For the sake of those of you who have not yet gotten to your op-ed page today, this is a heads-up to make sure you don’t miss the excellent piece from our own Paul DeMarco, M.D.
As usual, Dr. DeMarco sets out the issues fairly, intelligently and with impeccable intellectual honesty. Some who don’t know him would be surprised that he seems to find some fault within his own worthy profession. Not I, and not anyone who knows him.
Paul DeMarco will always tell it straight.
Note that today’s op-ed page
deals entirely with issues of central concern to the Energy Party. (Mike
was out yesterday, so I picked the content and put that page together myself. Therefore it reflects my obsessions.) It also provides an opportunity to say again what our platform is, and what is isn’t.
Someone who doesn’t think long enough about it might say the two pieces are at odds. Jim Ritchie sets forth his excellent set of initiatives for our state to do its part in promoting energy-efficient buildings, hybrid cars, and such, and Robert Samuelson says beware of politicians announcing grand plans to save the Earth from global warming.
But they actually support each other, and together sort of explain why I take the approach I do in proposing this party.
True, proposals such as "cap and trade" that politicians are likely to get behind (because they see the parade marching that way) will not stop or reverse global warming. Even if you do all the "politically unrealistic" things I propose, the trend will likely merely slow down, and surely not reverse in our lifetimes. Of course, that’s all the reason to do everything we can (and NOT just what we want to do, or think we can afford) to put the brakes on the trend. Otherwise, things get worse, and at a faster rate.
But as Sen. Ritchie makes clear, what we CAN do is grab hold of our energy destiny. What he proposes won’t completely solve the problem, but it’s a damned good start from the perspective of what state government can do. And the broad coalition he’s got behind it is extremely encouraging — not only in terms of Energy issues, but others where we’ve been stymied by partisanship and ideology.
Pragmatism is on the march. Let’s all join. Except, let’s get at the head of the parade and start a new, double-time pace. Otherwise, the battle will be over before this rapidly coalescing army gets to the field — and we all will have lost.
The author of this op-ed piece in today’s editions of The State
has a point when he says we can’t have open enrollment without providing transportation for all children whose parents want to take advantage of it.
And he’s completely right when he notes the rather obvious fact that income levels are a major predictor of student performance. In fact, it’s the one great objective measurement we have, in terms of finding correlations between measurable factors.
But he’s wrong, I believe, when he says open enrollment is a bad idea. And I suspect he takes the poverty factor, as important as it is, a little too far.
People who want to destroy public schools by paying the middle class to desert them like to lump us at the paper in with the "defenders of the status quo." But here’s where we depart from them. They say it’s purely a matter of poverty, and suggest that there’s nothing a teacher can do to change that. This is why they resisted so strongly the PACT and accountability, which we strongly supported.
As critical as poverty is, we believe good teachers and well-run schools can do a far better job of educating poor kids. The point of accountability for us is to point out, beyond a shadow of a doubt, where those good teachers and administrators are most needed. The true "defenders of the status quo" blanch at the thought of suggesting that some teachers are better than others, which in turn suggests that some teachers are, well, not up to snuff.
But it struck me in reading this piece that there’s a way to settle this dispute: Test the teachers. If their students’ scores are an imperfect indicator of the job their doing because they don’t control what the kids bring to the classroom — and that’s true enough, to a point, we just don’t know to what point — let’s come up with a PACT for teachers. Then we could see how much of the problem in rural schools comes from the students’ poverty, and how much from the fact that good teachers choose to work under better conditions, and they have the skills to get jobs in the suburbs.
This would be extremely useful. We could address the task of improving the quality of education available to all students much more effectively. We could even — gasp — use it as a factor in instituting merit pay. You want to see the system push back, try that. Or for that matter, try testing teachers to begin with.
The argument against it would be that the quality of a teacher lies in many things, many of them unmeasurable in a test. I would agree. But the test would give us some information we don’t have, and it would be helpful. As for taking it as far as using it in calculating merit pay — it wouldn’t be the ONLY factor. Along with the performance of their students (weighted by income levels plus the student’s performance under other teachers), you would have to consider subjective assessments — mainly the principal’s judgment, but you might want to toss in parent surveys.
That would really send those who resist reform through the roof. Subjective judgment, oh my! But what do you think those of us out in the private sector have to deal with, every working day of our lives?
Lee Bandy at work in his hotel room at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York.
Lee Bandy, the fairest of us all
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
LOOKING AROUND at a crowd of journalists, I gestured to Lee Bandy and said, “This is the fairest guy in the room.”
Like Snow White’s stepmother, scribes generally don’t like to hear that anyone is fairer than they. But no one disputed the point, as all present had gathered to bid a fond farewell to Bandy as he retired after 40 years of remarkable service to this newspaper and its readers.
I was Lee’s editor when I first came to this newspaper almost 20 years ago. I was young enough and arrogant enough not to be intimidated — as I should have been — at the thought of supervising a man who had been covering Washington since the Kennedy administration. That was OK with Lee; he tolerated me. He tolerated everybody, and enjoyed the company of the human race in general. He still does.
That’s not the only way in which he stood out from the rest of us scribblers. He was also completely fair and impartial. Sure, all of us are, yadda-yadda, but he really was, and many people found it disconcerting.
One of the first things I was told about Lee Bandy was that he was a Republican. It had to be true, because Democrats kept telling me so over and over.
As you can guess, I watched him closely as a result. In my nine years as an editor at two other newspapers I had known one other reporter who was a Republican — he made no bones about it, so I’m not casting aspersions — and he ended up leaving us to become press secretary to a newly elected GOP congressman. Next thing you know he was wearing fancy suits and suspenders; he’s now a lobbyist.
Not wanting to risk another such ugly episode, I was extra careful with Mr. Bandy’s copy. Strangely, though, I never found any evidence that he skewed Republican. He seemed to be scrupulously fair to all his subjects.
That, apparently, was what had aroused the suspicion of S.C. Democrats. They were still in the majority. Not long before, there hadn’t been anything in the state but Democrats, so anything having to do with these newfangled Republican critters seemed unnatural and made them wary. The fact that Lee Bandy was just as fair to Republicans as he was to normal people made them think he must be one of them.
But he wasn’t, believe me. I had edited other political writers over the years who were routinely fair to Republicans, and I had worked with that one actual Republican, so I knew the difference.
You can see why Democrats wondered, though. Republicans on the national and state levels actually trusted Lee Bandy, and this made him conspicuous. When Lee Atwater, Democrats’ ultimate bete noir (before W. and Rove), contracted cancer, he would only speak to one reporter in Washington or anywhere else — Bandy.
Years later, when former Gov. Carroll Campbell revealed that he had Alzheimer’s, Lee Bandy was the only one he wanted to tell the story. That would seem to indict him permanently as a Republican, or at best a friend of Republicans, if not for one thing:
By this time, the conventional “wisdom” had shifted. Now, it was common knowledge among Republicans everywhere that Lee Bandy was a dyed-in-the-wool, unrepentant, proselytizing, big-government-loving, yellow-dog left-leaning liberal Democrat, and probably a socialist.
I have learned this unassailable truth from letters to the editor in recent years. If you’re a regular reader, you know exactly what I’m talking about. In fact, you were probably disoriented by the first part of this column, unless you’re an old-timer like Lee. Your younger, or more recently converted, Republicans would just as soon vote to restore welfare as we used to know it as believe that Lee Bandy could possibly be one of them.
What changed? Nothing. Lee’s great sin was that he was just as fair to the now-despised minority Democrats as he had been to Republicans back when they were little more than an oddity.
What hadn’t changed was that he was still the pre-eminent political writer of South Carolina’s largest newspaper — its capital city newspaper — which magnified his sin of being fair and magnanimous to those whom the partisan majority of the moment would prefer to see him despise.
Lee can’t help it. That’s just the way he is. He likes people, and he’s nice to them. Don’t ask me to explain how a guy like that kept a newspaper job for 40 years. It’s unnatural, but there it is.
We’ll miss you, Lee.
Yeah, I know I’ve been kind of silent, but that’s because those of us who are still in the office have been working our steely buns off just trying to get editorial pages out every day.
But I just had to share this typo, on a proof I’m reading of our Saturday page. It’s in a letter to the editor:
It is beginning to look a lot like 1938.
Last week the Iraq Study (AKA surrender) Group issued its report. The report writers believe that Iran and Syria can be good partners shaping a new Iraq. History has left a message for us about dealing with rouge governments…
The same transposition is repeated later in the same epistle, as "rouge states," which the writer suggests are not trustworthy.
Well, I certainly don’t trust them. They may not be as obviously wicked as those "excessive mascara states," but they’re pretty bad. And don’t even get me started on those "Lipstick Vogue governments."
By the way, I have no idea whether the errors mentioned here are those of the writer, or our fault. I do know it’s our responsibility to fix it. I just thought I’d share it with y’all, since mere newspaper readers will miss out.
There is, of course, the possibility that this is not a typo. It could be a reference to the cultural decadence of Germany in the early ’30s, as symbolized by Joel Gray‘s makeup in "Cabaret." But I’m sort of doubting it.
It’s not every day you get to put the star of "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" on the editorial page, but I managed it in this morning’s paper.
The thin excuse I used was the letter to the editor that touched — and indirectly, at that — on the subject on today’s page. I inserted a mug shot derived as a detail from the above photo. I hereby reproduce the full-length image for the benefit of you ladies out there — or at least, the really hard-up ladies.
I saw the movie over the weekend. It may be the funniest of the year, although it’s not for the easily offended. It’s not even for the moderately sensitive, for that matter. Come to think of it, it’s not all that tough to be the funniest movie around when one scene features the protagonist wrestling naked with a really hairy fat guy.
Anyway, have any of y’all seen it? What did you think?
How did ‘our’ candidates do
last week? Very well, as always
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
IT IS WIDELY believed that, like Michael Corleone in “The Godfather II,” I have the power to administer the “kiss of death.” This is not true. In order to administer this kiss, I must first consult with my consiglieri — I mean, my fellow members of the editorial board of The State.
Actually, it is even less true than that. There is no “kiss of death.”
It is popular — among people we have not endorsed, and particularly those whom we will never endorse, for political office — to say they are glad not to get our nod, because our endorsement is the “kiss of death.” Our candidates always lose. There is truth in this, yes?
No. Of course, if there were a correlation between candidates we anoint and those who suffer humiliation at the polls, it would not matter, because we are not trying to make predictions. We are saying whom we believe should win, not who will win.
OK, so maybe it would matter a little. That might be taken as our being seriously out of sync with the people of South Carolina.
But it doesn’t matter at all because it isn’t true. I knew “our” candidates usually did pretty well, but it wasn’t until two years ago that I went back and studied 10 years worth
of endorsements versus actual election results. The people we endorsed won about three-fourths of the time in general elections. From 1994 through 2004, we endorsed 85 candidates, and 64 won, for a 75.29 percentage.
I found out something else.
Certainly you know that we always endorse Republicans. That is, you know that if you’re a Democrat. If you’re a Republican, you are just as certain that we always endorse Democrats. Obviously, one of you is wrong. Less obviously, both of you are.
Here’s the skinny:
It turns out that over that same decade ending in 2004, our candidates split almost perfectly down the middle — 43 Democrats, 41 Republicans and one independent. This was a surprise, and completely unintentional. Party being unimportant to us, we are just as likely to endorse mostly Democrats or mostly Republicans in a given election year.
It was encouraging to realize how it worked out over time.
So enough with the history. How did our candidates do this year?
I was sort of hoping for a big Republican year to make the overall figures perfectly even. No such luck. The Democrats fielded some good candidates, there were a number of Republican incumbents who seriously needed tossing out, and most of our favorite Republicans had no opposition — hence no endorsement.
The result? As I realized the day before the election, we had endorsed 12 Democrats and five Republicans. Yikes.
That was setting us up for a really bad year on the won-loss score (not that it matters, but I’d like to see them win).
Or so I thought. At this point, if you count Jim Rex as a win (and admittedly that’s still a significant if), then 12 of our candidates won, and five lost.
How is that? Every one of the five Republicans we backed (Thomas Ravenel, Hugh Weathers, Mark Hammond, Joe Wilson and Bill Cotty) won, and only five of “our” Democrats (Tommy Moore, Drew Theodore, Robert Barber, Boyd Summers and Sadie Wannamaker) lost.
So every time we picked a Republican, the voters agreed with us. They also agreed on seven out of the 12 Democrats.
If we had been trying to pick winners (which we weren’t), we would have done pretty well. Although it’s not really anything to brag about. Since 12 is less than three-fourths of 17, our running “win” average has now dropped
to 74.5 percent (sigh).
Separately from the whole endorsement business, I (and I alone) did try to pick winners a few days before the election.
Tempted by an e-mail invitation, I tried my hand at predicting. To keep myself honest, I posted my prognostications on my blog.
I was only asked specifically about the eight statewide races on the ballot. I picked six Republicans and two Democrats to win. How did I come out? I was right on five, wrong on three. Both of the Democrats I had picked to win (Grady Patterson, whom we had not endorsed, and Mr. Theodore, whom we had) lost, and so did one of my Republicans (Karen Floyd, whom we had not endorsed).
That’s a batting average of .625, which would be good in baseball, but is not nearly as good as the success rate of the candidates that our editorial board picks as the best without regard to whether they will win or lose.
Sure, I did it just off the top of my head, whereas we had spent months choosing our preferred candidates — as had the voters. And they came up with pretty much the same results we did. Smart voters. Smart us, too.
But I don’t think I’d better give up my day job for predicting the weather. Or anything else, for that matter.
Roll out the red carpet! You are invited to be among the first to view a brand-new, ground-breaking documentary from the studios of bradwarthensblog productions.
The facade is ripped away from a mediocre election, as your host reveals shockingly low turnouts and stunning personal stories from the mean streets of Rosewood.
Enjoy…
Since I started shooting video clips of candidates early this year, the one who protested the most vociferously to being on camera was Karen Floyd, who is arguably the most telegenic candidate running for major office this year. I thought that sort of ironic. She finds being photographed at all — video or still — "just dreadful."
She has a point. The camera is intrusive, although I try to minimize that by using a very small camera sitting next to my notepad on the table. Some candidates don’t even notice it; others have trouble putting it out of their minds.
This makes me worry about polluting the process by making candidates too uncomfortable. But in some cases, I think the video clips can help readers understand a little better why we form some of the impressions we do in these interviews.
I remain torn about this, and my colleagues on the board remain leery of it. They sometimes find it distracting, too. At times in the past, I’ve talked about video-recording entire interviews — say, with gubernatorial and presidential candidates. But I’ve been talked out of it because those chats can be tense and difficult enough without people playing to a camera — we want the candidates’ undivided attention, and we want to give them ours.
It also makes going off the record — a far more useful tool to editorial writers than to reporters, since we don’t want quotes as much as we want to know what is really on people’s minds — rather awkward. When they are on camera, candidates are unlikely even to suggest going off the record, and we might never even know there was something else we could have learned.
Anyway, this is an experiment — sort of dipping our toe in the video waters — and we’re still evaluating its pros and cons. I’d be interested in your thoughts on that.
A lot of people believe that one of the problems with politics today is that the press poses unfair, unanswerable questions to politicians. This causes good people just to stay out of politics, rather than be abused so.
Such critics have a point. And here’s proof positive, as if we needed any.
My colleague Mike Fitts is a decent-enough sort, for a journalist — kind to children and dogs, tries to do his bit for the environment and such (drives a Prius). But check what he did today.
As our op-ed editor, Mike was charged with asking each of the gubernatorial candidates to contribute a guest column making his final pitch to the voters before next week’s election. This is something we’ve done for years.
But this time, Mike proposed to encourage a certain degree of relevance in that use of precious space by asking each of the candidates to devote their essays to answering this question:
"Where would the candidate’s leadership take South Carolina in the next four years?"
Well. Obviously this trick question is loaded against Mark Sanford. He can say what his leadership vision is, but given his performance over the last four years, there’s nothing he can say that would convince anyone that any of his proposals will actually be translated into reality.
The only consolation the governor might take from such a grossly unjust question is that it is every bit as unfair to Tommy Moore, since he’s good at getting stuff done, but has no particular vision to speak of.
I pictured each of the candidates having trouble filling his 600-word space, since about all they could say would be:
Sanford: "Nowhere, because nobody would follow, even though they should."
Moore: "Wherever it wants to go, I guess. What does that have to do with me?"
Mike claims that his purpose in posing such a stumper is that he’d like there to be some substance in these pieces.
Yeah, right.
I see that even after the last time I weighed in on this string, Chris W was still exercised about Cindi Scoppe saying in a column that Rich Eckstrom’s foolishness with the state van was actually illegal.
A sample of Chris W’s commentary:
You say something is illegal. The officials say it is not. You stand
behind your statements as if there were no burden of proof. You offer
no proof, just a claim.
Well, I made the mistake of asking Cindi if she’d mind sending me a note walking me through the basis of her opinion that Mr. Eckstrom appeared to have committed a misdemeanor, so I could post it for Chris W and anybody else who was curious. She said OK. I expected a paragraph. Cindi being Cindi, this is what I got:
Here’s the statute Mr. Eckstrom points to to argue that his use of the state van was legal:
SECTION 1-11-270. Division of Motor Vehicle Management; establishment of criteria for individual assignment of motor vehicles.
(A) The board shall establish criteria for individual assignment of motor vehicles based on the functional requirements of the job, which shall reduce the assignment to situations clearly beneficial to the State. Only the Governor, statewide elected officials, and agency heads are provided a state-owned vehicle based on their position.
(B) Law enforcement officers, as defined by the agency head, may be permanently assigned state-owned vehicles by their respective agency head. Agency heads may assign a state-owned vehicle to an employee when the vehicle carries or is equipped with special equipment needed to perform duties directly related to the employee’s job, and the employee is either in an emergency response capacity after normal working hours or for logistical reasons it is determined to be in the agency’s interest for the vehicle to remain with the employee. No other employee may be permanently assigned to a state-owned vehicle, unless the assignment is cost advantageous to the State under guidelines developed by the State Fleet Manager. Statewide elected officials, law enforcement officers, and those employees who have been assigned vehicles because they are in an emergency response capacity after normal working hours are exempt from reimbursing the State for commuting miles. Other employees operating a permanently assigned vehicle must reimburse the State for commuting between home and work.
(C) All persons, except the Governor and statewide elected officials, permanently assigned with automobiles shall log all trips on a log form approved by the board, specifying beginning and ending mileage and job function performed. However, trip logs must not be maintained for vehicles whose gross vehicle weight is greater than ten thousand pounds nor for vehicles assigned to full-time line law enforcement officers. Agency directors and commissioners permanently assigned state vehicles may utilize exceptions on a report denoting only official and commuting mileage in lieu of the aforementioned trip logs.
Note that this law does NOT say vehicle use is unlimited. It merely says that 1) constitutional officers can have a vehicle permanently assigned to them without first meeting the test of demonstrating that the state saves money by assigning them a vehicle and 2) constitutional officers are allowed to COMMUTE to and from work without reimbursing the state for that expense.
Additionally, as one prosecutor put it, the language allowing constitutional officers to use the vehicle for commuting IMPLIES that any other personal use is outlawed.
Beyond that, though, two other laws, below, make it even clearer that personal use of state vehicles that is not specifically authorized is prohibited.Here’s the provision contained in this year’s budget (and in every year’s budget going back at least to 1993) that says state employees don’t get extra perks except for those specifically spelled out in the proviso; note that the proviso does NOT include unlimited use of a state vehicle as an excepted perk. (A budget proviso has the force of law.) A 1993 attorney general’s ruling on the question of constitutional officers’ use of state vehicles cited this provision as an additional basis for saying that the use of the vehicles was restricted:
72.19. (GP: Allowance for Residences & Compensation Restrictions) That salaries paid to officers and employees of the State, including its several boards, commissions, and institutions shall be in full for all services rendered, and no perquisites of office or of employment shall be allowed in addition thereto, but such perquisites, commodities, services or other benefits shall be charged for at the prevailing local value and without the purpose or effect of increasing the compensation of said officer or employee. The charge for these items may be payroll deducted at the discretion of the Comptroller General or the chief financial officer at each agency maintaining its own payroll system. This shall not apply to the Governor’s Mansion, nor for department-owned housing used for recruitment and training of Mental Health Professionals, nor to guards at any of the state’s penal institutions and nurses and attendants at the Department of Mental Health, and the Department of Disabilities & Special Needs, and registered nurses providing clinical care at the MUSC Medical Center, nor to the Superintendent and staff of John de la Howe School, nor to the cottage parents and staff of Wil Lou Gray Opportunity School, nor to full-time or part-time staff who work after regular working hours in the SLED Communications Center or Maintenance Area, nor to adult staff at the Governor’s School for Science and Mathematics who are required to stay on campus by the institution because of job requirements or program participation. The presidents of those state institutions of higher learning authorized to provide on-campus residential facilities for students may be permitted to occupy residences on the grounds of such institutions without charge
Here’s the provision in the Ethics Act that applies here, followed by the definition in that same act of the operative term, "economic interest":
SECTION 8-13-700. Use of official position or office for financial gain; disclosure of potential conflict of interest.
(A) No public official, public member, or public employee may knowingly use his official office, membership, or employment to obtain an economic interest for himself, a member of his immediate family, an individual with whom he is associated, or a business with which he is associated. This prohibition does not extend to the incidental use of public materials, personnel, or equipment, subject to or available for a public official’s, public member’s, or public employee’s use which does not result in additional public expense.
SECTION 8-13-100. Definitions.
(11)(a) "Economic interest" means an interest distinct from that of the general public in a purchase, sale, lease, contract, option, or other transaction or arrangement involving property or services in which a public official, public member, or public employee may gain an economic benefit of fifty dollars or more.Additionally, the state constitution has this provision on the private use of public funds, which the courts have held to be a prohibition on the private use of public funds or resources:
ARTICLE VI., SECTION 8. Suspension and prosecution of officers accused of crime.
Whenever it appears to the satisfaction of the Governor that probable cause exists to charge any officer of the State or its political subdivisions who has the custody of public or trust funds with embezzlement or the appropriation of public or trust funds to private use, then the Governor shall direct his immediate prosecution by the proper officer, and upon indictment by a grand jury or, upon the waiver of such indictment if permitted by law, the Governor shall suspend such officer and appoint one in his stead, until he shall have been acquitted. In case of conviction, the position shall be declared vacant and the vacancy filled as may be provided by law.
Finally, I don’t have the cite for this, but I know that … either state law or the constitution or both says that all public employees have a fiduciary duty to avoid even the appearance of improper conduct, and to use public resources for private or personal purposes would certainly apply. As one prosecutor put it, "That’d be like using the wildlife boats to go out and take your family on a fishing expedition."
Cindi Ross Scoppe
Associate Editor
The State newspaper
(803) 771 8571
Anyway, that either satisfies you or not. She has her opinion; you have yours. Hers is based upon the above.
A couple of replies to the comment by Chris on the last post. Chris, when you say this…
The problem with editorial endorsements is that it alerts readers to
thought processes and reasoning of those making them…
…you point to the precise reason that my colleagues and I on the board write columns — to elaborate on the reasons we endorse, to give readers additional insight into our thinking so that they have more information upon which to base a judgment of our decision, whatever they choose to make of it. The point of my doing the blog is to go even a little deeper into all that, to give you the chance (if you’re at all interested) to know even more about how the editorial page editor ticks, so that you might have even more insight into the editorials. It’s so you don’t have to guess.
The whole point of an endorsement editorial, as I’ve said a thousand times, is not the WHO, but the WHY — the "thought processes and reasoning" behind the decision. It’s really hard to get that message across, because it’s counterintuitive for a lot of folks. It’s not personal, as a Corleone would say. The fact is that — in this case — one of these two men is going to be governor. The purpose of an endorsement is to say, knowing what we know (and in part, what we know is based on dealing with these men repeatedly over the course of years), which way we would go if we just have to vote for one of them.
Our reasons, and the reasons behind our reasons, are all we have to offer you. That’s what it’s about. It’s not about whose side we’re on, or who we "like." If we went on the basis of who we like, I’d probably have gone with Sanford. I know him, and I personally like him. I really have to force myself to look at what he’s doing (and not doing) as governor and shove aside the fact that I like the guy.
I can’t say the same for Tommy Moore, which is not to run him down. I just don’t know him as well. I’ve known him at a distance for almost two decades — much longer than Sanford. But I knew him as an editor dealing with the information that reporters (usually Cindi Scoppe, back in her reporting days) brought to me about him. Mark Sanford I’ve dealt with directly, ever since he was in Congress, because his political career began about the same time I joined the editorial board.
I’ve also dealt with him more because he’s a wonk like us. He’s more into talking about issues than he is about doing anything. I’ve had the impression that he’d rather pick up the phone to chat with me for 45 minutes about some political theory than sit down and wheedle lawmakers to turn ideas into laws. (At least, he was inclined to do that until a few months ago. I don’t think I’ve heard from him at all since my column about his veto of the budget.)
Sen. Moore has never spent much time talking to editorial types — at least, not to me. He was over in the State House, getting stuff done. Since he wasn’t trying to accomplish abstract goals, he had nothing to chat about with perpetual talkers. So I don’t know him that well. I don’t think he’s figured us out, either. To him, I’m that guy who wrote that he didn’t have the "fire in the belly," and he knows he didn’t like that.
So why did we not endorse Mark Sanford? Read the endorsement. Then read my column. Then read other columns. Then read everything you can get your hands on, and talk to everyone you know who might know more about these guys and the issues than you do. Then go out and vote any way you think is best.
If you do that, having made our endorsement even a small part of your own process — even if it’s only to tick you off and make you want to do the opposite, and to work harder to find reasons why we’re wrong — then I will have done my job.
Oops. There I go. Revealing thought processes and reasoning again. Sorry. (Not.)
(One other thing, though, Chris — your comment sort of loses me when you jump from editorial to news coverage, as though there were a connection. If you’re suggesting that what we do has anything to do with what the news department does, you are confused. Reporters, and their editors, would likely laugh their heads off at the idea that they agree with our conclusions. That is, they would if so many people, including sometimes candidates, didn’t make the same assumption you do, which is a major professional pain for them. I think most news people would just as soon the editorial page go away, as it causes them little but grief. Good thing there’s a high wall between our separate divisions to protect us — there are a lot more of them than there are of us.)
The capacity of people to hang onto canards that favor their world view is really impressive. Take this one, which I encounter everywhere and which persists in spite of the published, confirmable, objective facts.
I’ll just let our own LexWolf, who most recently asserted it, put this popular bit of absurdity in his own words:
… the State has a fairly dismal record with its preferred candidates
(that’s not necessarily the candidates they wind up endorsing in the
end but the ones they started out with in Spring).Fortunately for us all, most voters make up their own minds instead
of voting according to what The State‘s editors and columnists think
they should want.
Yep, voters make up their own minds. And 75 percent of the time over the last 12 years, they have made the same decision we did.
In general elections, of course. You talk about primaries, and I would assume our preferred candidates’ record wouldn’t be as good. Of course, I’ve never gone back and done a 12-year count on primaries. That would be a lot more time-consuming. I only did the count on the general because I had to give a primer on endorsements to employees at The State, and I thought such a count might be useful (I had no idea what I’d find before I did it).
But since you raise the issue, I stopped just now and did a count on the primaries we just had in June — I was able to find a complete list of endorsements in a convenient place for that one.
You can count them yourself, but the record for our candidates was that 13 won, and 9 lost. That’s essentially a 60-40 split (59.09 to 40.9, to be more precise). That’s well into landslide territory.
Does that surprise you? It surprises me. Since primaries are dominated by partisans, and we are adamantly anti-partisan (I’m constantly railing at the quality of candidates that the parties force us to choose between in the fall), it seems like we would differ with the party-line voters more often. All I can say is that this year at least, there was a high correlation between the stronger candidate and the one that even partisans could see was stronger.
You can’t bet on that always happening. I sure wouldn’t. Of course, maybe the trend continues over time. Maybe sometime when I’m a lot less busy, I’ll do the sifting through moldy tearsheets necessary to finding out.
But here’s the bottom line: We don’t consider whether a candidate is going to win, in terms of whether we endorse that person or not. If we did, we would never have endorsed, say, Joe Lieberman in the 2004 Democratic primary. We go for the person who, among the choices offered, would in our considered opinion be the best person for the job.
It just so happens that our considered opinion matches that of South Carolinians quite a bit more often than it doesn’t. We don’t do that on purpose, but it happens.
I seldom write editorials (and if anyone needs me to explain the difference between an editorial and a column, I will). They’re mostly written by Associate Editors Warren Bolton, Cindi Scoppe and Mike Fitts. But when a hole in our schedule emerged yesterday — and the hole was in today’s newspaper — and we talked about ideas that we might address, and I said "I’ll do that one," my friends and colleagues cried "Sold!" with an alacrity that suggested that some of them think I don’t do enough around here.
Well, I showed them.
Here’s the editorial, with links. Maybe it will provoke a little discussion in this venue:
The grownups
strike back
in Five Points
ONE OF THE greatest needs in America in the 21st century is something we used to take for granted — grownups. In a time when everything on TV, from “reality” shows to celebrity-and-sensation-soaked “news” to you-gotta-have-it-now commercials, screams immaturity, one wonders where the grownups have gone.
The situation takes on infinitely greater urgency when our front pages tell of drunken children dying in car crashes, of a mother giving other children alcohol
and encouraging them to have sex, and of still others “accidentally” killed in the crossfire of warring gangs.
And that’s just in the Midlands. The whole world seemed to catch its breath for days on end when a twisted head case insisted that everyone believe he raped and murdered a 6-year-old whose death is an object of obsession because her parents made her up to look like a full-grown woman for beauty pageants.
Where, indeed, are the grownups? The adage “It takes a village to raise a child” assumes the presence of watchful grownups sharing a communal concern for the children of the society growing up safely and sanely into the kinds of responsible adults who will in turn work together to protect and teach the next generation.
Obviously, the mere fact of chronological majority — turning 18 (an “adult” forvoting purposes), 21 (for drinking), 25 (according to
car rental companies) or 35 (to be president of the United States) — doth not a grownup make. Chronological “adults” are a huge part of the problem. The woman accused of encouraging drunken bacchanalia at her house is 46.
A grownup is someone who knows how and when to say “No” to a child who insists that “I can do whatever I want” — whether that child is 2, 16, 18 or 46.
Well, fear not. There are still grownups in charge, at least in Five Points this past weekend.
That’s where and when Columbia police — acting in behalf of the grownups of our community to protect both children and the rest of us from some of adolescents’ more dangerous behaviors — staged their “Welcome Back” operation.
This crackdown on underage drinking led to 160 charges including DUI, having open containers and public drunkenness. Twenty-eight people were arrested and charged specifically with underage drinking.
The place and the timing were perfect. Smart grownups set out boundaries ahead of time to avoid bad behavior before it really gets out of hand. This was the first weekend after classes had started at the University of South Carolina, and the best time ever to let students — especially freshmen overwhelmed with the freedom of being away from home for the first time — know that there are rules, they exist for excellent reasons, and they are to be obeyed.
Those who run Five Points bars and restaurants seemed to welcome the police presence, and said they were doing their bit to prevent underage drinking as well. Good. Grownups should work together.
Sometimes kids, particularly of the adolescent variety, feel like the whole grownup world is involved in a conspiracy to keep them from doing what they want. When “what they want” involves behavior that is a threat to their lives and those of others, it’s a good thing to know they’re not just being paranoid.
Congratulations to the Columbia Police Department, and to grownups everywhere who are still willing to draw the line wherever it needs to be drawn.
I admit it: I’m instituting
a double standard
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
SO WHEN AM I going to get off this “civility” kick? Soon. Very soon. After all, electioneering season is almost back upon us in full force; we start endorsement interviews right after Labor Day.
But that only gives greater urgency to an effort to encourage discussions on public policy issues that go beyond trite, partisan name-calling and sloganeering.
As you know if you haven’t just tuned me out altogether, I’ve been worrying about the tone of the discussions taking place on my Weblog. Don’t misunderstand: I get hundreds of comments from thoughtful people from across the political spectrum. Unfortunately, some really hostile partisans from both left and right have been running off the folks who want to have a dialogue.
It’s not that these folks can’t take the heat. They just don’t want to waste their time.
My greater worry is that such partisan, ideological nonsense is the very problem with politics in America today, aggravating reasonable people to the point that they just want to turn away. My column last week celebrating Joe Lieberman’s independent candidacy was about this same subject. I don’t have the authority to play umpire with regard to the national political discourse. But I can call balls and strikes on the blog.
So after an online discussion that drew close to 500 reader comments, I’ve come up with a new system that I hope will work. It’s far from perfect, and will be subject to change if it doesn’t appear to be working, but since I want the site to continue to be a place where people are free to disagree strongly, forget about perfect. I’ll settle for better.
Here’s the plan: I’m implementing a Double Standard (I thought I’d go ahead and call it that before the critics do, seeing as how that’s what it is). Or maybe you’d call it “behavior profiling.”
Some people will be free to post pretty much whatever they want. With them, I will maintain the same hands-off policy that I’ve applied to everyone up to now. But I’ll have a different rule for everyone not in that select group: I will delete at will any comments that I deem harmful to good-faith dialogue.
The good news is that you get to choose whether you’ll be a privileged character or not.
To be among the elect, you just have to give up your anonymity (just as letter-writers on this page do). You won’t have to fill out special forms or show your birth certificate or anything. Just fill out the existing fields that precede comments with your real, full name; your regular, main e-mail address (the one you use for friends or family or co-workers, not something you set up on Yahoo for the purpose of hiding your identity); and if you have a Web site, your URL.
If it seems necessary (either to you or me) to provide more info to establish who you really are, you can do so either in the text of the comment, or by e-mailing me.
When would it be helpful to provide more info? Use your judgment — if your name is John Smith and your e-mail is jsmith@aol.com, you might want to tell a little more, such as that you’re a Columbia attorney or a student at USC or whatever. And I’ll use my judgment — if you call yourself Mike Cakora (one of my regulars), but write something totally uncharacteristic of him, I’ll start asking questions.
To be in the other group, just keep hiding behind anonymity. I’ll still let you through most of the time, but I’m going to start deleting comments that fit into one of two categories:
Between those two categories, I can tell you already that I will act upon the first with greater alacrity than upon the second. It is the greater offense.
But, some of you are by now sputtering, this is so subjective! Yep, and to some of you, that’s just plain shocking. Not to me. I’ve had to make millions of such judgments in my 30-plus-year career. It’s what editors do. Every word I have ever allowed into the paper has required, at the most basic level, an unforgiving yes/no type of decision. Space and time constraints require us to leave out a whole lot more than we’re able to put in. Those considerations don’t apply on the Web, but something at least as important does: The need to have at least one place where people can hear each other think without being drowned out by shouted stupidity.
I expect the number of comments will drop off for awhile. Some will depart in disgust, others in confusion. Still others will be more selective about what they post, which is actually the point of this. I hope we make up in quality what we give up in quantity.
If you don’t understand how to meet the new standards, here’s a hint:
Always try to express your ideas in a way that will actually change the minds of people with whom you disagree. Don’t write in a way calculated to win cheers and attaboys from those who already agree with you, or to give yourself a jolt of vindictive satisfaction.
Oh, and remember: You don’t have to worry about the standards if you have the guts to stand up and identify yourself. Just don’t be a wuss, and you can still be a jerk.
Unfortunately, given the present polarization of political attitudes, some of you will refuse to believe that “those other people” can ever be persuaded. You think there are people like you, and people like those others, and any attempt to reason across the divide is futile.
If that describes you, you’ve come to the wrong place. I believe that good-faith dialogue has the power to bring us together over what we have in common. If all you want to do is shake your fist and shout slogans, there are plenty of other blogs out there that welcome that. Just not mine.
And here’s where you find it: http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/.
Still polishing the new policy to govern comment decorum. Since it’s taken me this long, I thought I’d go ahead and share it with the world as my Sunday column. So you’ll be able to read all about it Sunday, either in the paper or right here.
But here’s a sneak preview, a teaser if you will, just to stir up advance interest:
I’m implementing a Double Standard:
The bad news is that one group of people will be free to post pretty
much whatever they want. I will maintain the same hands-off policy with
them that I’ve maintained with everyone up to now. With those in the other group,
I will delete at will any comments that I deem harmful to good-faith
dialogue.
The good news is that you get to choose which group you’re in.
To be in the first group, you just have to give up your anonymity.
This won’t require filling out special forms or supplying me with your
birth certificate or blood type or anything. Just fill out the existing
fields that precede comments with your real, full name; your regular,
main e-mail address (the one you use for friends or family or
co-workers, not something you set up on Yahoo for the specific purpose
of hiding your identity); and if you have a Web site, your URL. If it
seems necessary (either to you or me) to provide more info to establish
your legitimacy, you can do so either in the text of the comment, or
more discretely, by e-mailing
the data to me. When would it be helpful to provide more info? Use your
judgment — if your name is John Smith and your e-mail is
jsmith@aol.com, you might want to tell a little more, such as that
you’re the West Columbia attorney or a student at USC or whatever. And
I’ll use my
judgment — if you call yourself Mike Cakora, but write something totally uncharacteristic of him, I’ll start asking questions.
To be in the other group, keep hiding behind anonymity. I’ll still
let you through most of the time, but I’m going to start deleting
comments that fit into one of two categories…
How will I define those categories? Tune in on Sunday.
You will also be able to read some hints on how to communicate constructively while still making strong points. Here’s an excerpt from that:
As you write, always try to express your ideas in a way that will actually change the minds of people with whom you disagree.
As a corollary to that, don’t write in a way calculated to win
cheers and attaboys from those who already agree with you, or to give
yourself a jolt of vindictive satisfaction.
Bottom line is, if you internalize and act in accordance with those … two principles, you will never have your comments deleted.
Unfortunately, given the present polarization of political attitudes, some of you will refuse to believe that those other people
can ever be persuaded. You think there are people like you, and people
like those others, and any attempt to reach across the divide with
reason is futile.
Anyway, you won’t have to wait all that long for further explanation. Here’s hoping that this policy — the product of a conversation that involved more than 470 reader comments — will produce a place that all of us find more useful for discussions that move toward real solutions on issues.
If not, we’ll try something else.
Respondent SGM had such a pertinent question, expressed so well, on my last post that I feel compelled to highlight a large part of his comment — and then answer it gladly — in this separate item.
Here’s an excerpt from what he wrote:
Since you bring up the Karen Floyd race for Superintendent of
Education, what a fine example of just how fragmented and weak our
state’s executive branch is. (It seems like the same principle is also
applied to the structure of most local mayors’ offices.)
It almost seems like the state constitution was written explicitly
to make the executive branch as diluted and powerless as possible.
Oh, wait a minute, I get it now, it was deliberate…
OK. So does your UnParty have a platform position on this issue?
Seems to me that it would be in the interest of all (except the
state legislature) to have a stronger, unified governor’s office.
From a political point of view, it would make the race for governor
actually mean something and allow both parties to run broader, more
intense campaigns. They could actually offer platforms that were
comprehensive and had actual chances of getting things done their way.
Seems like the big party machines would look at this as an economy
of scale issue. Instead of spending campaign money and resources spread
out over several candidates with diverse issues and constituencies,
they could consolidate their efforts into a single race which might
engage more of the electorate.
From the voters point of view, it would go a long way to giving us
some real accountability. We might get some representation that would
have actual authority to get things done and that we could hold
responsible if it’s not effective.
As it stands now, nobody can be held responsible because they can
all point their fingers at other offices and claim that the authority
to take action has been withheld from them.
Amen, SGM! And yes! Maybe I can’t speak for the whole Unparty, but this Unpartisan could not agree more with your assessment of what is wrong with S.C. government. I spent the whole year of 1991 on a special project documenting exactly the problems of fragmentation that you outline. That series helped lead to the partial restructuring of the executive branch in 1993 — a reform that went a lot farther than many expected the Legislature to go, but not nearly far enough. Last year (trying once again to get some reform rolling in the Legislature), we ran a mini-series of editorials updating that project, which was on line, but disappeared. As we revamp our online editorial presence, I intend to restore those pieces.
Until then, here are some pieces that serve as a sort of primer on the issue, starting with a very few of the more than 100 articles in the original 1991 series:
From our 2005 recap:
And for a big finish, here’s the whole text of a column I wrote for 2/6/2005 as part of that recap series:
THE STATE
SHARDS OF POWER
Published on: 02/06/2005
Section: EDITORIAL
Edition: FINAL
Page: D2
BY BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
YOU WANT the bumper-sticker version of what’s wrong with government in South Carolina?
Fragmentation.
At every level and in almost every area, government is chopped up into so many little shards that power is never sufficiently concentrated to allow any of those mini-governments to get much done. This so confuses and dissolves the lines of political accountability that voters seldom have any way of really knowing whom to blame for failure.
At the state level, we have at least 85 agencies, many with overlapping responsibilities. A few are part of the governor’s Cabinet, but that’s only about a third of the government as measured by spending. Most of the rest are run by boards and commissions made up mostly of people you and I did not elect. A few are even run by people who are elected separately from the governor, and therefore have no political or legal mandate to cooperate with the governor or any other part of state government.
Last week, opponents of fixing that last problem raised the usual specious argument that letting the governor appoint such specialized functionaries as the secretary of state and agriculture commissioner takes away the people’s right to choose their leaders. Try this: Go to the mall and ask the first 10 intelligent-looking adults you see to name the secretary of state and explain what he does. How many could do it? I thought so. Then ask them to name the governor. Now, whom do you suppose they’re going to be able to hold accountable when something goes wrong?
Fortunately, the House passed the measure. The bad news: It only lets the governor appoint two of the eight separately elected state agency heads. Worse, this is the most substantive move the Legislature plans to take toward restructuring this year. The other two bills that have a chance – one that theoretically puts the governor in charge of administrative functions and the other that claims to reduce fragmentation in health care and a few other areas – do even less.
The worst news: The Legislature isn’t even contemplating addressing the fragmentation of local government.
There are no plans to do anything about the 85 school districts – every one with its own expensive administrative structure – in our 46 counties. The same with the other 800 or so local governments (no one is really sure how many there are) that make it nearly impossible for voters to keep track of who is setting their property taxes.
So why do we have a system that seems to be designed not to get things done? That could be answered in a complicated way, but here’s the simple way: It was designed not to get things done. The basic organizing principles of government in South Carolina were established to serve the interests of the antebellum slaveholding elites. They wanted a system that resisted change, and that’s what they created. There have been changes over the years, but it’s basically the same structure we’ve always had.
In a column several weeks back, I quoted from the 1990 series of columns by USC professors Walter Edgar and Blease Graham that helped inspire the original Power Failure series. I didn’t have room for this gem:
"It makes no sense for the 130 residents of Pelzer to be subject to the taxing authority of six different governing bodies and service districts."
No, it doesn’t. And it makes no sense for the people of Richland and Lexington counties to be subject to more than 20. But that’s the way it is.
And nobody’s doing anything about it.
I’ve got plenty more where that came from if you want it.
As I type this, editors from across the Carolinas are meeting down on the first floor of this very building. What do they have in common? Their newspapers are all now owned by McClatchy.
Some — such as Raleigh, Rock Hill, Beaufort, Hilton Head — are old McClatchy, or as one corporate exec has put it, "McClatchy Classic." The rest — The State, Charlotte, Myrtle Beach — are the newbies, having been part of Knight Ridder.
It’s kind of like in "The Godfather," when the heads of the Five Families get together and eye each other warily. At best, they find a way to live together peaceably and perhaps even share some
resources (just as one don who has a drug connection might benefit from a symbiotic relationship with another don who has political protection). At worst, it could launch another wasteful war. In that latter respect, all eyes would be on the Corleones and the Tattaglias (Charlotte and Rock Hill) — the ones whose respective interests have clashed most directly in the past.
There were no threats uttered when I was in the room. But then, a man of respect doesn’t have to threaten.
Back to reality — the folks gathered below are all news people, so their confab doesn’t have much to do with me. But I went down to visit briefly and listen out of curiosity — and to say hi to folks I’ve worked with in the past.
In such an instance, when I am to be seen and not heard, what would be my greatest concern? Obviously, to look cool. So I had to make a decision: Should I take my coffee down in my gravitas-laden Foreign Affairs mug (above, both sides), which just shouts "thinking about geopolitics?"
I think not. Since this affair is sparked by corporate relationships, the only thing for it would be my official INITECH mug from "Office Space." Since it bears on one side the slogan, "Is This Good for the COMPANY?" it gives the proper, nonthreatening message to the uninitiated. The thoroughly hip will see something else, and smile.
Cool without being chilly. Just right.
OK, OK, hold off with the jokes. I know I set myself up on that one.
I was just trying to remember: Who is it that does this site (which I have long linked to at left)? A couple of people have mentioned the author’s identity to me in the past, and I seem to recall that maybe it was one of our regular commenters. Or was it just that somebody put that as the link on his or her screen name?
I don’t know. I don’t remember. Does anyone? Does it matter?
Oh, and by the way, we don’t buy ink by the barrel. We’re no pikers. We get it by the train carload.
