Category Archives: Marketplace of ideas

Equal opportunity advertising

Just a moment ago, I happened to notice an ad at the top of my blog. It may or may not still be there, but I saved the link. It grabbed my attention because it seemed to be attacking the Lieberman Warner Bill. And you know how I like to stick up for Joe. He and I may not agree on everything, but we agree on enough things that when I see somebody attacking him, I tend to go, "Now hold on a minute…"

Add to that the fact that when anybody starts demagoging on energy — whether they’re proposing a gas tax holiday, or tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, or saying Lieberman-Warner "would hurt consumers by driving up energy bills" — I get suspicious.

Turns out the folks buying space above my blog happen to be "AmericasPower.org," which "is sponsored by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), which is a partnership of the industries involved in producing electricity from coal."

Not that I automatically disagree with the idea of Clean Coal. We’ve got to have some way to produce electricity until we get those new nuclear plants built. (For this reason, I still haven’t decided what I think about that proposed Pee Dee plant that is causing such controversy.) In fact, I didn’t start this post to agree OR disagree with these people. It’s too late in the day to sort all that out.

What this post is about is that at the same time THAT ad was appearing ABOVE my blog, there was another one to the RIGHT from an outfit called "Fight Global Warming," which is affiliated with the Environmental Defense Fund.

The ads that appear on this blog have nothing to do with me. I see them when you see them, and I am not consulted about them. I neither agree nor disagree with the messages they push — that is to say, I’m as likely to disagree with them as agree; they’re appearing here are irrelevant to my own positions.

But I thought it was pretty cool that two seemingly disparate groups were contending for your attention around my blog at the same time. It’s almost as thought the ad folks are contending for the kind of balance we shoot for in our letters and on the op-ed page. I doubt that’s happening — ad folks are pretty much market-driven; they don’t manipulate the world the way we journalists do in our quest to be "fair." But I thought it was kind of cool the way it worked out there for a minute…

Blasts from past come unexpected in this business

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Needless to say, I get a lot of unsolicited, pure junk mail in my line of work. Most of it goes into the round file with hardly a glance. But I guess I was moving slow or even more easily distracted than usual today (and folks, if I weren’t easily distracted, I wouldn’t be doing a blog), but I happened to notice something today that made me say, wait a minute… and actually open one of the pieces of junk.

The junk in question is this slick magazine with a snazzy cover called Edge. or Leader’s Edge (look at the cover and tell me which one it is). It’s a big one, as you can see compared to The Economist above. To the extent that it has registered on my consciousness at all in the past, I’ve just thought it was some generic thing aimed at business execs, a category in which I fit only technically (on account of having the title of V.P.). But today, I noticed there was, shall we say, a theme running through the headlines of the articles teased on the cover:

"Committing Insurance Without a License"
"Employer plans: best cure for ill health insurance market"
"Attacking group benefits — why destroy what works?"

The last one grabbed me, as it seemed to be about health insurance, and seemed to suggest that we Edge_006
currently have a system that works. Those of you who know me know that I strongly disagree.

So I opened the mag, and eventually found the masthead, and sure enough, this is a publication of "The Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers." It’s full of institutional advertising from such luminaries as UnitedHealthcare.

But that’s not the good part, the part that prompted me to write this. The good part is that in the few seconds I spent flipping through this thing, I ran across the name of an old friend, Joel Wood.

I first met Joel when I was a reporter operating out of a bureau in rural West Tennessee back in the 70s. He was a student who wrote for one of the local weeklies. Later, when I was the news editor of The Jackson Sun, he was one of my best reporters. But after the 1982 election, he left the paper to become press secretary to Don Sundquist, who had been elected to Congress over a candidate whose campaign press secretary was another former writer at the paper (whom I later hired back, as it happened). Sundquist later became governor of Tennessee. But before that happened, Joel became a lobbyist for the insurance industry. In one of those startling coincidences that make Washington seem like such a small town, I ran into him years later when I was showing one of my kids around the Capitol.

Anyway, I last ran into Joel three years ago at a Jackson Sun reunion. True to form, he kept doing deals via cell phone while the reunion was going on, as seen in the picture I shot below.

Now that I’ve read his mag, and read in his latest column (the one about destroying "what works," which isn’t on line yet; here’s a previous one) that "I’ve been blessed with terrific health benefits in my 15 years at the council," which he says is a good thing given his lifestyle, which he says consists of "attending political cocktail parties professionally in the selfless service of our member firms," all I can say is…

Joel, it’s not too late. Come home! All is forgiven. And don’t bring the phone this time…
Woodjoel

Are Democrats more sexist? Hillary Clinton seems to think so

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Normally, I don’t think very hard about things that make little sense, such as the claim by Hillary Clinton that her flagging political fortunes result from "misogyny." Since such claims are not logical, I don’t bother carrying them to their "logical conclusions."

That’s a mistake on my part, because such an exercise can yield interesting results. Check out this very short op-ed piece in the WSJ this morning, headlined, "Nothing but Misogynists."

It starts out by considering some of her statements along the lines of what I quoted earlier in the week:

"I think that both gender and race have been obviously a part of it because of who we are and every poll I’ve seen show more people would be reluctant to vote for a woman to vote for an African American, which rarely gets reported on either…. But it does seem as though the press at least is not as bothered by the incredible vitriol that has been engendered by comments and reactions of people who are nothing but misogynists."

It then considers that at the same time she’s blaming misogyny for her failures in Democratic contests, she asserts — in practically the same breath — that she’s "the strongest candidate against John McCain."

So the op-ed piece arrives, quite logically, at this conclusion:

This fact (if it be a fact) reveals a hitherto unknown, ugly truth about the Democratic Party. The alleged bastion of modern liberalism, toleration and diversity is full of (to use Mrs. Clinton’s own phrase) "people who are nothing but misogynists." Large numbers of Democratic voters are sexists. Who knew?
But here’s another revelation. If Mrs. Clinton is correct that she is more likely than Barack Obama to defeat John McCain in November, that implies Republicans and independents are less sexist than Democrats.
It must be so. If American voters of all parties are as sexist as the Democrats, Mr. Obama would have a better chance than Mrs. Clinton of defeating Mr. McCain. The same misogyny that thwarted her in the Democratic primaries would thwart her in the general election. Only if registered Republicans and independents are more open-minded than registered Democrats – only if people who lean GOP or who have no party affiliation are more willing than Democrats to overlook a candidate’s sex and vote on the issues – could Mrs. Clinton be a stronger candidate…

Who knew, indeed?

Our Joe cup overfloweth

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Y‘all saw where I bragged on Joe for his fine piece in the WSJ the other day. Well, today we have a counterpoint from Joe in that same publication, so our cup overfloweth.

OK, for those of you too lazy to follow links, I’m talking Lieberman and Biden, respectively. Both of them are good guys. We endorsed the first Joe in his presidential bid in 2004, and might well have endorsed the other this time around if he hadn’t dropped out before the S.C. primary (we went with Obama instead, you’ll recall). Both are blessed with essential Joe-ness, as I’ve explained before.

And although these pieces are set against each other, there is much to love in each of them, infused as they are with Joe-ness. In other words, they are written by rational men who are not entirely enslaved by the idiotic partisan extremes of our times. Joe is much more inclined to support his party’s nominee, but that’s because he hasn’t made the radical break that Joe was forced into. But you still don’t find the kind of polarized claptrap that you usually hear from the party faithful on either side.

OK, I’ll start using last names, although it sounds unfriendly…

Here’s one of the best parts of Mr. Biden’s piece. It repeats a point that I’ve praised him for making in the past, which is that President Bush blew a once-in-a-lifetime chance to lead this nation, and the Western alliance, into a far better place than the sad situation that Joe, I mean Tom, Friedman described the other day. Anyway, here’s the Biden excerpt:

Sen. Lieberman is right: 9/11 was a pivotal moment. History will judge Mr. Bush’s reaction less for the mistakes he made than for the opportunities he squandered.
The president had a historic opportunity to unite Americans and the world in common cause. Instead – by exploiting the politics of fear, instigating an optional war in Iraq before finishing a necessary war in Afghanistan, and instituting policies on torture, detainees and domestic surveillance that fly in the face of our values and interests – Mr. Bush divided Americans from each other and from the world.

As with Lieberman, though, there are weak spots. In particular, there’s this contradictory passage:

Terrorism is a means, not an end, and very different groups and countries are using it toward very different goals. Messrs. Bush and McCain lump together, as a single threat, extremist groups and states more at odds with each other than with us: Sunnis and Shiites, Persians and Arabs, Iraq and Iran, al Qaeda and Shiite militias. If they can’t identify the enemy or describe the war we’re fighting, it’s difficult to see how we will win.
The results speak for themselves.
On George Bush’s watch, Iran, not freedom, has been on the march: Iran is much closer to the bomb; its influence in Iraq is expanding; its terrorist proxy Hezbollah is ascendant in Lebanon and that country is on the brink of civil war.

The problem is that on the one hand, he feels constrained (since he’s still in the party) to state the party line that terrorism is a means, not an end, or even a coherent enemy — all of which is true, but his litany of all the different contending actors is belied by the truth he later embraces: That through it all, Iran has been on the march, and gaining against us. That would have been an excellent point to make; it’s just too bad he weakened it by making the situation seem less coherent than it is two paragraphs before (this incoherence of the enemy is essential to the modern Democratic ideology that Lieberman abhors — the refusal to clearly see and clearly state the degree to which we face a coherent, albeit complex, enemy).

I refer to another recent Friedman column, which — thanks to the fact that he isn’t carrying anybody‘s political water — states how all of these superficially disparate issues are connected, to our nation’s great disadvantage (largely due to the Bush failures that Biden refers to):

The next American president will inherit many foreign policy challenges, but surely one of the biggest will be the cold war. Yes, the next president is going to be a cold-war president — but this cold war is with Iran.
That is the real umbrella story in the Middle East today — the struggle for influence across the region, with America and its Sunni Arab allies (and Israel) versus Iran, Syria and their non-state allies, Hamas and Hezbollah. As the May 11 editorial in the Iranian daily Kayhan put it, “In the power struggle in the Middle East, there are only two sides: Iran and the U.S.”

Anyway, if the link works for you, I recommend you read this one as well as the last one. Between the two of them, you’ll see an intelligent way to debate foreign policy, as opposed to the idiocy of left and right, Democrat and Republican.

We CAN drive 55

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My best-known Energy Party think-tank fellow called yesterday pretty excited that Tom Friedman had mentioned our 55-mph speed limit plank. The column in question appeared on our op-ed page today. Here’s the passage in question:

It baffles me that President Bush would rather go to Saudi Arabia twice in four months and beg the Saudi king for an oil price break than ask the American people to drive 55 mph, buy more fuel-efficient cars or accept a carbon tax or gasoline tax that might actually help free us from, what he called, our “addiction to oil.”

That was just a portion of the overall message of the column, which is that our nation’s strategic failures — chief among them the failure to adopt a rational energy policy (or any energy policy, really) after 9/11 — have left the nation in a multifaceted bind that is going to be phenomenally difficult, if not impossible, to get out of.

“Call it the triple deficit,” said Mr. Rothkopf. “A fiscal deficit that will soon have us choosing between rationed health care, sufficient education, adequate infrastructure and traditional levels of defense spending, a trade deficit that has us borrowing from our rivals to the point of real vulnerability, and a geopolitical deficit that is a legacy of Iraq, which may result in hesitancy to take strong stands where we must.”

The first rule of holes is when you’re in one, stop digging. When you’re in three, bring a lot of shovels.

The metaphor is inadequate, because one, just one, of those shovels would be energy policy, of which 55 mph would be just one essential facet among many. In fact, that one facet could be a bellwether as to whether we have a chance, even a very slim one, to turn things around. To have any hope, we’re going to have to achieve a phenomenal bipartisan consensus to do everything envisioned in the Energy Party Manifesto. And let me say it one more time: That’s just to have an outside chance.

You don’t want to slow down to 55? Guess what, neither do I. But if we’re not willing to do that, something that is such a minor sacrifice as that, then forget the rest. Our nation is doomed to accelerate into decline.

To hear the voice of one American who is flat ready to do what it takes, listen to the audio of Samuel Tenenbaum’s phone message.

Now, as Jimmy Malone said to Eliot Ness (in the story, anyway): "What are you prepared to do?" And if your answer is that you are prepared to do that which is convenient, that which pleases you — ideologically, or economically, or in whatever way — I ask, "And then what are you prepared to do?"

Join the movement. Join the Energy Party, before it’s too late for America.

Joe laments loss of the party of FDR, Truman, JFK

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This is why I like Joe Lieberman so much — he’s always writing stuff that sounds like I wrote it myself, always giving me cause to think, Thank God I’m not alone here…

Specifically, he wrote in an op-ed piece in today’s WSJ:

How did the Democratic Party get here? How did the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy drift so far from the foreign policy and national security principles and policies that were at the core of its identity and its purpose?…

This was the Democratic Party that I grew up in – a party that was unhesitatingly and proudly pro-American, a party that was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders. It was a party that understood that either the American people stood united with free nations and freedom fighters against the forces of totalitarianism, or that we would fall divided.

He goes on to lament how this unraveled over Vietnam. He writes wistfully of efforts by such Democrats as himself (remember the Third Way?) to pull the party back from a condition in which it blamed America for all its international troubles, as the party became "prisoner to a foreign policy philosophy that was, in most respects, the antithesis of what Democrats had stood for under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy."

There are flaws in the piece, admittedly. He uses the inaccurate common terminology, referring to this trend toward self-loathing isolationism as a move "to the left" — when I would assert that it is the rejection of the kind of idealistic, internationalist liberalism of FDR, JFK and the rest. Isolationism is, if nothing else, a manifestation of conservatism — and not the better sort of conservatism, either.

But set that aside. He ends strongly, with a quote from "a great Democratic secretary of state," Dean Acheson (who, perhaps not coincidentally, was from Connecticut):

(N)o people in history have ever survived, who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies.

Let’s talk military buildup

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There are certain things that worry me, and nobody seems to be talking about them. In fact, our public conversations tend to go off in directions entirely opposed to where the discussion should be going. For instance:

Children’s brains are essentially formed, in terms of their ability to learn for the rest of their lives, by age 3. What do we do about that? I don’t know, but it’s weird that we can’t even make up our minds to fund 4K for all the kids who could benefit from it.
Also on education — we need to bring about serious reforms in public education, from consolidating districts to merit pay to empowering principals. But thanks to our governor and his ilk, we talk about whether we want to support public schools at all.
China is growing and modernizing its military at a pace that matches its economic growth. It won’t be all that long before it achieves parity with our own. But instead of talking about matching that R&D, we can’t make up our minds to commit the resources necessary to fight a low-intensity conflict against relatively weak enemies with low-tech weapons.

Anyway, there was an op-ed piece in the WSJ today about the latter worry:

China has a vast internal market newly unified by modern transport and communications; a rapidly flowering technology; an irritable but highly capable workforce that as long as its standard of living improves is unlikely to push the country into paralyzing unrest; and a wider world, now freely accessible, that will buy anything it can make. China is threatened neither by Japan, Russia, India, nor the Western powers, as it was not that long ago. It has an immense talent for the utilization of capital, and in the free market is as agile as a cat.

Unlike the U.S., which governs itself almost unconsciously, reactively and primarily for the short term, China has plotted a long course, in which with great deliberation it joins economic growth to military power. Thirty years ago, in what may be called the "gift of the Meiji," Deng Xiaoping transformed the Japanese slogan fukoku kyohei (rich country, strong arms) into China’s 16-Character Policy: "Combine the military and the civil; combine peace and war; give priority to military products; let the civil support the military."

Anyway, discuss amongst yourselves. And if you can, try to get the people running for president to talk about it. We need them to…

Now and Zen

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Yesterday, my wife and I went on a walk with one of our daughters on the Cayce segment of the Riverwalk. As we were heading back toward our car, we heard the Giant Zipper sound of a very large tree starting to fall, accelerating as it tore down through surrounding vegetation, then landing with a muffled Crump!

Curious to see the source, we started back up the trail roughly in the direction of the sound (the foliage was too dense for the direct approach), but we met a man coming from that direction, and he reckoned that the tree was about 100 yards from the path, well out of sight. So we gave up and left.

When led us to an epiphany, one which I must remember to mention to my friend Hal French over at USC:

If a tree makes a sound in the forest but no one sees it, did it really fall?

When you know the answer to that, Grasshopper, it will be time for you to leave the blog…

Mayor Bob is an op-ed machine

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Recently, in a post headlined, "Now I know how Dr. Frankenstein felt," I mentioned that Bob Coble has enthusiastically embraced the new Saturday Opinion Extra venue. And as you probably noticed, we had a piece from Mayor Bob that Saturday.

We had another one from him this past Saturday. And today, I get this message from Cindi:

I see from Mike that Mayor Bob has already submitted TWO op-eds, and it’s barely Monday…

Yikes.

Just pronounce it right: It’s FRAHNK-en-steen.

Must intellectuals use the language properly?

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First, I realize to what extent I’m opening myself to criticism, but then, when did I ever call myself an intellectual, other than ironically? So have at me, for whatever sins against the language you can find on this blog. I know they are many; one thing I had to do in resolving to maintain a blog to begin with was accept the fact that I would have to write and publish more quickly than I could do so without error. So go for it.

On to my subject: I don’t know whether you clicked through this post on Foreign Policy‘s "Public Intellectuals" reader-participation feature. If you did, you might have found the accompanying article by Christopher Hitchens, "The Plight of the Public Intellectual." Do so now, if it’s not too much trouble. It won’t take long. I’m just asking you to take a quick glance at the first paragraph, which goes (for those of you too lazy to click) like this:

Has anyone ever described themselves as an “intellectual,” or given it as the answer to the frequently asked question, “And what do you do?” The very term “public intellectual” sometimes affects me rather like the expression “organic food.” After all, there can’t be any inorganic nourishment, and it’s difficult to conceive of an intellectual, at least since Immanuel Kant, whose specialization was privacy. However, we probably do need a term that expresses a difference between true intellectuals and the rival callings of “opinion maker” or “pundit,” especially as the last two are intimately bound up with the world of television. (I recently rewatched the historic 40-year-old ABC News confrontation between Gore Vidal and the late William F. Buckley at the Chicago Democratic Convention. The astonishing thing was that the network gave these two intellects a full 22 minutes to discuss matters after the news. How far we have fallen from that standard of commentary.)

Actually, you only have to read the first five words:

Has anyone ever described themselves…

… to which I respond, No, I don’t believe anyone ever has.

Do you not find this painfully jarring? You don’t see it? It’s the number disagreement, dammit! It jumps right out and smacks me in the face. I could not make a mistake like that. There are all sorts of mistakes I can make, and not bat an eye or any other part of my anatomy, or yours either. But this one is a mistake that I find it hard to imagine myself making.

Of course, Mr. Hitchens being an intellectual and all, I find myself doubting that it’s a mistake. There is a school of thought out there — one of the more twisted branches of feminism — that hold that it’s better to refer to a person of nonspecific gender as plural rather than commit the unpardonable sin of using the traditional English standard of the inclusive "he" — or rather, in this case, "himself."

So it seems that one of three things seem likely:

It was an honest slip, on Mr. Hitchens’ part as well as at least one (and probably more) editors’. (The fact is that even if one agrees that we should no longer assume the masculine form is inclusive, one can write around the problem without committing the sin of number disagreement.)
It was a positive assertion of a sociopolitical point, and one that I would have thought far too trite for Mr. Hitchens, who — while I may disagree with him on the existence-of-God thing, is a man of discerning and courageous intellect, one who doesn’t tiptoe around words to avoid offending. Doubt me? Read this piece about Iraq, "A War To Be Proud Of."
This disturbing usage has become so ubiquitous that even top intellectuals — and their editors — think nothing of employing it.

Whichever explanation applies, I was surprised to see such an article begin that way.

Dissed by ‘Foreign Policy’

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Foreign Policy magazine is inviting readers to vote for their Top Five Public Intellectuals. Here’s the link. As you can see, there are 100 "intellectuals" listed.

One Hundred. And yet, I didn’t make the list. Tom Friedman — sure, HE made the list. And the Pope, too — and you know, I don’t even like this Pope as much as the last one…

I’m reduced to being like one of those pathetic celebrity freaks at a premiere, standing alongside the red carpet, hoping to see an intellectual I recognize: "Oh, LOOK, there’s Salman Rushdie! I know him — I met him at a reception over at Andrew Sorensen’s place! I had my picture taken with him (and I’m still waiting to get a copy, I might add)!"

It’s sad. So then I pore over the list, looking for the biases of the compilers. Hmmm. I see four guys who are mainly known for being famous atheists, so is that … no, there are several religious types other than the Pope. Wait, what’s this — how can you have a "Muslim Televangelist," since "evangelist" refers to a proclaimer of the Gospel? No way. They could have put me in that guy’s place…

Oh, well. At least I can pick my own Top Five. Here they are, in alphabetical order, with the rather thin rationales for each:

Pope Benedict XVI — As I said, no John Paul the Great, but a smart guy, whatever you think of him. And he has one of the world’s bulliest pulpits. I figure if you’re looking for public intellectuals, we’re talking potential for influence, right?
Umberto Eco — Did you read The Name of the Rose? I did, and was impressed. (Not so much by Foucault’s Pendulum, though.)
Tom Friedman — Hey, I had to give a nod to somebody in the trade. And he has potential to have more public influence (and for the good, I’d say) than almost anyone else on the list.
Vaclav Havel — Based on the cool factor. Both a playwright and a paradigm-busting political leader.
David Petraeus — There is no more practical or unforgiving testing ground for an idea than the battlefield. By applying his ideas, he turned around both facts on the ground and the political momentum in this country. No mean feat.

I almost put Robert Putnam on there, just to get somebody with communitarian cred. But you can’t have everything in a Top Five list. In fact, if you don’t shoot from the hip, you can’t get your list done. Reflect too much and it doesn’t work.

And believe you me, the most famous names of the moment are likely to dominate here — unless the Foreign Policy readers ALL go esoteric, just to prove how smart they are, which is a distinct possibility.

But this list was compiled with an eye to celebrity, and provocation, for that matter. For instance, I find Robert Samuelson more intellectually impressive than Paul Krugman, but Krugman made the list (provocation) and Samuelson didn’t. And I’ve had the privilege of engaging in long conversations with both Al Gore and Lindsey Graham, and guess what — while Al’s no slouch, Lindsey’s smarter. But with his Nobel and his Oscar, of course he was chosen (also, in defense, he’s WAY more influential, thanks to that celebrity).

Have I ticked off enough people yet? I’m sure I have. OK, smart guy — who’s in YOUR Top Five?

The Energy Party Manifesto: Feb. 4, 2007

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Since, I’m on my Energy Party kick again, it occurs to me to provide you with something never previously published on the blog: My original Energy Party column from the paper. Since it was based on a blog post to start with, I didn’t post it here. Consequently, when I do my obligatory "Energy Party" link, it’s always to the incomplete, rough draft version of the party manifesto.

So, if only to give myself something more complete to link to in the future, is the full column version, published in The State on Feb. 4, 2007. Here’s a PDF of the original page, and here’s the column itself:

THE STATE
JOIN MY PARTY, AND YOUR WILDEST DREAMS WILL COME TRUE. REALLY.
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
EVERYBODY talks about the weather, which is as boring and pointless as the cliche suggests. So let’s do something about it.
And while we’re at it, let’s win the war on terror, undermine tyrants around the globe, repair our trade imbalance, make our air more breathable, drastically reduce highway deaths and just generally make the whole world a safer, cleaner place.
It’ll be easy, once we make up our minds to do it. But first, you Democrats and Republicans must throw off the ideological chains that bind you, and we independents must get off the sidelines and into the game.
In other words, join my new party. No, not the Unparty I’ve written about in the past. You might say that one lacked focus.
This one will be the Energy Party. Or the "Responsible Party," "Pragmatic Party" or "Grownup Party." Any will do as far as I’m concerned, but for the sake of convenience, I’m going with "Energy" for now.
Like weather, everybody talks about Energy, but nobody proposes a comprehensive, hardnosed plan to git ‘er done. So let’s change that, go all the way, get real, make like we actually know there’s a war going on. Do the stuff that neither the GOP nor the Dems would ever do.
I’ve made a start on the plan (and mind, I’m not speaking for the editorial board here). Join me, and we’ll refine it as we go along:
— * Jack up CAFE standards. No messing around with Detroit on this one. It’s possible to make cars that go 50 miles to the gallon. OK, so maybe your family won’t fit in a Prius. Let’s play nice and compromise: Set a fleet average of 40 mph within five years.
— * Raise the price of gasoline permanently to $4. When the price of gas is $2, slap on a $2 tax. When demand slacks off and forces the price down to $1.50, jack the tax up to $2.50. If somebody nukes some oil fields we depend upon, raising the price to $3, the tax drops to $1. Sure, you’ll be paying more, but only as long as you keep consuming as much of it as you have been. Which you won’t. Or if you do, we’ll go to $5.
— * You say the poor will have trouble with the tax? So will I. Good thing we’re going to have public transportation for a change (including my favorite, light rail). That’s one thing we’ll spend that new tax money on.
— * Another is a Manhattan project (or Apollo Project, or insert your favorite 20th century Herculean national initiative name) to develop clean, alternative energy. South Carolina can do hydrogen, Iowa can do bio, and the politicians who will freak out about all this can supply the wind power.
— * Reduce speed limits everywhere to no more than 55 mph. (This must be credited to Samuel Tenenbaum, who bends my ear about it almost daily. He apparently does the same to every presidential wannabe who calls his house looking for him or Inez, bless him.) This will drastically reduce our transportation-related fuel consumption, and have the happy side benefit of saving thousands of lives on our highways. And yes, you can drive 55.
— * Enforce the blasted speed limits. If states say they can’t (and right now, given our shortage of troopers, South Carolina can’t), give them the resources out of the gas tax money. No excuses.
— * Build nuclear power plants as fast as we can (safely, of course). It makes me tired to hear people who are stuck in the 1970s talk about all the dangerous waste from nuke plants. Nuclear waste is compact and containable. Coal waste (just to cite one "safe" alternative) disperses into the atmosphere, contaminates all our lungs and melts the polar ice caps. Yeah, I know; it would be keen if everyone went back to the land and stopped using electricity, but give it up — it ain’t happening.
— * Either ban SUVs for everyone who can’t demonstrate a life-ordeath need to drive one, or tax them at 100 percent of the sales price and throw that into the winthe- war kitty.
— * If we don’t ban SUVs outright, aside from taxing them, launch a huge propaganda campaign along the lines of "Loose Lips Sink Ships." Say, "Hummers are Osama’s Panzer Corps." (OK, hot shot, come to my blog and post your own slogan.) Make wasting fuel the next smoking or DUI — absolutely socially unacceptable.
— * Because it will be a few years before we can be completely free of petrol, drill the ever-lovin’ slush out of the ANWR, explore for oil off Myrtle Beach, and build refinery capacity. But to keep us focused, limit all of these activities to no more than 20 years. Put the limit into the Constitution.
You get the idea. Respect no one’s sacred cows, left or right. Yeah, I know some of this is, um, provocative. But that’s what we need. We have to wake up, go allout to win the war and, in the long run, save the Earth. Pretty soon, tyrants from Tehran to Moscow to Caracas will be tumbling down without our saying so much as "boo" to them, and global warming will slow within our lifetimes.
Then, once we’ve done all that, we can start insisting upon some common sense on entitlements, and health care. Whatever works, whatever is practical, whatever solves our problems — no matter whose ox gets gored, or how hard you think it is to do what needs doing. Stop whining and grow up. Leave the ideologues in the dust, while we solve the problems.
How’s that sound? Can any of y’all get behind that? Let me know, because we need to get going on this stuff.

Join the party at my — I mean, our– Web Headquarters: http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/.

Tom Friedman’s back, and he’s going to bat for the Energy Party!

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Tom Friedman is finally back after a four-month, book-writing sabbatical. The NYT said he’d be back in April, and he just barely made it! (Now I can stop fielding those phone calls from readers wanting to know what happened to him. Here’s a recording of one of those. )

And he’s coming out swinging… and best of all, he’s coming out swinging on behalf of the Energy Party (whether he knows it or not). His first column is headlined, "Dumb as We Wanna Be," and you’ll see it on our op-ed page tomorrow. An excerpt:

It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.
When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit…

Go get ’em, Tom! That’s a very fine leadoff hit. Coming up to bat next, on the same op-ed page, will be Robert Samuelson, and he’ll bring Friedman around to score. His piece, succinctly headlined "Start Drilling," is the rhetorical equivalent of a hard line drive down the opposite-field line:

What to do about oil? First it went from $60 to $80 a barrel, then from $80 to $100 and now to $120. Perhaps we can persuade OPEC to raise production, as some senators suggest; but this seems unlikely. The truth is that we’re almost powerless to influence today’s prices. We are because we didn’t take sensible actions 10 or 20 years ago. If we persist, we will be even worse off in a decade or two. The first thing to do: Start drilling.
It may surprise Americans to discover that the United States is the third-largest oil producer, behind Saudi Arabia and Russia. We could be producing more, but Congress has put large areas of potential supply off-limits. These include the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and parts of Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. By government estimates, these areas may contain 25 billion to 30 billion barrels of oil (against about 30 billion barrels of proven U.S. reserves today) and 80 trillion cubic feet or more of natural gas (compared with about 200 tcf of proven reserves)….

Not start drilling as a substitute for conservation or the search for new fuels (as the ideologues of the right would have it, and the ideologues of the left deplore), but in addition to. Like I said, this is straight out of the Energy Party playbook (yeah, I know this started as a baseball metaphor, not football, but bear with me).

To reduce dependence on tyrannical foreign sources, to help out Mother Nature, to keep our economy healthy, to stoke innovation, to win the War on Terror, and make us healthier, wealthier and wiser, we should adopt the entire Energy Party platform. We should, among other things I’m forgetting at the moment:

Increase CAFE standards further — much further.
Raise the tax on gasoline, NOT reduce it, so that we’ll suppress demand, which will reduce upward pressure on prices, and we’ll be paying the higher amounts to ourselves rather than America-haters in Russia, Iran, Venezuela and yes, Saudi Arabia.
Use the proceeds for a Manhattan Project or Apollo Project (or whatever
else kind of project we choose, as long as we understand that it’s the
moral equivalent of war) to develop new technologies — hydrogen, solar, wind, geothermal, what have you — and shifting the mass of the resources to the most promising ones as they emerge.
Reduce highway speed limits to 55 mph, to conserve fuel and save lives (OK, Samuel? I mentioned it.) And oh, yeah — enforce the speed limits. The fines will pay for the additional cops.
Drill in ANWR, off the coasts, and anywhere else we can do so in reasonable safety. (Yes, we can.)
Increase the availability of mass transit (and if you can swing it, I’d appreciate some light rail; I love the stuff).
Fine, jail or ostracize anyone who drives an SUV without a compelling reason to do so. Possible propaganda poster: ""Hummers are Osama’s Panzer Corps."

And so forth and so on.

My point is, no more fooling around. It’s way past time to get serious about this stuff, and stop playing little pandering games. Let’s show a little hustle out there. And no dumb mistakes running the bases out there, fellas…

P.S. — The name of the book Mr. Friedman’s been writing, which will come out in August, is Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution — and How It Can Renew America. So yeah, he’s got an economic stake in these concepts. Well, more power to him. There’s money to be made in doing the smart thing, and to the extent he can persuade us to move in that direction, he deserves to get his taste.Just to help him out, here’s video of him talking about these ideas. Here’s a link to his recent magazine piece on the subject.

A Grownup Party forum

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As I mentioned back here, sometimes I call the UnParty the Energy Party (depending on the subject at hand), and once or twice I’ve referred to the Grownup Party. That kicked off a discussion that I think has a certain relevance to some of the philosophical friction that vexes us these days. Here’s the discussion:

Doug, I give you credit for being a consistent anarchist…but don’t you support parental "authority"?

Posted by: Randy E | Apr 30, 2008 9:17:05 AM

Not coercive authority… I should be able to influence my children
through my words and actions, not by threats or intimidation.

I want a government based on ethics, productivity, and fairness. We have a government based on lies, inefficiency, and
greed.

Posted by: Doug Ross | Apr 30, 2008 9:48:46 AM

Actually, whenever I have disputes with libertarians, I do so as a
parent. I’m in my 32nd year of being a parent. I have five kids and
three grandchildren, and my worldview is that of a parent. Whenever I
hear people standing up for their "right" to do something stupid — such as not wear motorcycle helmets on the public roads — I hear the voice of a child. By now, it’s sort of hard-wired into me.

Lots of people look at laws in terms of "what this means to me" in
terms of "what I get to do" or "what gets done to me." I tend to look
at society as a whole and think, Is this a good idea overall? or Does this make society safer, or healthier, or wealthier? or Is this the logical way for society to function?

I don’t think, Do I want to pay this tax? or Do I think I should have to buckle my seat belt?
To me, those are unacceptably self-centered questions. This makes for
profound disagreements, because the basic cognitive processes, the
entire perspective going in, is very, very different.

Posted by: Brad Warthen | Apr 30, 2008 9:52:30 AM

Brad,

You may not understand this but my view on society is the same as
yours: Is this a good idea overall? Does this make society safer, or
healthier, or wealthier? Is this the logical way for society to
function?

And then I examine the issue using my own personal experience as
reference. Take taxes for example… I look at the issue logically
based on the taxes I pay and conclude that a) the system is illogical
b) the use of tax dollars is inefficient and c) the tax burden is
unfairly applied.
I don’t want MY taxes to be lower, I want EVERYONE’s taxes to be
lower… because I believe our economy would be far better off for
EVERYONE if we had less government. The same logic applies to my views
on Social Security, healthcare, education, etc.

Your world view is what gives us the government we have today. One
where we citizens pay people to sit around making crucial decisions
like: when can we sell beer and wine on Sunday? what time does a store
need to open on Sunday? what tax breaks does a newspaper deserve that
other companies do not? should we give people age 785 and over a 1/2%
sales tax break? how much of the taxpayers’ money should we give to the
Okra Strut? and on and on it goes. Completely wasted effort… I want
to see that abolished for EVERYONE’s benefit, not my own.

Big government types are worse than selfish – they take what isn’t theirs.

Posted by: Doug Ross | Apr 30, 2008 10:52:03 AM

And I see those as unrelated questions, not in terms of some sort of
overriding conflict between "government" and… what — "ungovernment?"
But you’re right in that government in one sense or another is involved
in all those decisions. What I wonder about is what you see as the
alternative.

Basically, we have this thing called a civilization. But even in the
most chaotic, anarchic situations, certain arrangements arise among
human beings that determine how they are going to live together (or NOT
live together). Such things seem unavoidable in a group of any sort of
social animals. With gorillas, you have a whole network of decisions
and arrangements that tend to be built around the overriding question
of, "Who gets to be the alpha male?"

Things get more complicated with humans because we are a verbalizing
race, and think in symbols and abstractions that can’t be communicated
without language. But everywhere that there are two or more humans
together, some sort of arrangement or agreement has to be arrived at in
terms of how to interact and arrange things, from the ownership of
property to acceptable behavior.

In the closest thing to a state of nature — a place where
government has utterly collapsed, such as in Somalia; or a place where
conventional government is not recognized as legitimate, such as Sicily
over the centuries — you have something closer to the "alpha male"
model found among other creatures. In Somalia, it’s warlords. In Sicily
(and sometimes among transplanted communities of Sicilians) you have a
system of bosses and underbosses who hold power through the most
elemental system of violence-backed "respect."

Now THAT is a system in which somebody is, as you say, taking what isn’t theirs.

Actually, through much of human history, the warlord model has held
sway, in such disparate settings as pre-communist China and Europe
during the middle ages. Europeans called it feudalism. Under such a
system, wealth that is coerced from weaker members of the society is
used in such capital projects as building fortresses for the warlords.
What you don’t see in a system such as that is a system of roads. For
such infrastructure as that, which might economically benefit the
society more broadly, there has to be a different governing system. For
well over 1,000 years, Europeans continued to use roads the Romans had
built because that was the last time there was a broad government with
an overarching concept of acting on behalf of something broader — in
that case, an empire in which the rule of law was only helpful if you
were a Roman.

You saw some city-states rise up in Italy, and bands of city states
along the Baltic and in other regions, in which councils and other
decision-making bodies created infrastructure and regulations that
facilitated commerce that created wealth for a somewhat larger group.

Anyway, to speed ahead… in this country we came up with
representative democracy as a means for a free people to work out
questions of how they would arrange themselves socially and make the
decisions that WILL BE MADE one way or another among any group of
humans. Once everyone gets a voice like that, all sorts of questions
will come up: Do we need a new road? OK, how will we pay for it? Some
people will not want to see alcohol sold at all, others will have an
opposite view. Perhaps for a time, the community will strike a
compromise: OK, we’ll allow alcohol to be sold in our community, but
not on Sunday, because there is a critical mass in the community that
finds such activities on a Sunday beyond the pale, and those who don’t
feel that way go along to get what they want on the other six days.

Of course, laws governing alcohol get far more complicated than
that, with debates over where to draw the lines in terms of operating a
car on the PUBLIC roads after drinking, whether minors can drink or
even hang out in drinking establishments, and so forth. And all of
these are legitimate areas for regulation as long as we, acting through
this system of representative democracy, decide they ARE legitimate
areas for such.

Government, and politics, are in our system the proper place for deciding where all those lines are.

In our constitutional system, we have in writing certain guarantees
to prevent a government answering to a majority doesn’t trample certain
fundamental rights (life, liberty, and such) of any individuals,
including those in political minorities. This does not, of course, mean
that individuals can blow off the more general will. You can’t commit
murder just because it’s in keeping with your personal value system.
Nor can you take your neighbor’s car without his permission, or poison
his cat, or engage in insider trading, or sell beer in a community that
has legitimately (acting through the proper processes) decided to make
that illegal.

This is a great system; it beats the hell out of doing things
according to the whim of the local warlord. And everyone —
libertarians, authoritarians, Christians, Wiccans, what have you — get
to make their case in the public square.

Some libertarians, unfortunately, seem to regard the political and
governmental decisions that THEY DISAGREE WITH — a tax they don’t want
to pay, for instance — as being illegitimate. But they aren’t.

Each and every one of us accepts losing political arguments, and
submitting to the resulting regulations or laws or lack thereof — as
the price of living in this (I would argue) highly enlightened system
of making social decisions. We accept it rather than go live in a place
where only brute force counts.

That doesn’t mean we don’t make our case for the next election, and so forth.

Is anything I’m saying here making sense to you?

Posted by: Brad Warthen | Apr 30, 2008 11:51:33 AM

Also, Brad, your view of government is what gets us things like rebate checks to stimulate the economy and gas tax holidays.

McCain claims both of those are great ideas designed to help
everybody out when, in reality, he supports them for purely selfish
reasons – to dupe voters so he can get elected President. He hasn’t got
the guts to tell the truth. His own personal ambition means more to him
than the truth. Guess he’d make a good libertarian, huh?

Posted by: Doug Ross | Apr 30, 2008 11:56:27 AM

You can’t commit murder just because it’s in keeping with your
personal value system. Nor can you take your neighbor’s car without his
permission, or poison his cat, or engage in insider trading, or sell
beer in a community that has legitimately (acting through the proper
processes) decided to make that illegal.
-Brad

Murder or killing the neighbor’s cat are issues not in dispute by
anyone, libertarians or otherwise. Those are acts that clearly affect
other people and clearly must involve intervention by the government.
Doug nor anyone else has suggested the legalization of murder. Clearly
that is the mother of all non-sequetors.

But selling or buying beer on Sunday is completely different. That
is a decision which rightly belongs in a class of activities that can
and should best be handled by individuals without interference from the
government because it has no affect on others. That is true regardless
of who has their say in the public square. If I want to buy beer on
Sunday that is a decision that should be made on the basis of my own
conscience, religious views and other factors that only I can evaluate.
It’s no one else’s business if I buy beer on Sunday. Same with video
poker, pot smoking, what I do with my own body – including who I sleep
with. It’s no one’s damn business, period.

Let’s try another example that perhaps Brad can understand. What if
some religious extremist came to power and, with the help of Congress,
decided that only their religion could be exercised. The majority of
the people agree. The folks from the banned religions had their say in
the public square but were overruled. Brad could no longer attend the
Catholic Church he’s been a member of for decades.

Or, let’s say that all movies that depict the political process in
an unflattering light must now be banned. The Manchurian Candidate can
not be shown any longer as a result.

Or, perhaps hitting close to home, what if the only newspaper
allowed is the one run by the government. Even though The State has run
editorials oppossing this the law passes anyway. The day after the law
passes the government troops occupy The State paper’s operation and
begin publishing their own spin on the world.

According to Brad’s world view all of these events are a legitimate intrusion into the way people conduct their lives.

Posted by: bud | Apr 30, 2008 12:51:57 PM

Right, Bud. I don’t want all government abolished, just some of it.
I don’t want to abolish all taxes, just some of them. I don’t want to
repeal all laws, just those that intrude on personal rights.

The whole drug issue is a perfect example. Nobody should ever go to
jail for using drugs unless they end up doing some harm to another
person. We have a society filled with people popping anti-depressants
and sleeping pills, abusing alcohol, etc. and yet we have law
enforcement people spending time and resources making sure adults don’t
smoke a joint. This is a case where the moral minority in power feels a
need to enforce its will upon people.

Posted by: Doug Ross | Apr 30, 2008 1:27:26 PM

Actually, bud, what you just said is completely inconsistent with what I wrote. So this is a non-argument.

And Doug, come on: When a majority wants cocaine to be legal
(again), it will be. I direct you to the Volstead Act and the
Eighteenth Amendment, which were followed by the 21st Amendment…

A lot of people (primarily libertarians) point to Prohibition as
evidence that such things "don’t work." Nonsense. Prohibition went away
for the same reason it came in– the prevailing political will of the
time, acting with sufficient force to change the constitution (which is
what would be necessary for bud’s farcical scenario to work, and good
luck that that one, by the way).

In other words, "Prohibition doesn’t work" only makes sense when you say, "Prohibition doesn’t work if we don’t want it."

Doug is using the reasoning of the child — someone OUT THERE is
imposing something on my in contradiction of my sovereign will. With
the child, it’s the parent; with Doug, it’s this alleged "minority in
power."

I don’t look at the world that way, because I am not alienated from
the American political system. Therefore I can say WE decide something,
whether it was my idea or not. I don’t see the decision-making
apparatus as being something OUT THERE.

Posted by: Brad Warthen | Apr 30, 2008 1:43:56 PM

Anyway, I decided to create the separate post to call more attention to the exchange.

Payday lenders reduced to quoting McGovern

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This release came in today from the Community Financial Services Association (Tommy Moore’s employers), which among other things cited the organization’s Quote of the Month:

“Why do we think we are helping adult consumers by taking away their options? We don’t take away cars because we don’t like some people speeding. We allow state lotteries despite knowing some people are betting their grocery money. Everyone is exposed to economic risks of some kind. But we don’t operate mindlessly in trying to smooth out every theoretical wrinkle in life.”

George McGovern
Former South Dakota Senator
1972 Democratic Presidential Candidate
Wall Street Journal

… which of course reminds me of something I didn’t like about McGovern, and which I had forgotten until I read that piece in the WSJ recently. Actually, it’s a problem I had with the Left of those days — they were way anti-government. We have a letter on tomorrow’s edit page from one of those people who considers motorcycle helmet laws to be the first step to totalitarianism (I am not making this up). Such folks would have been at home in the Left in 1972.

And such people are not considered to be liberals any more — in fact, some of the most fiercely anti-government types now actually claim to be "conservatives" — which of course is one of the many reasons why I insist that the "liberal" and "conservative" labels haven’t made sense for some time.

That aside, I find myself wondering — whom is this quotation intended to persuade? Certainly not the GOP majority over at the State House. Maybe Tommy and the gang thought sending this out to the "liberal" media might have a salutary (from CFSA’s point of view) effect.

If so, it didn’t work in my case. But maybe I’m not typical.

In Hillary’s defense, it DOES work…

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When it comes to my preference for Barack Obama in the contest for the Democratic nomination, I refuse to take a back seat to those worthies on the editorial board of The New York Times. However, I must protest that their urgent yearning for Hope and Change caused them to ignore rather obvious realities earlier this week:

The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it.
Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.

When you say "Voters are getting tired of it," you mean you are getting tired of it, as am I. (Sure, you can say Obama still leads nationally poll, but "national" doesn’t count until November, and even then it’s state by state.) And yes, it’s demeaning, but this is politics, ya know.

And you’ve gotta hand it to the lady: It does work. It certainly did on Tuesday, anyway.

Not everyone at the Journal is clueless about McCain and Sanford

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My earlier post reminded me of something — a couple of weeks back, someone at the Journal was trying to reach me to talk about Sanford and McCain. Elizabeth Holmes and I traded phone messages, but never got in touch. Then I forgot about it.

Remembering that today, I sent Ms. Holmes a link to today’s post on the subject. She wrote a quick line back asking whether I had ever read her story, which I had not. I just found it. It ran on Saturday, March 29. I don’t know if this link will work for you or not, but essentially the piece drew the sharp contrast between 2000, when Sanford co-chaired McCain’s S.C. campaign, and 2008, when he wouldn’t give the McCain campaign the time of day:

Mr. Sanford didn’t endorse anyone during the primaries this year, after having co-chaired Sen. McCain’s bitter battle in South Carolina during the 2000 race. He brushed off requests for support by the McCain team at least three times, according to people familiar with the matter, including a period last year when the campaign was at a low.
The snub could cost him his chance at the vice presidency. "Loyalty is a big, big commodity in McCain-land," said a McCain aide familiar with Mr. Sanford’s involvement…

As for why there’s so much talk out there about Sanford in defiance of all reason… Ms. Holmes is hip to that as well. After the 2000 campaign, Mr. Sanford became governor, and as she notes, "As governor, he began speaking at conservative think tanks — such as
the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute — and continues to do
so."

Add to that the governor’s most ardent cheerleaders at the Club for Growth. The Club was pushing Sanford for national office as early as the Republican National Convention in 2004. Here’s an excerpt from a piece I wrote at the end of that week in New York:

Even our own Sen. Lindsey Graham and Gov. Mark Sanford were being mentioned. As I wrote earlier in the week, Sen. Graham spent the convention going between interviews like a bee going from flower to flower.
For his part, Mr. Sanford calls all the talk "the last thing in the world I’m looking at or thinking about." But that’s about all he’s got time to say about it because he’s too busy participating in things like a "Four for the Future" panel over at the Club for Growth.
On Wednesday, he invites the delegation to a soiree at a friend’s home on the Upper East Side. He urges them to come see "how a real New Yorker lives. They live in small boxes." His host’s home may be a little narrow, but if that’s a box, it’s from Tiffany’s — and it’s gift-wrapped.
At the reception itself, when the governor silences the assembled gathering to thank Howard Bellin for the use of his home, the host says, "I fully expect to be his guest at the White House in another four years."

One nice thing about the Club, though — maybe nobody else reads my blog, but they certainly do. This appeared on the S.C. chapter’s Web site roughly an hour (either 47 minutes or an hour and 47 minutes, depending on how their site treats time zones) after my last post went up.

So, let me close with a big shout-out to my pals at the Club, which believe it or not actually has a blog devoted to pushing Sanford as Veep.

‘Sanford as veep’ AGAIN? Geez, would you people give it a rest?

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Back when I did the editorial stating fairly succinctly why naming Mark Sanford as running mate would be stupid for John McCain, and disastrous for the country, I got a call from a reader who said I was manufacturing the whole thing, that nobody mentioned it but us, and if I’d just shut up, it would go away.

I wish.

Unfortunately, even though most Republicans see no reason for McCain to choose Sanford, and those Republicans who actually know both men (that would be S.C. Republicans) mostly think such a move would be insane, there is one subfaction in the GOP coalition that continues to push him, against all reason and all odds. That is the economic-libertarian faction represented by the Club for Growth and The Wall Street Journal, among a few others.

Sanford_promo_2
The Journal‘s latest effort along these lines was to devote the big "Weekend Interview" to Mr. Sanford on Saturday, and to promote it from the front page, complete with a front-page, full-color caricature of
our gov. It’s fascinating the way the Journal — truly one of the best papers in the country — continues to sully its reputation by taking Mr. Sanford more seriously than does any paper in South Carolina, with the possible exception of the Post and Courier.

The Journal apparently justifies continuing to float this idea on a basis that simply isn’t true, that Mr. Sanford "is on nearly every Republican strategist’s shortlist for vice president this year." To back that up, the piece names three people: "Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove and Sen. Lindsey Graham (a stalwart John McCain backer) have all floated Mr. Sanford’s name for veep."

Sen. Graham is on that list because of the three, he’s the only one that anyone might believe has Sen. McCain’s ear. Well, I’ve shown you what Sen. Graham has to say about his old friend Mark’s status as a veep candidate or as a party leader of any kind; you may want to watch the video again.

So I don’t know where that’s coming from.

Anyway, the "hour-long interview" with the governor is said to have taken place at the State House; one must sincerely doubt that the interviewer bothered to ask anyone else about the governor on the way in or out of the building. That would have been damaging to the Journal‘s premise that the governor would be an asset to a national ticket. Of course, if you buy into the premise that Mr. Sanford is involved in a lonely, "prolonged fight against the political status quo in South Carolina," then you wouldn’t want to talk to any of those people, anyway.

But six years after he was elected, one has to be rather gullible to buy into that myth. The truth is that the State House is dominated by conservative Republicans who are much, much more representative of the national party and rank-and-file Republican voters (much less the independents that McCain must continue to appeal to) than Mr. Sanford ever has been or ever will be.

Yes, you can believe the myth if you don’t actually know him, and if you read the quote that starts the piece:

"Our system was put in place in large part based on the fear that a black man would be elected governor. So traditional functions of the executive branch were diffused . . . to mean that if a black man was elected governor, it wouldn’t matter anyway because he wouldn’t have any responsibility . . . That is an insane operating model."

And if you like that, you can read the much more extended version, written by me in 1991 as part of our "Power Failure" series (you’ll also learn that keeping the governor weak was not an innovation of the 1895 constitution, but the continuation of a 300-year South Carolina tradition). The governor read our reprint of that series back in 2002, and based much of his electoral platform on that. That’s why we endorsed the guy. But ever since he was elected, he’s put far more effort into his more marginal, anti-government libertarian proposals than he has into anything that would reform our system.

Several statements in this piece need to be addressed individually, to set the record straight (to the extent I can do such a thing, my pulpit being decidedly less bully than the Journal‘s):

After noting the rather obvious fact that no South Carolinian could help the GOP ticket, the author protests, "But Mr. Sanford is popular on the right because he understands markets." No. The truth is that he is popular among economic libertarians because he agrees with them, right down the line, perfectly. Such people are not the same as "the right," although they overlap with that set. And no one can be said to understand markets when he believes that distributing vouchers to people in a thinly populated, poor community that can’t attract a grocery store would lead to the spontaneous generation of an excellent private school.
"Mr. Sanford’s main governing problem is the state’s constitution." As someone who has been pushing for 17 years for the same restructuring reforms that Mr. Sanford says he’s for, I wish that were true. But Mr. Sanford’s main governing problem is that he can’t get along with other Republican leaders — and that doesn’t augur well for one who would lead his party nationally.
"…the state has leaned left on spending…" Oh, Good Lord have mercy. That’s so idiotic, so utterly marinated, rolled and deep-fried in fantasy, that it’s astounding a bolt of lightning didn’t strike the Journal’s presses as they pushed that one out.
"Over the past six years, he has helped shepherd through three big tax reforms: the state’s first cut to its income tax; a grand tax swap that slashed property taxes and increased sales taxes; and the virtual elimination of grocery taxes. That last one is not the tax cut Mr. Sanford wanted to spur investment. But he took what he could get…" Our "left-leaning" Legislature loves nothing more than to cut taxes. A session seldom passes without a tax cut; and the only suspense is what kind of cut will tickle lawmakers’ fancy that particular year. The governor can pretend that the Legislature keeps doing what comes naturally as some sort of response to him, but it’s just not true. (The closest it comes to truth is that some lawmakers pointed to the income tax cut as being kinda, sorta like a cut the governor wanted, and they used that as an excuse to say they don’t always ignore him. But even in that case, the cut what they wanted to cut, as they always do. But that’s the only instance in which it made sense for him to say he "took what he could get.")

Aw, geez, I can’t spend any more time on this, but if you’re able to call up the piece, you’ll find more absurd assertions than you can shake a stick at. Obviously, the only person this writer — the Journal‘s assistant features editor, if you can wrap your head around that — spoke to in South Carolina (or, perhaps, anywhere) for this piece was Mark Sanford.

And no matter what sort of goals it may have of bending the world to its ideological will, the Journal did its readers a disservice by publishing it.

Forget Real ID; Big Brother’s going private

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While Gov. Mark Sanford and other opponents of Big Gummint are busily fighting that hyper-scary Threat to All We Hold Sacred, the Real ID program, Big Brother’s turning to the private sector to get the dirty deed done.

The Financial Times reports that, under a program (that’s "programme" to you Brits) run by Homeland Security, air travelers are voluntarily turning their most intimate identifying info over to private contractors:

Until recently the only thing apart from love that money could not
buy was a guaranteed place at the front of an airport security queue.
That is changing, as an additional 500 US air passengers a day agree to
hand over a $100 (£50) annual fee, plus their fingerprints and iris
scans, for the right to become “registered travellers” in private
programmes supervised by the Department of Homeland Security.

Once
the authorities have run an applicant’s background checks to ensure he
or she is not a threat to airline security, the successful RT receives
a credit card-style pass containing biometric information and the
privilege of joining specially designated fast lanes at a growing
number of US airports. The market leader, Verified Identity Pass (VIP),
has received about 100,000 applications, of which 75,000 have been
approved.

I suppose the reader reaction to this news will serve as a sort of litmus test: Libertarians will say, "See? Told you the private sector can get the job done better than gummint!"

Others among us would far rather give up such information only to Uncle Sam, who is constrained by laws written by the representives we elect, than to someone with a profit motive, who might choose to do whatever he pleases with it. Different strokes.

First we outsource warfighting. Now this.

Why Wright’s outrages don’t turn off Obama supporters

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Moss Blachman sent me (and a bunch of others) a copy of a piece from The Jewish Week Web site that sorta, kinda expresses my attitude about Obama and his pastor — what Rev. Wright said was utterly beyond the pale, and yet it doesn’t turn me against Obama. An excerpt:

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Sen. Barack Obama’s longtime pastor, says
some things that really offend me. As a passionate Zionist I take
offense at his cruel reference to an apartheid regime going on in
Israel. As a patriotic American I shake in disgust at the “God Damn
America” sermon he gave soon after the tragic events of 9/11. His
ongoing association with Louis Farrakhan troubles me deeply, since
Farrakhan is a bigot. Indeed, I once led a group of protesters into the
office of Anthony Williams, former mayor of Washington, D.C., and
begged him not stand with Farrakhan.
At the same time, I do not view Rev. Wright’s remarks as a reason not to vote for Barack Obama. I may or may not decide
to vote for him, but not on the basis of his longtime pastor’s politics.

Of course, Obama’s relationship with this guy doesn’t help him with me, but it’s not a deal-killer, any more than it is for Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, who wrote the piece.

Another thing I liked about the piece — and for me, this is a separate point from the whole Wright/Obama thing — was this statement:

A congregation should not identify itself with a specific political
party, but a religious leader should feel free to express himself on
issues that he deems of social and political significance.

As I wrote before, I was impressed at the political moral teaching I heard from the pulpit (is "pulpit" the right word?) at a synagogue up in Greenville several months back. Of course, the difference between that and the inexcusable stuff that comes from the Rev. Wright are very, very different.

bradwarthen.com

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