Category Archives: The State

The Stuff I Kept

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been rooting through the vast piles of stuff I brought home when I left The State, stuff I just didn’t have time to go through in those last couple of weeks, but just jammed into boxes and hauled down to the truck, night after night, right up until that last night when Robert and I went off for beers in 5 Points.

And I keep running across fun little things that I want to share, enough of them that I’ve decided to start a new feature on the blog: The Stuff I Kept.

Here’s a favorite comic strip I kept taped to the wall over my credenza.

This one doesn’t take much explanation. As one accustomed to being in a leadership position (I had been supervising other journalists since 1980), I just enjoyed this send-up of the leadership imperative of always appearing to know what to do. Not that I could get away with this dodge with the members of the editorial board; they were a good bit smarter than the pirates in Overboard. But there were times when I did say “All right, then, here’s what we’ll do…” just to make a decision and move things along. Someone had to. And it was good if the someone who had to didn’t take himself too seriously.

Or at least, it was important that he give the impression to his subordinates that he didn’t take himself too seriously, say, by putting little self-deprecating cartoons up on his wall. Oh, leadership is complex, and deep. Deep enough to need hip boots.

Getting it wrong, and right, in ‘State of Play’

6 Replies

Back on this post, we had a sidebar about the film “State of Play” — Kathryn mentioning that I really should see the original British series, and I will certainly put it in my Netflix queue. As it happens, though, I saw the American film over the weekend, and it was, mediocre.

I’m reminded of it again today because I went by to visit folks at The State, and ran into Sammy Fretwell, and told him I had thought about him over the weekend. That’s because the one detail the filmmakers got right in Russell Crowe’s depiction of a reporter, aside from the fact that he worked on a ridiculously old PC, was his workspace. I would say “desk,” but this was the sort of workspace that has worked itself up into a fortress, with piles of papers, magazines, newspapers, files, publicity packets, all sorts of stuff in unsteady towers of material dating back 10 years and more, stacked on desk, credenza, nearby filing cabinets, and other items of furniture that can no longer be identified.

I saw that and thought, “Sammy!” (And I say this with all respect; Sammy’s a great newspaperman. He’s awesome. This just happens to be a common characteristic of great newspapermen.)

Beyond that, the screenplay was evidently NOT written by anyone who had ever worked at a newspaper. The characters just weren’t right. And they said ridiculous things that only non-journalists would ever say, such as “sell newspapers.” You know how people who want to criticize a paper for a story say the editors just ran it to “sell newspapers?” That’s always a dead giveaway of a clueless layman. I’ve never met a journalist who spoke or thought in terms of “selling newspapers.” Most journalists didn’t care if you stole it, as long as you read it. Selling was the concern of the business side folks (and a poor job they’ve done of it in recent years, huh?). Another real prize bit of dialogue, which you can hear on the above trailer: “The newspapers can slant this any which way they want to…” Who wrote this stuff?

The one really true bit was during the credits, when they show the Big Story that the movie was about going through the production process and onto the presses. They got that just right. I’m guessing that’s not a tribute to the knowledge of the writers. The producers probably just asked a newspaper to produce a page with this story on it, put it on the presses and run the presses. And THIS part got me. I haven’t really felt nostalgic about the lingering death of my industry, but this simple device of putting the camera on the actual physical processes sort of gave me a lump in the throat — the film coming out of the imagesetter, the plate being made, the plate being fitted onto the press… THAT was real.

But nothing else was. Not even the messy desk, as it turns out. When I mentioned it to Sammy, he said I was behind the times. He took me over to his little fortress in the corner, and it was NEAT. He had gotten permission to take three days off from covering the news and spent the time imposing order. It was freaky.

Sort of made me want to go back and make sure the imagesetters, platemakers and presses were still there…

Columbia’s pay raises, or, How do I get me one of THESE jobs?

3 Replies

A former colleague asked me if I had done anything on the blog about the Columbia city employee pay raises. Come to think of it, I had not. Here’s the story in The State he was referring to.

I don’t know about you, but I had trouble sorting through all the numbers in the story — which is why I didn’t post when I first tried to read it. I found it confusing. I had trouble finding the one figure I wanted most, the one I could hang my hat on: The average percentage increases each year. You tell me they were getting raises of 10 percent, and I get upset. If it’s more like 2 percent, I’m just jealous.

You can sort of guess at averages, but I couldn’t quite arrive with the available data. For instance, we’re told that between 2004 and 2009:

The number of employees making more than $50k rose from 172 to 412.

Employees making more than $50,000 a year had a combined total of $5,078,016 in raises.

OK, I don’t know how many there were over $50k in each year, but we can perhaps say that those 412 employees had a combined total of $5,078,016 in raises over five years (I think it’s saying that, but I’m not quite sure — how do you read it?). So if I’ve got those numbers right, they received an average of about $12,325 in increases over the period, or about $2,465 a year. An employee making $60k a year who got that much got a 4 percent raise. An employee making $120k receiving a $2,465 raise in one year got an increase of about 2 percent. Which is better than I got in my last couple of years at the paper, but not wildly out of line. But it’s at least debatable for anyone to get a 2- 4-percent raise in hard times.

Trouble is, one gets the impression that guesstimates of average percentages don’t mean much here, because some people got WAY more than that. And that’s the hardest, and most eye-opening, information in the story, to wit:

Valerie Smith, whose annual pay grew to $79,000, about a $26,000 increase, with a promotion from executive assistant to office manager, where she supervised five people.- Shirley Dilbert, whose annual pay grew to $60,000, about a $24,000 increase, with a promotion from executive assistant to the city manager to public services coordinator.

– Starr Hockett, whose annual pay grew to $56,000, about a $13,000 increase, with a promotion to administrative fiscal resources coordinator.

– Libby Gober, whose annual pay grew to $77,000, about a $23,000 increase, with a promotion to administrative liaison to City Council.

– Gantt, whose annual pay grew to $135,000, about a $22,000 increase, with a promotion to bureau chief of operations. (Gantt now is interim city manager.)

… and so on. Those are the facts that really jump out.

I don’t know anything about those individual cases, and I have no idea to what extent those promotions are meaningful. But it seems unlikely to me that that many people, in a city government with as many problems as this one had, should have gotten raises of those magnitudes.

Thoughts? I would particularly appreciate some analysis from someone who is more adept with figures than I.

Today’s scoop, and why it means so little

20 Replies

Today on Twitter, I chortled:

Scoop! Today’s lead story in the paper was on my blog 4 days ago…

… Not that I’m gloating, of course. I’m just saying, even a blind hog, etc….

And I wouldn’t gloat because, well, it doesn’t mean much.

To begin with, as news goes, it didn’t mean much to me. I’m not really big on the “size of the warchest” horserace stuff in politics, I just wanted to mention having chatted with Steve as one of my routine “contact reports” (I mean, I went to the meeting, so I might as well say something about it), and so I threw out that tidbit — in passing.

I haven’t talked with Adam at the paper, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he heard it the same day I did, but wanted to run down whether it really was a record or not, but then someone decided after a couple of days that he’d better just go ahead and report what he had. But that’s just conjecture on my part. Or maybe, just maybe, he was waiting to see a document rather than just reporting what Steve said, which would be the responsible thing. In any case, it’s not like it was earth-shattering news that you HAD to hear right away.

The reason I raise this now is to say that you will sometimes read things here on this blog before you see them in the paper, and while it might mean the paper’s falling down on its job, it doesn’t necessarily. What brings this point to mind was reading Lee’s comment back here, when he said:

The Free Times, a give-away weekly in Columbia, has plenty of ads, and more in depth coverage of local government than The State. In fact, it has broken many stories of waste and corruption which The State either missed or sat on.

Here’s the thing about that… I don’t want to take anything away from The Free Times, but I will say that if they didn’t have a scoop now and then, there’d be something wrong with them — regardless of how good a job The State is doing.

Here’s why: One newsman worth his salt can always find something that the newsroom with 100 people isn’t writing about. One of the most enviable positions in journalism is to be a one-man bureau in another paper’s town. Given the fact that the largest news organization in the world, and the best one in the world, is only going to cover more than a fraction of the thousands, or millions, of things going on in a given coverage area, you can always hit ’em where they ain’t.

And if you’d like to create the impression that they’re falling down on the job and only you are telling folks what is truly going on, all you have to do is beat them on one fairly significant development about once a year or so. That’s because nobody notices the thousands of times they beat YOU (many times a day, usually), because they’re supposed to beat you. It’s also because no one expects YOU to cover everything. And of course, nobody CAN cover everything, but the dominant local medium catches hell for anything significant that it misses, because it’s supposed to at least give the impression of covering everything of significance. Whereas if you’re the one-man operation, you can work on your one story, the one you hope will be a scoop, and ignore everything else — and no one will think the worse of you.

If I went to New York, I could do it to The New York Times. If Burl, who has spent his whole career in Hawaii, came to Columbia, he could do it to The State. So can I. I just did, without trying…

The dominant local medium always plays defense; you’re always on offense. The big paper never “wins” but occasionally you do — and when you do, folks like Lee are ready to damn the paper for its “failure.” And I say that not to criticize Lee; I’ve heard that many, many times from nice, smart people who are really upset that their paper didn’t have the story first. Sometimes they’re right to feel that way. But sometimes they’re not.

Trying to explain Joe Wilson to France

24 Replies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Does Sanford still think he has anything to lose politically?

47 Replies

This really got my attention in an otherwise boring turn-of-the-screw story over the Sanford ethics case:

Sanford asked the court to intervene Wednesday, arguing that if the State Ethics Commission releases the report, it could be used against him politically or undermine the governor’s ability to defend himself. Sanford’s attorneys will have until noon Tuesday to respond to the Ethics Commission arguments.

The boldface emphasis is mine. I would love to see the original press release or court filing or whatever that led to that paraphrase, “used against him politically.”

Surely the governor doesn’t actually believe that he has anything to lose politically. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t he say, in writing, not long ago, that his political career was over? I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time because it seemed like a painful case of stating the obvious.

This guy was toast before he dug the hole deeper with his unsuccessful attempt to block the stimulus funds. Already, the leadership of his own party had stopped listening to him, and the stimulus battle just made it less likely that they’d ever start again. All the Argentina madness happened on top of that. Those of us who were all too familiar with this guy and his irrelevance knew far before that explosion that there was no way he would ever have had a chance at national office, once the national media paid any attention to his record whatsoever. And of course there wasn’t anything left for him in South Carolina.

So how on Earth could he be hurt politically by disclosure of the preliminary ethics report, or, for that matter, by anything else? How could you possibly hurt a political career that is SO over, and then some?

But maybe he didn’t say that. Maybe The State got it wrong. I’d love to see what he DID say, so if any of y’all know, please direct me to it. A brief search on my part yielded nothing…

Valerie B. is back in town (all too briefly, though)

4 Replies

This morning I had the good fortune to run into Valerie Bauerlein, formerly of The State and now with The Wall Street Journal. She was having breakfast with Tim Rogers at the Cap City Club, working on a story that she hopes will make the “A-hed” position on page one — that’s the feature that is always such at good read at the center of the bottom of the page. (Fortunately for her, she wasn’t here to do yet another Sanford story.)

Valerie works in the Journal’s Atlanta bureau. While she spends close to half her time on regional general-assignment news reporting, her specific beat these days is the soft drink industry.

After Tim left, Valerie stopped off at my table and we had a chance to catch up. Her biggest news is that she’s expecting her second baby in November, so she has that glow about her — but then, Valerie always had that glow about her. She’s one of the nicest, most pleasant, kindest, most considerate people I ever worked with, to the extent that you wonder how she ended up in the trade. Not that news people are universally unpleasant or anything; it’s just that she was SO nice. And very good at her job, to boot.

Anyway, it was great to see her, and greater to see her doing so well. I thought I’d pass it on for those of you who remember her.

An early interview with Rob Miller

17 Replies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See what you think.

Compromising photographs

6 Replies

You know how back in the day, people would say they didn’t smoke dope, but if a joint was going around they’d take a toke “to be polite?” Doonesbury once made fun of it, with Zonker speaking the punch line, “I’m VERY polite.”

Well, I’m sort of that way about getting my picture taken with the guest of honor at rubber chicken dinners, receptions, etc. When somebody (usually some enthusiastic lady who has worked hard to put on the event) tugs my elbow and says, “Come have your picture taken with …” whomever, I may grumble a bit, but then shrug and make the best of it.

That explains why there are photographs of me with a wide variety of people, from our latest political persona non grata Joe Wilson (see the new header on my home page) to people I actually feel a little intimidated and unworthy standing next to, such as Elie Wiesel (below). You can see the awkwardness in my face on that one.

But in the Wilson pic, I’m perfectly at ease. You can probably even see a bit of amusement. This was taken at a reception for Joe at the Republican National Convention in New York. This was the last time the newspaper ever paid for me to travel out of state to do journalism, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. At this point, I’m grinning both to be a good sport, and because all week, I had been watching Joe really, REALLY enjoying being at the convention. Joe just has to pinch himself all the time, he SO enjoys being in Congress, and being a Republican, and being around other Republicans, to the point that he just wants to be friends with everybody. He was definitely not saying “You lie!” to anyone that week.

I don’t get enthusiastic like that, and people who do make me smile. Different strokes.

The Obama picture is slightly more complicated. In this case, I was amused not by the candidate, but by the excitement among some of the other people in the room. This was immediately following our editorial endorsement meeting. And while there were no member of the editorial board asking to have their pictures taken with the candidate (Warren, Mike and Cindi are too cool and professional for that) this was one of those meetings that people from around the building who had nothing to do with our editorial decisions asked if they could sit in, and I always said yes to such requests, as long as there was room and no one was disruptive.

And some of them were lining up eagerly to have their pictures taken with Obama. If you’ll recall, this is the kind of excitement his candidacy engendered. The candidate was anxious to get downstairs and put on some longjohns in the men’s room before going to sit in the freezing cold at the MLK Day rally at the State House, but he was a good sport about it.

And after several of these pictures were taken, I said — with an ironic tone, making a joke of it — well, why don’t I get MY picture with the senator, too!? Of course, it wasn’t entirely a joke. On some level, I was thinking that someday my grandchildren will want proof that I met all these famous people, and for the most part I don’t have any photographic proof. Here was my chance to get some, as long as everybody was camera-happy. I was also thinking, it’s all very well to be cool and professional but isn’t it a fool who plays it cool by making the world a little colder? Or something. Anyway, I like to do things that other more staid professionals turn their noses up at. It’s why I started a blog, while my colleagues didn’t. It’s why I do http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/2007/10/the-colbert-end.html”>silly stuff like this. You enjoy life more this way…

My regret that I have looking back is that I didn’t get my picture taken with John McCain, Joe Biden, George W. Bush, John Kerry, Al Gore, Ralph Nader, Ted Sorensen, Benazhir Bhutto, Jesse Jackson, or hosts of others. Mainly because I was too cool at the time when I was around them (especially back in the days when I spent a lot of time with Al Gore — in my early career I would have been WAY too self-righteous to pose for any such thing). I never even got my picture taken with Strom Thurmond. You know what? Next time I see Fritz Hollings, I’m going to ask somebody to take our picture…

Trying to think like a businessman

4 Replies

I already posted this once this morning and it disappeared; let’s see if I can recreate it…

This morning I ran into Dwight Drake, who was breaking his fast with some newspaper folk, including my former publisher and Bill Rogers of the state press association.

I asked Dwight whether he was wooing the press, but he said it was the other way around: They were trying to sell him some ads.

Well, good luck to them, said I as I moved back toward my table — newspapers certainly need the revenue, and maybe if Dwight broke with the conventional wisdom and invested significantly in print, some of his competitors would, too.

Only later did I realize I should have told Dwight that I’m planning on taking ads on my blog, once I work out the technical issues, and so if he wants to spend money, he could do so with me. But I always forget stuff like that. Maybe I’m not cut out to be a Mad Man after all (please don’t tell Joan Holloway) …

I chatted with Dwight a bit more after his meeting broke up, and he told me that before he would approve the “500 Days of Sanford” video spoof, he had to go see the movie. Wanting to seem hip, I didn’t ask “What movie?,” although that’s what I was thinking. Oh, now I see. Dwight says it was OK, but no “Gone With The Wind.” I can believe that. At any rate, I found the video amusing without getting the allusion.

Then, after I left, I realized I’d missed yet another selling opportunity, because I could have told Dwight I can run video on my blog. Of course, I already did run his video, for free.

I’ve really got to get a handle on this thinking like a businessman thing…

You tell ’em, Dr. Paul! (In your own sensible way)

13 Replies

Dr. Paul DeMarco of Marion, at the Gallivants Ferry Stump Meeting in 2006.

Our own Dr. Paul DeMarco is as always dispensing wisdom, or at least good common sense, in his op-ed piece today.

As you know, Paul used to be a regular on my (old) blog, but he got sick and tired of all the pointless, childish yelling, and some of the comments bothered him too, so he quit contributing. But we remain friends and stay more or less in touch. And he’s one of those doctors who knows what’s good for what ails America: a single-payer health care system.

Here’s an excerpt from his piece this morning (I’d reproduce the whole thing, but that might step over the line copyright-wise, and then Cindi would have to call me and yell at me, and I’d yell back at her, and she’d go to her office and sulk until she thought of some more choice things to call me, then she’d come back and yell at me some more, and it would be just like old times, but I know she’s busy, and I don’t want to put her to all that trouble):

Ironically, the cure is right at our fingertips: Simply expand Medicare to all Americans. Canadians, who cover all their citizens with a system similar to our Medicare, point to it as a source of national pride. In the ’60s, they recognized that justice was the first principle to be addressed in health care; once they decided that no citizen should go without reasonable access to medical care, they were well-positioned to face the difficult but not insurmountable questions about what should be covered and how to pay for it. While it is clear that the Canadian system has its problems, there is little doubt that taken as a whole it is better for the average citizen. The Canadians achieve similar overall health outcomes as the United States while spending just over half what we spend.

Are there Canadian health horror stories? Certainly, but America has no lack of those herself. More to the point, anecdotes shouldn’t be the basis for health policy. The United States would have to address legitimate concerns such as waiting times and access to specialists if we adopted Medicare for all. But universal coverage will immediately improve the lot of the many hard-working small-business people with chronic diseases who are floundering without health insurance. My barber is a perfect example. He’s one of Main Street’s most solid citizens. His shop lights are already on when I drive by in the early morning, but he must rely on charity care because as an owner-operator, he can’t afford a health policy. His plight does not exist in Canada.

Americans are rightly skeptical of government and wary of our recent deficit spending. But the notion that publicly funded health care is a new and radical idea for us is nonsense. Medicare, Medicaid and the Veterans Administration are all federally funded single-payer systems that have been in place for decades.

U.S. Medicare alone covers 45 million people — 12 million more than the entire population of Canada. Some seniors are so comfortable with Medicare they seem to have forgotten it is publicly funded; at town meetings, they have argued against the public option as unacceptable government intrusion while at the same time singing the praises of Medicare. And although the empty claim that government-funded health care would be bloated, intrusive and inefficient has been repeated incessantly, the truth is that U.S. Medicare achieves satisfaction rates similar to private insurers while operating with roughly a third of their overhead….

Notice how deferential Paul is to mindless anti-gummint sentiment, with that “Americans are rightly skeptical of government.” Paul’s a very civil guy, which is why the blog makes him uncomfortable. He gives the knee-jerk anti-gummint types more than their due, despite his politely reminded us that so many of them don’t know what they’re on about (such as the cranky old people at town meetings who somehow don’t understand that the Medicare they love so much is a gummint program, which to me ought to be grounds for having one’s right to vote revoked).

And before you Ayn Randians get all cranked up about the failings of gummint, let me say that you’re right: Gummint has it’s flaws, just the same as private companies or the Church or non-profit agencies or anything that’s run by mere humans. But as Paul also explains, Medicare produces results at least as satisfactory as the private sector, at about a third the overhead.

As I said, Paul always makes good sense…

Our governor certainly doesn’t lack for gall

10 Replies

Today, our governor, increasingly detached from reality, lashed out at the media. At least, he did according to CNN’s Peter Hamby:

(CNN) – South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford lashed out at the media on Friday, admonishing reporters at a press conference for their coverage of the multiple investigations into his travel expenses.

“One of the frankly disappointing things I’ve seen in several instances here over the last 60 days of my life since I’ve been through this thing is that in some cases it’s not been about objective journalism, its been about advocacy journalism with an agenda,” he said.

Sanford was in the town of Conway revealing his plans to waive confidentiality in a state Ethics Commission investigation into his use of state airplanes and taxpayer-funded travel, a move that will allow to the public to view the results of the probe.

But the governor, who has adopted an increasingly combative tone in recent days, also blasted members of the state legislature for being hypocritical, accusing them of spending state money on travel as well. He called on members of Senate and House to make their travel documents public.

Then he turned his sights on the South Carolina press corps, with whom he had a largely cordial relationship before he turned the state’s political world upside down in June by copping to an extramarital affair with an Argentine woman. He chided the media for its coverage of his travel record and said he has been an excellent steward of taxpayer money, unlike previous administrations…

… and I trust Peter’s account. He’s young, but steady.

The nerve of this guy Mark Sanford. With all of this insanity that he’s dragged us through because of his own narcissistic little drama, and which he keeps dragging us through, he has the unmitigated gall to lash out at the hard-working people who are merely reporting it to the people of South Carolina. Every day, he amazes me a little more.

I call your attention in particular to this passage:

Sanford singled out John O’Connor — a political reporter for South Carolina’s largest newspaper, The State — and accused the newspaper of covering the political back-and-forth over the travel controversy while skimming over Sanford’s arguments defending himself.

Sanford took one question, but refused several others. But when O’Connor asked a question about private flights that Sanford failed to report on public disclosures, the governor became irritable.

“John, we’re not going to play your game,” he said, jabbing his finger in the reporter’s direction. “I don’t work for you.”

Ah, but see, governor, that’s the thing — you do work for John. And you also work for the other four million-plus people of this state, which includes Andre Bauer, and most emphatically includes the many, many of us who believe your one great remaining chance to perform a service for this state is to take Andre up on his offer and resign. If you do that, we no longer have to be subjected to this farce of having you as governor, and will be spared the risk of having Andre elected in 2010.

But as each day goes by, with each outburst from you that we witness or hear of, our hope that you will come to your senses and do the right thing fades.

We deserve better than this.

Maybe I’m putting too much into Twitter…

1 Reply

It occurs to me that maybe too much of my energy that could go into making my blog better is going into Twitter.

Traditionally, I get a lot of my blog ideas when I’m reading the papers over breakfast in the morning. That first cup of coffee coinciding with the reading generally leads to far more ideas than I have time for. I used to stew through the morning meeting, which came right after breakfast, when I was at the paper because I was anxious to get to the computer and start putting some of the ideas on the blog before my enthusiasm (or the coffee, whichever you want to think of it as) wore off.

Now, since I started Twittering, I just go ahead and post a lot of the ideas as they occur to me, on my Blackberry, while eating. Which is great, I guess. Except that this gets each of those ideas out of my system, and by the time I’m at my laptop (It’s possible to blog on the Blackberry, but it’s a LOT harder), my mind has moved on.

So they don’t go totally to waste, bleeding off into the Twitter void, I decided to reproduce this morning’s tweets here, improved with links to the original sources of these brief comments.

You’ll see that only one was developed into a full-fledged blog post. The others I share for whatever minimal value they have:

Gov says calls to quit are “pure politics.” Let’s hope so. The alternative is the divine right of kings. (This, of course, is the one that became a blog post.)
Paper says “South Carolinians aged 18-20 cannot drink alcohol.” Actually, they CAN, but aren’t allowed to…
Twitter followers come and go so quickly. The number constantly fluctuates; the pattern eludes me…
Ad in paper touts “powerful joint pill,” which makes me think “THC,” but that’s not it, apparently…
Sanford sez other govs flew 1st Class. Yeah, but they weren’t hypocrites about it. Big difference…
Just inadvertently did a subversive thing: went to the WSJ Web site and searched for “trotsky”…
Just saw meter maid downtown, and the bag across her shoulder made her look a little like a military man…

And as a bonus, here’s one I just posted:

Gov says he won’t be “railroaded” out of office. How about “trolleycarred?” Or “pickup-trucked?” Or “little-red-wagoned?” Any mode will do.

Checking my look, checking my attitude

9 Replies

Y’all remember Christina Binkley. She’s the super-savvy Wall Street Journal columnist who quoted me awhile back regarding key economic indicators (in this case, Ben Bernanke’s beard — don’t ask me to explain; follow the link).

Anyway, today she’s giving advice on how to be unemployed with style, so of course I paid close attention:

Laid Off? Check Your Look … and Your Attitude

Newly Jobless Update Wardrobes, Rein In Resentment and Embrace Punctuation

… In the aftermath of a layoff, style is critical. And it’s about more than the decision to polish a wardrobe. The way people comport themselves after losing a job can make all the difference in what comes next. From how they convey the news to colleagues, to the type of clothes they wear and how they punctuate their emails, the newly jobless must use careful footwork to navigate the job hunt.

When in doubt, it’s a safe bet to retreat to conservative styles. After Michael Bragg was downsized from his New York-based job at a high-end European fashion brand, he went out and bought a new pair of shoes—lace-up, American-made Aldens. Play it straight with email, too. Sure, sometimes it’s perfectly acceptable to shoot off a short, all lowercase missive to a colleague. But punctuation is a risk-free option. The same goes for social-networking. Now is not the time to post pics from a beer-sodden barbecue and share them with everyone in your network….

Good advice, that last bit. Hang on a sec while I go pull a couple of things off of YouTube…

…OK, I’m back. (While I was there, I updated my channel so it no longer says I’m “the VP/Editorial Page Editor of The State, the largest newspaper in South Carolina.” Along with style and attitude, I’m assuming accuracy is also important.)

Back to Christina’s piece today … I hope bud will take careful note of the advice therein. bud doesn’t seem to think I should be wearing clothing that requires dry-cleaning while unemployed. I disagree. Christina’s with me. Folks, I get up every morning, put on my coat and tie (shirt and pants, too — details are important), and go downtown to have breakfast at the usual place (Doug knows where). Only way I know to stay in the game and maintain contacts. To me, networking seems key. Looking like you’re ready to go to work this minute also seems advisable.

As for attitude — I think I’m OK there, too. I didn’t get upset and cuss anybody out when I got laid off. I mean, y’all can go back and see what I said at the time, here and here and here (I even said nice stuff about Mark Sanford). Maybe there will be a delayed reaction sometime, but I haven’t really worked up a good mad yet (which is actually sort of out of character for me, but there it is). I guess as a vice president of the company I understood the situation too well. Thirty-eight people were getting the ax that day, and they needed some of them to be top management. I got picked (and had the honor of being the one mentioned in the news story). Way of the world. Stiff upper lip and all that. A chap must face facts, and other pseudo-British mumbo-jumbo…

So I’m doing everything right. Of course, it hasn’t produced full-time permanent employment yet, so after a few more dry-cleaning bills maybe I’ll try bud’s approach, but for the moment I still think Christina knows the score.

What’s wrong with you? I’ll tell you. (What else are friends for?)

26 Replies

I was going to use as my headline, “Do you know what your sin is?,” the quote from “Serenity.” But then I realized I’d done that before. Too bad, as it would have worked better here.

Anyway, I had to smile when I read this in Cindi Scoppe’s column today:

My friend and editor at the time, Brad Warthen, wasn’t convinced that joining an Anglo-Catholic parish made me Catholic, but as a Roman Catholic, he understood the power of confession, and he figured anything that might make me less of a pain to work with was worth a shot, so he happily helped me compile my list of sins. “Imperious is the word you’re looking for,” he said, before more began rolling off his tongue: arrogant, dismissive, condescending, scornful, impatient. (Most of them were already on my list.) “Don’t forget pride,” he said. “That’s one of the seven deadly sins.”

Thus prepared with my list, I went to my first confession.

Frankly, I had forgotten that incident. But it all came back when I read, “Imperious is the word you’re looking for.” Yep, that was me. I say things like that.

Now, here’s the question: What condemnatory words might someone who is inclined to judgment apply to someone who so glibly details another person’s sins? But hey, I was just trying to oblige. I’ve always done that. Ask me a question, I’ll give you an answer, with a minimum of hemming and hawing.

Back in the early days of our acquaintance, it took my poor wife about a year to realize that I would answer ANY question, whether I knew the right answer or not. She’d ask, “Why is the car making that noise?” or “Why did the weather get so cool so suddenly?” and I would launch into an explanation that sounded reasonable to me. Sometimes I would add, “That’s my theory, anyway;” other times I would forget to. Eventually, she learned to recognize my “theorizing” tone. I wasn’t trying to mislead her. I just always figured that if a person asks a question, they want an answer, not “I don’t know.” And as I said, I like to oblige.

Then, as editorial page editor, I developed the capacity to come up with something to say, under any circumstances. Since the point of an editorial board is to come up with something to say, this was a handy skill to have. It settled many an impasse on the board. We’d be deadlocked, and the inspiration would come upon me; I’d say “Here’s what we’ll say,” and essentially dictate an editorial that took into account all that had been said. Just something I did. I’m hoping to come up with another job that requires that skill, because I’m very good at it. Better at that than writing or editing. (Too bad no one’s hiring absolute monarchs these days, because that’s something they need to know how to do…)

So if you asked, “Whom should we endorse for governor and why?,” I’d come up with the answer. And if you asked, “What are my sins?,” I’d tell you that, too. Even if it made me sound disturbingly like that insufferable busybody, the Operative.

And it’s just like Cindi to remember something like that…

Today’s news that matters

Lately I’ve been missing my Wall Street Journal (the subscription that the paper paid for ran out, and they wanted $299 to renew), particularly the “What’s News” feature on the front page, which provided a nice briefing each day of the news that mattered. If all I had time to do was read that, I at least was aware of everything important that had happened nationally and internationally.

It took me a while to get used to that. For years, I had thought in standard newspaper-front-page language to get my cues on what was big. There is nothing, of course, standard about the WSJ; they do things their own way. The New York Times is typical of the traditional, conventional approach, which as a newspaperman (who was once a front-page editor, many years ago) I appreciate. It’s probably meaningful to you as well, only subconsciously rather than overtly.

It works like this, in part: The most important thing that happens in the world appears in a vertical element on the far right-hand side of the page, usually, but not always, touching the top of the page. In a newspaper with a truly conservative approach such as the NYT (I’m using “conservative” in the true meaning of the word, not in the popular political sense, folks), most days that lede story (that’s the newspaper spelling for “lead,” by the way) will only have a one-column headline. That’s because most days, there is no earth-shattering news. History moves gradually, for the most part.

When the lede hed (newspaperese for headline) gets bigger than two columns, watch out. It could be good news, but it could be really bad. In any case, it’s really something.

A lede-worthy story is several things:

It’s important.
It’s probably interesting, but it doesn’t have to be. Quite often, the most important developments are dull, and your attention naturally drifts to other things on the page. Those highly interesting other things may be more prominently displayed on the page — toward the center top, or left-hand side — and they may have art with them (newspaperese for photos, graphics or anything that’s not plain text).
It happened. It doesn’t advance something that’s going to happen (although there could be rare exceptions, such as a story that builds up to something like a presidential inauguration — but even then, something has to have happened leading toward that). It’s not a trend story — it doesn’t take a step back from the news; it is the news. It’s not analysis.

This may seem all terribly pedantic, especially as it has to do with a dying industry. It may seem like I’m providing a connossieur’s view of horses and buggies. But a lot of you out there are confirmed newspaper readers, and you probably understand these things I’m explaining instinctively. I’m talking here about you true aficionados; the people who not only take The State 7 days, but the NYT or WSJ as well. You are the people who are the most avid editorial page readers, because you are the most committed readers of the paper overall.)

Editors informed by that tradition certainly assumed you did. Buzz Merritt did. Buzz was the executive editor at The Wichita Eagle-Beacon (now known once again merely as The Wichita Eagle) when I was its front-page editor in the mid-80s. Buzz had come up in the business at The Charlotte Observer, which was always of the traditionalist school (I don’t know if it is now or not, because I never see it). He’s the one who drilled those three qualities of a lede, and the permissible ways to present it on the page, into my head.

And Buzz explained that a lede should communicate one thing very clearly to the reader, even the casual reader, whether consciously or not: Is my world safe? Usually, the answer will be yes, at least relatively so, and your eyes will merely brush over that reassuring fact as you move on to dig into news that interests you more. For that reason the lede should often be unobtrusive, occupying the minimal space on that right-hand edge. But when you really need to sit up and take notice (the collapse of credit markets, the USSR moving missiles into Cuba) it needs to be big enough to reach out and grab you.

Most of these subtleties, of course, are lost on you if you read your newspaper online. As useful as the Web versions can be (and the NYT and WSJ are very good at adding value via the Web) that medium just hasn’t developed the same visual and organizational language to convey the same messages about what’s important today. And that’s one reason why, consciously or unconsciously, many of you still cling to your print editions.

Anyway, as an Old School newspaperman, with a traditionalist’s sense of what matters — and one who thinks some of you might be of a similar orientation — let me offer a briefing glimpse at the news that actually mattered this morning. No Britney Spears. No “Idol.” No sports (except, of course, during the World Series or the Final Four, and then just as leavening in what we call “the mix”). Just news that matters.

Here goes:

National/International

U.S. to Regulate Tobacco — A good lede candidate. It happened. It’s historically important, with extremely wide-ranging implications across the country. And it’s also interesting. (From an SC perspective, it’s another step forward on the national front while we can’t even raise our lowest-in-the-nation tax.)

Iran Votes Today — This couldn’t be the lede, because it hadn’t happened yet. But there’s nothing bigger on the horizon today, and demands prominent front-page play. Barring something huge and unexpected overshadowing it, a likely lede candidate for tomorrow (if we know anything about results).

Al Qaeda shifting Out of Pakistan — Not a lede either, but a very important trend story. Seems to have been exclusive to the NYT, although I could be wrong. (Of course, if you’re a paper that subscribes to the NYT news service, you would have had access to this in-cycle.)

TV Finally Goes Digital — This story, after the years of build-up, is pretty ho-hum. But it is happening today. And even though most folks won’t notice the difference, this is a significant milestone that affects, even if unobtrusively in most cases, technology that all of us have in our homes, and that too many of us spend too much time staring at. A small, take-note-of headline on the page.

State/Local

BEA Issues Gloomier Forecast — A good lede candidate for a South Carolina paper (and indeed, that’s how it was played in The State). You might want to run, as a sidebar, this more upbeat indicator: Lowcountry Home Sales Up. There are promising signs, and you need to keep readers apprised of them, while not sugarcoating the situation.

USC Tuition Holds to Inflation — Important consumer news, to be sure. But this also contains currents of several things of strategic importance to the state, addressing as it does economic development, the federal stimulus, the state budget cuts, and accessibility to a college education in a state in which too few adults have one.

I’ll stop there, because that’s enough for a respectable front page with most newspapers.

Anyway, if y’all like this, maybe I’ll do it more often. Like daily.

Henry’s ‘profile in courage’

This may sound odd, but I have to force myself to get into the habit of reading the editorial page of The State each morning.

See, I never did it when I was the editor, since I had read it closely the day before. So it’s just not part of my morning newspaper-reading ritual. I go front page (only reading the stories that jump out as important in terms of being an informed citizen, which is often just one or two items on the page), the jumps from that page, metro front and the jumps of the stories I read there, the business front and (during the legislative session), page B3. And, if I’m not also reading the Wall Street Journal or some other paper, I’ll look at A4 for a national-international overview.

I’ll “read the paper” in accord with my habits, and never even glance at the opinion pages. Which is not good. I don’t mean to avoid it; it simply does not occur to me that I hadn’t read it unless something comes up to make me consciously realize it. And that’s awful, because I know how hard Warren and Cindi (and Randle and Claudia, but you don’t know them as well) are working in my absence.

For instance, I “read the paper” this morning, but did not see Cindi’s nice piece about what a principled guy Henry McMaster is. Finally, after it was brought to my attention a couple of times today, I went and read it. Sorry I missed it earlier. You should go read it now, if you’ve been similarly remiss.

Henry’s one of those gubernatorial candidates I had not written a profile of before I left the paper, since he had not declared. Still hasn’t. But when he does, I’ll write more about him on the blog. In the meantime, Cindi’s piece is a nice conversation-starter.

Henry’s been the sort of attorney general who makes you say you’re sorry — for not endorsing him when he ran. He has been SO much better than his predecessor (and so much more reasoned and professional than you might have expected the ex-party chairman — who used to trade silly partisan shots with Dick Harpootlian when they were opposite numbers — to be), that he is one of my two favorite people about whom I like to say “we were wrong” for not endorsing. The other is Lindsey Graham.

Henry and Lindsey, along with Bobby Harrell, were the South Carolinians who stuck with John McCain in the darkest hours of his campaign for the GOP nomination. That has something to do with why I respect them as I do. It’s not that I respect them for backing the right guy per se; it’s just that the qualities that caused them to choose McCain among the Republicans and stick with him are related to the traits that cause me to respect them as public servants.

But I digress. Of course, digressing is a large part of what a blog’s for, isn’t it?

My former employer is having me followed

Not sure what to make of this.

One of the pleasures — for a megalomaniac — of Twitter is that instead of having “friends” (and I’ve never quite gotten the meaning of the word as Facebook uses it), you have “followers.” My number of followers has been steadily, but gradually, growing since I signed up over the weekend. Each one makes me feel slightly more powerful and influential, just because of the word.

But what am I to make of my 26th follower?

The State Newspaper (thestate) is now following your updates on Twitter.

Not Warren or Cindi or even Mark Lett, or Gary Ward with thestate.com. No, the institution itself. Its icon is an extreme closeup of the paper’s nameplate.

Of course, you know that I’ve always loved Big Brother. Even ex-Big Brother.

I guess I should deal with this by following it right back, huh?

Why the good falls with the bad

Cindi Scoppe’s column today about Mark Sanford’s “good vetoes” makes an excellent point. Many of his vetoes as governor have truly been about good and smart government, and have tried to undo some of the General Assembly’s more objectionable excesses.

Unfortunately, the governor has generated so much bad blood between himself and lawmakers — and damaged his credibility outside the State House with such wrongheaded moves as trying to block the stimulus — that he’s made it much, much easier for lawmakers to brush him off, even when he’s right.

Some who still defend the governor believe this is not his fault, that it’s all the fault of those wicked, wasteful lawmakers. And indeed, legislators give such critics ammunition when they reject even the governor’s demonstrably good ideas.

But the sad truth is — and it IS a sad truth to someone who initially was a Sanford supporter, as I was — that he has gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure his own ineffectiveness in dealing with the Legislature across the board. However wasteful or foolish you may think lawmakers as a group are (and Lord knows they give plenty of opportunities for you to draw that conclusion), the fact is that the Republican leaders would love to have worked with a governor of their own party to achieve his agenda, even when it wasn’t theirs. It’s in their nature, whatever their flaws.

Cindi does a pretty decent job of explaining how that happened, although you had to be there watching closely to fully get the degree to which he has spoiled his opportunities:

Unfortunately, the Legislature dealt with his 2004 vetoes in a most irresponsible way (overriding 105 of 106 of them in 90 minutes, before most legislators even had a chance to hear his arguments), which prompted his even more-irresponsible response (carrying two squealing, defecating piglets into the State House in a made-for-TV protest), which made legislators even more angry, which made the governor even more provocative, which made legislators even more determined to ignore him, which made him even less concerned about making nice — or acting responsibly — which prompted legislators to not just ignore him but punish him, which ….

You get the point. And all of that was before he united just about the entire Legislature — Republican and Democrat and, more significantly, House and Senate — in seething opposition to his campaign to reject federal stimulus funding unless it is used to not stimulate the economy.

And let me tell you, it’s one thing to unite Democrat and Republican. Uniting the House and the Senate against you takes real talent for p0litical self-destruction, bordering on genius.

The result is that the governor’s good ideas get swept away with the bad, and that truly is a shame.

Perspectives on hydrogen

Here’s something that struck me as interesting this morning. Did you read the op-ed piece by my friend Kevin Dietrich, arguing — as you would expect someone at the S.C. Policy Council to argue — against our state’s investment in hydrogen research? An excerpt:

In the past few years, taxpayers have poured tens of millions of state and local tax dollars into hydrogen research even though multiple experts question how viable the technology will be in offsetting U.S. reliance on foreign oil or reducing carbon emissions.

“A hydrogen car is one of the least efficient, most expensive ways to reduce greenhouse gases,” said Joseph Romm, a physicist in charge of renewable energy research during the Carter administration. Asked when hydrogen cars will be broadly available, Romm replied: “Not in our lifetime, and very possibly never.”

The Los Angeles Times was blunter in assessing the future of hydrogen-powered vehicles: “Hydrogen fuel-cell technology won’t work in cars…. Any way you look at it, hydrogen is a lousy way to move cars.”

What struck me about it was that, without naming the author, Kevin was quoting the very same L.A. Times column by Dan Neil that I was praising yesterday. (Now I know why Cindi Scoppe happened to run across the Neil piece and bring it to my attention yesterday — she was doing her due diligence as an editor in checking Kevin’s source material, and recognized the piece as something I’d be interested in.)

The difference, of course, lies in the degrees to which Kevin and I considered the full text of the piece to which we referred. I was up-front with y’all about Neil’s arguments against hydrogen as a fuel source for cars. I didn’t blink at that at all. But I also emphasized the very positive things he said about Honda’s hydrogen car project, on my way to making some positive points about why hydrogen research is worthwhile.

Kevin, in standard S.C. Policy Council “if it involves the government spending money, it’s bad” style, cited ONLY the negative. Kevin’s a good guy, and he’s completely sincere about the things he says. But I ask you — given what I got out of the Neil piece and what Kevin got out of it — who has his eyes completely open? Who explored the full implications of the piece (which I again invite you to go read for yourself)?

I raise this point not to criticize Kevin, but to praise our state and community’s commitment to this research. From what I’ve seen and heard, the hydrogen researchers are very realistic about the limitations of H as a fuel source for cars from where we stand at this moment. But their eyes are open to what this research DOES offer South Carolina, Columbia and the nation.

bradwarthen.com

All The News That Gives You Fits