Category Archives: The State

The Hillary cartoon that wasn’t

Last night, while I was making the rounds of campaign HQs in Columbia, it suddenly hit me that I needed to come in and revamp the editorial page for today, which at that point had gone to the pressroom hours earlier.

The first thing that hit me was that a couple of passages in my column for today were wrong — more about that in a minute. But the thing that would have really hit you in the eye and make you wonder what we’d been smoking was Robert Ariail’s cartoon. What you see above is what would have landed on your doorstep today if I hadn’t gone back in to the office a little before 10 p.m.

When Robert had left for the day, the cartoon was as fine as prognostication could make it. The polls almost uniformly had said, right up until the day of the New Hampshire primary, that Obama and McCain were going to win up there, and that Obama would win by a bigger margin than McCain. All of the talk about Democratic Party insiders was about how Mrs. Clinton would probably have to skip South Carolina, conceding it to Obama, and concentrate on the big states coming up in February.

By 8:30 or so, it was becoming obvious that even if Obama won New Hampshire, it would be close. An hour later, it was looking increasingly like Hillary had achieved an upset win. And this morning, I have yet to find anyone who offers a plausible explanation as to why that happened. People mention the tears, but to me, that remains implausible. I guess I just don’t want to admit voters can be so swayed by something that that. Perhaps I should know better.

Here’s the cartoon I put in place of the Hillary one (it’s also reproduced below) — fortunately, Robert had finished it earlier in the day, only deciding to do the Clinton one late. All I had to do was scan it in and put it on the page.

Due to a glitch in software that automatically searches for each day’s cartoon and puts it on thestate.com, some of you may have already seen the Hillary cartoon. But we’ve fixed that, and at least I was able to keep it out of the paper.

Oh, yes, here are the changes I had to make in my column. Originally, the relevant passage in my column went like this:

Let’s do Republicans first, since y’all face S.C. voters first (on the 19th) and come back to the Democrats (assuming, of course, that Barack Obama hasn’t sewn up the nomination before this column lands on your doorstep).
We’d like some specifics beyond the vehement claims that pretty much each and every one of you is “the real conservative” in the race.
We’ll start with John McCain, the likely winner (as I type this) in New Hampshire Tuesday.

Once again, that was based on the best info available at the time our page needed to go to meet our normal production schedule. Here’s what it changed to:

Let’s do Republicans first, since y’all face S.C. voters first (on the 19th) and come back to the Democrats (after the cliffhanger night Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton just went through, they could probably do with a rest today).
We’d like some specifics beyond the vehement claims that pretty much each and every one of you is “the real conservative” in the race.
We’ll start with John McCain, the big winner in New Hampshire Tuesday.

As the world keeps changing several times a day over the next couple of weeks, this sort of thing is likely to keep happening. I just hope I can always catch it before an error is published.

08ari0109a

Video: DeMint on why he’s for Romney

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Shortly after Mrs. Thompson left today, Jim DeMint dropped by The State to talk about his support for Mitt Romney.

While The Wall Street Journal cast doubt over the weekend on the political value of Romney’s business-executive reputation, Sen. DeMint remains sold on it. In fact, he sees such a background as key, not only to solving domestic problems, but foreign policy. At one point, he said "More important around the world than democracy is free enterprise."

As for Gov. Romney’s turnaround on abortion, all the better: "That’s a wonderful thing," he said. "Reagan was pro-choice." In other words, converts to the cause are welcome.

To hear the senator elaborate on these and other points, see the video.

Happy Elvis Day!

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Chris Roberts no longer works for this newspaper, but every year on this day, that former colleague somehow gets through the crack security of our isolated campus, and the motion detectors protecting my sanctum sanctorum itself, and leaves a jelly donut on my desk.

So it is that I never forget Elvis Presley’s birthday — which, as I’m sure you know, is today.

Yes, folks, it’s time to take a breather from our earthly striving and try to get in touch with our essential Elvisness.

Video: Jeri Thompson drops by the office

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Ken Wingate had just called me back — I was wanting to talk with him about his support for Mitt Romney — and word came up from downstairs that Jeri (Mrs. Fred) Thompson was in the building, and would like to come up and say hi.

Mrs. Thompson graciously sat down for a few minutes to chat, and since I don’t let anybody sit down without turning on my camera, we have video. (FYI, the "Joshua" I speak to off-camera is Joshua Gross, former blogger.)

And yes, we DID talk about my blog post over the weekend about her husband… Just watch the video.

Pay no attention to that man on the blog

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Folks, please disregard the error published on this CBS News blog yesterday, headlined "S.C. Paper Asks Thompson to Drop Out," which said:

GOFFSTOWN, N.H. — The largest newspaper in South Carolina is asking Fred Thompson to drop out of the Republican nomination and endorse John McCain.

“It’s time for him to do the principled thing,” writes The State’s
editorial page director, Brad Warthen. “He should bow out, and support
McCain. And he should do it now; now is when he can make a difference.”

The editorial from the Columbia, South Carolina, paper comes at a
time when Thompson is getting ready to focus all of his attention on
South Carolina, after finishing third in Iowa and admitting he is “not
competitive” in New Hampshire…

First, it wasn’t "an editorial." Editorials actually DO speak for the newspaper as an institution, and reflect the consensus of the editorial board, NOT of an individual. So the headline is wrong — this "S.C. Paper" said nothing at all on the subject.

Anyway, when I saw people were being directed to my site by CBS, and followed the link to that blog item (by a guy named "John Bentley") and found the error, I tried posting a comment there, as follows:

I’d like to request a correction.

This "S.C. Paper" has not said a word about Fred Thompson. It’s just a thought I happened to share on my blog. No one else on our editorial board had anything to do with it; in fact, I doubt that anyone else is even aware that I said it, since I posted that on a weekend and they all have other things to do.

It’s OK to say the editorial page editor [and not the editorial page "director;" what is THAT, some TV term?] said it, but The State did NOT say it.

As I said in a column (which is ALSO personal opinion, and does not speak for The State), "Such are the pitfalls of blogging. Some folks mistake my passing observations for final conclusions and (an even greater mistake) my opinions for those of the whole editorial board."

For more on that subject, here’s a link:
http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/2008/01/its-now-or-neve.html

Anyway, please take note of this problem. I don’t wish to embarrass my colleagues by the world thinking they are somehow responsible for my personal eruptions.

So, to play on the allusion I used in my Friday column, pay no attention to that man behind the blog — especially not the erroneous one … but don’t attach to much importance to this one either. My thoughts are what they are — my thoughts. And I wouldn’t even want anyone to think they are MY final word on the subject, since one of the purposes of editorial board discussions is to make each other think a little more — as I also suggested in today’s column.

It’s now-or-never time for our endorsement decisions

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By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
ON TUESDAY, New Hampshire votes. On Wednesday, presidential candidates will descend on South Carolina in such numbers as we’ve never seen, and stay for the duration — the Republicans until the 19th of this month, the Democrats through the 26th.
Time for us to get busy on The State’s editorial board. Not that we’ve been slacking off, but our pace starting this week is likely to make the past year look like a nice, long nap.
Watch for more columns than usual from me on this page or the facing one. And between columns, keep an eye on my blog. But the main work of the next two weeks will be interviewing the remaining viable candidates and writing our endorsements. Our plan, from which we will deviate only under the most extreme circumstances, is to endorse in the GOP primary a week from today, Jan. 13, and to state our choice in the Democratic contest Jan. 20.
But, asked regular gadfly Doug Ross on my blog last week, our endorsements have “already been written,” right? And as another writer, who goes by the pseudonym “weldon VII,” asked, “Why would Romney waste his time coming to see you, Brad?”
Such are the pitfalls of blogging. Some folks mistake my passing observations for final conclusions and (an even greater mistake) my opinions for those of the whole editorial board.
Right now — since I have not once asked any of my colleagues whom they currently prefer in the two primaries (I want that discussion to happen after the last interview — it makes for a more intense debate, but a much better-informed one), and since they haven’t hinted aloud or in print, I don’t know how near or far we are from our eventual consensus. (Ask me next week this time.)
As for “weldon’s” comment — well, let’s be frank: He’s thinking of my oft-stated respect for John McCain. You don’t have to read the blog to know about that; it’s been stated here often enough.
But I’ll say two things about that: First, I had good things to say about Mike Huckabee, too, after I met him for the first time on Sept. 20. He made a stronger impression than expected; he’s made a similar impression on a lot of other people since then.
Secondly, I was a big admirer of Sen. McCain back in 2000, too — but we ended up endorsing George W. Bush.
Let me tell you about that — and also answer another question Doug asked: Who breaks a tie on the editorial board?
It generally doesn’t come to a tie, because we work really hard for a consensus. Some of us change our minds during the discussion, while others concede to a second choice, seeing that their first isn’t going to carry the day. It’s complicated.
I can think of only two times when we had a “tie” to break, and one of them was in February 2000. Gov. Bush came in at 8 a.m. on the Wednesday before our endorsement; Sen. McCain joined us Thursday afternoon. (Alan Keyes had been in the previous week.) The moment Sen. McCain left, we began our final discussion.
The previous weekend, I had written and e-mailed to my boss, the publisher, a 4,000-word memo explaining why I believed we should endorse Sen. McCain. I did so knowing that he (this was two publishers ago, I should add) was just as firmly for Gov. Bush. But he was leaving the question open until after the interviews.
We went into those meetings with most of the group leaning toward McCain (based on comments volunteered to me). It’s amazing what a good meeting can do for a candidate, or what a bad one can do to a candidate. That Wednesday, George W. Bush had the most “on” hour of his life. I have never seen the man, before or since, present himself so well, or so articulately. (Maybe it was the time of day; maybe it was the two cups of coffee we watched him drink; most likely it was his firm knowledge that this was a make-or-break moment.)
John McCain was in a funk on Thursday. I’ve never seen him so “off” as he was that day. In a downcast voice, he spoke of a young boy who’d come up to him that day and told him the senator had been his hero, but not any more, after what a caller had told the boy over the phone. (Neither he nor we fully appreciated yet the devastating impact that smear campaign would have.)
The publisher had come prepared for our internal debate. He had a six-inch stack of documents he had gathered to support his position. When he was done, and I was done, we went around the table. Two people had changed their minds. It was a tie. And in a tie in which the publisher is on one side and the editorial page editor on the other, the publisher’s side wins.
Do I make my decision solely on the basis of a single meeting? Of course not. But some of my colleagues don’t pay the kind of attention to these candidates that I do day after day; that’s not what they’re paid to do. They come in with relatively fresh perspectives.
And while it doesn’t happen often, I’ve been known to change my mind in these meetings. I’m wary of this, and reluctant to give it too much weight. But if I don’t give it some weight, what indeed is the point of the interview?
We’re working with the campaigns to firm up the appointments, but I’m hopeful that we’ll have spoken with Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson by the end of the day Thursday. Once those are out of the way, we hope to see Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — and John Edwards, if he’s still in it after Tuesday.
I don’t know exactly how it’s going to go, but I know this is going to be interesting.

What do you want this blog to be for the next three weeks?

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You’ll notice that today’s column — which I mistakenly backdated to yesterday morning rather than this morning, but have now corrected — was an elaboration on a blog post. Watch for more of that; over the next three weeks — between now and the Jan. 26 Democratic primary here — I plan to write more columns than usual, and as often as not, the blog will be the place where the column ideas first take shape.

I also plan to post more than usual. I’m shoving as many of my other duties aside as possible to concentrate on covering (in my own way, which will differ from what you see in news) and writing about the primaries, both for the blog and the paper. (You would have seen more last night and this morning here, but my personal life has been rather full — and joyful — the last 26 hours or so.) I will not, of course, be as free as a reporter would — I’ve got to jam in time for as many as five candidate interviews in preparation for endorsements on the 13th (Republican) and 20th (Democratic). But those interviews should produce a lot of fodder for this venue as well.

I want to make the most of all this effort, and make what I’m doing as useful as possible. I won’t just be doing this to be busy; I’ve got granddaughters to rock, you know. So I’d like y’all’s suggestions as to what you would like to see here. More video? More accessible format? More links to news and other opinions? More pictures of grandchildren (sorry, that just slipped out)? Think particularly in terms of what the editorial page editor of South Carolina’s largest newspaper might contribute that you wouldn’t get elsewhere; there’s little use in my duplicating stuff you can get already.

One thing I want to get done this weekend is replace the Stephen Colbert video that’s at the top of my main page (that guy’s campaign just went nowhere) with some sort of quick-start daily briefing. Maybe links to latest news, latest posts of interest, latest issue-oriented posts, or something like that. Something that you would find useful and that’s doable without my dropping everything else to spend my days coding.

Anyway, I’m looking for ideas, so please pitch them my way.

More on McClatchy

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Since there was so much interest in this previous post about the WSJ piece on McClatchy, I pass on this link to a previous piece in Forbes. If you already read the WSJ piece, this one will hold no surprises. But here’s an excerpt:

Holy smokes–what happened to McClatchy?
Just a few years ago, industry observers hailed the newspaper company and its boyishly charismatic chairman and chief executive, Gary Pruitt, for growing earnings and producing solid journalism at a time when some of its rivals couldn’t accomplish either.
The peak: March 22, 2005, when the company’s shares hit an all-time, split-adjusted high of $76.05.
Then the industry turned and so did McClatchy’s fortunes…

Or did y’all just talk so much about the McClatchy piece because I wasn’t providing other fodder last week? Either way, enjoy.

The newspaper business

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You may have noticed that I’m taking a bit of a break. Well, it is Christmas, you know. It started yesterday. All that stuff that went on the several weeks before, with all the hubbub? That was Advent, not that you would be able to tell, going by the dictionary definition.

Yesterday, driving home from my parents’ house with the wife and a couple of our kids, the radio started telling me about the presidential election, noting that while most folks were taking a holiday, the campaigns were not, that in fact… at which point I changed the station. Like I wanted to hear about that. I wondered who they thought did want to hear the same rehash of an ongoing story at that moment.

Anyway, I will be somewhat disengaged for several more days. Next week, however, I expect to be going at double or triple speed, so if you go away, be sure to come back for the home stretch of the aforementioned story in which I am currently uninterested. I think it will be worth your while.

It’s not just the holidays that will be occupying me between now and then. My oldest daughter is expecting twins, and the medicos have decreed that they are to be born tomorrow — the 27th. I doubt that I will be thinking about the blog with such excitement as that going on.

Anyway, I wish an excellent time between now and the New Year to you and yours.

Oh, yes — the reason I started this post was to share something with you. I noticed that Gordon and Karen were discussing the newspaper business back on this post. As it happens, The Wall Street Journal had as its most prominent front-page headline this morning (not technically its lead story, although a layman might be forgiven for mistaking it for that) a story about the company that owns my newspaper. Here’s a link, and here’s an excerpt:

Despite Woes, McClatchy
Banks on Newspapers
Family-Controlled Chain
Faces Internet Challenge;
Mr. Pruitt Keeps Faith
By STEVE STECKLOW
December 26, 2007; Page A1

SACRAMENTO — In the beleaguered newspaper industry, one chief executive has long stood out as the golden boy: Gary Pruitt. He skillfully managed the McClatchy Co. chain and last year engineered the $4.6 billion takeover of Knight Ridder Inc., one of the largest in the history of the business.
But since the beginning of 2006, Mr. Pruitt’s company has lost $1.46 billion and seen its stock price plunge 78%, exceeding the carnage at most newspaper companies. Still, when members of the board and the controlling family privately discussed Mr. Pruitt’s future last month, they unanimously supported the man who brought McClatchy to this juncture.
"We have the best person in place to get us through some of these turbulent times," says Kevin McClatchy, a descendant of the company’s founder. Board member Larry Jinks says the entire board expects Mr. Pruitt "to be the CEO into the future."…
Mr. Pruitt is one of the last true believers in the financial power of the press. He says he expects McClatchy to recover from its slump, with the help of a new deal with Yahoo Inc. aimed at driving visitors and ads to his newspapers’ Web sites. He plans to sell off some nonnewspaper operations and to continue a cost-control strategy that has so far spared reporters’ jobs, a McClatchy hallmark….

There were no surprises in the story for me, of course, except one. I did not realize that Larry Jinks — the guy I sent my resume to when I first went to work for a Knight Ridder paper back in 1985 — was now on the board of McClatchy. Shows how little I pay attention to what goes on at corporate. Well, now I know.

Expert witness

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Yesterday, I had to make several unaccustomed trips down to the newsroom to get page proofs as I was cranking out the pages in Mike’s absence. (We don’t have a printer that big on our floor.)

Anyway, on one of the trips, Adam Beam stopped me as I passed his desk to pass on a message. First, he told me about this story he was working on:

S.C. won’t charge 2 for racy e-mails
By ADAM BEAM

Two former managers at the Department of Corrections will not face criminal charges for using state computers to send e-mails of naked women, state Attorney General Henry McMaster said Friday.
While using state computers to view the images violated Corrections Department policy, it is not a crime.
The announcement comes seven months after state Sen. Mike Fair, R-Greenville, initiated the investigation in May with a letter to McMaster’s office that alleged “very graphic pornography” was being exchanged “among high-level employees on state computers.”…

Adam said he had asked Henry to be specific about why he did not regard the pictures as being obscene. What was difference to Henry, he asked, between mere pictures of nekkid women and "very graphic pornography."

Henry begged off on that. He said if Adam somebody to give him an expert opinion on whether pictures were obscene or not, "Ask Brad Warthen."

Having not even attended law school, I suppose I should be flattered that our esteemed attorney general would cite me as a greater authority on any aspect of the law.

Of course, if the attorney general trusts me with such a solemn responsibility, I can’t be careless or flippant about it. So I told Adam I couldn’t give him a definition of the terms just off the top of my head, without evidence of any sort. I’d have to see the pictures first.

Made ya look, didn’t I?

JFK adviser Sorensen tells why he’s supporting Obama

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Oh, yeah, now I remember why I do this job — one of the reasons, anyway: Really, really interesting people come to see you and you get to ask them questions.

Today, I was honored to meet Ted Sorensen, chief adviser and speechwriter to John F. Kennedy. You know how I’ve written in the past about how how Barack Obama’s call to service echoes JFK’s? (And yes, I know I’m hardly the only one to mention it.) Well, Mr. Sorensen was here to confirm that as far as he’s concerned, Obama is indeed Camelot’s rightful heir (so forget what you may have heard about that Mordred guy; he’s not running anyway).

It’s been a long day, so I’ve just edited and posted one quick video clip (below), with Mr. Sorensen talking briefly about why he supports Sen. Obama. But more will be coming. For one thing, Andy Haworth of thestate.com shot video of the whole interview, with a much better camera than I use and lights and everything. I’ll give you a heads-up when he puts that up.

Also, I’ll go through the rest of my footage as soon as I can (probably this weekend at this point), and provide video on some of the other topics we covered, such as:

The Cold War, from a leading participant’s perspective.
Why Kennedy doesn’t deserve any blame for Vietnam escalation.
How Romney’s "religion" speech stacks up to his own — I mean, to JFK‘s.
What kind of speech he’d like to hear the eventually Democratic nominee give.
Which Republican he’d prefer, if we had to have a Republican.
Why he particularly prefers Obama to Joe Biden.

I’ll get to in when I can. I’m out of steam for today. In the meantime, here’s a clip with Mr. Sorensen talking about Obama:

My handy, all-purpose endorsement of everybody (almost)

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Yes, dear readers, you’ve read this one before — probably. I cannibalized a blog post to construct this column — almost word for word. You’ll probably see me doing that more than once before the holidays are over. That’s partly because I’ll be doing double- and triple-duty with folks out of the office. But it’s also in keeping with what I intended when I started this blog; I had always meant to use it as a lab for developing column ideas. I just usually forget to do that.

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
SINCE MY COLUMN advocating a “single-payer” national health plan ran in this space last week, I’ve received a good bit of feedback along these lines:

Dear Mr. Warthen,
I think your article is right on target and has a very good insight of the realities of the inefficient American health system. However, it is my feeling that by mentioning that [Dennis] Kucinich is the only one talking about single payer, and in the same line that he is not viable and has seen a UFO you are delegitimizing him…. If you think that this country needs a health care reform, why not throw your support to Kucinich…?

Regards, Kethrin Johnson

Then, my regular blog correspondent Doug Ross wrote:

Again, I’ll ask you to put your proverbial money where your mouth is. If you think this is an important issue, don’t endorse candidates who don’t support single payer….

I get this sort of thing a lot, and I think it’s worth pausing to address. Doug was literally right — I think a national health plan is “an important issue.” It’s not the important issue. If there were anything that I would designate as the important issue in a presidential race, it probably wouldn’t be a domestic one. And I’d rather not judge on the basis of any single issue in foreign affairs either, if I can avoid it. (We found ourselves unable to avoid it in 2004, which made for a most distasteful endorsement.)
Health care is very important; so are other things. If I chose on the basis of one issue only, I would have to endorse everybody at least once. Just off the top of my head, it might go like this:

Health care — Dennis Kucinich in a walk.
Iraq (as a military operation) —John McCain, the only guy who stood up for the “surge,” which was based on the idea that he alone had been pushing for four years, which was that Donald Rumsfeld refused to send enough troops to get the job done.
Iraq (long-term strategy) — Joe Biden, who (along with erstwhile candidate Sam Brownback), has been pushing the federalist approach of transforming the nation into three semi-autonomous political regions with only a loose Baghdad government uniting them.
Immigration — Either Sen. McCain, who took all the heat on the recent failed comprehensive reform effort, or Hillary Clinton, who refused to demagogue on the driver’s license flap.
Afghanistan — Barack Obama, who had the nerve to say he’d go after the Taliban in Pakistan if necessary.
Pakistan — Sen. Biden, for articulating the fact that we needed a Pakistan strategy, not a Pervez Musharraf strategy.
Administrative ability — Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney or Bill Richardson, the only governors.
Most likely to be the UnParty nominee — Tough call, but I see three most able to lead us out of the vicious partisanship of the past 15 years: Mr. Huckabee, who seems to have governed Arkansas pretty effectively with a Democratic majority in the legislature; Sen. Obama, who has made his desire to be the president of all Americans a centerpiece of his campaign; or Sen. McCain, who, from confirming judges to campaign finance reform to immigration to fighting the use of torture, has demonstrated his willingness and ability to work with Democrats time and again. (See my blog for my UnParty Manifesto.)
Abortion — Either Mr. Huckabee or Sen. McCain. The Democrats walk in the door disqualifying themselves on this one (from my point of view; maybe someday a Democrat like Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania will have a shot), and none of the other leading Republicans can be trusted fully in this area.
Most likely to be the Energy Party nominee — Nobody. Sen. McCain has done some good stuff in the Senate (along with Joe Lieberman, who was my pick for the Democratic nomination four years ago), and I like some of the things Sen. Biden has said about a president’s role in leading on this critical strategic issue. But I don’t think anybody goes far enough. (You can also read about the “Energy Party” on the blog.)
Education — Ron Paul almost gets it by wanting to do away with the U.S. Department of Education; the federal government has no business trying to run our local schools. But then he blows it by wanting to give tax credits to pay people to attend private schools, which is none of the government’s business at any level.

You get the idea. You may notice that I have no scenarios in which I endorse John Edwards, Rudy Giuliani, Chris Dodd or Fred Thompson. That’s not to dismiss them completely. I suppose if I dug further into all their positions I’d find some single-issue excuse to endorse each.
But that’s not how we endorse, and that’s not how voters vote (I hope). Since
we can only choose one candidate, practical reality demands that we accept some compromises. The candidate you end up favoring might get just “Bs” and “Cs” on your unique grading scale in most subjects, while someone you reject might be at the top of the class on one issue, but flunk everything else.
On my own scale, for instance, Mr. Giuliani gets mostly Bs and Cs, with a couple of poor grades on personal deportment. He may not lead the class in anything that comes immediately to mind, but that doesn’t count him out entirely.
One good thing about primaries is that they force people who might otherwise surrender their thinking to a party to understand that even within a party, there can be great diversity of thought. Such choices compel us to acknowledge the necessity to compromise on some things, unless we’re fooling ourselves. For any thinking voter to find a candidate with whom he agrees on everything would a minor miracle.
Anyway, back to where we started: Rep. Kucinich gets an A-plus and a gold star on health care in my gradebook. But he flunks national security, which is a required subject.

The game is afoot!

Which is worse: cronyism or bad judgment?

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Read today’s editorial about last week’s explanation of the Bar exam mess, and then consider the following, about which we had a debate in yesterday morning’s editorial meeting:

Which is worse — the favoritism that many believed had been extended to the children of the connected, or just plain bad judgment, which in the end appears to have been the case? (And yes, I know many of you still believe there was favoritism, but for the sake of my question, pretend that you agree with me on this point of fact, so that we can hash out the dilemma I’m posing.)

I disagreed with my colleagues. They thought the court’s explanation, if one believed it (and we did), described a bad situation, but not as bad as if results had been overturned in response to phone calls by the powerful. I said it was worse. I said adjusting the results in response to calls from a lawmaker (the House Judiciary chairman, no less) and a judge was not inherently bad in and of itself, if those calls did indeed lead to finding some flaw with the system. In other words, if the action itself was not corrupt, it did not matter whether the impetus for the reconsideration gave the appearance of favoritism.

Yes, I know, most folks seem to assume that if the reconsideration was prodded by someone whose name we know, the adjustment has to be corrupt. But that isn’t true. And remember — there had been no substantive disclosure as to whether there was anything wrong with that section of the test or not. In the end, there apparently was nothing wrong with the testing, only the recording of the score in one instance. But most of the talk during the couple of weeks this issue ran was about who said what to whom, not the quality of the test.

But what the court says it actually did is to me worse than taking another look at the test because of some phone calls (which is what most of the hullabaloo was about). It discovered an error — one person who had been recorded as passing had actually failed that section, and therefore the overall exam. To me, there are only two options under such circumstances — let the result stand, and allow that one person to become a lawyer (in keeping with the rule that judgments are final), or give that one person the cruel news (and as one whose child became a lawyer in recent years, I realize how cruel a disappointment that would be) that the celebration had been premature, that he or she had failed.

What the court actually did was so nonsensical that I couldn’t quite take it in from our news account. I assumed I had read something wrong, so that my first question when we had our first post-holiday editorial meeting Monday morning was, "Tell me again what the court did." As it turned out, it had done exactly what I had thought I’d read: It decided to give that one candidate a free pass on that section of the test, and then gave everybody a free pass on that section, boosting 20 demonstrably unqualified people to the status of attorney at law.

When I had read it, I kept thinking that can’t be right. There’s no way that the court would turn 20 "fails" to "passes" because of a mistake on one. And yes, I can see how some would think it logical, and fair — to the test-takers. But the court has a higher responsibility to the 4 million people of South Carolina.

This was a serious error in judgment, and to me, worse than any inherent harm based on who made a call to whom.

Do you agree or disagree?

Daring adventures at Lexington Medical

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Today, I was reminded of a recent contact report I failed to file at the time. It was our visit to Lexington Medical Center week before last. Mike Biediger, who runs the place, gave a tour to my boss, Henry Haitz; Mark Lett, the top editor in our newsroom; my colleague Warren Bolton; and yours truly. We got to see the hospital’s beautiful new North Tower with its capacious, well-designed rooms. We toured the operating rooms. We saw cool 3D computer scans of people’s vital parts. It was all most edifying, even though they didn’t actually let me cut on anybody.

I hadn’t written about it because I was determined to put together a video show of the tour, and haven’t found the time to edit my footage yet. But I was reminded that I should go ahead and post something today, when I took my Dad home from the place.

Ironically, less than a week after our tour, my Dad was a guest of the hospital, staying in that very North Tower we had toured. He’s been there most of the past week, and I had occasion to try out the comfortable daybeds they have built under the windows of each room. I had a nice snooze yesterday afternoon there; so I can report they work fine. Dad’s feeling much better now, by the way.

A literary footnote: Just before I went to get Dad, I was reading Zorro by Isabel Allende. I bought two copies of the book (one in English, the other in the original Spanish) at a discount sale at the beach over the summer. You might call it Peruvian pulp fiction. I was a huge "Zorro" fan as a kid — I speak of the old Walt Disney TV series. In fact my first watch was a Zorro watch (no Mickey Mouse for me), and I once had a toy épée with a piece of chalk on the end for writing Zs. Ms. Allende’s book was OK for light reading; I finished it just a few minutes ago. (Best part? She included both loyal sidekick Bernardo and lovable nemesis Sgt. Garcia as characters. Worst part? Possibly because it was written by a lady, it had too much romance and too few swordfights.) Anyway, just as I was about to go spring my Dad from the hospital, I was reading a part in which Don Diego was about to spring his father, Don Alejandro de la Vega, from a damp, dirty prison. It seemed like I saw a parallel there. Unfortunately, LMC’s new tower is much nicer than El Diablo prison, and there were no guards upon whom to scratch Zs, so as an adventure, it was a bust.

But it was nice to get Dad home.

Video to go with Cindi’s health care column

Romney sales pitch reminds me of Bush’s

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Hal Stevenson, former supporter of Sam Brownback, is continuing his quest — which I wrote about in Sunday’s paper — for a new candidate to back. He and I continued our conversation about it after Rotary Monday. We talked for about half an hour, until I had to run to another meeting. We weren’t done by any means, and we made a loose commitment to continue over coffee or breakfast or something soon.

Hal had been speaking to someone else who urged him to go with Romney, as a CEO type to cure what ails the executive branch after eight years of Bush administration incompetence. I responded in two ways. First, I promised to send him a link to this WSJ piece — it was the Saturday interview feature on the op-ed page — discussing the idea of Romney as "Consultant in Chief," an image he seems to choose to project himself. The piece didn’t make the prospect sound very appealing to me, but maybe Hal will read it differently.

But I shared with him a second thought — one which may help account for my jaded response to the WSJ piece (that is, in addition to the fact that I have yet to be impressed by the performance in office of anyone who went in promising "to make government run like a business").

Back in 2000, we went through an agonizing process (agonizing for me, anyway) over whom to endorse in the GOP primary. I argued strenuously for John McCain, but my then-publisher was adamantly in favor of Gov. Bush. In the end, the publisher won over half the people in the room — and a half that includes the publisher has more weight than a half with the editorial page editor. To bring the rest of us into consensus, we ran an endorsement that said good things about McCain, too. You could almost have read it as a 51 percent Bush, 49 percent McCain endorsement. This caused us to be criticized for a "wishy-washy" endorsement, but that was where we had ended up as a board. Even though I had lost on the main point, I would have held my breath until I turned blue before running a piece that ran down McCain. (Here’s what we ran. Read it, and feel my pain at losing the one editorial argument I probably most regret losing.)

Anyway, there was a thread that ran through our lengthy discussions, and in a way it reflected the difference in the working styles of the publisher and me. Our publisher was an above-the-fray CEO type, who hired competent people to do the actual work and come up with policies. His job was to decide between the various competing proposals suggested by the professionals under him.

I have always been very different. When I was in a newsroom, I tried to master every skill there was, from photography through production. I was (and am) an editor who also writes, and composes pages, and does photography and video, etc. Very hands-on. Maybe it’s an insecurity and therefore a character flaw, but I’ve always preferred to manage in situations where I felt like I could do the same work as those I managed (preferably better).

The publisher believed, and presented evidence to support the position, that Bush would have been a sort of above-the-fray executive — a guy who didn’t claim to be the expert himself, but would decide among the ideas advanced by the experts he hired to work under him. McCain was seen as more the guy who embodied the policies he espouse, who dug into the grubby work of policymaking up to his elbows. He was more like me.

Seriously. There was a lot of talk at the time supporting that view of G.W. Bush. Here’s an example of it, from The Christian Science Monitor:

Some critics argue that Bush is a captive of his advisers, dependent on their analysis in making up his mind on complex issues. Bush insiders tell it another way: He is a typical CEO who delegates details to a team of trusted advisers, while focusing his attention on the bigger picture. Clay Johnson, a friend at Phillips Academy at Andover, roommate at Yale, and now Bush’s chief of staff, says the press has been too quick to label the governor a dim bulb.

His subsequent performance as an "above-the-fray" executive has been so often disastrous, largely due to the quality of "experts" he hired to make policy, as to make this hard to imagine. But that view won the day.

And so it is that while I doubt that Romney is as incompetent as Bush — he’s got a more impressive resume — I still greet anybody who claims they can govern effectively as a CEO with many, many grains of salt. Painful experience has made me dubious.

Over the transom

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This morning, I read the story about the changed Bar exam scores with some interest, because the tale was immediately familiar.

Earlier in the week, I had received this e-mail:

Brad-
I’m not sure if you are the appropriate one to handle this, but I figured you would be able to pass it to the right person/people. As you may or may not know, the South Carolina Bar recently issued its list of the most recent admittees into the South Carolina Bar. This list was published October 26 and can be accessed online at www.sccourts.org. The bar passage rate was 77.5%
Either yesterday or today, the SC Supreme Court issued a statement in which they threw out the results of a section of the bar exam, which allowed 20 more individuals to pass the bar exam. At least one of those who now passed is the daughter of a House Judiciary Chairman Jim Harrison. I have information … that 12 of judicial law clerks failed the bar exam and are among these 20. I also have information that Rep. Harrison is among those who contacted the bar examiners to complain about his child not passing. It is also my understanding that some of those 20 also may be children of members of our Judiciary.
As you can see, this is quite the discomforting situation. … I find this entire situation outrageous and would like to see these people called out on it. The swearing-in ceremony is next Tuesday, Nov. 13th. There is typically a program which includes the names of those being sworn in. A comparison of that program with the list now available on the website would give you the names of those admitted after the fact. At that point, it simply becomes a question of finding out who is working for whom. Obviously it will be fairly easy to tell whose children, if any, are among those added to the list.
I’d be willing to talk to you about this more if you have questions. I do not, however, want to be named at any time if you or someone else decides to investigate further.

And so it is that I leave the name off, and excise a couple of short phrases that might point to this tipster’s identity. (I’ll say only that it was not a regular source of mine; this was a classic "over the transom" tip.)

I forwarded the e-mail to some folks down in our newsroom. Whether they had received other tips, I have no idea. I seldom receive so much as an acknowledgment that my e-mails are received when I send tips to the newsroom, which is fine; I understand. No one on either side wants to seem, even to himself, to engage in collusion. Such is the nature of the separation between news and editorial.

In any case, it seems the tipster was onto something, and had his/her facts straight. As to what to think of it — once again, we’re in that gray area of appearances that I’m never sure what to think about. It might have been innocent; it might have been awful. One thing I do know about such stories of apparent favoritism: I’m glad to see them reported, so that you can decide for yourself if you think wrong was done.

The War on Spontaneity

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This morning, I had a meeting with Supt. of Ed. Jim Rex, Education Oversight Committee czarina Jo Anne Anderson, and various members of their respective retinues.

That is, I was supposed to have a meeting with them. It was placed on my calendar a couple of months ago (and had somehow neglected to set the Treo to remind me the way I always do), and for a time earlier than I usually arrive at the office, and I didn’t realize it was happening until I was halfway through breakfast, and by the time I got here I was more than half an hour late for it. I can’t remember the last time anything like this happened, and I am very, very sorry it happened this time; it was embarrassing.

The meeting was ostensibly to talk about the 2007 Report Cards, and I missed that part (since Cindi Scoppe had been hosting them, and I rely on her to pay attention and remember stuff even when I am here, we were covered — I just haven’t had time to get Cindi to regurgitate it to me yet). I know that the info they had to share wasn’t amazingly good news, since we had already seen the PACT scores — upon which the report cards are mostly based — and because I saw Jim Foster’s face (see below). Jim’s more of a class clown than I am, always with the jokes. (Long ago, three superintendents ago, Jim worked at the paper.) If he’s looking this glum, watch out.

Anyway, right after I got into the room, talk turned to discipline, and I started to squirm, not only because I’d come to class late and unprepared, but because I was once one of those one or two kids who distract the class, to put it mildly. (So was Jim, I’m sure, despite his severe mien below.) I sat there thinking how very, very lucky I am that I made it out of school before the era of Zero Tolerance. Which suggests a digression…

Honest, I’ll try to come back with some serious info from this meeting once I’ve caught up with it, but for now I’d like to share a piece from this morning’s WSJ about how increasingly unfriendly this country is getting toward kids like me. The op-ed was headlined "Adult supervision." An excerpt:

The Christian Science Monitor reports that colleges across the country now require permits or permission slips for undergraduate pranks. This was perhaps inevitable: First they came for dodgeball. Then tag. How long could something as spontaneous and fun as the prank escape?
Educational administrators justify the new prank rules by invoking 9/11, though most college pranks have as much to do with terrorism as a greased pig in the hallway has to do with the invasion of Poland. But the war on spontaneity continues….

At this point, either you’re nodding in smug approval at efforts to get those hooligans in line, or you’re cringing like me. Another taste:

At Mascoutah Middle School in Illinois, 13-year-old Megan Coulter was recently given detention for hugging two friends goodbye before the weekend — a violation of the school’s ban on "public displays of affection." One California school district worried about "bullying, violence, self-esteem and lawsuits" also banned tag, cops and robbers, touch football and every other activity that involved "bodily contact."

You know, when it comes to most things, I try to side with the grownups. Society needs to have rules. Hence my strong disagreements with the libertarians. But at some point, short of engaging in life-threatening behavior of the kind I worried about in my Sunday column, there’s a space where adults should let the children play. And please, please forgive them when they wander in a bit late… I’m sure they feel bad about it.

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Correspondent weighs in on Ron Paul event

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Since I couldn’t make it to the Ron Paul event, I asked the correspondent who originally brought it to my attention to tell us about it:

Dear Brad,
Thanks for the reply. I know it was a busy day,
with Bush and several candidates visiting at the
same time. The Rally was a great success. The West
Columbia Riverwalk amphitheater provided a
charming, intimate setting for Dr Paul to share
his message of peace, prosperity and liberty to
several hundred supporters. Folks came from as far
away as Chattanooga and Atlanta to hear him speak
and have the opportunity to meet him in person.
I tried to get the campaign to schedule an
interview with your editorial board while he was
in town. Perhaps next visit? In the meantime, I
hope you will be including him in your series this
week on Republican candidates. I was disappointed
to see no mention today about his historic
fundraising on Monday. At 4.2 million, I believe
it was the largest Republican primary donations in
a 24-hour period ever! Surely that’s more
newsworthy than Obama running a new ad, isn’t it?
Dr Paul truly is a viable contender, contrary to
what the MSM would like everyone to believe. As a
ten-term congressman, he is extremely
knowledgeable about the destructive issues facing
America. People from all walks like his message
and feel hopeful that we can turn things around
and restore this country to its former greatness
… if they can just hear it. Please allow your
readers to make up their own minds with equal
exposure of all the candidates, not just the
anointed RudyMcRomneyson.

Sincerely,
Jackie

Thanks for the report. Here’s a hint, though: When an editor gives you access to get your message out, you’re probably better off spending your words on that purpose, rather than wasting them complaining. But the complaints serve a purpose; they give me a setting for correcting several widely-held misconceptions:

Here’s an assumption that was not a complaint, but I’ll address it anyway: The Bush visit had no impact on my day. Folks make that mistake a lot — thinking that I have a busy day because of some news event. Those are for the news department to handle. And for that matter, such an event as a presidential visit doesn’t tie down much of their assets, either. But for editorial, the impact is zero. I was busy on Friday because I’m always busy on Fridays — it’s crunch time for production of the next three days’ opinion pages.
I have nothing to do with any "series this week on Republican candidates," beyond reading the pieces in the paper just as you do. Again, that’s the newsroom; we’re editorial. McCain fan that I am, if I had anything to do with it, don’t you think the McCain piece would have had a more positive headline than "McCain struggling to win over voters?"
Regarding Jackie’s disappointment over lack of coverage of the Paul fund-raising, or belief that it’s more important than an Obama ad — once again, nothing I can do for you, except forward all of your concerns to editors down in our newsroom. And I did that before posting this.
"Dr Paul truly is a viable contender, contrary to what the MSM would like everyone to believe…" The more accurate way to phrase that would be, "contrary to what the MSM believe." While I don’t work in news now, I did for 20 years, and I can tell you that I never saw anybody report something in an effort to get people to believe something that the editor doesn’t believe is already true. The concern, for an editor, would be to report the reality, not distort it by giving too much coverage to a nonviable candidate, and too little to a viable one. Bottom line: If Rep. Paul is so popular, he’ll win — so there’s no need to construct elaborate media conspiracy theories.
As for the last plea for "equal exposure" — once again, I’ve passed that on.

As for what I do control in my own little bailiwick — I’ll have you note that with this second post, Ron Paul has received more coverage on this blog in the past couple of weeks than any "candidate" other than Steve Colbert. (Or maybe I should say, he’s tied with the Hillary/Obama combo of these two posts.) And Mr. Colbert got the coverage he got for the same reason certain non-news events dominate what we laughingly call "TV news" — I had video of it.

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