Joe as the guy who was saying What Real Americans Think (which you know has gotta be making Sarah Palin jealous, because what else has she got now that she’s not governor any more?). Maureen Dowd, after saying she was “loath” to resort to such oversimplification, chalked it up to racism, asserting that what Joe really meant was “You lie, boy!”

Well now, there’s something to that if you’re making a general statement about the Republican Party in the South. There was a time when to be a Republican in the South meant you were either a reformer who couldn’t bring himself to join the Old Boy network that was the Democratic Party, or black. But then Strom Thurmond, inspired by Lyndon Johnson’s embrace of civil rights, defected to the GOP in 1964. It took awhile for a lot of white voters to follow him. But then some of the folks who followed George Wallace in his independent run in 1968 just didn’t go back. Some considered themselves independents for awhile, but they eventually drifted into the GOP, and after awhile a certain dynamic was in place whereby more and more white folks got the impression that all the other white folks were going over there, and joined them.

The process wouldn’t be complete in South Carolina until Republican lawmakers persuaded some black Democrats to join forces with them in a reapportionment battle in the 90s. Here’s where things get more complicated than the Dowd explanation. You see, after a certain point (the point to which white Democrats were willing to go), the only way you can create another black-majority district (which will presumably, according to conventional wisdom, elect black candidates) is by creating several surrounding districts that have been bleached free of black voters. Such districts are FAR more likely to elect a white Republican than a Democrat of any color. Anyway, that reapportionment deal led to the election of a few more black members and a LOT more white Republicans, which is how the GOP took over the Legislature.

So yeah, the dynamics that produce a Joe Wilson — or a Jim Clyburn — are just shot through with racial considerations. So you can always say that race is part of the equation in any confrontation such as we saw last week. I haven’t examined the list of people who contributed to Joe Wilson’s campaign coffers last week because he made an ass of himself, but I’m thinking it’s pretty safe to say that it’s somewhat whiter than South Carolina as a whole — and most likely whiter even than the 2nd District.

Does that mean Joe Wilson is a racist? No. The idea would shock him. He would sputter and protest in that out-of-breath way he has when he’s excited, and he would be absolutely sincere. I know Joe Wilson; I’ve known him for more than two decades, and I know that he’d mean it when he said that he’d never judge the president or anyone else by the color of his skin. Joe Wilson is a guy who goes out of his way to be nice to everybody.

No, there’s another explanation for why a guy like Joe Wilson gets elected, and why huge numbers of white folks will flock to his side when the Nancy Pelosis of the world are looking daggers at him. It’s a phenomenon that runs in parallel to the narrative of race in our state’s history, one that is so interwoven with it that whenever it appears, people look right past it and see only the racial aspect, black and white being less subtle than what I’m talking about.

White South Carolinians, as a group, exhibit a trait that is not at all unusual in this nation, but which has shown some of its most extreme expressions in the Palmetto State. It’s the thing that makes a guy put his foot down and declare that no government is going to tell him what to do. This manifests itself in lots of ways. It was surging through the veins of those Citadel cadets firing on Fort Sumter. Yes, you can say that the Civil War (conceived and launched right here in South Carolina) was about race. You can say it was about a minority of wealthy whites wanting to keep black people as their property, and the majority of whites being dumb enough to go along with them on it, even though it was not it their economic interests (or any other kind of interest) to do so. But ask yourself, HOW did the ruling elites get all those other whites to go along with them? By selling them on the idea that the federal government was trying to run their lives. It worked like a charm, and we’ve been reaping the evil result of that madness ever since.

It’s no accident that we have twice elected a governor who has NO accomplishments to point to and who distinguished himself by being the last governor in the union to accept stimulus funds that S.C. taxpayers were (like taxpayers everywhere, if they live long enough) going to have to pay for. Standing against gummint involvement, especially federal gummint involvement, plays well among a significant swath of the electorate here.

But defiance is not a necessary ingredient. If it were, Joe Wilson would not have gotten as far as he has. He’s no stump-thumper (the shouting incident was truly anomalous); you wouldn’t mistake him for Ben Tillman, or even Strom Thurmond. But Joe Wilson is the natural heir of another political phenomenon that Thurmond embodied (and Sanford has raised to an art form): the do-nothing officeholder.

It’s a twist on the Jeffersonian notion that one is safest when the government governs least, a play on the old joke that we’re all safe now because the Legislature’s gone home, etc.

We all know about the highlights, or lowlights, of Strom Thurmond’s career — his Dixiecrat campaign, his infamous filibuster against the Civil Rights Act, his later mellowing on race, etc. Less noticed by the popular imagination is that for most of his multi-generational career, he didn’t do much of anything. In fact, the only legislation I can remember bearing his mark in the years that I was responsible for The State‘s coverage of him was those little health warnings on beer cans and wine bottles. That’s about it. I mean, that’s something, but it’s not much to show for half a century in the Senate.

What Strom Thurmond did was constituent service. He perfected the technique of staying in office by being the voters’ (black voters or white voters, he didn’t care) own personal Godfather in Washington. You got a problem with that big, bad government up there? Talk to your Godfather. Doing personal favors for people was far more important than lawmaking. And this made him politically invulnerable.

Over in the House, the member who best embodied the Thurmond Method — minimum lawmaking, maximum constituent service — was Floyd Spence. Joe Wilson became Spence’s acolyte, his squire, his sincere imitator. It was perfectly natural that he became his successor. Floyd was a nice guy who loved being a congressman but didn’t want to accomplish much in Washington beyond constituent service and a strong military, and Joe fits that description to a T.

The 2nd District has come to expect, even more than any other district in the state, elected representation that Does Nothing on the national scene (beyond fiercely supporting a muscular national defense, of course).

The representative of that district, who is very much the product of that non-governing philosophy, is bound to be at odds with a president who is the product of the Do Something philosophy of government. And you can see how he might get a little carried away with himself in trying to stop the Biggest Thing Barack Obama has tried to get the government to Do.

And yes, you can describe this dichotomy in racial terms. The folks who keep re-electing Jim Clyburn want government to Do As Much As Possible (at least, that’s how he interprets his mandate, and I don’t think he’s wrong), while Joe Wilson’s constituents tend to want the opposite. And those districts were drawn to put as many black voters in Clyburn’s 6th District as possible, thereby leaving the 2nd (and the 3rd and the 4th the 1st, and to some extent the 5th) far whiter than they would be if you drew the lines without regard to race.

I’m just saying there’s a lot more at work than that.

Clowning around with health care

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Maybe you can help me out with something. I was driving down Sunset Blvd. in West Columbia this morning, and sorta kinda saw something for a fraction of a second, and I’m not sure I know what I saw. If you saw it, maybe you can clear this up.

I was driving past Joe Wilson’s office, and as I whiffed by, happened to glance at a clump of three people (at least I think there were three) loitering on the sidewalk at the corner.  One was sitting on a bicycle. I don’t remember what the second person was doing. The third was holding up a sign that said “Stop Clowning around with our Health Care.” I think. We’re talking split-second here, and I turned away before any of it registered on my mind.

The person holding the sign was wearing a blue outfit with white designs on it from neck to toe. It may have been a clown outfit, but I’m infering that from the sign. He or she may also have been wearing clown makeup, but I have no idea at all about that, because his/her face was blocked by the sign during that tenth of a second or whatever it was.

As I drove on, a number of questions occurred to me:

  • Did I read the sign right?
  • Was the person dressed as a clown? Possibly not. The power of suggestion from what I think the sign said overwhelmed what other information was available to me.
  • Were the other people involved in the demonstration, or just curious passersby?
  • Was this person working for Joe Wilson, and saying President Obama was “clowning” with our health care? (If so, hasn’t Joe called enough attention to himself?)
  • Was this person protesting that Joe Wilson was the one “clowning around with our health care?” (I’ve noticed that one of the favorite epithets hurled at Joe from leftist bloggers is “ass clown,” for some reason) If so, he or she was going to a lot of trouble to send a confused message. You’d have to stop and talk to find out, which not many are in a position to do at that stretch of road at that time.

I was in a hurry to get downtown just then, but I went back that way later to check. No one there. No clown. No guy on a bike. No third person who barely registered. All gone. Must have been a drive-time thing. Or my imagination. I wonder what I saw, and what it was supposed to mean?

Anyway, right after I saw them, as those questions were going through my mind, I reached a stretch where orange roadwork cones were jamming the traffic into one lane. I found myself behind a big white pickup truck. It had a bumper sticker on it with a message that there was no mistaking:

OBAMA

SUCKS

Such is the state of political discourse these days in the 2nd District…

Pants on Fire: Who’s lying and who’s not on health care and illegal immigrants

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Early this morning, I got an e-mail from Jim Clyburn’s office pointing me to this St. Petersburg Times fact-check site, which rated claims that Obamacare would institute free health care for illegal immigrants in its “Pants on Fire” category:

Finally, we consulted with Jennifer Tolbert, an independent health care analyst at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan foundation that studies health care reform. Tolbert has read and analyzed all the major health proposals, including those of the Republicans, and the foundation provides point-by-point analyses of the plans on its Web site.

We’re hardened, battle-scarred fact-checkers, so false claims in e-mails don’t really surprise us anymore. But we sent Tolbert a copy of the latest from our in-box, and she was none too pleased.

“It’s awful,” she said. “It’s flat-out, blatant lies. It’s unbelievable to me how they can claim to reference the legislation and then make claims that are blatantly false.”

The claim that the bill provides free health care for illegal immigrants is particularly egregious, Tolbert said. “No one’s provided with free health care. That’s ridiculous,” she said.

We looked for promises of free health care for immigrants and found nothing. So we’ve rated this claim Pants on Fire!

Then, this afternoon, I ran across this CNN Truth Squad item, which found the following after Sen. Ben Cardin was jeered for saying his bill would not cover illegals:

The bill, HR 3200, would set up a health insurance “exchange,” in which consumers could compare policies and choose a plan. It would create a government-run health plan to compete with private insurers in that exchange, and extend subsidies for coverage to people who aren’t already covered by employers or federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

It specifically bars illegal immigrants from receiving those subsidies. Section 246, which is included in the part of the bill that sets up the exchange, forbids payments “on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.”

But when Cardin said undocumented workers “will not be in this bill,” he appears to have missed one point: It may require them to buy their own coverage.

That’s the conclusion of the Congressional Research Service, which issued a report on the topic this week. According to the CRS, noncitizens who can be considered “resident aliens” under U.S. tax law would have to buy insurance — and unlike immigration laws, the tax code doesn’t distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants.

That last part makes sense to me. After all, we’re already spending millions unnecessarily because of uninsured people — legal and illegal, foreign and native-born — are getting free care at emergency rooms, and the cost is passed on to the rest of us.

In fact, the idea of making health insurance mandatory — like auto insurance in SC — is one of the things I like best about what the president had to say last night (and probably what my libertarian friends like least). The bigger the pool the smaller the risk for each individual, and pretty much everybody will need health care sometime, so it makes no sense to let anyone opt out.

One question I don’t have the answer to — how the Cardin bill relates to what the president was pitching. I’m not sure about the correlation, although I can tell you that I got to the CNN fact-check from a page about the Wilson outburst. Can anyone help me on that?

And does anyone have any other reliable fact-checking sites to pass on?

I’m sorry to see this, Adam…

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I’ve long enjoyed reading Adam Fogle‘s Palmetto Scoop (and not just because I love the “Office Space” allusion of his “TPS reports“).

So I’m sorry to see that Adam is offering (for free, at least — he’s not trying to make money off of this) “I’m With Joe Wilson” T-shirts, to conservatives who “wish their Congressman would be as bold as Wilson.”

The blogosphere is a place where we can have fun, a place for irony, for satire, for all sorts of things that might have been out of place in your granddaddy’s news source. But here’s a situation in which I feel compelled to channel what Tom Wolfe called The Victorian Gent:

It was as if the press in America, for all its vaunted independence, were a great colonial animal, an animal made up of countless clustered organisms responding to a central nervous system. In the late 1950’s (as in the late 1970’s) the animal seemed determined that in all matters of national importance the proper emotion, the seemly sentiment, the fitting moral tone, should be established and should prevail…

Wolfe meant to deride the Gent as a hypocritical creature. But here’s a case where we need him, because there is such a thing as a correct reaction to Joe Wilson’s behavior last night. It is to be deplored, not celebrated. Joe Wilson knows that; it’s why he apologized.

And until I saw this, I would have thought that Adam Fogle knew that, too.

Graham hits the wrong note

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I was surprised, and disappointed, by this release this morning:

Statement from Senator Lindsey Graham on President Obama’s Health Care Address to the Nation

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) made this statement tonight after the presidential address.

“I was incredibly disappointed in the tone of his speech. At times I found his tone to be overly combative and believe he behaved in a manner beneath the dignity of the office. I fear his speech tonight has made it more difficult — not less — to find common ground.

“He appeared to be angry at his critics and disappointed the American people were not buying the proposals he has been selling. The president’s confrontational demeanor increased the emotional and political divide. I hope the President will learn that true bipartisanship begins with mutual respect. Criticism of a public official is to be expected and not all criticism is demagoguery.

“When it comes to the public option, the President is either being disingenuous or misinformed. The public option, contrary to the president’s claims, will eventually lead to a government takeover of our health care system.

“One could easily be led to believe tonight’s speech is the beginning of a ‘go it alone’ strategy. If the Obama Administration and congressional Democrats go down this path and push a bill on the American people they do not want, it could be the beginning of the end of the Obama presidency.”

On a Member of Congress Accusing the President of Telling a ‘Lie’:

“The president’s combative tone did not justify a Member of Congress shouting out ’you lie.’ Our nation’s president deserves to be treated with respect It was inappropriate remark and I am glad an apology has been made.”

#####

I’m proud of Sen. Graham, and of John McCain, for so clearly and unequivocally calling Joe Wilson down for his insupportable behavior. But given that Joe DID what he did, and any commentary on the president’s speech is unfortunately bound to be considered within that context, Lindsey’s release this morning just seems way off-base.

You’re “incredibly disappointed” by the president’s tone? The president was “overly combative?” He behaved in “a manner beneath the dignity of the office?” The president’s demeanor “increased the emotional and political divide?” He’s the one who needs to learn a lesson about “mutual respect?”

Say what?

This was definitely not the morning to release a statement like that.

Such is my respect for Sen. Graham that whenever I find myself disagreeing with him (or Joe Lieberman, or John McCain, or Joe Riley), I stop and think again: Could I be wrong on this? So I analyze my own reaction. I think, Maybe the president was too combative. Maybe I didn’t notice it because I’m so completely fed up with the lies and obstructionism that are threatening to kill our hopes for a decent health care system in this country yet again. Maybe that’s what makes me think the president was, if anything, overly deferential to those who don’t give a damn about our health care, but want to see this issue be Obama’s “Waterloo,” because partisan advantage is more important to them than the good of the nation…

So I run those thoughts through my head, and then I think, Nah, this time Lindsey’s just wrong. That can happen, you know…