Category Archives: Marketplace of ideas

Finally

Finally, voices of reason
talk back on Iraq
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
FINALLY.
Finally, after weeks of serious talk about taking the suicidal step of pulling American troops out of Iraq — driven by the steady drip of relentless news coverage of a casualty one day, two the next, and virtually nothing else; by poll numbers that fed on that coverage; and by political opportunism on one side of the partisan aisle, and political cowardice on the other — some people who knew better started talking back.
It started about 10 days ago.
That’s when The Economist sent out its last week’s edition, with these words on the cover: “Why America Must Stay.”
After going on at length, with brutal frankness, about the mistakes the Bush administration has made in Iraq (and I urge you to go to my blog — the address is at the bottom of this column — and follow the links to read this and the other items I will mention), the piece gave both the positive reasons and negative reasons why we have no choice but to maintain our force there until the job is done. The “positive” reasons had to do with political and military progress achieved. Some “negative” reasons: “The cost to America of staying in Iraq may be high, but the cost of retreat would be higher. By fleeing, America would not buy itself peace. Mr. Zarqawi and his fellow fanatics have promised to hound America around the globe. Driving America out of Iraq would grant militant Islam a huge victory. Arabs who want to modernize their region would know that they could not count on America to stand by its friends.”
Then, on Saturday, political scientist James Q. Wilson wrote in The Wall Street Journal of the kind of speech he’d like to hear President Bush deliver. He complained, quite rightly, that the president was wasting time “arguing against critics of the Iraq war who are trying to rewrite history,” when “What most Americans care about is not who is lying but whether we are winning.”
And we are winning — a fact of which most Americans are tragically unaware. Mr. Wilson went on to tell how the president should explain that. A sample: “We grieve deeply over every lost American and coalition soldier, but we also recognize what those deaths have accomplished. A nation the size of California, with 25 million inhabitants, has been freed from tyranny, equipped with a new democratic constitution, and provided with a growing new infrastructure that will help every Iraqi and not just the privileged members of a brutal regime. For every American soldier who died, 12,000 Iraqi voters were made into effective citizens.”
Then on Tuesday, Sen. Joseph Lieberman wrote — once again, in the Journal — a piece headlined “Our Troops Must Stay.” Informed by a recent visit to Iraq, his picture of a nation moving toward Liebermaniraq becoming a vital democracy (as long as we don’t abandon it) was even more compelling than the others. But my own anti-partisan heart was probably warmed most by this passage:
“I am disappointed by Democrats who are more focused on how President Bush took America into the war in Iraq almost three years ago, and by Republicans who are more worried about whether the war will bring them down in next November’s elections, than they are concerned about how we continue the progress in Iraq in the months and years ahead.” Amen.
Why such a flurry of similar statements of good sense all at once? It may be that the voices of grim reason finally piped up in alarmed reaction to the fact that the American people were actually starting to think of doing the unthinkable. They also wrote (very specifically, in Mr. Wilson’s case) in reaction to the appalling leadership vacuum left by the failure of the president of the United States to explain, and keep explaining, to his people the stakes in this war.
Then finally, finally, finally, the president reported for duty on Wednesday. As he should, he counseled “time and patience.” But he did more important things than that. He not only explained why we must think not of timetables for withdrawal, but measures for success. He also spelled out how we will achieve those goals. He showed a way to outcomes that too many Americans have Bushvictory_1 stopped being able to imagine.
And he addressed the mad talk about timetables for withdrawal, promising that “decisions about troop levels will be driven by the conditions on the ground in Iraq and the good judgment of our commanders — not by artificial timetables set by politicians in Washington.” In other words, by the brave men and women fighting this fight, rather than by Democratic opportunists and Republican cowards.
“Setting an artificial deadline to withdraw,” he said, “would send a signal to our enemies — that if they wait long enough, America will cut and run and abandon its friends.” Not only that, but it would tell them exactly how long they have to wait — and that would be insane.
The president’s speech was accompanied by the release of a 35-page “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq.” In greater detail than the address, it set out the definition of victory, and the plans for achieving it. It also stated what should be obvious: “(T)he terrorists, Saddamists, and rejectionists do not have the manpower or firepower to achieve a military victory over the Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces. They can win only if we surrender.”
There remains much left to be said, and even more to be done. But it is gratifying and reassuring that the president and others are now discussing, in de
pth, the actual situation and what should be done about it. Finally.

Keeping the ‘Un’ in ‘Unparty’

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A comment by GS Gantt deserves a prominent reply, so I’m making a separate post of it. He wrote, in part:

Your "UNPARTY" idea has merit in that it would be in opposition to
the Democrats and Republicans, such opposition being desperately
needed. But I’m sure you know full well how terribly difficult and
expensive it would be to actually create a "third party". Besides, the
Dems/Repubs would fight this vehemently and they would probably win.
Incumbency plus money equals POWER!, and they’ve got all three.

If you’re serious (and I don’t think you are), why not pursue the
only option that has a chance of unseating the career politicians? This
would be the WRITE-IN campaign vote. Such an option would require
nowhere near the money or politics it would take to actually create a
real third party.

Mr. Gantt, I’m not sure what you mean by "serious." I’m as serious as a crutch about the need for alternatives to the current situation. My job is to throw out the ideas — and have fun doing so when I can — and hope some of them will take root and lead to action.

I’d love to see somebody run for office on the Unparty ticket. It would be really interesting to see how the public reacts. Personally, I’m hopeful, given the statistics in a recent David Brooks column. He wrote that a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that only 24 percent of Americans see the Republicans as representing their priorities, and only 26 percent see Democrats that way.

That leaves 50 percent for us to work with. None of that stuff about money and organization worries me — let the actual political parties worry about that. This is about the power of an idea, which can be like a mustard seed.

And the idea is that parties don’t matter. People matter. Ideas matter. The good of the country, and of the whole world, matter. Doing the right, smart, practical thing for the greater good matters. But parties, and ridiculously abused terms such as "liberal" and "conservative," do not.

It doesn’t matter whether a new party comes into being, as long as the grip of the other two is loosened, and people see beyond the limits of partisanship. Then the smart ideas — rather than the politically correct dogmas of right or left — will come to the fore, people who advocate them will be elected, and the country and the world will be better off.

How’s that for an Unparty manifesto? Or the beginning of one, anyway…

A possible recruit?

Yep, you’ve seen it before

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If my column on today’s page looks familiar to you, that’s because it appeared as a blog post last week.

You’re accustomed to seeing my columns from the paper published simultaneously in this space, with links. This time, I thought I’d try the opposite, and see how it goes. Note that I’m not posting the column version, because that would be redundant. If you want to comment on the column — and I hope you will — please go to the original blog post.

This one seemed like a good one to try this with because 1) I had hoped for more feedback on the original post, but didn’t get it (possibly because I posted it on Thanksgiving), and 2) It happened to be column-length, and easily adaptable for print.

Anyway, I look forward to your feedback on the subject. We can’t get this new party (the party for the rest of us) started without a mascot, can we? Once we’ve got that, we’ll come up with a name. Then we’ll recruit candidates — or not. Let’s see how it goes.

Unparty column

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It’s my party, and I’ll vie if I want to
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
INSPIRED BY Ariel Sharon’s decision to abandon the Likud Party he helped build and start another, more centrist one — one that immediately began to catch on to the extent that it looks as though it will propel him past the established factions and into another term in office — I posted a blog item last week that asked, “Why can’t we do this here?”
Excited at the idea of “giving those of us in the sensible middle an actual alternative to the mutually exclusive, mutually loathing Democrats and Republicans,” I got right to the business of setting up my own faction, posing such questions as: What would be the precepts of such a party? What should we call it? Who would be some good candidates? What animal should be our mascot?
My respondents quickly brought me down to Earth. I heard from both sides of the partisan divide, and the more ardent were soon ignoring my questions and clawing each other. But both sides seemed to agree that those of us who eschew the current phony ideologies don’t believe in anything ardently enough to get things done.
What a relief when “David” spoke for me by writing, “I am always intrigued by this argument that moderates aren’t passionate about anything…. I take every issue on its own merits and when I make up my mind, I am as passionate and diehard about that position as any conservative or liberal could ever be.”
Exactly. Why is it so hard for partisans and ideologues to understand that we might hold our own values and positions even more passionately than they hold theirs, for the simple fact that they are ours. We didn’t do what they did, which was to buy an entire set of attitudes off the rack, preselected and packaged by someone else, and chosen based on nothing deeper than brand name.
Is there anything wishy-washy about the stands taken by such “moderates” as John McCain and our own Lindsey Graham? Was Joe Lieberman being a fence-sitter when he helped push through the Iraq Liberation Act, which way back in 1998 made the overthrow of Saddam Hussein the official policy of this country?
These are the people who take the independent risks that make things happen, from campaign finance reform to banning torture. Without them as pivots, giving ideas credibility by virtue of their own independence, we’d be forever in a state of stalemate, unable to settle any difficult issue.
And those of us who support their like are the ones who decide elections
— not the partisans, who can be taken for granted.
The best thing is to have no parties. But it’s still fun to imagine what kind of party we who despise them would create if we were so inclined. Let’s give it a go.
Right off, I’m stumped as to a name. So for now, let’s just call it the “Unparty.” (After all, the “Uncola” caught on for a while.)
Are there any fundamental, nonnegotiable tenets? Sure:

First, unwavering opposition to fundamental, nonnegotiable tenets. Within our party would be many ideas, and in each situation we would sift through them to find the smartest possible approach to the challenge at hand. Another day, a completely different approach might be best.
Respect for any good idea, even if it comes from Democrats or Republicans.
Contempt for any stupid idea, even if it comes from our own party leaders.
Utter freedom to vote however one’s conscience dictates, without condemnation or ostracism from fellow party members.

Every Unpartisan would have his or her own set of positions on issues, having worked them out independently. But to banish the thought that Unpartisans don’t take strong stands, here would be some positions I would bring to the party table (and remember, this is just me, not the editorial board of The State):

Respect for life. Opposition to abortion, the death penalty and torture of prisoners.
Belief in just war theory, and in America’s obligation to use its strength for good. (Sort of like the Democrats before Vietnam.)
A single-payer national health care system — for the sake of business and the workers. If liberals and conservatives could stop driving a wedge between labor and capital for about five minutes, we could make this a reality.
Universal education — as a state, not a national, responsibility. Go ahead and shut down the U.S. Department of Education, and make sure you provide equal educational opportunity for all on the state level.
A rational, nonideological energy policy that will make us independent of despotic foreign regimes: Drill in the ANWR. Impose strict efficiency standards on Detroit. Build more refineries. Since we are at war and they are helping the enemy, build internment camps for Hummer drivers. (OK, scratch that; just make the Humvee like automatic weapons — banned for all but military use. In fact, what was wrong with the Jeep?) Launch a Manhattan Project to find something better than fossil fuels. Take the advice of Charles Krauthammer and set gasoline permanently at $3 a gallon — when the price of crude drops, raise the tax to keep the pump price at $3. Unlike Mr. Krauthammer (who’d use the proceeds for tax cuts), I’d make like a real conservative and balance the budget.

Such ideas are not left, right or wishy-washy. Admittedly, in my zeal to debunk the myth that we “moderates” (an inadequate word, really, for independents) don’t take strong stands, I’ve deliberately chosen some ideas that are attractive to me but are too out there for my own editorial board. (Although the issues they address are similar to some set out by potential Unpartisan Paul DeMarco in comments on my blog.) But wouldn’t that make for some lively Unparty conventions? And wouldn’t they be more worth watching than those scripted, stultifying pep rallies that the Democrats and Republicans hold every four years?
I certainly think so. In fact, that’s one point on which most of us Unpartisans could agree.

Reform!

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This piece in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal was fascinating. The writer, a member of the Journal‘s editorial board, struggles mightily to figure out John McCain. He just can’t understand how someone could be so admirable and yet not recognize the "obvious truth" that economic policies should be structured to reward wealth.

And I just don’t understand why he can’t understand.

An issue for the Critter Committee

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Finally, one or two people who actually like my idea of a political party for the rest of us responded to my post on the subject. And Paul DeMarco even gave serious thought to my question of what sort of animal should symbolize our party. I was impressed that he came up with one that was actually high on my own list: the owl. As he put it, the owl is "Quiet, wise, but no-nonsense and a swift and skillful Owl predator when the need arises."

Good idea. I’m not ready to settle on it, but it’s a good start.

Of course, as surely as we will hear stories of the Pilgrims and Squanto on this day, we had an item in the paper reminding us that Benjamin Franklin advocated the wild turkey as our national symbol. I think he was serious about that one, but you never know; ol’ Ben was a bit of a raconteur, and may have been sending us up.

On the subject of birds, I had already thought about the one that won out over the turkey. The bald eagle would be ideal in some ways. First, it would say we align ourselves with the nation itself, rather than with any ideological segment. Also, the traditional rendition of it, grasping the arrows with one foot and the olive branch with the other, would say that on the federal level at least, we concern ourselves with the main business of the national government — our conduct with other nations. (Yes, Bald_eagle I know it’s supposed to regulate interstate commerce and such, but one thing I want to do is distance ourselves from some of the sillier battles that the donkeys and the elephants have over domestic Kulturkampf issues that aren’t properly any of the federal government’s business — such as manger scenes in town squares, and comatose patients in Florida.)

In some ways, though, the eagle is limited. For one thing, it always looks fierce. I like the idea of a mascot that can look fierce when it needs to, but the eagle doesn’t seem capable of any other expression. Also — and this will seem silly, but remember that I work every day with a cartoonist for a living — I can’t see the eagle working well in political cartoons. Maybe that’s just because I haven’t seen it done enough yet. Robert Ariail could most likely anthropomorphize the noble bird into characters just as hilariously human as his donkeys and elephants, but I have trouble picturing it.

Maybe we should look beyond birds. Birds are good, given that the United States is the world’s first and greatest air power, and our party would be open to the judicious use of that power. But as I think on cartoons — and we need to be open to being lampooned — I’m thinking four feet might work better.

Of course, you can come up with an objection to almost any symbol:

The Owl: Never available in the light of day. Too close an association with Hooters.
The Turkey: Essentially American, and admirable in many ways (very tasty, for instance), but too ugly and ungainly — not to mention that "turkey" has unfortunately come to be a putdown in modern slang.
The Eagle: Drawbacks listed above. One other: Too obvious.
The Bull Moose: Already taken, and proven to be electorally unsuccessful, even with a strong candidate.
The Bison: VERY American, but too, well, bovine. Any animal that’s so easy to creep up on and kill in such large numbers to the point that you have to make special efforts to keep it from going extinct is problematic (ditto the eagle, come to think of it).
The Lion: Not indigenous, and too associated with royalty. We could go with the cougar, but I’m just not a cat person. I like dogs.
The Dog: Noble, loyal, friendly but willing and able to tear your head off if you mean to do ill to anyone or anything that it has taken under its protection. Note that I’m not talking Chihuahuas or French poodles, but real dogs — preferably a big mutt (symbolizing the melting pot), with some retriever, some setter, some shepherd, some chow, and some plain old hound dog. Probably can’t be a yaller dog, because that would be encroaching on the Democrats’ territory, and it is too suggestive of blind party loyalty, which we would abhor.

And there are other drawbacks to the dog — for instance, the fact that it would make us an object of contempt among Arabs and some other cultures, and we’ve got enough problems over there as things stand. But the dog has promise.

Ultimately, I remain stuck on this one. I guess, once we get this party organized (but not too organized, because that would be unlike us; we should strike a good medium between the Democrats and Republicans on that point), we’ll have to send this issue to our Critter Committee.

Or, we could just leave it to the cartoonists to come up with their own way of symbolizing us. They’ll do that anyway, unless we propose one that they find irresistible.

Anyway, enjoy your turkey today. And think no political thoughts while doing so, but remember to thank the One from whom all such blessings flow.

Bison_2

Why can’t we do this here?

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I find this to be pretty exciting news, because of the possibilities it suggests. Basically, Ariel Sharon is quitting the Likud Party he helped found in order to form a new, centrist party that turns away from the extremes of both Likud and Labor.

This, coming on the heels of Sen. John McCain’s visit here over the weekend, prompts me to ask the following questions of my readers (and if you give me some good answers, maybe I can get a column Sharon_1 out of it, and maybe even get a movement started; who knows?):

Why can’t we do this over here, giving those of us in the sensible middle an actual alternative to the mutually exclusive, mutually loathing Democrats and Republicans?
What would be the precepts of such a party? (I have some ideas of my own on this score, but I’d like to know what you think.)
Who would be some good candidates we could run under our banner?
What should be the name of our party?
What animal, if any, should be our party symbol?
Do you think such a party would, given time to grow, actually have a chance to make a difference and help us find a way to move forward as one country, leaving the destructive bitterness of the two dominant parties behind?
If you believe it does, what’s stopping us?

I guess that’s enough conversation starters to go on for now. I look forward to your feedback.

KR Alumni: Good journalism is good business

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OK, one more on this navel-gazing subject and then I’ll move on to something else.

I thought you might find this piece, about a letter that former Knight Ridder journalists circulated over the last few days, interesting in light of the current situation in which the corporation — and, more relevantly to you and me, its newspapers — find t hemselves.

Here is their statement, as reported by Editor & Publisher:

John S. Knight, a founder of the company known today
as Knight Ridder, believed –- and proved — that excellent journalism is
good business. The undersigned, all alumni of Knight Ridder, have lived
that creed.
As did the late Jack
Knight, we believe profit is not merely nice but necessary. Knight
Ridder routinely has generated double-digit operating profits -– such as
last year’s 19.4 percent. We understand the obligation of an
institutional investor to maximize return on investment. An investor
for whom double digits are insufficient is free to sell Knight Ridder
stock. An investor who instead demands the sale or dismantling of
Knight Ridder merely in the name of a larger profit margin is engaged
not in good business but in greed.
As
did Jack Knight, we speak out of confidence in, not fear of, the future
of the good business of excellent journalism. There is durable value in
businesses that treat their citizens, their communities and their
employees with respect. New technology is an ally of, not a threat to,
trustworthy and nimble media. Competition gives rise to innovation and
efficiency, much as recent declines in print circulation have been
accompanied by increased electronic readership.
Knight
Ridder is not merely another public company. It is a public trust. It
must balance corporate profitability with civic purpose. We oppose
those who would cripple the purpose by coercing more profit. We abhor
those for whom good business is insufficient and excellent journalism
is irrelevant.
We have watched
mostly in silent dismay as short-term profit demands have diminished
long-term capacity of newsrooms in Knight Ridder and other public media
companies. We are silent no more. We will support and counsel only
corporate leadership that restores to Knight Ridder newspapers the
resources to do excellent journalism. We are prepared collectively to
nominate candidates for the Knight Ridder board. We wish to reassert
John Knight’s creed.

The signers, all of whom are listed at the link, include some highly prominent former journalists and executives who have left the KR ranks in recent years. The group said they "are prepared collectively to nominate candidates for the Knight Ridder board," candidates who see the newspapers’ mission as they do.

Corporate’s reaction, expressed in E&P by KR spokesman Polk Laffoon, was that "This is a fine gesture and a well-intentioned gesture by good and honorable people." He went on to say that "Unfortunately, the reality is that more than 90% of
Knight Ridder shares are institutionally held and more than a third of
them are held by three institutions."

Mr. Laffoon, vice president for corporate relations, was quoted by The Philadelphia Inquirer as saying:

"I wish there were an identifiable and strong
correlation between quality journalism as we all define it and strong
and growing newspaper sales. If that were the case, we would not only
know how to meet some of the challenges we would face today, but we
would thrive on doing it. I wish it were that simple. Unfortunately it
isn’t."

So now you’ll want to know what I think, as a current employee of a Knight Ridder newspaper. Well, on that subject, I’ll quote the composite character played by Eric Bana in "Black Hawk Down" — based, incidentally, on a series of stories by Mark Bowden, a former reporter for The Inquirer. Mr. Bowden is one of the "alumni" who signed the above statement.

Mr. Bana was speaking to an actor portraying a real-life hero of the battle of Mogadishu, Staff Sgt. Matt Eversmann:

"You know what I think? It don’t really matter what I think. Once that first bullet goes past your head, politics and all that (expletive) just goes right out the window…. Just watch your corner; get all your men back here alive."

Good advice, that, even if no literal bullets are flying. Nobody in San Jose or on Wall Street is asking what I think, and my situation — and those of the people and pages for which I’m responsible — will pretty much be the same whatever I think. We’ve got plenty to deal with right here, addressing the issues of importance to all of us in South Carolina, and trying to put out better journalism each day that we do it. That’s my mission, and that’s how I intend to occupy my time while all the big money people work out their politics and all that stuff.

When I’ve got something else to say about it, I’ll let you know.

“Three Amigos” column

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Reform backers disappointed,
but not discouraged
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
THEY WERE called the “Three Amigos,” even though there were up to five of them. They were business leaders who were instrumental in pushing the Legislature to pass the Education Accountability Act of 1998. Later, they served on the Education Oversight Committee that was created by that legislation.
They were Bill Barnet, Larry Wilson, Joel Smith, Bob Staton and James Bennett (scroll down on the link to bio). But the old “Amigos” gag led me to ask three of them for reaction to last week’s news that, for the first time since the standards they pushed went into effect, schools across the state failed to advance.
Far more (354) got a lower grade than received a higher one (55), compared with 2004, while most (668) held steady.
Messrs. Wilson, Barnet and Staton were all “disappointed” by the results, but none would own up to being “discouraged.”
They were not surprised by what they saw as a temporary setback on a long “journey.”
After all, this is what the Accountability Act was supposed to do — use tough standardized tests to show objectively where the challenges are, so that they can be addressed.
“I’m not all that upset about it,” Larry Wilson (whose latest ideas on education and economic development were the subject of last week’s column) called to tell me.
“You have to look at long-term trends,” he said. One year’s setback isn’t enough to worry about. If schools lose ground next year, too, “Then I’ll begin to be concerned about a trend.”
He noted that those who have spent their whole school careers under the law’s regimen are showing remarkable progress. For instance, our fourth-graders exceeded the national average in math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test, the “nation’s report card.”
“As these students progress, we’ll see better results,” he said.
He said the state has four big areas to work on:

Appropriate, early remediation for kids who need it.
Consolidating school districts to eliminate the “inefficiency and high cost of small districts.”
Early childhood education, getting children ready for the increased rigor they’ll face in K-12.
Raising expectations of students, parents and communities.

As one trained in systems engineering, he says “education’s no different from any other complex system.” The key is finding the right buttons to push and dials to turn.
Bill Barnet left the Oversight Committee to become mayor of Spartanburg, but his interest in the mission hasn’t waned.
He said it’ll take time to overcome the “generational abuse” that led to the conditions the Accountability Act sought to address.
He illustrated this with a story: For years, he ignored a herniated disc — until the pain in his leg became excruciating, and he consented to surgery. When his leg still hurt weeks later, he complained to the doctor. The doctor told him he couldn’t just assume the pain would go away overnight when he had allowed the damage to continue for 10 years.
Similarly, the challenges to educational achievement in South Carolina “cannot be solved in any one- or five-year period.”
He bristles at any suggestion that the struggle should be abandoned for, say, tax credits that encourage parents to abandon the schools.
“The governor says, ‘How can you be comfortable and pleased with where you are?’.æ.æ.æ. I look him in the eye and say I’m not comfortable and I’m not happy,” he said. And then, he says, he tells Gov. Mark Sanford that while he, Bill Barnet, believes in “choice” (such as charter and magnet schools) where it works, the “Put Parents in Charge Act” is “all about your constituents, and maybe your run for president.” Ultimately, it’s a “huge distraction” from the real issues, such as the inequality between rich and poor districts.
He keeps an eye on efforts to address that through comprehensive tax reform, but wonders if it is politically possible: “Greenville has to be willing to accept the premise that they’re going to take their money and send it to Dillon.”
The message, he insists, shouldn’t be “stay the course.” It should be “stay the course, with thoughtful adjustments.”
The only one of the three still on the Oversight Committee, Bob Staton takes heart from the knowledge that “Our kids are still being better educated than they were seven or eight years ago.”
In fact, he expected a setback such as this one last year — the first time the bar was raised on what schools had to accomplish.
But he knows not everyone sees it his way: “People will use this information to validate their point of view that we’re awful, we’ve always been awful and we’ll always be awful,” he said.
“My frustration is, people just look at a piece of it,” such as graduation rates. But today’s dropouts started school before the Accountability Act. “The kids that are beginning to come through it are doing better,” he said. “The graduation rate is the culmination of 18 years of that kid’s life and what goes on in it.”
He cited “three things to look at” going forward:

Where a child is in the third grade. Remediate if necessary.
The transition from middle to high school, when reading proficiency is essential to mastering critical thinking skills.
Moving out of high school and into career preparation.

“We’ve got to get them through each of those stages,” he said.
And my reaction? The questions to be asked today are: What are the conditions that led to 55 schools doing better, and how do we go about replicating them in the 354 that slipped?

Column on Larry Wilson’s trial balloon

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A comprehensive plan for
making us wealthier and wiser
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
LARRY WILSON, one of the chief architects
of the Education Accountability Act, came by the office the other day and offered a pretty compelling vision for what South Carolina should do next.
The local entrepreneur doesn’t hold elective office, and doesn’t claim to speak for anyone but himself. But the ideas he put forth are worth sharing because:

He is a board member for the Palmetto Institute, and that think tank is expected to join with the Palmetto Business Forum, the Competitiveness Council and the state Chamber of Commerce to set forth a unified vision for how to make the average South Carolinian wealthier. Some of these ideas may crop up in that context.
He is also close to the new speaker of the S.C. House, Bobby Harrell. How many of these ideas Mr. Harrell buys into and how many he has told Mr. Wilson — according to Larry’s account — just aren’t feasible I don’t know.

Nor do I know how many of these ideas my editorial board colleagues and I will go for once we sit down and study them.
But I was sufficiently impressed by this set of interlocked proposals that it seems worth throwing out to see what others think. If not this, we need some kind of comprehensive strategy for moving South Carolina forward. We must get beyond the usual piecemeal responses to crises and interest group demands if we’re to catch up.
The critical element that ties all of these ideas together is the unassailable fact that education and economic development are inseparable. If we don’t realize that, we’ll continue to make 80 percent of the national income.
I don’t have room to set out everything covered in our wide-ranging discussion, but here are the most intriguing and/or appealing ideas that I heard:

EDUCATION
Mr. Wilson wants an Education Quality Act that includes:

Early remediation. Third-graders scoring below basic on the PACT would attend school year-round in the fourth grade, under master teachers or National Board-certified teachers. The teachers’ incentive? Higher pay for 230 days of teaching. He would then add a grade level at a time, on up to high school.
Full-day kindergarten for 4-year-olds. This would be provided at “accountable, certified” public and private schools, “financed by vouchers and integrated w/First Steps.” The money might come in part from consolidating current pre-5K efforts, and be distributed in a way markedly different from the awful “Put Parents in Charge” scheme: Low-income kids would get full funding (about $4,000 apiece). The money would go to the school their parents choose. Higher-income folks would get a tax deduction (not a credit) to help with a portion of the cost. “I’m absolutely against vouchers in the public schools, by the way,” Mr. Wilson said. “But this is an area where I think it will work.”
An appointed state superintendent of education.
A BRAC-style commission for reducing the absurd number of school districts in the state. He credited this idea to Rep. James Smith, D-Richland, citing the facts that 41 of the state’s 85 districts serve only 14 percent of all students, but account for 100 percent of schools judged “unsatisfactory” under the Accountability Act.
A statewide salary schedule for educators, by category and qualification. This way, for instance, Marion County wouldn’t lose good teachers to Horry just because the Grand Strand county can pay so much more.

KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY
Mr. Wilson would like to increase the lottery money going to endowed chairs from $30 million to $40 million to take greater advantage of this indispensable tool for helping our research universities to boost our economy.
He would also push for an Industry Partners Act that would:

Recruit or set up companies to apply cutting-edge research going on in the state, accelerating the growth of economic clusters built around automotive innovation (Clemson), “Next Energy” development (USC) and biotech (MUSC and USC). The idea would be to market the state’s under-acknowledged assets and provide such incentives as local demonstration projects — say, running buses in the Midlands on hydrogen. The goal: to see these products manufactured here, by highly paid South Carolinians.
Define respective, interconnected roles for the state Commerce Department, universities, S.C. Research Authority and tech system in boosting knowledge-based enterprises in the state.

TAX REFORM
Comprehensive tax reform, of course — the only kind worth talking about. Fortunately, while there’s a lot of talk regarding “property tax relief” as an end in itself, the climate has never been better for realigning our whole tax structure.
Mr. Wilson calls it “tax-balancing.” He would shift the burden of financing schools to the state (the only way to standardize teacher pay and otherwise reduce the gap between rich and poor districts). A Senate panel is talking about replacing the property tax as a school funding source with a higher sales tax. But Mr. Wilson raises two caveats: Care must be taken not to raise the sales tax to the point that S.C. merchants can’t compete with the Internet and neighboring states, and the tax burden must not be shifted to businesses to the point that it stifles job creation.
That latter point is worth considering for a reason he didn’t bring up: If only owner-occupied homes were exempted from school property taxes, gross inequality would still exist between districts rich in industry and commerce, and those without that base.
He would also:

Eliminate the $300 cap on the automobile sales tax.
Raise our lowest-in-the-nation cigarette tax.

“The point of all this is, it fits together,” Mr. Wilson concluded. “You can’t fix one problem without fixing the other.”
Exactly.

Cleaning up the nation

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A remarkable thing happened at precisely 7:47 p.m. yesterday, as I was driving home from work and "tuning in the shine on the light night dial."

A local radio station played Elvis Costello‘s indictment of the sterile radio industry, "Radio Radio." You may have noted previously that I have a certain affinity for this song, as I do for the work of Declan MacManus in general.

Anyway, it was a bit of a milestone. The new WXRY, 99.3 — first recommended to me by one of my children — is doing a very creditable job of living up to its stated mission as an "independent alternative station," to "make radio special again." The management says it believes that the following principles "are essential for a great radio station:"

Intelligent presentation, passion and respect for the music

No limits on the number of songs we play

Support local music

Treat listeners with respect

Intense community involvement

The courage to be different

Avoid the trap of playing the same songs 7 or 8 times a day

That’s from the Web site. On the air, it also promotes itself as a station that doesn’t run "adult entertainment" ads that send you lunging for the dial when you have your kids in the car with you.

I like that. I don’t like the fact that sometimes it’s a little hard to get the station without static, and I can’t say I like everything they play, but it’s worth checking out — you know, for when you’re driving in the car and it’s not safe to be reading the newspaper.

Jumping the gun

18 Replies

The sides in the culture war that is smothering America’s judicial selection process couldn’t wait to get started fighting over the nomination of Samuel Alito. The sooner you attack, the sooner the other side attacks back, the sooner everybody gets really ticked off, and the more money you can raise, so you can pay your advocacy group’s staff, so you can keep on attacking, so … well, you get Alito2_1 the idea.

Anyway, the prize for being the first out of the gate this time — judging by nothing more reliable than my e-mail — was the ever-feisty People for the American Way. President Bush announced his new nomination at 8 a.m. The "American Way" folks couldn’t wait that long. My first release from them came in at 7:58. Either that, or 6:58. (I’m not sure whether my e-mail had switched over to standard time yet, since my desktop didn’t ask my permission to make that move until a couple of hours later.)

Anyway, the release proclaimed, in all capitals,

BUSH PUTS DEMANDS OF FAR-RIGHT ABOVE INTERESTS OF AMERICANS WITH HIGH COURT NOMINATION OF RIGHT-WING ACTIVIST ALITO

No point in throat-clearing or small talk. Might as well get to screaming right off the bat.

The same group weighed in again a couple of hours later. It wasn’t until a few minutes after that that the second party was heard from. At 10:04, Jim DeMint declared that:

Judge Alito is one of the most respected judges in America. His constitutional credentials are unquestionable and his judicial philosophy is verifiable…. In 1990, Judge Alito was unanimously confirmed by a Democrat-controlled Senate because he commanded respect across party lines. Now that he has been nominated to the Supreme Court, I hope Democrats will resist the temptation to obstruct the process and deny him an up-or-down vote. Judge Alito is a dignified man and he deserves a dignified process. He deserves a fair hearing and a fair vote. People in South Carolina and across the nation want a judge who will carefully listen to the arguments in each case and make thoughtful decisions. Americans want a judge who will strictly interpret the law, not legislate from the bench. We have a critical confirmation process ahead of us and I am confident Judge Alito will clearly demonstrate his qualifications to serve on the Supreme Court.

Then, at 11:30 came a piece headlined:

Christian Coalition of America Praises the Nomination of Judge Alito to the Supreme Court.

It went on to quote CCA President Roberta Combs as saying, "President Bush has hit a homerun with this nomination."

Then, at 12:02, The American Civil Liberties Union got the opposition back up on the scoreboard with one headlined, "ACLU Urges Senate to Explore Supreme Court Nominee Alito’s Record on Reproductive Rights, First Amendment." On that side of the Kulturkampf, "reproductive rights" is seen as rolling off the tongue more smoothly than the simpler "abortion." Don’t ask me to explain.

Being a moderate, Lindsey Graham didn’t hit me with a release until 1:27 p.m. (He said that John Roberts hit a home run. But since I have yet to see instant replays on either of these taters, I’m waiting until the official score is posted.) But he made up for his tardiness at 5:58 with a breathless anouncement that the senator would be meeting with Mr. Alito on Tuesday.

And that’s just the start. There’s plenty of action to come, sports fans.

This column contains no allergens

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‘Disinterested observer’
corrupted by a can of soup
By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
BIG BROTHER is about to step in and make my life — and the lives of a tiny handful of others — better by imposing broad regulations that will probably cost the food industry billions without benefiting the overwhelming majority of Americans one whit.
And I’m fine with that. But the fact that I’m fine with it does make me a tad uncomfortable.
I’ve never wanted to be part of an interest group. That’s why I throw away those membership solicitations from AARP (even though I sometimes feel a wee bit envious of the discounts my wife, who lacks such scruples, enjoys).
For one thing, it’s a liability in my business. Even though I write opinion these days rather than “objective” news, I value detachment. Like the human computers called “mentats” in Frank Herbert’s novels, I prefer my judgments to be generally untainted by “feelings” or self-interest.
I can be passionate about issues, but they tend to be fairly abstract (say, government accountability) or involve groups to which I don’t belong — such as poor, black, rural children who get the short end of the stick on educational opportunity.
I cling to the great self-delusion of the Average White Guy, which is that I don’t belong to a group. If there’s a group trait among us white guys, it’s that we don’t see ourselves as having group traits, or interests in common. I look at a rich white guy and don’t celebrate his success (he’s not sharing it with me). And when he goes to the slammer for insider trading or whatever, I’m as likely to feel Schadenfreude as a member of any other ethnic group.
You can’t even characterize me as a WASP. I’m a half-Celtic mutt, and I’m Catholic. But I refuse to feel aggrieved when secularists (vicious, slanderous dogs that they are) attack the Church. I tend to snort at whiny releases I get from the Catholic League For Religious and Civil Rights (“Yahoo! Displays Bias Against Catholics”), and sneer at politicians’ ham-handed efforts to corral the “Catholic vote.”
Not that bias against Catholics doesn’t exist. It’s just that I refuse to join the pity party.
But there are limits to my detachment. I’m no mentat, but a three-dimensional human being, and to fail to recognize that is to fail to see the world accurately (as any mentat would tell you).
I think it would be great if somebody really did do something about the trains that keep me and others who work on Shop Road from getting downtown and back in a timely fashion. And as an asthmatic, I welcome all the restrictions recently placed on smoking in public places.
But I can rationalize those. Eliminating train delays would also benefit football fans (a group to which I definitely don’t belong), fairgoers, Farmers Market shoppers, folks trying to get to I-77, and the residents of Arthurtown, Taylors and Little Camden. And everyone is harmed by cigarette smoke; those of us who suffer more immediately are merely the canaries in the coal mine.
But this latest thing I just can’t rationalize away. On Thursday, I finally became corrupted by the unoriginal sin of narrow interest. That was the day I read in an article (it wouldn’t let me link directly; search for "Zhang" and "allergens") from The Wall Street Journal that a new federal food-labeling law taking effect Jan. 1 will not only cause packagers to highlight the presence of milk, eggs and wheat (to which I am allergic, in the first two instances to a life-threatening degree) and other major allergens, but it will go to the next level — letting the less-savvy know that “whey” and “casein” mean milk just as surely as do butter and cheese. (I was an adult before I realized why I was getting sick from consuming “non-dairy” products containing traces of sodium caseinate.)
Best of all — and this is the really sweet part — some manufacturers are going so far as to simply eliminate the allergens from their recipes, when they are not key ingredients. You may ask yourself why the allergens were even in there if they were not essential. If so, congratulations! You have finally thought to ask a question that has driven me nuts my whole life. I have to remove my bifocals and press labels against my nose to read the fine print on every packaged product I consider consuming. And more often than not, I find that some innocuous-sounding product such as beef-vegetable soup, or an oat-based cereal, has been inexplicably poisoned with whey or another form of dairy. It doesn’t look creamy, and you can’t taste it, but it’s there.
And there’s no acceptable explanation for it; the soup or cereal would taste fine without it. As often as not, a competing brand right next to it is made without the offending materials, and with no damage to quality.
So how to explain it? Why would a food processor go to the expense of buying mass quantities of an irrelevant ingredient, arrange to have it delivered, and put it in the product? Other interest groups have their paranoid conspiracy theories, and here’s mine: This country has for decades been run from behind the scenes by the dairy industry. Don’t try to “reason” with me on this; no other explanation satisfies.
Yet the iron grip of Big Cheese must be loosening. How else could the FDA be getting ready to enforce these new regulations? How else could Campbell Soup Co. — an outfit that produces a gazillion products, of which I can safely consume about four — be on the verge of purging its products of unnecessary allergens?
In any case, it’s wonderful news. To me. Suddenly, grocery store aisles are going to seem a lot less like minefields. To me.
And there’s the rub. I just can’t get around the fact that in this case, I am a member of a hyper-narrow interest group. Sure, millions have “allergies,” in the sense that they get seasonal hay fever, or suffer a little rash when they eat strawberries. But not that many of us have real allergies, in the sense of a clear and present danger of going into deadly
anaphylactic shock from exposure to a common food. Oh, everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who has “this bizarre thing about peanuts,” but that’s about it. The Journal article says about 150 people die from food allergies a year. So in one sense, the entire food industry is going to be retooled to save about one in every two million people.
And I think that’s great.
So I’m human. Sue me. But don’t try sneaking any of your spoiled bovine secretions into my tucker. If you do, Big Brother’s gonna getcha.

The conflicted conservative

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I sort of felt sorry for George Will on Sunday. That was a pretty conflicted column. You could tell he didn’t want to disagree with those "conservatives" in Colorado who favor arbitrary spending limits. But he had to, because he actually is a conservative, and must therefore reject such radical measures that undermine the very concept of representative democracy.

I’d very much like to see the radicals who are inclined to follow our governor‘s similarly intemperate proposal to consider Mr. Will’s concluding words:

Is a political creed that is so monomaniacal
about taxation that it allows no latitude for tacking with shifting
fiscal winds a philosophy of governance or an ideological fetish?

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the correct, conservative answer to that question is, "the latter."

Mr. Will is far less conflicted on today’s op-ed page. He doesn’t hesitate at all to trash President Bush’s latest Supreme Court nominee. And why does he do that? Once again, for true conservative reasons. Too often, people confuse conservatism with loyalty to the Republican Party, its leaders and all their works. Mr. Will is too intellectually honest for that.

Oh, by the way, I’m not endorsing his condemnation of Harriet Miers. I really haven’t formed an opinion on that score yet. And anyone who can draw fire from both the left and the right stirs a certain sense of kinship in me. But Mr. Will does make some excellent points.

Totally irrelevant postscript: I enjoy typing "Mr. Will." Each time I do so, I hear Sally Field‘s voice addressing John Malkovich‘s character in "Places in the Heart," which was a really good flick, with what would easily make my top five all-time favorite movie endings. Of course, I enjoyed Mr. Malkovich more in "In the Line of Fire," my favorite Clint Eastwood vehicle. But I digress…

Two birds with one deal?

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Being busy with lots of other stuff last year, I never really focused on new Sen. Barack Obama. I did Obama notice sort of peripherally that the Democrats seemed to be really excited about him.

I can sort of see why, after a colleague today shared with me this excerpt from a story in The Washington Post:

Last month, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) offered a proposal to raise
federal fuel-economy standards in cars and trucks by 3 percent a year
in exchange for the federal government picking up the costs of retiree
health care. Detroit automakers say the costs are a crippling burden in
competition with foreign rivals.

Talk about killing two birds — increasing fuel economy and lowering the price of automobiles. Of courses, that assumes that automakers would pass on the savings to us (estimated at $1,500 per vehicle), which I realize is quite an assumption. But it could happen.

I have to say, though, that while solving automakers’ health care cost problem is nice and all, how about the rest of us? I don’t know what the solution is, but I agree with Nicholas Kristof when he writes in a column that will appear on tomorrow’s page that something a tad more comprehensive is called for. (I’ll go back into this in the morning and link to it.)

Sunday, Oct. 2 column

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Issues, and people, are too
complex to describe with labels
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
IF YOU GO to my blog — the address is at the bottom of this column — and click on the “comments” link for any given posting, you’ll find a whole lot of opining going on, but the quality of dialogue often leaves something to be desired. Not always (in fact, many of my electronic correspondents are thoughtful enough to make me regret my own superficiality), but often.
The Internet has done much to facilitate the creation of “communities” of narrow interest, from Monty Python fanatics to shoe fetishists. But it has militated against community in the broader sense. Because you can spend all day talking with people just like you, you tend to be less motivated to understand those who view the world differently. And the more that happens, the more facile our world views become.
It’s not just the Internet. You don’t even want to get me started (again) on the 24-hour cable news channels, with their shouting matches between opposing partisans substituting for meaningful commentary.
Nor are newspapers blameless. We have tended to cover politics as spectacle, as a sport with only two sides to each game — winner and loser, left and right, black and white. That makes issues easy to write about on deadline. But it doesn’t help citizens solve problems.
When issues, and people, are presented as caricatures — that dumb Bush, that flip-flopping Kerry, that skirt-chasing Clinton, that crook Nixon (this is not an entirely new phenomenon) — we can’t truly understand them.
I try to avoid this by interacting personally with newsmakers as much as possible, whether I need something for publication from them at a given moment or not.
But “as much as possible” isn’t always enough. Consequently, I still sometimes make facile assumptions.
Case in point — Perry Bumgarner. Before last week, here’s what I knew about Mr. Bumgarner: He was a founder of We the People of Lexington County, the antitax group. He was running for County Council as a Democrat, after having failed to get elected as a Republican. It seemed highly unlikely that we would be interested in endorsing a person whose only previous interaction with local government was to complain about taxes — especially when he was up against Republican Jim Kinard, a man with practical experience dealing with the day-to-day realities of governing on the Lexington 4 school board.
We had interviewed Mr. Kinard at length back during the Republican primary process (which had led to not one, but two runoffs), so when he came in to see us last week, we had few questions. Besides, he was up against a two-time loser who apparently was only running as a Democrat to avoid having primary competition. This one was going to be easy.
But then Mr. Bumgarner came in, and I had to learn for the thousandth time that you can’t assume such things. There was, as always, more to him than the two-dimensional picture in my mind.
At first, he seemed to fit the caricature. A retired homebuilder, he was dodgy on the subject of impact fees. Asked why he had switched parties, he was startlingly frank: “Because they had three Republicans running, and I didn’t want to get mixed up in that thing.” Yep, a political opportunist who knows nothing about government beyond the fact that he doesn’t like paying for it.
But then we kept talking, and the caricature took on three-dimensional human form. His U.S. Navy tie tack led to questions, and I found he had served with the Marines as a medical corpsman in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, earning a Silver Star and a Purple Heart. (“It was cold,” he said, at the “Frozen Chosin” Reservoir. No kidding.)
He may not have had much to say about impact fees, but he had spent so much time observing county government in recent years that he had something knowledgeable to say about almost everything else. Some of his positions were surprising, coming from an antitax activist. He said he would advocate a half-cent sales tax to support the regional bus system if it would expand into Lexington County beyond its three current routes. Rare is the local politician willing to go out on that limb while seeking office. In fact, rare is the candidate who has thought much about the buses at all. (One GOP primary candidate we spoke to last month didn’t even know there was such a thing as a regional transit authority.)
He even favors letting the school districts retain the authority to tax — which is certainly more than I would allow. (So who’s the anti-tax activist?) But we found agreement on the need to consolidate school districts, and on the lack of accountability of the special purpose districts that run the county’s recreation facilities.
When Mr. Bumgarner left, my colleague Warren Bolton and I looked at each other, and each knew what the other was thinking: There’s more to this guy than we thought.
So we endorsed him, right? No. But we seriously considered it. In the end, we went with Mr. Kinard, for several reasons: his experience as a school trustee, his more specific ideas about what his district and the county needed, his broad community involvement and his relative youth and energy. I gave him points for being willing to face a crowded primary field, rather than taking the easy route. And he knows where he stands on impact fees: He’s for them, as a sensible alternative to higher p
roperty taxes.
But it was no slam-dunk. Politics, and life, get complicated when you take the time to see past initial assumptions.
Maybe I need to get some of those partisans who shoot at each other on my blog together in a room, face-to-face. That could be dangerous, but who knows? We all might learn something.

How would Jesus vote? Would he vote at all?

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I see my latest posting has, much to my surprise, provoked a theological discussion. OK, I’ll jump in, and regret it later.

I just wish both sides would stop trying to enlist Jesus for their party platforms.

Jesus was pretty much indifferent to government, and for good reason. If he had been walking the Earth as a man today, he might have been more interested in politics than he was. In our representative democracy, we expect government to reflect our values, and then we fight over what those values should be. There is therefore room in the political arena for the kinds of things Jesus spoke of. But as a first-century Jew, the government he knew was about raw, exploitative power (the same thing libertarians think it’s about today, but they’re delusional), and it had no intention of bowing to the values of Judea or any other part of the empire. The Roman system was a plunder economy. There was no chance that any taxes one paid would ever be used to benefit you and your community. Yet despite that, he said go ahead and pay your taxes. He was sort of saying, if that’s Caesar’s trip, go along with it so he’ll leave you alone. But give God his due, which is something else altogether.

As for capitalism — well, I’ve always been struck by the way his parables seemed to uphold capitalist values. And that still challenges me, because he was totally against anyone being acquisitive. If you have two coats, give one away — that doesn’t sound like an affirmation of a consumer society to me. And yet the servant who buried his master’s money to keep it safe was castigated because he didn’t go out and risk it in an effort to make a profit. The servants who played the market were the good guys in the parable, but the one who refused to be a capitalist was the bad guy. (Of course, maybe his master wouldn’t have been so mad at him if he hadn’t indulged in all that Marxist rhetoric, calling the master an exploiter of the workers and such. That was sort of imprudent of him.)

So really, whether you think Jesus would have been for or against an activist government, or pro or con on capitalism, you can find something in the Gospels to support (or undermine) your conclusion. This might make Jesus seem contradictory, to the modern mind. But the thing was (I believe), he just didn’t care about the kinds of things we argue about in the public sphere today. If some Simon Zealot from either end of today’s political spectrum could sit down and try to enlist Him in the cause, I think he’d shrug and change the conversation to what HE deems to be important.

This is why, as a Catholic, I can’t root for either side in the political wars. I don’t think Jesus would, either. He would care about certain issues, standing up for justice and mercy, but he wouldn’t join a side. Both parties hold positions that are inimical to all that Rabbi Jesus taught.

Dare we dream?

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Actually, the item on "Morning Edition" that followed the one referenced in my last posting holds much greater significance, and is worth listening to if only for this: It makes a passing reference to the possibility that Ariel Sharon, under attack from within his own party over the Gaza withdrawal, was thinking about forming a new, centrist party to challenge both Likud and Labour — if Bibi is successful in his attempt to overthrow him. (Which he was not — this time.)

Now set aside for a moment whether including "Sharon" and "centrist" in the same sentence constitutes an oxymoron (I would argue that it does not, given some of his moves lately — if you’ll let me ignore some of his other moves lately). What interested me about that was this:

If the leader of a nation who’s very existence is constantly under threat — a place where differences between parties are about the life or death of the nation, not just abstract ideology — can seriously think about minting a new party that charts a middle way, then why on Earth can’t we do the same here in the States?

Imagine a party in which John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Joe Biden or our own Lindsey Graham might actually have a chance of getting the presidential nomination — or which, in the past, might have nominated a Scoop Jackson or a Howard Baker. Now that would be a party that might cause me to question my universal disdain toward the very idea of parties.

Plays better with others

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By contrast with the release from GOP HQ quoted in my last posting, I’d like to point out how much the governor’s rhetoric has improved in this same area.

The governor started out, a couple of years back, making the same kinds of misleading statements about public education as Mr. Dawson — saying, essentially, that we weren’t getting any improvement for our investment in public schools, when most of the data indicated otherwise (he was careful to select those very few data that supported his false conclusion). This has been, since the beginning, the standard rhetorical procedure for all those who want to undermine public education — first say that we’re wasting our money on it, then try to get the voters to buy some snake oil instead.

But the governor is no dummy, and ultimately an honest man. (I think the false and misleading things he’s said about the schools arise from his utter ignorance of the world of public education, and his instinctive distrust of that terra incognita.) This shows in the rhetorical about-face I’ve witnessed on his part recently.

Check out, for instance, the governor’s release of the same date as Mr. Dawson’s. Mr. Sanford has now learned to say,

This goes to show that there are a whole lot of teachers, parents and students working very hard to educate our state’s children, and they deserve credit for these improvements.

Mind you, he’s referring to the exact same data that caused Mr. Dawson to say, "Regrettably, this is sad and disappointing day for South Carolina’s students and parents."

Of course, the governor uses his congratulatory statement as a setup for the sales pitch for the snake oil, following those words immediately with:

Unfortunately, incremental change in SAT scores isn’t going to get us where we need to be in terms of competing with other states, let alone in competing with the rest of the world. That’s why this administration will continue pushing for fundamental reforms to the current system that give parents more choices…

Still, Gov. Sanford’s acknowledgment of progress is laudable. And it’s smart, on one level: Most of us love our public schools and are proud of their progress. The governor is trying to sell a political idea, and you don’t get anywhere with most voters by trashing the schools.

But on another level, he’s throwing away an essential tool in his selling process. It’s impossible to sell something as far-out and obviously unworkable as PPIC without getting people so worked up against the current education reform process that they’re unable to think clearly. Don’t expect to see the governor’s allies in this process drop the tactic. The only sector of the electorate in which they have made any progress is among those who have heard the statement, "We keep throwing money at the schools (they love that phrase, "throwing money"), and they just keep getting worse" so many times that they believe this utter canard.

They’re like the poor, programmed souls in Huxley‘s Brave New World:

The students nodded, emphatically agreeing with a statement which upwards of sixty-two thousand repetitions in the dark had made them accept, not merely as true, but as axiomatic, self-evident, utterly indisputable.

Groups such as the Orwellian South Carolinians for Responsible Government and its moneyed out-of-state fellow travelers aren’t going to give up the lies, because they can’t win without them.

But let’s at least appreciate that the governor is learning a little of the truth about the schools, and speaking it. Yes, you can say he’s being the "good cop," but we usual suspects should learn to appreciate any kindnesses we can get. Remember, the bad cops will be back in the interrogation room in force, come January.

bradwarthen.com

All The News That Gives You Fits

Category Archives: Marketplace of ideas

Finally

Keeping the ‘Un’ in ‘Unparty’

A possible recruit?

Yep, you’ve seen it before

Unparty column

Reform!

An issue for the Critter Committee

Why can’t we do this here?

KR Alumni: Good journalism is good business

“Three Amigos” column

Column on Larry Wilson’s trial balloon

Cleaning up the nation

Jumping the gun

This column contains no allergens

The conflicted conservative

Two birds with one deal?

Sunday, Oct. 2 column

How would Jesus vote? Would he vote at all?

Dare we dream?

Plays better with others