Category Archives: Marketplace of ideas

Payday lenders reduced to quoting McGovern

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.

An intriguing way out for Hillary

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With John McCain beating either Democrat in polls, and the prospect of months of exhausting Democratic Party infighting ahead, an intriguing idea was offered on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal today. It was proposed as a way for Hillary Clinton to save face, and for the party to regain ground lost to the bitter primary campaign. And the power to act lies entirely in the hands of Harry Reid:

The solution that is within his power is simpler, yet more profound than any of the extraordinary political events America has witnessed this election year. It requires only the rarest of things: an individual willing to set aside his own power and ambition for the good of his party and his country. It is this: Mr. Reid could step aside as leader of the Senate and hand the post to Mrs. Clinton. Only the proffer of this consolation prize would likely persuade Mrs. Clinton to drop her divisive, and now futile, quest for her party’s nomination.

Neither Sen. Reid nor Sen. Clinton is likely to actually listen to this advice, for a simple reason: The author of the piece is Richard N. Bond. Since he is a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, he is persona non grata to Democrats.

He would be persona non grata to me, too, as founder of the UnParty. But over the years, I’ve come to the conclusion that former party chairs can be decents sorts. Look at Henry McMaster and Joe Erwin (and don’t look at Dick "Bad Boy" Harpootlian; that would spoil the picture). And besides, it’s an important UnParty tenet to be open to good ideas wherever they may come from.

Is this a good idea? I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts. Read the whole piece, if the link allows you to, and let me know what you think.

An amusing aside (amusing to me, anyway, as a word guy). Mr. Bond is addressing himself to Democrats — sort of — yet he can’t help engaging in a linguistic tic that labels him immediately as a partisan Republican: He refers to "Democrat primaries," and "Democrat presidential hopefuls." What makes this stand out particularly is that he was actually trying to write in a neutral fashion, acknowledging the difference between a noun and an adjective. Elsewhere, he refers correctly to "a smashing Democratic win," "Democratic gains," "a dream Democratic year," and even, if you can believe it, "the Democratic Party!"

So he tried hard, but couldn’t quite carry it off. He reminds me of Gordon Jackson as Flight Lt. Sandy McDonald, "Big S" in "The Great Escape." Remember how he drilled prospective escapees in their German, and would trip them up by suddenly speaking English, causing them to speak English, and he’d lecture them on not falling for such a cheap trick? Then he fell for it himself during the actual escape. (I couldn’t find video of that scene, but as a consolation prize, here’s a clip of Steve McQueen’s legendary motorcycle chase scene.)

Habitual use or abuse of language carves deep ruts in the brain, and it’s hard to keep your tongue out of them, however hard you try.

Club for Growth targets two

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You read here before about the incumbents who are favored by the Club for Growth. Now, in this release, we see whom they want to get rid of. Since the only names on the list are those of Richard Chalk and Jake Knotts, I’m guessing this is not a final list, but I could be wrong (Matt, please correct or confirm).

Mind you, this is not the same as the governor’s "list," but I think we can assume (there I go again) that it has some names in common with it. Anyway, here’s the release:

SC Club for Growth State Action PAC Endorses Three Reform-Minded Candidates
Columbia, SC – Today, the South Carolina Club for Growth State Action PAC endorsed three reform-minded candidates who are seeking election in the upcoming June 10th primary.
Tim Scott, Stu Rodman and Katrina Shealy are lifelong advocates for smarter government, increased economic growth and more money for families and small businesses whose budgets are not growing nearly as fast as our state government’s.
Each has shown a commitment to improving a state government that refuses to address South Carolina’s most important problems including high taxes, too much regulation and an outdated government structure. Their success in this historic, watershed election will positively impact our state for decades to come.
In a legislatively dominated state, change happens at the ballot box. In the last election cycle, the SC Club for Growth State Action PAC endorsed candidates in 23 primary and general election races. Thanks in part to the electorate’s desire for change and the generosity of our members, endorsed candidates won 17 elections – an impressive 73 percent of the races in which the Club PAC was involved.
The South Carolina Club for Growth State Action PAC has already endorsed seventeen strong, fiscally conservative incumbents for re-election. Today, the State Action PAC is proud to announce the first challenger/open-seat endorsements of the 2008 primaries:

TIM SCOTT (HOUSE DISTRICT 117 – CHARLESTON)
Tim Scott is a very successful small business owner, Chairman of Charleston County Council and a strong fiscal conservative. Endorsed by Governor Sanford last fall for state treasurer and recently for this office, Tim has never voted for a tax increase nor has the council ever increased taxes during his thirteen-year tenure. Long-time incumbent Tom Dantzler, who has consistently received “F” ratings from the Club, recently chose to retire rather than face a great candidate like Tim.
Tim’s opponents for the open seat, Wheeler Tillman and Bill Crosby, both present causes for concern. Tillman served for four years in the House during the 70’s as a Democrat, ran again for public office as a Democrat in the 1980’s and only switched parties earlier this decade. Crosby wants to spend billions of dollars a year in taxpayer money on mass transportation and making local libraries a statewide responsibility.
We think Tim is unquestionably the best candidate in this race based on his record as a strong fiscal conservative and reformer. Tim will also make history as the first African-American Republican elected to the legislature since Reconstruction. Tim Scott is a rising conservative star, and we urge you to send him to the Statehouse.

STU RODMAN (HOUSE DISTRICT 123 – HILTON HEAD)
Stu Rodman is a proven, reform-minded leader who will bring his fiscally conservative principles to Columbia. He currently serves on the Beaufort County Council and was elected to the Beaufort School Board, giving him valuable insights into government.
As a businessman with an M.B.A. and an engineering degree, Stu understands how important it is for South Carolina to be competitive in the global marketplace by lowering taxes, limiting government bureaucracy, and improving educational opportunities for our children. Stu also served on Governor Sanford’s 2003 State Commission on Management, Accountability and Performance, which suggested ways to restructure and streamline state government.
Stu is challenging incumbent Richard Chalk. Chalk received an “F” in 2007 on the S.C. Club for Growth’s scorecard, which reflects his poor voting record on fiscal issues. Chalk supported a higher gas tax on working families and was one of the few Republicans to vote to overturn Governor Sanford’s vetoes on all fifty budget items in the Club’s “Lard List.” One can only assume Chalk was trying to send a message when he voted to overturn Governor Sanford’s veto of pork items like $150,000 for a new pottery program, over $8 million for Senator Hugh Leatherman’s pet projects in Florence and $9 million for a program editorial writers called “a legislative slush fund.” We hope you will send a message to Chalk by supporting Stu Rodman.

KATRINA SHEALY (SENATE DISTRICT 23 – LEXINGTON COUNTY)
Katrina Shealy is a proven leader and reformer in Lexington County. Her experience as an insurance underwriter gives her a great foundation in fiscal issues and she recognizes that South Carolina’s out of control growth in state spending must end. She supports state budget spending caps as well as tax cuts that will lower our state’s high income tax to encourage new businesses and better paying jobs. Katrina also supports important tort and worker’s compensation reforms that will safeguard our small businesses. As Chairwoman of the Lexington County Republican Party, she has done an incredible job of building a grassroots network of people who will work to support her campaign.
Her opponent is incumbent RINO (Republican In Name Only) Jake Knotts, who earned an abysmal 8 out of 100 on our most recent legislative scorecard. Knotts voted against a 29% reduction in our state income tax in 2005, complaining that letting you keep more of your tax dollars would reduce what he and his legislative buddies got to spend on government programs. And spend it they have – growing government by over 40% in the last few years! Last year Knotts even voted to send $950,000 of your tax dollars to the aforementioned Green Bean Museum and later voted to override every single one of Governor Sanford’s 228 budget vetoes that would have saved taxpayers $167 million.
To say that Knotts has worked against Governor Sanford’s reform agenda is like saying that John Edwards is willing to pay “a little extra” for a haircut. He has cast crucial votes to kill Sanford-backed restructuring plans and to prevent parents from having increased choices about where to educate their children. Just last year, Knotts voted to give a liberal judge a ten-year term on our State Supreme Court. He explained his vote by saying that the candidate was “a female who puts more diversity on the bench. It shouldn’t be about being conservative.”
Frankly, we are not sure how Knotts even calls himself a Republican after publically supporting Democrats Jim Hodges and Tommy Moore over Governor Sanford in the last two gubernatorial elections. Fortunately, he’ll finally get a chance to face Republican voters.
Knotts’ defeat will remove a major legislative roadblock to lowering taxes, slowing government growth and implementing common-sense structural and educational reforms. Katrina’s election will provide sorely needed leadership for her district and the state. In fact, Knotts seems to agree – he contributed $100 to her campaign for House in 2002. Once you are over the shock of hearing that he actually supported a Republican for a change, we hope you will support the real Republican in the race- Katrina Shealy.

You gotta hand it to the Club… here we haven’t even had our first legislative candidate interviews, and they’ve already settled on endorsements. Maybe it’s a little easier for them. Then again, maybe it’s just all that hard work, initiative and talent that helped the Club members grab their disproportional portions of the American pie, and which they firmly believe WE could do, too, if we would just buckle down and apply ourselves…

Why not just let in more Mexicans?

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Over the weekend, we had our gazillionth in a series of letters from indignant writers insisting that they are NOT anti-immigration, they are anti-ILLEGAL immigration:

We in the pro-enforcement camp do not oppose legal immigration, and we do not call for discrimination against legal immigrants, no matter their race or ethnicity. All we ask is that our government enforce its immigration laws, secure our borders and deport illegal aliens.
Since when is being in favor of law enforcement on a nondiscriminatory basis racism? Certainly, those who favor illegal immigration and amnesty for illegal aliens have been unfairly labeling us, as they have no legitimate reason for opposing enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws.

And of course, for about the gazillionth time I thought, fine — let’s change our immigration limits and streamline our procedures so that the Mexican labor our economy seems to demand can get in legally. Then, we’ll all be happy. I certainly will, because I don’t like having a shadow, extralegal population either. People in this country from another should be documented. People who are hot about illegal immigration will also be happy. People who just don’t like having a lot of Mexicans around will not be, but you can’t please everybody.

Why not remove the incentive to come in illegally by lowering barriers to legal immigration? I’m not an economist, but it seems fairly obvious that there is a demand for Mexican labor in this country — and a demand for American work in that country — that is greater than the supply we are currently processing legally. Those demands will continue to exist, and those forces will continue to attract vast waves of people to this side of the border, whatever laws we have. So let’s get serious about getting a handle on it.

The people who actually ARE economists disagree with each other on all this, of course. Here’s an interesting, fairly dispassionate piece that was in the NYT Magazine a couple of years back, which examines whether we should let so many unskilled workers into our economy. If you’re looking for an absolute "yes" or "no," you need to look elsewhere, but I found the discussion interesting:

Economists more in the mainstream generally agree that the U.S. should take in more skilled immigrants; it’s the issue of the unskilled that is tricky. Many say that unskilled labor is needed and that the U.S. could better help its native unskilled by other means (like raising the minimum wage or expanding job training) than by building a wall. None believe, however, that the U.S. can get by with no limits….
What the economists can do is frame a subset of the important issues. They remind us, first, that the legislated goal of U.S. policy is curiously disconnected from economics. Indeed, the flow of illegals is the market’s signal that the current legal limits are too low. Immigrants do help the economy; they are fuel for growth cities like Las Vegas and a salve to older cities that have suffered native flight. Borjas’s research strongly suggests that native unskilled workers pay a price: in wages, in their ability to find inviting areas to migrate to and perhaps in employment. But the price is probably a small one.

That last point, of course, is an important one to discuss. And in fact, if these are NOT "jobs Americans don’t want," but merely jobs with conditions and wages depressed by an oversupply of cheap labor from south of the border, then we should reduce the flow northward, and thereby raise wages and conditions for Americans (and the cost of goods and services, but that might be a policy outcome we decide is worth it).

But if, in the aggregate, these millions of Latinos are just a supply meeting a demand without widespread ill effects on the working class, why not let more in legally?

Obviously, they didn’t poll ME

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Just got this press release:

Dear Brad Warthen:
I write to inform you of the release of a new public opinion poll on whether leaders should listen to public opinion. In sharp contrast to views recently expressed by Vice President Cheney, this poll finds that an overwhelming majority of Americans believe government leaders should pay attention to public opinion polls and that the public should generally have more influence over government leaders than it does
These findings are part of a larger international poll conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org, an international research project managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland. The poll of 975 Americans was fielded from January 18 to 27 by Knowledge Networks. The margin of error was +/-3.2 percent.
Please find the press release pasted below. You may access the press release, charts and a questionnaire at: http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/
If you would like to speak with the principal researcher of this study, please contact Steven Kull, director of WorldPublicOpinion.org…

Sincerely,
Melinda Brouwer
Communications Coordinator
Program on International Policy Attitudes

Of course, I couldn’t resist answering the e-mail, as follows:

I disagree. I don’t know what Cheney said [and don’t much care to know, frankly], but it’s been my observation that the republic is being undermined by finger-in-the-wind governance. We elect people to do what 300 million people can’t all do — go to the capital, study issues, listen to people who disagree with them, and make the best decision they are capable of making. If they go by the gut, unconsidered reactions of people responding to "yes" or "no" questions, we get … well, we get the hyperpartisan, polarized, dumbed-down sort of governance we now have.

I didn’t even get into the fact that, if one thinks we shouldn’t govern by polls, why would one be persuaded otherwise by the result of a poll disagreeing with us? I felt sort of like I’d made my point without that.

The op-ed that came too soon

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Speaking of Mayor Bob, as we were earlier… A few days ago, he sent us an op-ed submission. Then he resent it with an additional byline on it — that of Councilwoman Tameika Isaac Devine. It was about the recent city council retreat.

Trouble is, we had run a piece from him just days earlier — last Friday, as a matter of fact. And that piece wasn’t long after another one from him. We can’t just turn over the space we have for local guest columns to the mayor every time there’s something he wants to respond to — he’s a very responsive guy. We have space most days for one local, nonstaff column. There’s a lot of competition for that slot, most days. So we have a guideline — no more than one piece for the same person within 30 days. And we had already stretched that rule once for the mayor, since his earlier piece had been on Feb. 20. We couldn’t give him yet another pass and still face all the other folks we’ve said "no" to. We’d made the first exception because he was responding to an editorial that had been critical of the city. We could have made another for the same reason, but chose not to.

Instead, I offered to put it on the blog. Here’s the cover note that came with the most recent version of his latest submission:

In light of today’s editorial I wanted to submit again the op ed from myself and Tameika Isaac Devine. The editorial was based on Adam Beam’s story about our retreat. While the editorial and Adam’s story certainly describe legitimate issues, I believe the op ed addresses one issue that has been corrected. The City Council partly as a result of the study cited in the editorial has set specific goals and a specific strategic action plan to implement those goals. Both the goals and the plan will be on our website after the plan is updated from the comments at the retreat.

The editorial specifically addresses the report and lack of goals when the writer says: "The report, based on interviews with dozens of managers in city government, said the City Council set no vision or goals…" The editorial goes on to say: "Council members told the study commission that the 2001 report was accurate. But they declared things had changed under Mr. Austin. Mayor Bob Coble said he thought members followed state law in terms of how they interact with city employees. But the events at the recent retreat say things have gotten no better. The council remains a major culprit in ensuring the city’s government struggles."

Clearly the main thrust of the editorial is the "interferance" (the writer’s term in the opening paragraph) of City Council and the form of government and not the lack of planning. While City Manager Austin would be the one to say what improvements have been made in how City Council interacts with him, I would note that the lack of formal goal setting and planning has been addressed, I believe in fairness the op ed adds an important perspective on whether the City Council took steps to formally address that criticism (instead of using the State of the City for the last six years as the primary vehicle for setting goals as would be the common practice under a strong mayor form of government). Of course the op ed discusses the major issues that were addressed at the retreat in addition to the one that Adam addressed in his story. As always I appreciate your consideration.

And here is the text of the submission itself:

City Council Retreat Friday March 7, 2008
I wanted to give a report on the Columbia City Council Retreat that was held Friday March 7th at the Convention Center. The bulk of the day was spent reviewing the four broad goals that City Council adopted last year. Those goals were:
1. To enhance the quality of life in the City of Columbia for all citizens, customers and visitors.
2. To enhance and protect our natural and built infrastructure.
3. To enhance Columbia’s future role as the flagship municipality in South Carolina through the use of best practices for local government operations.
4. To grow the City’s tax base by facilitating opportunities for citizens and future generations to reach their full economic, social, and cultural potential.
Those broad goals are being implemented through Columbia’s Strategic Operational Plan that staff has developed, and that City Council reviewed at the retreat. Both the goals and strategic plan will be on our website www.columbiasc.net.
While a number of specific issues were discussed at the retreat, I think four were particularly important. First, City Council affirmed our plan for safety and security in Columbia. We established as our top funding priority, the police and fire retention plan to increase salaries by $2.5 million over a three year period. We reaffirmed our commitment to fund a security camera system and the goal of 375 police officers (an increase of 19 officers). Additionally, we are committed to fighting gang and youth violence with the implementation of the recommendations of our gang assessment.
Secondly, we reviewed the progress we are making in correcting the deficiencies in our Finance Department that were outlined in the September 2007 Management Letter. We have retained the Municipal Association of South Carolina to help us establish best practices and online financial reporting.
Thirdly, the City has made a real commitment to climate protection. Implementation of our energy audit, which will be released this month, will be a top priority for the coming year. Columbia must do our part to reduce global warming and protect our environment.
Fourth, we reviewed the implementation of the disparity study that was adopted by Council in August of 2006. City Council reaffirmed our strong commitment to the study’s implementation and the need for accountability in reaching our goal of economic fairness and inclusion for our diverse community.
Columbia City Council established last year our broad goals and the strategic operational plan to implement those goals. This year’s retreat was an important opportunity to review progress and take corrective steps where needed. Columbia is going through the greatest renaissance in our history. Innovista will transform our economy and create high wage jobs. The Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center and Hilton Hotel are bringing in tourists and conventions. We are creating new attractions such as EdVenture, the Three Rivers Greenway, and the historic Bethel AME Church Museum. The heart of Columbia, from the Riverfront, Downtown, Five Points, North Columbia, Two Notch Road to Read Street, has been revitalized. Private investment, both residential and commercial, has exploded. We have stronger neighborhoods with more residents, more homeowners, and greater home values in Columbia. We have achieved this growth with a commitment to diversity and inclusion. We have launched a new effort “Together We Can” to improve our public schools through greater community partnerships. This coming year will be an exciting though challenging time. Clear goals and our strategic plan will help us achieve success.

Thank you,

Mayor Bob Coble
3333 Heyward Street
Columbia, South Carolina

Councilwoman Tameika Isaac Devine

‘God Damn America’ means what it means

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Over the last couple of days, I’ve seen and heard a number of explanations, or attempts at explanations, regarding the Rev. Jeremiah Wright having proclaimed, "God Damn America."

Most of them have been along the lines of the old cliche, "It’s a black thing; you wouldn’t understand," although no one has used those precise words. Well, I accept that on one level or another, I can never fully understand where any other human being is coming from. My own brother has the same genetic background that I do and grew up in the same household, but each of us has had a separate experience of life that has shaped us differently and causes us to express ourselves differently. The farther you get from being my biological brother — or, to describe someone I’ve spent a lot more time with than my brother, my wife — the wider that gap will get. The more different our experiences, the more different our perceptions of the world, and the more different our ways of speaking of the world.

But I’ve got to tell you, "God Damn America" is not a statement that is fraught with nuance. It’s very clear, uncompromising and all-encompassing. In all the explanations I’ve heard for that statement, no one has suggested that the words mean anything different. In English, they can only mean one thing. If Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says "God Damn America," I know what he means, even though he and I probably have a lot fewer reference points in common than the Rev. Wright and I have.

And if the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, speaking from his pulpit, deliberately and clearly calls upon God to damn America, and urges his congregation to send forth the same prayer, I know what he means. It means asking God to send America to hell forever. Damnation, under any sense of the word that I have every heard of (and no one has offered an alternative definition in response to this issue), and within any theology I have heard of (and again, no one has offered a different theological meaning of the word), means that and nothing else.

It doesn’t say, "America has a lot to answer for." It does not say, "America is guilty of terrible crimes." It does not say, "America has treated you and me and millions of others horribly and inexcusably, and we can never forgive that." It means to curse America beyond redemption, beyond improvement, beyond a second or third or billionth chance. "Damn" means "damn." It goes infinitely beyond any other obscenity you might utter in expressing your displeasure with America. If you say — and pardon my implied language — "F— America," that is at least something from which the object of your anger might recover. If you say "Kill America," you have at least described something from which it might be redeemed. But the Rev. Wright did not say those things. He said "God Damn America."

I understand hyperbole. I know all about exaggeration for effect. I know that many people have profound, complex reasons for being angrier about the way the world is and has been than I ever will. But this is not about exaggeration. This word is not a matter of degree. It is not about merely using a word that goes quantitatively too far.

I also understand that black homilitic and worship traditions are very, very different from that of, say, my own church, or any that I regularly attended growing up. I’ve been in this country most of my life (like Obama, I’ve lived abroad), and I took in that fact long ago.

And I’ve read the news stories — here’s one that was in our paper today, and another I saw in The Wall Street Journal — that quote experts explaining that it’s different when Jeremiah Wright says it. But it isn’t different. There is no moral context, no separate historical grounding, no cultural style, no emotional framework that gives the words "God Damn America" a different meaning. When, in The State‘s story, the Rev. Joe Darby — whom I have known and respected for years, and to the best of my knowledge would never say "God damn America" — speaks of "the role of the historical black church in ‘speaking truth to power’," I know what he means. I agree that has been the role of the black church, and it has played that role well, and employed hyperbole in the course of doing so. But the point seems to me irrelevant. In what way, shape or form does "God Damn America" constitute speaking truth to anyone?

I also get it that I’m the clueless white guy. I’ve pled guilty to that before. But again, I remain unconvinced that I am too clueless to understand what "God Damn America" means.

Now — does what I am saying here change the fact that I respect and admire Barack Obama, and think he should get the Democratic nomination for president? No, it does not. To the contrary, I was very much impressed by the speech he gave on the subject yesterday, which in so many ways spoke to the qualities that I respect in Sen. Obama. And note that he strongly repudiates his former pastor’s message.

Am I saying he absolved himself from his connection — his extended, deliberate, close association — with a preacher who would say, "God Damn America?" No. He did not do that. And after all the years he has been going to that church, I can’t imagine any words he could say that would accomplish that feat. And if he did, he would be rightly criticized for politically convenient timing.

As a voter, and as a writer who comments upon politics in this country, I am deeply impressed by the transcendent way in which Barack Obama addresses the intensely, damnably pervasive issue of race in America. He says just what I want a presidential candidate to say on the subject, and he says it better than any politician I have heard. He reaffirmed that for me Tuesday.

But I do have to set all that alongside the fact that he has deliberately associated with the man who said — and apparently meant, since I’ve heard about no repudiation from the preacher himself — "God Damn America." That will be something that Barack Obama as a candidate will just have to live with. It can’t be changed, any more than John McCain can change the fact that he would be 72 years old if inaugurated (a very different sort of problem, but just as immutable).

Those are both inescapable facts, and voters will have to decide what weight to give them if these are the two nominees in the fall.

Peggy’s got it wrong this time

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Peggy Noonan’s column today puts forth a promising analogy — I mean, "promising" in the literary sense of presenting a device that looks like it will work in making her point — of a neighborhood with two houses. One is neglected, dilapidated, old, and people are so used to seeing it they don’t even notice it any more. The other is still under construction, a source of excitement, the cynosure of eyes.

The old house is the Republican Party with John McCain at its head, the other is the Democratic. The analogy only works, of course, if Obama gets the Democratic nomination — hard to see anyone looking upon a Clinton candidacy, which would certainly be a rehash of old battles, as fresh and new. But Ms. Noonan glosses over that part, because it’s not her point.

Her point is, what does McCain need to do to get people excited about him? And her answer, or rather her suggestion of what is missing, is ideology… no, wait — she says it’s "philosophy," and she believes there’s a huge difference: "Not an ideology—ideology is something imposed from above, something
abstract dreamed up by an intellectual. Philosophy isn’t imposed from
above, it bubbles up from the ground, from life." Yeah, OK. So which is "a thousand points of light?" The latter, I suppose — or neither.

Perhaps I should quote that entire passage:

In the most successful political careers there is a
purpose, a guiding philosophy. Not an ideology—ideology is something
imposed from above, something abstract dreamed up by an intellectual.
Philosophy isn’t imposed from above, it bubbles up from the ground,
from life. And its expression is missing with Mr. McCain. Political
staffs inevitably treat philosophy as the last thing, almost an
indulgence. But it’s the central fact from which all else flows. Staffs
turn each day to scheduling, advance, fundraising, returning the
billionaire’s phone call. They’re quick to hold the meeting to agree on
the speech on the economy. But they don’t, can’t, give that speech
meaning and depth. Only the candidate can, actually.

Philosophy is the foundation. All the rest is secondary, a quick one-coat paint job on a house with a sagging roof.

Anyway, one thing that neither McCain nor any candidate I would support needs is "philosophy." Please, Lord, spare us another Reagan. And no "kinder, gentler," either.

For me, the foundation is character, and all the rest is secondary, with "philosophy" coming somewhere near the rear of the procession.

John McCain believes in America, and the ideas that undergird it, that lift it up above mere nationalism as practiced through most of modern history. He has gone to the mat, and far beyond, for his country, and will never fail to do so in the future. Take that, and throw in a leavening of Teddy Roosevelt-style reformism, and you’ve got John McCain. Don’t give me any more philosophy, beyond the old-fashioned kind of "conservatism" I have previously extolled. It’s a kind of conservatism that gets bored or even impatient with talk of "philosophy," like a crusty old guy who knows who he is in a roomful of people discussing the latest fashions.

(Ms. Noonan objects to Mr. McCain’s fondness for Hemingway. But let
me quote Hemingway, and address it toward her call for
"philosophy:"Let’s not talk about it… You’ll lose it if you talk
about it.")

The older I get, the more I like candidates with characters I can trust — honor, integrity, a moral sense — who want to do what works to make the world better, without the taint of ideology. You might say, don’t you need philosophy to define "better," and I would say most of us would recognize it if they saw it. We’re talking pragmatism. Look at comprehensive immigration reform. It pleased no political philosophy, but just happened to be the one approach that makes common sense (a point Ms. Noonan acknowledges, while failing to see how pragmatic and unphilosophical it was). Comprehensive reform means you look at the whole problem, and consider all the practical angles, not just those pleasing to a philosophy.

Yes, some would object (on philosophical grounds, no less) to some of my definitions of "better," definitions I believe McCain shares. McCain is rooted in the American Century, and in his own life got a bellyful of what it’s like for this nation to be "humbled" over its foreign actions. I see another, greater American Century — one in which our nation is truly engaged in the rest of the world, diplomatically, economically, in humanitarian terms and yes, militarily — as vastly preferable to, say, a Chinese Century. Or a century in which the whole world slides back away from liberalism (in the geopolitical sense, not the way it’s misused in our domestic politics), a victim of chaos and distrust sown by atavistic impulses.

Whoa, I’m getting dangerously close to "philosophy" here. Best back off and say that I’d rather vote for somebody I trust, period.

Bud testifies about the constitutional amendment

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Just so you know Bud Ferillo thinks about more than spending Belinda Gergel’s money, here’s his testimony to the Senate subcommittee considering whether to amend the S.C. constitution to read that the state "will provide a high quality education, allowing each student to reach his highest potential."

Bud, as you may or may not know, is the guy who made the film, "Corridor of Shame:"

Presentation of Bud Ferillo
Senate Subcommittee
On S.1136
March 13, 2008
9:00 AM
      It is a privilege for me to address the subcommittee this morning, something I have never done before.
      While I served this state, in the 1970’s and 80’s as Chief of staff to House Speakers Rex Carter and Ramon Schwartz and as Deputy Lieutenant Governor under Lt. Gov. Mike Daniel, I come today as a private citizen still in awe of these halls and full of respect for those of you in both parties who serve our state today.
      The Constitution of the State of South Carolina which the legislation before you would amend was adopted in one of the most difficult periods of our state’s history by some of our most unenlightened elected officials. It was the era of Jim Crow and the long shadow of slavery has given way to legalized racial segregation, a cruel, one sided system of rights and privileges for the few over the many. It was not until 1911 that South Carolina attained a majority white population and so the constitution adopted in 1895 was not a declaration of human rights. In fact, it sought to enshrine the benefits of government only to those with political and economic power.
      Our racially segregated public schools remained separate and unequal for another two generations because that was state policy. Even with the Brown decision in 1954, rising from the school desegregation case of Briggs vs. Elliott in Clarendon County, it was not until Governor Hollings declared in 1963 as he left office that “South Carolina had run out of courts” and the state negotiated the admission of Harvey Garnett into Clemson University, followed a year later by the integration of USC and our public school system.
      This difficult history is painful to recall and painful to hear but it explains why we have attained no little progress in securing quality public education for all the children of the state. To be honest, we have not been about the business of providing quarterly education to all the children of South Carolina for very long.
      Even today, sadly, the legal position of our state in the Abbeville vs. State of South Carolina school funding case, still places South Carolina on the wrong side of history. This state continues to claim it has no obligation to provide even a “minimally adequate” education for our children.
      I have come to you today as a witness to the failure of our state to achieve either minimally adequate education or the opportunity for our children to achieve an excellent education which would equip them to contend in a world changing before their eyes at warp speed.
      My plea today is a simple one: I urge the General Assembly to put the issue of high quality public education to the people of this state to decide.
      Our sister states of Virginia and Florida have shown the way by amending their constitutions to require their states to provide high quality education to their children.
      A state’s constitution is its highest standard of governance; it is the document that enshrines our noblest aspirations; it is the final repository of who we are and what we care about as a people. While we were born into an unjust society in South Carolina; we do not have to grow old in it.
      I respectfully urge this subcommittee to favorably report S.1136 so that it might begin its rigorous journey through the legislative process and be given to the people of this state to determine in the general election of 2010. The amendment will serve a useful purpose in setting the highest standards of educational attainment against which future legislative actions and funding can be judged.
      My friend and ally John Rainey, who will address you shortly, and others across this state in a coalition too broad and lengthy to name will soon launch a petition campaign that will allow South Carolinians to participate directly in the legislative process.
      We will soon unveil the web site www.goodbyeminimallyadequate.com where South Carolinians may sign a petition in support of this constitutional amendment. It is our ambitious but accepted challenge to present the signatures of 1,000,000 South Carolinians in support of S.1136 to the General Assembly during the opening day of the 2009 General Assembly.
      We cannot miss this opportunity to involve the people of our state in this process which will, to a large extent tell, us everything about what kind of state we have and what kind of future we will pass on to those who follow.

I’m not entirely sure what practical effect Bud and other advocates believe this wording change will have. I mean, even based on the "minimally adequate" interpretation, all that a court case that started in about 10,000 B.C. has accomplished was a ruling saying South Carolina should do better at early-childhood education, to which the Legislature responded by nodding vigorously, expanding a pilot program, then forgetting about it.

Such a wording change might make a lot of folks feel better, but the fact is that if South Carolina wants to pull up its rural areas to the educational level of the suburbs — which it must do if we’re ever to begin to catch up to the rest of the country — it will do so, whether the constitution mentions education at all or not.

The Midlands Subway System

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Taking off on the subject of this recent post, I thought I’d hark back to a column I wrote in 1998, way before this blog was ever thought of. In it, I set forth my vision of what it might be like if the Midlands had the mass transit amenities of New York or Washington or even Atlanta:

Imagine: Say it’s a few years from now, and you live in Lexington and work in Columbia. You drive the mile or so to the station and leave your car in a parking lot. You take your seat and ride the old Southern line that parallels Highway 1 into the city. Call it the A line.
Despite all the stops, you get downtown in less time than it takes to drive, while getting ahead on work or (better yet) reading the paper. You change trains at the Vista Center station near the new arena and conference center.
Say you work where I do, near Williams-Brice Stadium (and why wouldn’t you; this is my dream, after all). You take the C line down one of the very tracks that used to frustrate you in your driving days (if you can’t beat the trains, join them). You get off within a block of work.
A few hours later, when you have a lunch appointment in Five Points, you take a quick ride back up to Vista Center, then through the underground stretch beneath the State House complex and the USC campus on the eastern reach of the A line.
Need to shop after work? Take the C all the way out to Columbiana, or the D along Two-Notch to Columbia Mall. (Where does the B line go? Out toward Lake Murray, which means it runs between 378 and the Saluda River, right by my house.)

Now that there’s so much more growth out to the northeast I suppose we could extend the D farther out. The C would be longer, too. And the A might need a spur that would run out Garners Ferry. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Yeah, I was dreaming then and I’m dreaming now — like the guy in that movie "Singles," who kept talking about his mass transit dream (in Seattle, I think it was), and anyone he told it to would say, "Yeah, but I love my car."

But it’s a nice dream. Here’s the rest of that column, by the way — but I already gave you the relevant part.

Samuel’s Florida solution: The Solomon approach

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My PDA kept buzzing with new e-mail while I was trying to get some lunch in New York Sunday, and it was Samuel Tenenbaum letting me know that a certain other editorial page editor had bought into his idea on what to do about Florida. An excerpt:

If the key concern is really about being fair to Florida and Michigan Democrats, there is a simple solution proposed by my friend Samuel Tenanbaum, a major Democratic fundraiser in South Carolina, that the Barack Obama campaign has indicated it could support.
Let’s call it the Solomon Solution: Seat the Florida and Michigan delegations at the convention and divide their votes equally between Clinton and Obama. That would be a fair deal for Clinton, who won 50 percent of the vote in Florida and 55 percent in Michigan, where Obama’s name was not even on the ballot. An even split would not change the delegate math in either candidate’s favor, but it would accomplish what everyone says they want – the seating of these two "rogue" delegations at the convention.
It may not be an ideal solution, but it’s better than any of the other ideas on the table. And best of all, it wouldn’t cost a dime.

Philip Gailey misspelled Samuel’s name, but Samuel doesn’t care about that — the idea’s the thing. Personally, I’m not sold on it, but it has a certain elegance to it, I’ll admit.

I’m not sure how we’d deal with this in the UnParty, if we were ever to have such a problem.

To endorse or not to endorse

32 Replies

Here’s a good "talk amongst yourselves" topic.

As regular readers know, I’ve written a lot over the last few years on the topic of the newspaper’s endorsements — from the high-altitude stuff like why we do them and how we do them, to the nitty-gritty of how we came to decide on a particular endorsement, and the party affiliations and won-lost record of candidates we’ve backed, and plenty of other stuff that’s probably way more than you ever wanted to know.

But there is a significant anti-endorsement faction in the news trade that simply doesn’t want us to do them at all. That’s a tempting proposition when I’ve just been through something like these presidential primaries, and when starting next week I’ll be resuming the gantlet with city elections, then county and state primaries, and then the general elections themselves, with scarcely a moment to breathe. Nevertheless, I find the arguments of the "don’t do ’em" crowd unmoving. I’ve run across two such arguments in the past week.

The first was in TIME magazine, which basically doesn’t have a dog in the fight, not even being a newspaper. A longtime thoughtful reader brought the piece to Cindi’s attention, and she brought it to mine. It’s called "Should Newspapers Still Be Taking Sides?" An excerpt:

I confess that I’ve never quite understood why newspapers endorse
presidential candidates. Sure, I know the history and the tradition,
the fact that newspapers in the 18th and 19th centuries were often
affiliated with political parties, but why do they do it now? Why do it
at a time when the credibility and viability of the press are at
all-time lows? More important, why do it at a time when readers,
especially young readers, question the objectivity of newspapers in
particular and the media in general?

This guy’s argument reminds me of one that Tony Ridder, the top dog of the now-defunct Knight Ridder, made to a roomful of KR editorial page editors in the waning days of the empire (early 2005). Never mind why there was such a gathering of EPEs when corporate had zero say in the running or content of our editorial pages, but they use to hold such meetings about once every five years whether I wanted them to or not. Anyway, Tony’s argument didn’t go as far as this guy’s, he just didn’t want us endorsing in presidential elections any more. His spiel sort of amounted to, "Golly, folks, why do this when it just makes a lot of folks mad at us?" In fairness, he saw it as a distraction to our main missions, which is writing about our respective local communities. We mostly just stared at him blankly. If anyone in the room took his advice to heart, I don’t know about it — and in any case, by the time of the next presidential election (this one), there was no more Knight Ridder.

Then, there was this piece in The New York Observer about the NYT‘s policy against its op-ed columnists endorsing candidates. An excerpt:

Unlike the board that puts together The Times’ endorsements, they can say whatever they want. They can even court an R rating. They cannot, however, endorse a candidate.

“I came here in 1995 and Howell Raines told me
about it,” said Gail Collins, the former editorial director, who is now
herself a columnist. “His thought, as I understood it, was that it
would confuse people. Columnists could hint, and could make it clear,
but we couldn’t explicitly say it.” The logic goes like this: If Gail
Collins endorses Barack Obama, then a reader might confuse it for the New York Times newspaper endorsing Barack Obama.

This makes no sense to me, but then I’ve never been in the position of having staff op-ed columnists who were not members of the editorial board, so it’s hard for me to imagine. Personally, I wish they’d go ahead an overtly state the preferences that some of them so obviously have, instead of hiding behind this absurdly small, thin fig leaf of impartiality. I mean, come on — do you really doubt whom Paul Krugman preferred in the last two presidential elections?

As David Brook was quoted as saying in the piece, such obfuscation is a great challenge to a writer: "It’s like a two-year process of deliberation without reading the verdict."

Of course, we write personal columns on the editorial page of The State (not op-ed), and those columns are intentionally separate from editorials, which express consensus opinions. And no, we never write "I endorse so-and-so" in columns, but for slightly different reasons. One, there’s the word itself — endorsement is reserved for the newspaper itself, not for individual writers. Also, however many good things we might say about one candidate or bad things about another, there’s always a little bit of hanging back from a final, total commitment because we know we can get embarrassed by having the real endorsement go against us when we get around to it as a board.

Of course, readers of my work will note that as time goes by, I worry less and less about that. I’m more interested in being completely candid with readers as to what I think here and now, and less concerned with the potential embarrassment of losing the endorsement debate. My mania for disclosure even extends to publicly wallowing in my humiliation and mortification at losing the argument so spectacularly in 2000. But not everyone is that weird; others prefer to keep their dignity, and I respect that.

Anyway, I thought I’d share these pieces with you. You decide what you think. And I know you will. That’s one of the reasons why I’m so dismissive of one of the lamest arguments mounted against endorsements — which the TIME guy dusts off and trots out yet again: That we shouldn’t tell people how to vote.

As if we could.

Wm. F. Buckley dead at 82

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William F. Buckley has died, in case you haven’t heard. The guy I first remember from impersonations of him in the 60s (David Frye, I believe), founder of a modern conservative movement brought into being on the pages of the National Review, a man with close S.C. ties…

What to say about him? I can’t stop and say anything right now, as I’m in the middle of editing copy for tomorrow’s pages. Robert and I just had a discussion for a cartoon about Buckley (Robert’s big on elegiacal cartoons), but I haven’t liked any of the ideas. He was too complex to sum up simply, which cartoons tend to do.

Anyway, I thought I’d let y’all know.

Columbia City Council District 3 candidates

So is Kirsh still on the Club’s ‘nice’ list?

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What did you think when you read John Monk’s piece over the weekend about Herb Kirsh’s bill to limit contributions by Howard Rich and others who get around limits now by giving through multiple corporations?

I just had one, simple thought: Will Rep. Kirsh still be on the Club for Growth’s list of approved legislators, or did he just make the "naughty" list?

Yes, I realize Howard Rich and the Club are different things, but they share the same aims. And the effort of groups with similar aims to stack the Legislature in the image of Mark Sanford is a very sore subject at the State House, where the governor is persona non grata.

bradwarthen.com

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