Category Archives: Marketplace of ideas

Have we lost the war? Dems say yes, most say no

Here’s a crucial split in the electorate: Zogby says that while most Americans say the war in Iraq is not a lost cause, two out of three Democrats take the Harry Reid view:

A majority of Americans – 54% – believe the United States has not
lost the war in Iraq, but there is dramatic disagreement on the question between
Democrats and Republicans, a new UPI/Zogby Interactive poll shows. While two in
three Democrats (66%) said the war effort has already failed, just 9% of
Republicans say the same.

There’s a certain absurdity in focusing on whether Americans think the war is lost, as opposed to whether it is, which is a different thing entirely.

Unfortunately for the soldiers with their lives on the line, whether their struggles are for naught or not depends upon the political environment back home. So, as wrong as it may seem, a professional soldier can be kicking insurgent butt while winning hearts and minds among those Iraqis who want a decent country to live in, but if enough Americans back home are convinced it’s useless, the battle is lost. Why? Because the despair-mongers back home will say — regardless of reality on the ground — come home.

Weird, ain’t it? But so is life in our increasingly democratic republic.

The evolving standard: Is this comment worth approving?

1 Reply

Lying fallow among the unapproved comments down in the engine room of the blog is an offering from someone who styles himself (or herself) "bud’s friend."

Come on — I have long been torn about whether to allow anonymous comments in this forum, and up to now have let them in, but subjected them to greater scrutiny than those from folks with the courage and integrity to put their names behind their opinions. But I’m afraid that "bud’s friend" is a bit too much to ask. What sort of credential is that — you don’t know me, but I’m a friend of this other guy you don’t know. That wouldn’t get you in to a speakeasy. It’s not going to get you in here.

Now might be a good time for an update on the evolving standards for comments on this blog. We’ve been through several stages:

For the first year or so, I let in anything, and rejected nothing.

After it became clear that the nasty atmosphere of ad hominem bullying and partisan name-calling was running off the very kind of thoughtful readership I sought, I set a "double standard:" If you weren’t willing to stand behind a comment with your own, verifiable name, your comments were subject to summary deletion.

A few of our anonymous troublemakers made such insistent nuisances of themselves that I banned them from the blog.

Some of the exiles began a ridiculous game of repeatedly coming back (with a frequency that was shocking, in terms of the amount of time they were spending on the site) with slightly changed names, to get around the automatic blocking.

So after a false start or two ("authentication" was a bust), I drew a new line: For your comment to appear on the blog, I have to approve it. I really, really hated this step — and still do (if only for the extra work) — but what are you going to do in a world filled with the Web equivalent of vandals?

That development has given me a much more intimate acquaintance with individual comments. As long as they appeared without any effort on my part, the standards could remain pretty low. Basically, I don’t have time to spare to do this blog at ALL, much less to chase down every comment that lowers the bar. But when I have to spend time on it anyway — when no comment appears without a positive action on my part — a new question enters my mind: "Why should I approve this?" What does it add? In what way does this comment make the dialogue on this blog better?

Once I start thinking along those lines, pretty much all anonymous comments are endangered — by which I mean they are in danger of sitting right where you left them, because I am not inclined to throw MY back out leaning over to pick them up and publish them.

And while I continue to grant much, much greater latitude to those of you using verifiable real names, you are not completely immune. As I announced just over a year ago, those who stand behind their comments "will be free to post pretty much whatever they want." That "pretty much" means there are standards, even for you.

I say all this because I’ve been getting sidebar complaints from some folks who use bogus handles complaining that they don’t always get approved. And once or twice, I’ve heard from NAMED people who didn’t approved. (Those, at least — on the rare occasions that they occur — will get a reply.)

Everyone should remember: The question is no longer, why would I REJECT this comment? Now, it’s why would I approve it. That really moves the line.

Oh, and not to seem inhospitable or anything, but anyone who doesn’t like these conditions can go start his own blog, and say whatever he likes. There are a number of sites where you can do so for free.

‘ED in ’08’ calls out the NEA

6 Replies

This is weirdly close to the recent related post, so the people who like to accuse will claim that I’m paying extra-special attention to this because ED in ’08 advertises on my blog, but since Cindi passed it on to me, I’ll show just how much I care for such folks’ opinions by passing it on to you (wait — did I say that out loud? how do I let them know because of the unfreezing process, I have no inner monologue?):

WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 //PRNewswire-USNewswire// — Today Marc Lampkin, Strong American Schools’ ED in ’08 executive director, posted a blog entry on the Huffington Post criticizing a recent release from the National Education Association that responded to the recent Democratic debate and the candidates’ positions on performance pay for teachers.
"Instead of celebrating the dawn of a true education debate, some groups want to end it. For example, the National Education Association released a press statement that seems to imply all the candidates answered the question the exact same way — they were against it.
"Now that’s just mystifying to me. Anyone who watched Sunday’s debate should have seen a difference of opinion among the candidates. Yes, two candidates came out firmly against it. But when Stephanopoulos said ‘no one on the stage is for merit pay for teachers,’ one candidate jumped in to say that he definitely is for it. A second then asked for more time to clarify that he is for performance pay under certain circumstances. And a third offered his own version of performance pay-providing competitive salaries to compete with fields like engineering for top college students.
"That’s exactly the kind of education debate we should be having — and the kind Americans deserve! Maybe the NEA just wasn’t watching closely. Maybe they simply missed the point. With American schools needing to hire 2 million new teachers over the next decade, we should all be discussing how to attract America’s best and brightest to teach our students-presidential candidates included. Let’s not squelch that important debate just as it’s getting started."

Cindi sent me that because I was thinking about writing in my Sunday column about all these groups that are making their presence felt in S.C., from AARP to ONE, and Mike and I had been expressing thoughts about how the limitations, and even deleterious effects, of such blogs (Mike’s quote: "a question of Astroturf replacing grass roots") and Cindi stuck up for them, saying they were, too, having a good effect, and she sent me the above release as her way of saying, See? So there.

I will say that in this case, this particular rep of the Bill Gates-funded group is doing a good thing. Readers of our pages will know that we favor merit pay, so how dare the NEA try to squelch debate, via the time-honored dishonest tactic of convincing everyone it’s already squelched. This does no service to the kids in public schools, it certainly doesn’t help the Democratic candidates with us swing voters, and, believe it or not, it does the NEA no good either — at least, it does them no good when their fannies are exposed like this.

Here’s hoping the NEA takes out advertising on my blog, too, so I can demonstrate my independence by kicking them some more over merit pay… (wait! did I say that out loud, too…?)

Obama’s right about Pakistan. But who would follow?

24 Replies

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
BARACK OBAMA was right to threaten to invade Pakistan in order to hit al-Qaida, quite literally, where it lives. And as long as we’re on this tack, remind me again why it is that we’re not at war with Iran.
OK, OK, I know the reasons: Our military is overextended; the American people lack the appetite; the nutball factor is only an inch deep in Iran, and once you get past Ahmadinejad and the more radical mullahs the Iranian people aren’t so bad, but they’d get crazy quick if we attacked, and so forth.
I can also come up with reasons not to invade Pakistan, or even to talk about invading Pakistan. We’ve heard them often enough. Pakistan is (and say this in reverent tones) a sovereign country; Pervez Musharraf is our “friend”; we need him helping us in the War on Terror; he is already politically weak and this could do him in; he could be replaced by Islamists sufficiently radical that they would actively support Osama bin Laden and friends, rather than merely fail to look aggressively enough to find them; fighting our way into, and seeking a needle in, the towering, rocky haystacks of that region is easier said than done, and on and on.
But when you get down to it, it all boils down to the reason I mentioned in passing in the first instance — Americans lack the appetite. So with a long line of people vying to be our new commander in chief, it’s helpful when one of them breaks out of the mold of what we might want to hear, and spells out a real challenge before us.
Most of us believe that the baddest bad guys in this War on Terror have been hiding in, and more relevantly operating from, the remote reaches of western Pakistan ever since they slipped through our fingers in 2001.
The diplomatic and strategic delicacy that the Bush administration (contrary to its image) has demonstrated with regard to the generalissimo in Pakistan has been something to behold. Now we see this guy we have done so much, by our self-restraint, to build up on the verge of collapse. We could end up with the crazy clerics anyway, or at least a surrender to, or sharing of power with, Benazir Bhutto.
But even if all the conditions were right abroad — even if the mountains were leveled and a new regime in Islamabad sent our Army an engraved invitation along with Mapquest directions to bin Laden’s cave — we’d still have the problem of American political shyness.
Same deal with Iran. In the past week a senior U.S. general announced that elite Iranian troops are in Iraq training Shiite militias in how to better kill Americans — and Sunnis, of course.
So it is that the United States is asking the United Nations to declare the Revolutionary Guard Corps — less a military outfit than a sort of government-sanctioned Mafia family, with huge legit covers in pumping oil, operating ports and manufacturing pharmaceuticals — a terrorist organization.
What is the response of the Revolutionary Guards to all this? Well, they’re not exactly gluing halos to their turbans. The head of the Guard Corps promised that “America will receive a heavier punch from the guards in the future.”
General Yahya Rahim Safavi was quoted in an Iranian newspaper as adding, “We will never remain silent in the face of US pressure and we will use our leverage against them.”
And the United States is engaged in debate with other “civilized” nations over what names we will call these thugs. The world’s strongest nation — its one “indispensable nation,” to quote President Clinton’s secretary of state — ought to be able to work up a more muscular response than that. If we hadn’t gained a recent reputation for shyness, all we’d really have to do with those muscles is flex them.
The one thing I liked about George W. Bush was that he was able to convince the world’s bad guys (and a lot of our friends, too, but you can’t have everything) that he was crazy enough to cross borders to go after them, if they gave him half an excuse. This worked, as long as the American people were behind him.
If only the next president were able to project similar willingness to act, and be credible about it. A saber rattled by such a leader can put a stop to much dangerous nonsense in the world.
But does the will exist in the American electorate? Not now, it doesn’t. When Obama said his tough piece, the nation sort of patted its charismatic prodigy on his head and explained that he was green and untested, and was bound to spout silly things now and then. (Rudy Giuliani, to his credit, said Obama was right. Others tut-tutted over the “rookie mistake.”)
While we’re thinking about who’s going to lead the United States, maybe we’d better think about whether America will follow a leader who says what ought to be said — whether it’s on Iraq, Pakistan or Iran, or energy policy. Will we follow a president who tells us we should increase the price of gasoline rather than moaning about how “high” it is? How about a president who says we’re going to have to pay more for less in Social Security benefits in the future?
Winning in Iraq and chasing down bin Laden are not necessarily either/or alternatives. This nation is large enough, rich enough and militarily savvy enough to field a much larger, more versatile force. Can you say “draft”? Well, actually, no — within the context of American politics with a presidential election coming up, you can’t. Not without being hooted down.
That crowd of candidates is vying to lead a crippled giant. And the giant, sitting there fecklessly munching junk food and watching “reality” TV, can only blame himself for his condition.

Ex-Surgeon General Carmona visits

7 Replies

Dr. Richard Carmona, former U.S. Surgeon General, came by Tuesday to promote the worthy agenda of the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease. That’s yet another of those groups — such as this one, and this one, and this one (not to mention the one that advertises at the top of this blog) — that has established a presence in South Carolina in order to try to get the presidential candidates to address their issues of concern. As with the others, the effort is avowedly nonpartisan, and just as avowedly disinclined to promote any one solution over others.

I urge you to read about the group and its aims at this address.

Anyway, I asked the former Surgeon General whether his recent headline-making appearance at a congressional hearing — at which he complained that the Bush Administration, as is its wont, pressured him to get in line politically, regardless of science — had any effect on his ability to be heard across the political spectrum. I didn’t see why it should have, logically speaking, but I had long ago realized that political partisans don’t feel compelled to speak logically. His response was encouraging:

As long as I had him, I figured I’d ask him what he thought about South Carolina’s recent failed efforts to raise our cigarette tax:

Finally, I asked the question that I had always wanted to ask, and which I would not have been allowed to ask if my more task-oriented colleagues had been present (but fortunately, they were not): What’s with the Navy uniform (which one could also word, How come a "general" is wearing an admiral’s uniform?)

Why would abortion foes exempt rape?

41 Replies

Today, I got this e-mail from a reader:

I always enjoy your editorials and read them whenever I see that you are featured in the State (though I normally refer to the "State" as the "Local "since its sports bias is almost always limited to Columbia-area teams).
I enjoyed reading your editorial board interview with Sam Brownback, but am curious about something.
I read some time back that Brownback stated that a woman raped should be forced to carry the child to term. Did this or a similar comment come up in your interview?

Thanks and keep writing…

Which prompted me to break my rule and respond (actually, if I respond and then post it on my blog, it’s not really breaking the rule — since the rule is, after all, designed to get people to comment on the blog instead of via e-mail):

Not that I recall. But why would anyone who opposes abortion make exceptions in the case of rape? I’ve always had trouble understanding that. It seems to be a case of emotion overriding logic.
If we’re talking about a human life, why would it cease to be worth protecting in the case of rape? We don’t have the death penalty for rape, even in the case of the perpetrator. So why would we put the unborn result of the rape to death? It doesn’t make sense.
Yes, it’s horrible for the victim. But everything about rape is horrible. If one is truly opposed to abortion, the fact that a pregnancy resulted from rape should not negate one’s position.
I’m guessing — from your choice of words (specifically, your use of "forced") — that you object to Brownback’s position on abortion. Would you find it LESS objectionable if he said "except in cases of abortion?" If so, why? I ask this less from a pro-life perspective than from one of logical consistency. One of my colleagues who is pro-choice often says she finds pro-life people who don’t make such exceptions more worthy of respect. I think she’s right (narrowly speaking) to take that view.
What do you think?

If this exchange follows the usual pattern (and I hope it won’t), it will spin off into misunderstanding and miscommunication, but I ask once again: If you believe (as do I) that abortion ends a human life, why again would it be OK just because the horrible circumstances of a rape are involved? Logically speaking, of course.

That infuriating John McCain, or, How do you pitch to a hero?

6 Replies

Mccain1

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
HOW ARE YOU supposed to do your job with professional detachment when every time you see one of the main guys running for president, every time you read about him, every time he opens his mouth or takes an action in public, you think, “Hero”?
How are you supposed to keep your rep when you keep thinking, I admire this guy? Of all things, admire! It’s embarrassing.
On top of that, how do you do it when so many of the smart, hip, unfettered, scalpel-minded professionals around you snort when the hero’s name is mentioned, and use terms like “has-been” and “loser” and “that poor old guy”?
It’s not easy. Maybe it’s not even possible. It wasn’t possible on Monday, when John McCain visited our editorial board.
I presided as usual, asking most of the questions and so forth. But I never quite hit my stride. I was uneasy; I stumbled in bringing forth the simplest questions. It was weird. I’d pitched to this guy a number of times before with no trouble, even in post-season play. And here he was stepping up to bat in my ball park, where the rubber on the mound has molded itself to my cleats, and I can’t put a simple fastball over the plate, much less a curve.
I kept remembering our last formal meeting with him, in 2000, on the day that we would decide whom Mccain3
to endorse in a GOP primary that would either slingshot him onward toward victory, or enable George W. Bush to stop his insurgency cold. I wasn’t out of sorts like this. I had stated my case — my strong belief that we should endorse Sen. McCain — several days before in a 4,000-word memo to my then-publisher, a committed Bush man. I was fully prepared to make it again to the full board once the candidate left the room. And I was ready to lose like a pro if it came to that. Which it did.
But now, 9/11 has happened. The nation is at war, and bitterly divided, even over whether we’re “at war.” And I keep thinking — as I sit a couple of feet from the candidate, aiming my digital camera with my left hand, scribbling the occasional haphazard note with my right, glancing from time to time at the audio recorder on the table to note how many minutes into the interview he said such-and-such, so busy recording the event that I don’t really have time to be there — this is the guy who should have been president for the past seven years.
The odd thing is, a lot of people who now dismiss the McCain candidacy also believe he should have been president — that we’d be less divided at home, more admired abroad, more successful at war. But they talk like the poor old guy missed his chance. It’s like candidates have “sell by” dates stamped on them like bacon, and his was several years back. Too bad for him, they say. But I think, too bad for the nation — if they’re right.
The best thing for me, as a professional critic, as a jaded observer, would be for those people to be right. I have no trouble assessing the relative merits of the other candidates in either major party. I even like some of them. Life could be good, professionally speaking, if that old “hero” guy really did just fade away.
But he doesn’t. There he is, sitting there, being all honest and straightforward and fair-minded and brave and admirable. Dang.
Go ahead, get mad at him. He’s let the moment get away from him. You can’t take a man seriously as a leader when he’s blown all that money only to lose ground, when he can’t stop his hired rats from diving overboard. Focus on his mottled scars. Murmur about how even the best of men slow down with age.
But then you think about how this guy aged early. You look at his awkwardness as he holds his coffee cup, and you think about how the North Vietnamese strung him up by his broken arms, and all he had to do to end it was agree to go home. But he wouldn’t.
That was then, of course, but it’s just as bad now. Think about how you asked him several months ago why he thought he had to do something about immigration now, when the only people who cared passionately about the issue and would vote on the basis of that one thing were the ones who would hate him forever for being sensible about it. He had no excuse; he just thought it was the right thing to do.
Mccainstarbucks
You think of all the Democrats and “moderates” who egged him on when he was Bush’s No. 1 critic (which he still is, if you actually listen), but who now dismiss him as the president’s “lapdog” because he (gasp!) — supports the surge and actually, if you can stand it, thinks it’s working! These political goldfish forget that their favorite maverick criticized Bush for not sending enough troops, so of course he supports a “surge” when the president knuckles under and implements one.
Oh, but don’t speak of such people dismissively. This ridiculously admirable guy at the end of the table, who long ago forgave both his communist torturers and the protesters at home who would have spit on him given the chance, won’t have it. When I speak less than flatteringly of the impatience of Americans on Iraq, he corrects me, and relates a list of perfectly good reasons for them to be fed up.
So when it’s over, you try to produce a McCain column for Wednesday, but you can’t. Wednesday, Sam Brownback steps to the same plate, and your arm is fine. You interrogate the guy, assess him, reach a conclusion, and slap a column on the Thursday page. Three up, three down. You’ve got your stuff back.
But Sunday’s deadline draws nearer, and it’s gone again. Desperate, you think: How about a bulleted list of what he said Monday? There’s plenty of it. Naw, that’s a news story, not an opinion column.
And you know, you just know, that the one thing you can’t write is the truth, which is that you just admire the hell out of this infuriating old guy. The fans won’t stand for it. You can hear the beer bottles clattering around you on the mound already.
But it’s no use. You just can’t get the ball across today.

For actual information regarding the McCain interview, and more, go to http://blogs.
thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/.

Audio: Brownback’s proposal to end the fear of cancer

Sam Brownback of Kansas: The Beatific Conservative

5 Replies

Brownback_028

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
TO SAM BROWNBACK of Kansas, a “kinder, gentler” America is more than just a line from a speech by Peggy Noonan. It’s about who he is, what he believes. It’s about the kind of America he would like to lead.
The bumper-sticker take on Mr. Brownback is that he’s the Christian Conservative in the GOP presidential field — or one of them, anyway. But in his case, we’re talking actual Christianity, as in the Beatitudes.
Or maybe we’re talking Micah 6:8 — as president, he says he would act justly, love mercy and walk humbly.
That’s what drew Columbia businessman Hal Stevenson, a board member and former chairman of the Palmetto Family Council, to the Brownback camp. He was disillusioned by “some of the so-called ‘Christian Right… I was looking for someone who exhibits, and walks the walk that they talk, and that’s a rare thing in politics.”
When Sen. Brownback met with our editorial board Wednesday, I was impressed as well. I was struck by how interesting things can be when you get off the path beaten by national TV news and the covers of slick magazines. You find a guy who brings “Christian” and “conservative” together in ways that belie our common political vocabulary.
Sure, he’s adamantly pro-life. But for him, that means being “whole life” as well — “Life’s sacred in the womb, but I think it’s also sacred in Darfur.” He’s just as concerned about genocide or starvation or slave traffic in Africa or North Korea as about abortion clinics in Peoria. Did he get there, as a Catholic convert, via the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin’s “consistent ethic of life?” No — he explains that initially, he was more influenced by “the great theologian Bono.”
This sort of atypical association plays out again and again. His plan for Iraq is the same as Joe Biden’s, quite literally. (You know Joe Biden — the Democrat who has campaigned in South Carolina the longest and hardest, the one who’s arguably the best-qualified candidate in that field, but you don’t hear about him much on TV? Yeah, that Joe Biden….) Their bill would partition the country more along the lines of the old Ottoman Empire.
I have some doubts about that plan, but let’s suppose it worked, and we achieved some sort of stasis in Iraq. What about the next crisis, and the next one after that? What about Sudan, Iran, North Korea? What is America’s proper stance toward the world?
“I think we’ve got to walk around the world wiser and more humble,” he said. It’s an answer you might expect from Jimmy Carter, or a flower-bedecked pacifist at an antiwar vigil. Sure, the true conservative position, from Pat Buchanan to George Will, has been one of aversion to international hubris. But Sam Brownback carries it off without a tinge of either fascism or pomposity, and that sets him apart.
“Africa’s moving. Latin America is moving,” he said. “That’s where I’m talking about walking wiser and humbler. The first step in Latin America is going to be to go there and just listen.” Why is it, we should ask ourselves, “that a Chavez can come forward with his old, bad ideas, and win elections?”
“People in Latin America are saying, my quality of life has not improved.” And as a result, they’re willing to go with a dictator. “I think we need to go there and say, what is it we can do to help these economies grow…. It’s our big problem with Mexico and immigration.”
Back to Africa: “This is a place where America’s goodness can really make a big difference to a lot of people in the world, and it would be in our long-term vital and strategic interest.”
Asked about domestic issues, he cites “rebuilding the family” as his top concern. That may sound like standard, right-off-the-shelf Christian Right talk. But he comes to it more via Daniel Patrick Moynihan than James Dobson. He said he’s had it with beating his head against the brick hearts of Hollywood producers, and draws an analogy to smoking: Sure, people knew there was a connection between cigarettes and their nagging coughs, but Big Tobacco had room to dissemble until a direct, scientific line was drawn between their product and lung cancer.
Just as the government now puts out unemployment statistics, he would have it gather and release data on out-of-wedlock childbirth, marriages ending in divorce, and the empirically demonstrable connections between ubiquitous pornography and a variety of social pathologies. He’d put the data out there, and let society decide from there how to react. But first, you need the data.
His second domestic issue is energy (push electric cars) and his third is health care (he would “end deaths to cancer in 10 years”). He’s a conservative, but by no means one who wants government to butt out of our lives.
“Humility, as a nation or as individuals, is an effective thing,” Mr. Stevenson said in explaining his support for Sen. Brownback. “It’s the right thing, and it’s also a Christian principle.”
But that doesn’t mean you don’t take action. The Kansan summed up his attitude on many issues, foreign and domestic, in describing his reaction to Darfur: “Well you look at that, and you know that’s something that ought to be addressed… I mean, you’re the most powerful nation in the world… you can’t learn about these things and then say, well, I guess I’m just not going to do anything about it.”
Well, some could. But it reflects to Sam Brownback’s credit that he says he could not.

Brownback_037

Rudy speaking in Columbia on immigration, health care

8 Replies

Rudy Giuliani was playing to a very small crowd — the seats immediately behind him were (as often the case with such events) stacked with some of his best-known local supporters, such as Rusty DePass and Gayle Averyt, hardly "faces in the crowd" in this town — but he was in fine form as he addressed his "town-hall" meeting at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center.

On both immigration and health care, he managed to slip in the idea that America is one heck of a great place (which it is). On immigration, that’s why all those bothersome illegals want to come here. On health care, the fact that folks who have a choice come to this country for health care rather than vice versa is in his book (but not in mine) evidence that we do, too have the best system among advanced countries.

Anyway, enjoy my rough videos from this afternoon’s session. (By the way, with regard to what I said about it being a "small crowd" — note that in the second clip, many of the seats in the not-so-well-lit sections were empty. I should add that at least a couple of those that were not empty were taken up by those lazy freeloaders in the working press.)

My week in the ‘phony’ Spin Cycle

16 Replies

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
HAD YOU asked me on Monday what I would be writing about for Sunday, a second column dealing — even peripherally — with presidential wannabe John Edwards would have been the last thing I would have guessed.
Yet here I am. What choice do I have? I’ve spent so much time this past week dealing with the reaction from the first one that I haven’t had time to develop anything on another topic.
It was just a midweek column, not worthy of a Sunday slot, a back-burner thing I had promised to address several months earlier on my blog, after readers challenged me for calling the man a “phony” without explaining the series of experiences that had led to that impression — which is all it was.
(And in case you didn’t read that column and are wondering what those experiences were, I have neither the space nor inclination to repeat them here. They took up a whole column the first time. You can find it on my blog. The address is below.)
But without ever intending or wanting to, I got caught up in the Spin Cycle of national politics. My musings had become, for that brief moment, Topic A — or at least B or C or D — and believe me: You don’t even want to be Topic Z in that alphabet.
Subsequent events didn’t follow each other in any way that made sense, so I’ll just throw them out in no particular order:

The Drudge Report picked up my column Tuesday morning, which launched the craziness as much as any one thing.
The New York Post called asking to reprint it, which it did the following day under the headline, “POOR LITTLE PHONY: JOHN EDWARDS’ FAKE EMPATHY.”
Dennis Miller of “Saturday Night Live” fame interviewed me on his radio show Thursday.
I got mocked by the “Wonkette”: “Brad Warthen of the South Carolina’s The State has a controversial opinion about John Edwards! His controversial opinion, which he, Brad Warthen, thought of himself, and which he is going to share… with you now, is as follows: John Edwards is a phony! A big fat phony!”
After two more radio shows called — one from Charlotte (for Thursday), another from Canada (for today), I called Andy Gobeil so that S.C. ETV wouldn’t miss out, and he had me on his show Friday morning.
My column was the lead political story on the Fox News network Tuesday night. Or rather, the response the Edwards campaign felt compelled to produce — and I do feel sorry for them for that — was the lead story. The story posted online began: “John Edwards’ campaign scoffed Tuesday at a new effort to depict the Democratic presidential candidate as phony after an influential columnist for a newspaper in Edwards’ birth state wrote that his personal experiences only reinforce his image of Edwards as plastic.”
My blog had its third-biggest day ever Tuesday with 5,825 page views, and its fourth-biggest on Wednesday. The biggest ever had been in June, when state Treasurer Thomas Ravenel was indicted. That made sense. This did not.
ABC News National Senior Correspondent Jake Tapper wrote on his blog about my “rather nasty op-ed” in these terms: “I personally find the evidence rather thin for such a scathing verbal attack.” Hey, if I had meant to mount a “scathing verbal attack,” I would have come up with some thicker stuff.
Someone named Pamela Leavey, writing on “The Democratic Daily,” said I was “Spewing Right-Wing Talking Points About John Edwards,” and thereby providing “a classic example of what’s wrong with our media.”

Obama_detail
I guess I had been spewing “Left-Wing Talking Points” when I said nice things about Barack Obama the week before. Of course, Ms. Leavey wouldn’t know about that, because she had probably never heard of me before Tuesday. That was true of most of the people commenting.
And yet, they seemed to think they knew an awful lot about me. Their confidence in passing judgment was far greater than my own. All I had done was describe impressions I had formed from actual experiences in my life. I didn’t consider them any better than anyone else’s experiences. When Zeke Stokes wrote in saying that when he worked on the Edwards campaign earlier this year he had formed a very different impression, I urged readers to take what he said every bit as seriously as what I had said.
But folks out in the blogosphere or in the 24/7 political spin cycle don’t have time for reflections upon personal experience. They have a convenient short-hand vocabulary for passing judgment instantly upon anything and everything, and all of it is based in childishly simplistic, partisan labels: “He’s one of them! I don’t like them!” or “He’s one of us! Everything he says is true!”
Among the more than 1,500 unread e-mails awaiting me Tuesday morning were quite a few from across the country praising or damning me for having expressed my opinion. Many were as shallow as Ms. Leavey’s “reflections.”
But here and there were messages from someone who got the point, which was this: We all form subjective impressions, often unconsciously. In my column I tried to determine exactly when and where I had picked up the bits that formed my overall impression of this one guy among many running for president. I thought that such an airing would be mildly interesting to readers, who often wonder what sorts of gut “biases” inform what we write in the paper, and where they come from.
A few readers appreciated that, saying that there had been something about Edwards that had nagged at them, and my column had helped them define it: “You hit something in me that I had not been able to figure out,” wrote Glenice Pearson. “Thanks for explaining what was wrong with him,” wrote Nancy Padgett. “I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t enthuse even though he is a SC boy.”
In turn, I appreciate those few readers who got it. The rest of it I could have done without.

Slap 55 mph on our ‘friends’ the Saudis

21 Replies

My friend and sometime Energy Party think-tanker Samuel Tenenbaum sees justification for a true, enforced, 55-mph speed limit in many things — including this latest outrage from Saudi Arabia: The Jerusalem Post reports that our good friends over at the house of Saud are threatening to confiscate Christian and Jewish tourists’ Bibles.

Quoth Samuel:

Now why are we sending hundred of millions of dollars to them when they have no respect for any of us? Time for 55mph and deny them petrodollars to teach hate, fund terrorists, and deny all of humanity our equality! Wake up !!!!!!!!!!!!!! Let’s stop all the other bromides that much of our establishment is putting out about the war on terror and energy conservation !We are funding our own executioners. Lenin said we would sell the rope that they would hang us with. He is right but he was with the wrong crowd ! Do we have any organization that will stand up? Do we have any leaders out there? Are they so afraid of their own shadow? I am one disgusted human being!

Samuel Tenenbaum

He gets like that, and it’s one of the things I like about the guy.

Listen to Zeke Stokes

20 Replies

For a whole other perspective on John Edwards, be sure to read Zeke Stokes’ letter on today’s editorial page. For you lazy types, I reproduce it here:

John Edwards
is genuine, caring

During the first half of this year, I was privileged to work with Sen. John Edwards, traveling throughout the United States as he and his wife, Elizabeth, began this campaign for the White House. I have spent hours in cars and on planes with him. I have witnessed him in front of crowds and behind closed doors. And I can tell you without reservation that Brad Warthen misjudged him and painted an inaccurate picture of him in his column Tuesday (“Why I see John Edwards as a big phony”).
John and Elizabeth Edwards are two of the most caring and genuine people I have met in public life, and they have made it their life’s mission to improve the lives of people like so many of those in rural Lee County, where I grew up, and all across South Carolina and the country.
While Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are seizing the limelight, John Edwards is seizing the hearts and minds of the people of this country who have been forgotten: those in poverty, without adequate heath care, without good jobs, without hope. Our nation would be blessed to have him in the White House.

ZEKE STOKES
Columbia

I wrote my column to explain the subjective impression I had formed of John Edwards from my experience, and it was what it was. Zeke — who is a good, trustworthy young man of respect, an up-and-comer in Democratic campaign circles who helped guide Jim Rex to victory last year — formed an entirely different perspective.

I urge you to pay every bit as much attention to his opinion as to mine. That’s why we have letters to the editor — to foster productive dialogue, from which we can all learn.

He doesn’t change my mind about my experiences, but he does give me another perspective to think about. And that’s the point of it all.

My exchange about the governor with ‘Pollyanna’ Scoppe

8 Replies

Yesterday my uncle brought a copy of The State from Florence and let me look at it. When he saw me looking at this story, he asked whether I had expected that. I said certainly not, and started launching into a tirade on the subject before reminding myself I was on vacation and shutting up.

Cindi Scoppe also brought it to my attention, and we had the following exchange. To put it in language that young folk can understand, she was like:

—–Original Message—–
From: Scoppe, Cindi
Sent: Mon 7/30/2007 5:14 PM
To: Warthen, Brad – Internal Email
Subject: FW: E-Release – Gov. Sanford Names Buck Limehouse to ContinueLeading DOT

interesting …

—–Original Message—–
From: Joel Sawyer [mailto:jsawyer@gov.sc.gov]
Sent: Monday, July 30, 2007 4:03 PM
To: Joel Sawyer
Subject: E-Release – Gov. Sanford Names Buck Limehouse to
ContinueLeading DOT

STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA
OFFICE OF THE GOVERNORe
MARK SANFORD, GOVERNOR

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Joel Sawyer

Gov. Sanford Names Buck Limehouse to Continue Leading DOT
LIMEHOUSE TO SERVE AS FIRST SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION

Columbia, S.C. – July 30, 2007 – Gov. Mark Sanford today nominated Buck Limehouse as his Secretary of Transportation under the new authority given by recent Department of Transportation restructuring legislation.

Limehouse, 68, is a former chairman of the DOT board and currently serves as director of the agency. Limehouse will run the day-to-day operations of the agency. Gov. Sanford said Limehouse’s wealth of institutional knowledge of the agency made him the right person for the job while the DOT transitions from its previous management structure to the new restructured model.

"First off, I want to thank Buck for being willing to continue his service to the state as this agency transitions to a more accountable structure," Gov. Sanford said. "Whether it’s been his time as chairman or in his current role as director, I think Buck brings a unique skill set and perspective to this job as we sort out what works and what doesn’t under this new management model. This appointment will give us through the next legislative session to not only see what works and doesn’t work within the agency, but to clearly determine whether or not Buck is the right fit with this administration to bring those changes. Our administration will work closely with the DOT and with Buck to make that agency more accountable and a better steward of taxpayer dollars."

Gov. Sanford signed a DOT reform bill last month that in addition to creating an at-will director appointed by the governor, is also aimed at encouraging sound infrastructure investments by requiring that decisions be made in the context of a statewide plan. It also gives the new Secretary of Transportation the ability to hire and fire down to the deputy director level. The legislation was passed in response to an audit that found a number of problems at the state DOT, including overpaying by tens of millions of dollars for contracts, purposefully manipulating account balances, and violating state law on hiring practices for temporary employees. All told, the report found more than $60 million wasted by the agency that could have been used for infrastructure needs in South Carolina.

Limehouse will be officially named the state’s first Secretary of Transportation upon Senate confirmation.

"It’s an honor to be named the state’s first Secretary of Transportation, and I appreciate the governor picking me for the job," Limehouse said. "I think this legislation is a step forward, but at the same time there are clearly some unworkable components that need to get addressed. In addition to continuing to focus on accountability and good stewardship of taxpayer dollars, part of my role will be to continue looking for ways to improve upon this new legislation, and to work with the legislature toward that goal."

Joel Sawyer
Office of Gov. Mark Sanford

And then I was like:

—–Original Message—–
From: Warthen, Brad – Internal Email
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2007 8:54 AM
To: Scoppe, Cindi
Subject: RE: E-Release – Gov. Sanford Names Buck Limehouse to
ContinueLeading DOT

Actually, it’s just plain weird. First — at the very moment when he had leverage to reform an agency that badly needed it, and had just been re-elected saying that THIS time, he really MEANT it about restructuring — he goes in with an inadequate compromise as his demand, and comes out with next to nothing.

Now he not only capitulates to, but positively affirms, the status quo by naming the official Commission Man to the only position he has any kind of say over.

It’s nothing short of perverse.

And then she was like:

Or perhaps he’s trying to be pragmatic.

1. He has to get the Senate to confirm his choice for secretary, and Limehouse is popular in the Senate.

2. He wants the law changed to give the secretary more power, and Limehouse is saying the law needs to be changed to give the secretary more power, and he has pull in the Legislature.

So why not keep Limehouse in place to see if HE can get the Legislature to improve the law (we know the Legislature isn’t going to FIX the law) to give the secretary more power and the commission less. If it turns out that Limehouse really is a status quo guy, Sanford can replace him after he gets the law changed (or after it becomes clear that the Legislature won’t change it). If, on the other hand, it turns out that Limehouse is merely someone who does the bidding of whoever he works for, and that now that he works for the governor he actually works to reform the agency to the extent that the secretary can, then Sanford can keep him, and it’s a win-win.

So, is it a good thing or a bad thing that we discuss stuff before we do editorials about it, rather than going with our respective individual guts?

Obama’s folks catch Hillary with her foot in it

16 Replies

Well, now, this is interesting. Kevin Griffis, Barack Obama’s communications director for South Carolina, brings my attention to a January statement of Hillary Clinton’s regarding talking to the heads of rogue governments. It looks pretty doggone inconsistent with what she was saying last week about Obama’s intention to do so.

Anyway, here’s what Kevin said:

HEADLINE: how’s this for irony?
Thought I’d send this to you on
background. Just go to the 5:15 mark. I feel like we’re going full
circle. Let me know what you think. The transcript follows.

Here’s the clip:

And here’s the transcript:

OLBERMANN: Would you reach out immediately to the Syrians and the Iranians, even with the tensions between this country and Iran?

SEN. CLINTON: Absolutely. I don’t see it as a sign of weakness. I see it as a sign of strength. You know, our president will not talk to people he considers bad. Well, there are a lot of bad actors in the world, and you don’t make peace with your friends. You’ve got to deal with your enemies, your opponents, people whose interests diverge from yours.

Right now we’re flying blind when it comes to Iran. We don’t have good intelligence about Iran, about what their real motivations are, who’s calling the shots; the same with Syria. And I would immediately open a diplomatic track. And I don’t think we would lose. In fact, I think we would gain insight.

I mean, if we have to take a firm stand against Iran to prevent it from obtaining nuclear weapons, let’s get more information before we do that. Let’s figure out, you know, what levers of power in their society we might be able to pull and push.

Kevin asks what I think. I think that without a whole lot of extenuating explanation that I have not heard from either candidate, both sound awfully naive. There are lots of ways to "deal with your enemies, your opponents," and handing them a propaganda coup is not generally considered the wisest way.

I also think that — unless there was some stuff that explain away this comment that I haven’t seen — Hillary is sounding a lot less tough-minded, and Brooks and Krauthammer might want those bouquets back.

Hillary and the neo-cons, sittin’ in a tree…

5 Replies

Has anyone else noticed that prominent neo-con or center-right syndicated pundits have gotten awfully sweet on Hillary Clinton the last few days?

First, there was Charles Krauthammer, holding her up as the measure of what’s right and true as he pounded Barack Obama in the column that could have been headlined, "Yeah! What Hillary said…."

… For Hillary Clinton, next in line at the debate, an unmissable
opportunity. She pounced: “I will not promise to meet with the leaders
of these countries during my first year.” And she then proceeded to
give the reasons any graduate student could tick off: You don’t want to
be used for their propaganda. You need to know their intentions. Such
meetings can make the situation worse.
Just to make sure no one
missed how the grizzled veteran showed up the clueless rookie, the next
day Clinton told the Quad-City Times of Davenport, Iowa, that Obama’s
comment “was irresponsible and frankly naive.”

Then there was David Brooks, whom — since he’s NYT — I can’t link to. But it was on the op-ed page of this morning’s paper. If you haven’t gotten to it yet, here’s an excerpt:

LACONIA, N.H. — The biggest story of this presidential campaign is the success of Hillary Clinton. Six months ago, many people thought she was too brittle and calculating and that voters would never really bond with her. But now she seems to offer the perfect combination of experience and change.
She’s demonstrating that it really helps to have lived in the White House. She can draw on a range of experiences unmatched by her rivals. She’s dominated most of the debates. She’s transformed her position on Iraq without a ripple. Her measured, statistic-filled speeches rarely inspire passion, but always confidence.

It’s an inexplicable phenomenon. Maybe you explic it — I mean, explain it.

Obama, the young, and the magic of Making a Difference

20 Replies

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
HOW’RE YOU gonna keep ’em down on the blog after they’ve heard Obama?
For an old guy, I have a lot of ways of keeping in touch with the young, idealistic and enthusiastic — my kids, my kids’ friends, my friends’ kids… and Weblogs.
But these kids today — they need to learn to stick to something. Law student Laurin Manning was really cooking with her LaurinLine, one of the foremost political blogs in the state. Then she quit to Max2_2
politick for real, rather than just writing about it.
Then there’s Max Blachman [at right],
son of my friend Moss, who started “Democrats in the South” just over a year ago and was cooking along fairly well for a while. He last posted on March 3.
Both Laurin and Max have gone to work for Barack Obama.
And they are far from alone. Thursday, I met Elizabeth Wilkins [below left], originally from New York, who’s down here as youth vote director for the Obama
campaign. What pulls Elizabeth so far away from home? “It’s not
every 23-year-old who gets to work on a campaign Wilkins for a man who might be the first black president.” True, but there’s more than that.
Poor John McCain is laying off members of the Pepsi Generation left and right, but his Senate colleague from Chicago seems to have an employment agency going for the kids. (Not that they’re all paid. Most aren’t.)
Yes, campaigns in general tend to be youth-heavy. The rest of us have family responsibilities; we seek job security more lasting than the next news cycle.
But there’s something about Obama that makes the youthfulness of his supporters seem more apt, something that reminds me of my own youth — and not just because the first time I saw him in person was when he spoke to the College Democrats of America over at the Russell House on Thursday. It was there that I heard him, among other things, reassert (to applause) that he would rush right out and have meaningful talks with the thugs who run Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea and, by logical extension, pretty much any other regime that would be tickled magenta to be handed such a great propaganda photo-op.
It’s easy for a graybeard like me, or that crusty old neocon Charles Krauthammer, or Hillary Clinton for that matter, to dismiss such promises as “irresponsible and frankly naive” — as did Sen. Clinton to anyone who would listen last week after her chief rival gave her that opportunity to sound mature, tough and sane.
But beyond the fact that young people think mean people suck, and it’s mean not to talk to people, and that we should have done more of that before going all Angry Daddy on Saddam, there’s a positive reason why Obama has a particular appeal to the young: He describes public service as something you can engage in and still feel clean.
Poor Joe Biden, who’s even older than I am, got into all sorts of trouble for calling Obama “clean,” but that’s just what he is. And for those who are focusing on details of the latest 24/7 news cycle’s scandal or whatever, it’s easy to forget how appealing “clean” can be to the fresh-faced.
It can be a compelling issue, and it belongs completely to Obama. Bill Clinton’s wife, late of the Rose Law Firm, can’t touch it. Nor can the $400 haircut who wants to be the nation’s trial lawyer. And those old guys over on the GOP side — forget it.
The 23-year-old who still gasps somewhere within me is convinced that Barack Obama is completely for real when he channels JFK via Jimmy Carter. Remember Jimmy Carter — not the old guy with the hammer who shakes his finger at us like Miz Lillian when we fail to be sweet to other nations, not the Grand Incompetent of Reagan Revolution lore, but the original, the one whose green bumper sticker I had on my orange 1972 Vega back when even I was 23?
He was never going to lie to us. He would lead us from the partisan, crooked, nasty cesspool of Watergate and the angst of Vietnam. He would help us to be the kind of country that JFK had promised we would get to be, back before Everything Went Wrong.
Well, I do. And it wasn’t about Democrat or Republican or liberal or conservative or black or white or money or any of that stuff embraced by the people who had messed things up. It was about Clean. It was about Meaning.
I first spoke to Barack Obama — very briefly, because of cell phone problems while I was traveling through mountains — a month ago. He only wanted to talk about one thing: Clean. He was unveiling his plan for “the most sweeping ethics reform in history,” — “Closing the Revolving Door,” “Increasing Public Access to Information,” and other Clean Government 101 stuff.
But with that overflow crowd of college kids providing better reception than my Treo, I realized that for this candidate, such yadda-yadda basics were more than just the talking points of that one day.
“Here’s the point,” he told them. “I wanted you to know that I’ve been where you are. I loved the world as a young man, and I wanted to make a difference. I’ve often been told that change wasn’t possible, but I’ve learned that it was. I believe that it still is. And I’m ready to join you in changing the course …”
Not just the course of war, or the wicked oil companies, or me-first politics, or meanness, but changing the lousy way that things are, period.
He invoked “an image of young people, back in the civil rights movement, straight-backed, clear-eyed, marching for justice…” and told them they could be those young people. They were those young people.
He reaches across time, across cynicism, across the sordidness of Politics As Practiced, offering to pull them in to the place where they can make a difference.
You can see how, to someone who’s 23, he’d be worth ditching the blog for.

Obama’s big applause line at USC

30 Replies

Barack Obama got a warm reception at the College Democrats of America confab over at the Russell House today. The kids liked his JFK-style, rise-to-the-challenge-of-a-new-generation idealism. I liked it, too. I think it’s something that sets Obama apart, in a positive way. I might write about it in my Sunday column.

But I had to smile when this was his biggest applause line (up to that point in the speech, anyway).

Now, before you dismiss these kids as totally self-interested and selfish — he’s talking about a real problem. Whether he’s got the solution or not, I don’t know. But as the father of five kids, four of whom are in their 20s, I’ve had to deal with the painful spectacle of watching my kids work very hard trying to make it on their own, yet struggle to pay medical bills when they arise, because their jobs don’t provide them with coverage.

Our whole health care "system" is price-adjusted for those of us who have health insurance, and too expensive even for us. For young adults without that benefit, it’s a cruel joke.

Why should young people starting out in the world have to settle for a job that gives them such bennies? It really limits them to following established paths rather than going out and taking risks to innovate and move our country forward. At least, it limits them if they listen to their old man, who worries so much about them that he keeps saying, "Go for the thing with the benefits!"

Partly, I do that out of frustration. I work myself to death to take care of my family, and once they turn 19, or graduate from college, I can’t take care of them any more, no matter how hard I work. And then I see them struggle without the umbrella of health protection I’ve always had. I try to help them out with cash at times, but at such prices it’s beyond my pocketbook, much less theirs.

In any other civilized country in the world, this would not be a worry.

So yeah, I laughed at the big applause Obama got on this, but what he’s talking about isn’t really funny.

‘Plan A’ for Iraq: the perfect course of action

9 Replies

This is another one of those comments that went on and on until I decided to turn it into a post. It started like this: Uncle Elmer wrote, in part…

Brad you’re completely wrong when you say "it’s not about Bush," of
course it’s about him! He’s still in charge, and still following the
same pattern of bad decision making and ignoring history that has
become his trademark. Given his absolute refusal to work with other
countries, build consensus support here in the US, or even explain
himself in any other way than beating the Al Qaeda drum what choice is
there? I think a lot of the "pull out now" crowd is really saying "I
don’t trust him and won’t trust him" and what they are hearing you say
is "trust him!"

Exactly (to that last part). And I’m trying to get them to hear the opposite, which is that Iraq has a real-world existence that is independent of what you or I or anyone else thinks of that serial bungler in the White House. What we do from this moment on is what matters. We’re stuck with Bush as president until January 2009, which is really, really bad, but it has nothing to do with whether we need to maintain our commitment in Iraq. The only issue we have before us in terms of who the president is, or what we think of the president, is the 2008 election.

Let’s say there is some "Plan A" that is the perfect thing to do with regard to Iraq. Maybe it’s go with the surge. Maybe it’s run like a scalded dog. Maybe it’s a phased pullout. Maybe it’s institute a draft and inundate the country with U.S. troops. Maybe it’s declare martial law. Maybe it’s to pull back to remote bases, or try the Biden plan of partitioning the country. Whatever.

Now mind you, even though "Plan A" is the one most perfect thing to do, it "won’t be a fairy-tale ending," as RTH said in the same string. The "perfect" plan under such circumstances (that is to say, in the real world) is merely the best result you can get. That is not, and never was, the bogus "Jeffersonian democracy" that various people who didn’t want us there to begin with seem to set as the impossible standard, short of which we should just give up. (If they’re waiting for us to have a "Jeffersonian democracy" in THIS country, I hope they’re not holding their breaths. Given that reality, we would be looking for something short of that in Iraq.) No, the standard is that things will be better. Greater peace, greater prosperity, greater stability, greater self-determination, better relations with neighbors and with the West, etc. And Plan A gets things "more better" than anything else.

Whatever "Plan A" is, it’s what we should do — at this point in time, in this situation. And let’s say we can just wave a wand and make it happen. Of course, one thing we CAN’T do, because it’s a one-wish wand, is change who the president is. We’re stuck with Bush until January 2009, just like in the real world.

That means, when you wave the wand, whatever orders have to be issued — whether the orders are to keep fighting, withdraw to neutral corners, skedaddle, whatever — will go through him, acting as the commander-in-chief. Just like in the real world.

Now you can either wave that wand and implement Plan A, or refuse to do so because it will involve that guy you don’t like. Me, I’d wave the wand. There seem to be a lot of people who would refuse to do so, because as soon as they tried to implement it, "Plan A" would seem to them like the "Bush plan," and they would feel obliged to hate it.

And what I’m saying is that that’s crazy thinking.

Now, the Petraeus Plan is not "Plan A," in my opinion, and probably not in yours, either. The difference between us is that MY idea of "Plan A" would be more like institute the draft and and blockade every crossroad in the country. But you know what? There’s no chance of my plan A being implemented. That’s because there is no magic wand. But Petraeus’ approach — that of far more targeted reinforcements applied where they will do to the most good toward creating a more secure environment in which to seek political solutions — is as close to Plan A as we’re going to get, and more likely to produce a good result than anything else we are likely to do.

So I support it, and I do all I can to get other Americans to support it, because if they don’t, then neither this nor any other plan will ever succeed in making things appreciably better.

That doesn’t work, for you? OK, how about this: "(Extremely rude four-letter word starting with an "F") Bush. Forget him. Nothing you can do about it. All we can do about Iraq is the best we can do. We get to change presidents 18 months from now. Let’s do whatever we can to make the situation there as good as it can be when that new president takes over."

What we have here is a refusal to communicate

18 Replies

The nature of this discussion is changing for me. That is, the nature of what interests me in it is changing.

I find myself becoming less interested in my original question, and more interested in the phenomenal barriers to communication that human beings will erect when having a discussion of political philosophy.

I’m going to explore this further — maybe even in my Sunday column. But in the meantime, let me share this post on The Shot, which was responding to this post of mine. And then, let me share the comment I wrote on that blog:

First, to whom am I speaking. Is this Tim, or Casen? These multiple-hand blogs are confusing to us lone-gunmen types…

I’m about to do a post, when I get caught up with real work, about "The Cognitive Barrier." It’s a profound problem, and it seems to get even more in the way when we deal with broader philosophical issues such as this.

Here’s what happens — I write something. It’s bound to provoke people, but I want them to engage what I’m saying, and help me understand them better. I’m not interested in one of those tit-for-tat name-calling contests you usually see on blogs. I’m careful in how I state my position so as to make sure I’m being completely clear as to what I mean, because I’m talking to people who seem to have a very different set of assumptions from mine, so you can’t assume understanding of portions of your points. I can’t use shorthand, and I certainly can’t use slogans. I’m not going to dress up what I say to make it more palatable; I’m not selling. My one interest is in being clearly understood so that the honest response I get helps me in understanding.

And what do I get? Well, one thing I get is a lot of favorite bumper stickers and battle cries from the adherents of the philosophy I’m questioning — you know, the sort of taunts that members of a gang toss out so that the other members of the gang will be impressed, and say, "That’s tellin’ ‘im, man."

But that’s not as bad as this — having people come back at me NOT with what I said, or with what I believe, or anything I have ever even thought, but with what they would LIKE for me to have said, because they have an answer for THAT that they think works very well.

And the cause of understanding, of synthesis, of people who disagree learning to communicate so that maybe they can work together to solve something, is set back. I take a step forward, and I find us two steps back, making me have to work even harder to explain what I said before we can even get to better understanding what the OTHER guy might want to say in response.

The above is an example of that. For instance, "What you want is for a third party (government) to forcefully remove the fruits of another’s labor and give to those, who just as easily could have been making the money." Really? I didn’t know I wanted that. I didn’t say that or think that. So why are we talking about that?

And excuse me, but who the hell are you to tell me what I want, when I just told you what I want, and it wasn’t that?

"you love the idea of government controlling your retirement" — Say what? What do you base that on? What did I say like that?

Here’s what I said, and what I keep saying: What I want is to abide by a system of representative democracy. I want us to deliberate, through our elected representatives, of how to address all issues that involve us all as a community — provide for the common defense, etc. If we decide through that process that we will pool some of our income so that those who slave away all their lives at low wages won’t starve when they’re 75, then that’s what we’ll do. If we decide that everybody’s on his own, then everybody’s on his own. If we decide just to give money to people who’ve never worked a day in their lives, then that’s what we’ll do. Ditto as to whether contributions will be voluntary, involuntary, in a "lockbox" or in private accounts. All of these things are open questions to be dealt with through the political process. May the best ideas win.

Of course, if you lose the political argument, you do live under the agreement that was reached. You don’t get to opt out. Oh, you can move to Sweden, or Somalia (depending on whether you prefer civilization or a true State of Nature). You don’t have to be a part of the community. But if you live in the community, you will abide by these rules and policy decisions, whether you advocated them or not. To say you should not have to do so is stupid and childish, period. If you don’t like the outcome of the debate, and you want to live in the community, there’s always another election coming within two years. State your case.

But the question raised by my post wasn’t about any of that, so all of the words I just wrote were simply extra work to try to get us back to the starting place:

Never mind what kind of governmental system we should have. It’s established that it really bothers you for anyone — other than someone you have personally approved — to enjoy any fruits of your labor. No, let me define that more clearly — Doug Ross said that. He said any system that does NOT expect him to contribute toward anyone else’s retirement.

Let’s say he’s right, or let’s say he’s wrong. Never mind that. What I want to know is, WHY does he feel that way? WHERE does that powerful "don’t touch it; it’s MINE" impulse come from?

Everybody has it to some extent. If you’re hungry, and here are the nuts and berries you gathered, you don’t want somebody taking them all away — at least, not before you’ve had your fill. But what Doug says, and what libertarians espouse, goes so far beyond that fundamental survival instinct. He seems to say — and I stand here fully ready to be corrected on this if I’m misstating it; I’m TRYING to understand it — that he doesn’t want ANY of what he’s gathered to go to ANYBODY unless he specifically decides himself whether that person should have any.

He can have it that way if he wins the political argument. All I’m asking is WHY does he want that? It’s a powerful impulse that goes far beyond anything I have ever felt. So help me understand it.

bradwarthen.com

All The News That Gives You Fits