Y’all know how fed up I was during the campaign with all the breathless Identity Politics hoopla, especially in the national media, over Nikki Haley being an Indian-American (gasp!) woman (oh, joy! oh, rapture!). I don’t like all that IP stuff in the best of times, but to watch the way it boosted Nikki over the first Lebanese-American Catholic (to use language they would understand) ever to receive a major-party nomination for governor in this state was pretty maddening.
But if I thought that was bad, that was nothing compared to what we’ve been subjected to since last Tuesday. The next “journalist” who says “historic” in reference to what happened last week is going to get slapped upside the head, if I’m within arm’s reach.
I got my fill of it in the WIS studio on election night, as everyone but me went on and on about it. Of course, on live TV, one reaches for whatever one has at hand to have something to say, I suppose. But ever since then, Tom Wolfe’s Victorian Gent has been in full rant, loudly expressing the Appropriate Sentiment — or as Wolfe termed it, “the proper emotion, the seemly sentiment, the fitting moral tone” –over the allegedly monumental event.
OK, so basically, this was a big victory for women, huh? Well, before the sisters get too overjoyed about this, it would be good to note that “women” didn’t elect Nikki Haley. So much for the solidarity of sisterhood.
Mind you, I put “women” in quotation marks for ironic purpose. I’m using it the way Republicans say “America voted Republican,” or “South Carolina preferred Nikki Haley.” The thing is, a SLIGHT majority of women preferred Vincent Sheheen, according to exit polls. And when I say slight, I mean slight: 50 percent to 49 percent. But hey, it would have been enough for him to win if all the men had stayed home. (But I will say that, even though the exit poll didn’t measure this, I’m thinking Nikki won the SC Indian-American vote. I’m just going by the number that was there dancing at her victory party, so my assumption is unscientific.)
To analyze the exit polls further… If I were the sort who cared about Identity Politics — if I thought being of a certain gender or race or whatever mattered — I would start to wonder about myself. Vincent lost in pretty much every demographic group to which I belong. Except two: Ideology (Vincent won among “moderates,” with 63 percent of us) and non-evangelicals.
Which, I suppose, is why I hate talk of Identity Politics. It doesn’t affect the way I vote, and I don’t think it should affect anybody’s.
On Sunday I had too much going on to read the paper, but I didn’t feel like I was missing much, because the lede headline was, “How Haley beat Sheheen.”
That would have to be shortest analysis story yet, since the entire explanation can be expressed thusly:
“She ran as a Republican in 2010.”
It’s so obvious from the outcome that, since Vincent Sheheen garnered a larger percentage of the vote than any other Democrat running in South Carolina, Nikki Haley didn’t do anything else to contribute to her success. In fact, the numbers indicate that everything else that happened in the fall campaign must have worked against her.
So, a very short story. (And yet my colleague John O’Connor squeezed 2,000 words out of it. My hat is off to him. Editors don’t give reporters that kind of room often, so when they do, any writer worth his salt makes the most of it.)
Now, if you want to talk about how she won the nomination — her transition into the darling of the Tea Party — that might take some verbiage. But there’s not much to say about her victory in the general. She hit her crescendo in June, but the air gradually leaked out of her campaign until she barely squeaked by on Election Day. But being a Republican guaranteed that she could afford to blow a big lead, and still win. So she did.
In the newspaper biz, a “stand-alone” is a picture that has no story with it. I’m still looking back at Tuesday night, and pondering a photo that embodies another sense of “stand-alone”…
As we were waiting… and waiting, and waiting… for Nikki Haley’s victory speech that night, someone in the WIS studio wondered aloud why Henry McMaster was the one killing time at the podium (actually, he was introducing her, but we didn’t realize that at first). Well, who else would it have been? said I. He was the only member of the GOP establishment to have embraced her — her only primary opponent to play a positive, prominent role in her campaign. That’s Henry; he’s Old School. If it’s his party’s nominee, he’s behind her, 100 percent.
It was only when I looked at the photos later (and these photos are from The State, where you can find both a Nikki victory gallery and a Sheheen concession gallery) that I thought about the extreme contrast. There was Vincent, with a broad array of people loyally, warmly supporter him in his hour of defeat — while aside from Henry, Nikki stood alone (I’m not counting family; both candidates had that).
First the delay. Then she comes out alone, without political allies, then she delivers that less-than-enthusiastic speech. What was going on?
I don’t know, but I hope it doesn’t stay like this. We’ve had 8 years of a stand-alone governor, and a governor standing alone can’t accomplish anything in this state, for good or for ill.
We’d all be better off if more people were willing to stand with our governor. Of course, it would help if she acted like she wanted them to. And that’s the thing, isn’t it? The sort of person with whom more people are willing to stand, and who is willing to stand with more people, is the sort of person that, well, more people want to stand with. That made me dizzy. Let me read it again — yep, that’s what I meant to say…
Yesterday, a colleague pointed out to me that if you search for “Nikki Haley” at Google images, you get, amid a sea of actual picturesof Nikki, a picture of Tina Fey linking to a blog post of mine from January 2009.
I forgot about it until I was looking for a certain image of Nikki this morning, and found the same thing. And in fact, as you can see above, it’s the seventh image that shows up out of 353,000. The six before it are actually of Nikki, as are the next 22, before there is the oddity of a picture of Barack Obama.
So, is there some quirk in the Google algorithms that free-associates, going “Nikki Haley… Sarah Palin… Tina Fey…?”
As near as I can tell, the reason this happened was at the top of that Tina Fey post is a link to the post that followed it, headlined “Nikki Haley applauds House action on roll-call voting.” But there is no mention of Nikki in the actual post itself.
Which is reassuring, I suppose. It’s nice to see that even Google can go off on tangents just as weird as the ones we fallible humans let distract us…
Last night, when it was all over, I was struck by two things: How much better Vincent Sheheen’s concession speech was than any speech I heard during the campaign, and how much worse Nikki’s was.
As I said on the air last night, that “victory” speech was so… low… energy. The people in the studio laughed, saying, “It’s after midnight!” So what? I wasn’t tired (I didn’t hit the sack until about 3, and then only after a couple of beers). She shouldn’t have been, either. She should have been PUMPED! The crowd that had had the patience to wait for her (the folks in the WIS studio were puzzled she made the world wait for her so long; I told them to get used to it, because Nikki will have no more use for the people of SC going forward, as she continues to court national media) ALSO should have been pumped. But they sounded like an average group of supporters listening to an average, mid-campaign speech.
Maybe she was saving her energy to be on the Today show today. (Here we go again, folks. More of the same of what we got with Mark Sanford, Mr. FoxNews.)
As I urged people on TV last night — go to that clip I posted on the blog of her speech the day Sarah Palin endorsed her. Where was THAT enthusiasm? It’s like she had this finite supply, and it was just… enough… to carry her BARELY over the finish line in a remarkably close victory for a Republican in 2010.
As for Vincent, when he said that line about how he and his supporters “wished with all your might to take this state in a new direction,” it resonated so that I thought, “Where was THAT during the election?” Sure, he talked about not wanting more of what had under Sanford and such; he made the point — but he never said it in a way that rang out. He didn’t say it with that kind of passion.
It’s so OBVIOUS that that should have been his theme. Instead, we had the complete and utter absurdity of Nikki Haley running as a change agent. It’s so very clear that in electing Nikki Haley, the voters chose the course most likely to lead to more of the malaise that we’ve experience in recent years.
But hey, woulda coulda shoulda.
I just raise the point now to kick off a discussion: Is there something Vincent Sheheen could have done that he didn’t that would have put him over the top? Or did he come so close to winning, in the worst possible year to run as a Republican, because he ran the perfect campaign?
I mean, he came SO close. It was so evident that Nikki was the voters’ least favorite statewide Republican (yes, Mick Zais got a smaller percentage, but there were several “third party” candidates; Frank Holleman still got fewer votes than Vincent). I look at it this way: Mark Hammond sort of stands as the generic Republican. Nobody knows who he is or what he does, so he serves as a sort of laboratory specimen of what a Republican should have expected to get on Nov. 2, 2010, given the prevailing political winds. He got 62 percent of the vote.
Even Rich Eckstrom — and this is truly remarkable given his baggage, and the witheringly negative campaign that Robert Barber ran against him — got 58 percent.
So Nikki’s measly 51.4 percent, in the one race with the highest profile, is indicative to me of the degree to which voters either liked Vincent, or didn’t like her.
So the question remains: Could Vincent have won with a better campaign, or did he do as well as he did — ALMOST pulling off what would have been a miracle in this election year — because his campaign was so good?
My good friend Kevin Hall — you know Kevin; he’d probably be state Republican chairman now if a health problem hadn’t arisen (he’s much better now, I’m very happy to say) — was quite pleased with the election results today.
But he was having to face a sober reality on one front: He owes me a lunch. He had bet me that Nikki Haley would win by 8 percentage points. He didn’t realize that Vincent Sheheen would get more votes, and a larger percentage of votes, than any other Democrat in South Carolina (thereby demonstrating that if this had not been 2010, he probably would have won), while only Mick Zais — running for a job that Democrats continue to contest strongly every election — got fewer votes than Nikki among statewide Republicans.
(By the way, the best source for complete numbers remains The New York Times. It shows Nikki at 51.4 percent, and Vincent at 47.1 percent.)
By the way, if you saw me looking down at my Blackberry while on WIS live last night, I wasn’t checking election results. I was gloating over Kevin via text messages:
ME: Where you gonna take me to lunch? Remember, you said 8 percent…
KEVIN: It’s at 5 now so stay tuned. U might still be owing me. 🙂
ME: Bunch of little Dem counties still with 0 percent reporting. Her margin’s not getting bigger.
KEVIN: Patience, Brad. Let’s see…
ME: I’m thinking Mojitos, in the Vista. Nice place. Have you eaten there yet? It’s new…
KEVIN: That works. U still might be buying…
As you can see, I can be pretty obnoxious in victory. You should probably know this about me.
Now you may think if callous of me to profit from South Carolina’s misfortune. And don’t mistake me — my sorrow for the fact that voters went for more of the same yesterday, when we so badly need a break in our state, is undiminished. Yesterday was a dark day for South Carolina (on the governor front; I really don’t much care about the other races, although I’m sad to see John Spratt’s fine career of public service end thus). And eventually, I expect the majority of South Carolinians will realize that. (Only 2.9 percentage points less than a majority realized it yesterday, so we don’t have far to go. One more thing like her cavalier attitude toward paying her taxes or her picaresque work record, and bingo.)
But hey, a guy’s gotta eat. And a free lunch at Mojitos is a free lunch at Mojitos.
Back in 2008 when we endorsed John McCain, some of you pointed out how much of an outlier we were, since most papers across the country went with Obama. You were right to do so, because that was meaningful.
I realize that it’s axiomatic among the kinds of people who will turn out in enthusiastic droves tomorrow that newspapers, being “liberal,” always go with the Democrat. I know better. While newsrooms may be full of folks who usually vote Democratic, if they vote, editorial boards tend to be more centrist. And in South Carolina, they mostly lean right of center, to the extent that such a term in meaningful.
So it is that, even when I disagree with their conclusions, I give weight to the considered opinions of editorial boards, particularly when I see a consensus emerging.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) – Voters will decide Tuesday on South Carolina’s next governor, but the editors of the state’s larger daily newspapers have cast their ballots in their opinion pages.
The editorial boards of seven newspapers chose Democratic state Sen. Vincent Sheheen and the boards of two Lowcountry newspapers chose Republican state Rep. Nikki Haley.
The Post and Courier of Charleston applauded Haley’s views on government streamlining and reduced government spending.
“South Carolina could benefit from a governor who is committed to being an ‘ambassador, for business growth,” the editorial writers said.
The Greenville News, located in the center of the state’s most Republican and conservative region, said Sheheen is the best candidate to reverse the loss of authority and respect the office has experienced under Gov. Mark Sanford.
“Sheheen seems to best understand how to use the limited power given to the governor in South Carolina to put together teams and work for the common good,” The News’ editorial said…
Haley’s campaign also was endorsed by the joint editorial board of The Island Packet of Hilton Head and The Beaufort Gazette.
Sheheen’s campaign also received endorsements from the Aiken Standard, The State of Columbia, The Morning News of Florence, The Sun News of Myrtle Beach, The Herald of Rock Hill and the Herald-Journal of Spartanburg.
Note that the only paper of any size — generally, although not always, an indicator of greater professionalism — going for Nikki Haley is the Charleston paper, which has been head-over-heels for Mark Sanford since Day One. They love the guy, and are bound to love his designated successor.
Meanwhile, newspapers that would usually go for the Republican are unequivocally for Sheheen.
That’s because if serious people who have to stand behind and justify their opinions take a close, thoughtful look at these two candidates, the inevitable conclusion is obvious. At least, that tends to be the case 7 out of 9 times.
Kathryn Fenner, apparently in no mood for nuance at this point in the election, complained that I have posted a couple of videos of Nikki Haley that she (Kathryn) believed cast her in a positive light.
Well, perhaps they did, if you are someone who was likely to vote for Nikki anyway, and are immune to the logical arguments that accompany the clips. Personally, I thought the Wagner background music I put on one of them was a bit heavy-handed, but maybe you have to hit some people over the head with a Blitzkrieg.
So for Kathryn’s sake, and on the off-chance that it might help voters remember just how low Nikki will stoop to win, I rerun the clip of Nikki kowtowing to folks who think the only mistake that the Confederacy made was not winning the war and succeeding in seceding from the Union.
She was seeking the support of a group called “South Carolina Palmetto Patriots,” a group whose 2010 agenda states:
The Federal government has stolen our liberties and rights and nullified our ability to self govern as a state. It is the obligation of all people of our great state to restore unto ourselves and our children these inalienable rights as set forth in The Constitution of the United States of America.
I have to be careful what I say about this group, because Doug gets on me when I suggest that there may be a racial tinge in the attitude of anyone who claims NOT to be motivated by race. And I don’t want to get in trouble with Doug…
I did another guest piece for The Shop Tart over the weekend. Basically, it was a column on politics for people who are (at least theoretically) more interested in shopping and eating out. You may recall when I did this earlier, just before the Columbia city election.
It wasn’t one of my best efforts, but you may want to read it anyway. Here’s the operative core of it:
Now, to the contest that really does matter – governor. How to explain this one? Here’s one way: Don’t think about grown-up politics, or about Democrats and Republicans. Think of it as an election for high school class president. You went to high school, so you know these people. Nikki Haley was the girl who got good grades, not because she understood the subject material, but because she had mastered the ability to repeat to the teacher the key phrases. And because she did lots of extracurricular activities, and always insisted on being elected to head them up. And because she knew how to flatter and wheedle teachers, especially the male ones.
You knew this girl in high school. Maybe you WERE that girl in high school, but we won’t say any more about that.
Vincent Sheheen is the nice, quiet kid who would probably wind up being valedictorian, and you’d all be surprised and say, “How did THAT happen?” because he was never particularly pushy or assertive in class. He always asked the dumb questions that everyone else was too cool to ask, because he genuinely wanted to know the answers.
Everybody liked him, but he was never a BMOC. He was tall, and dark, and nice looking, but you weren’t interested, especially because your mom kept saying, “Why don’t you go out with that nice Sheheen boy?” YOU wanted to go out with that mouthy wiseacre who grew up to be Dick Harpootlian.
Vincent wasn’t a football star. He ran track, and was the best in the state at his event, but you never knew that. He also played basketball, but as a team player, never hogging the ball or showing off when he did get around to scoring.
Nikki was the manager of the girl’s softball team on account of her superb organizational skills (just ask her; she’ll tell you), a reputation she managed to maintain even after losing all of the team’s equipment on a road trip. Twice. She blamed what happened on Nancy Pelosi, which was odd, because at the time no one knew anyone named Nancy Pelosi. It was believed that she played shortstop or something.
In the debates for class president, Vincent gave long, thoughtful, boring answers based on having carefully researched the issues, and kept looking at everyone, even his opponent, with that shy, slightly goofy grin. Nikki, by contrast, spoke entirely in crisply-delivered slogans that sounded great – things like “Free parking for Seniors!” If challenged by Vincent – gently, with that same grin – on any of her dubious, but forceful, assertions, her eyes flashed with anger and she looked like she wanted to scratch his eyes out.
Vincent dated a really cute girl who was a cheerleader, and you had a feeling they would get married and in the future would be one of those infuriatingly perfect couples. Nikki had a boyfriend, but no one could remember his name. He was in JROTC or something. Her name was whispered in connection with other boys, and some of the more obnoxious, least popular geeks in the class made dubious claims of having “gone all the way” with her, but no one paid them any mind because no girl in the class would have dreamed of so much as speaking to those creeps, much less…you know.
OK, I’ve carried this analogy about as far as I can, but you get the idea…
There was some serious stuff after that, in which I urged the Tart’s readers to vote for Sheheen, and explained why they should. I may do an expanded version of that here, just as an election-eve summary, if I can shake off this cold-medicine lethargy. I got some kind of allergy or cold thing over the weekend, and am perpetually drowsy…
That was my compromise headline, by the way. My first thought was “How Nikki Haley seduced me,” and boy, that would have driven my traffic up and helped me sell some ads. It would have been a perfectly fine use of figurative language. But I decided against it. I’m not THAT anxious to sell ads (if I were, I’d spend some time on the phone selling, and you’d see more of them). Then I thought of, “How Nikki Haley fooled me,” but that would have been TOO prosaic. So I went with the compromise.
And what it means is this: Folks, I know how attractive (as a candidate, I mean) Nikki Haley can be. I mean, she had me at “I’m running against Larry Koon” way back in 2002, and she totally pulled me into her orbit when she told me of how his redneck supporters were attacking her ethnicity, causing me to write an impassioned defense of her and condemnation of them. (I have this atavistic impulse toward knight errantry. It’s what causes me to have a notion that the United States should ride about the world slaying ogres in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Bosnia and the like. And if I can actually, literally defend a lady in distress — well, all the better.)
Being on Nikki’s side made us feel good about ourselves. She came across as an absolute paragon of political virtue taking on the entrenched interests, and she did it well. At the time, we didn’t know that as she was advocating “running government like a business,” she was failing to pay taxes on time for the business for which she was the accountant. We didn’t know she was parlaying her support of Lexington Medical Center getting an open-heart center into a $110,000-a-year job that didn’t require her to show up.
And most of all, we did not know that she — who chaired a subcommittee charged with coming up with regulations for the payday lending industry — would tap that industry for contributions to her employer’s cause.
Now that I do know those things, I’ve thought back a number of times to the portion of my last extended interview with her when she spoke of how she was stymied by her leadership and prevented from passing meaningful reform of payday lending. You will hear her speak knowledgeably and energetically about how her committee carefully researched the issue and came up with a bill she was proud of (one that would regulate, not eliminate, such lenders), only to see it cavalierly deep-sixed by her leadership.
It was, in retrospect, quite a performance, and I believed in it entirely. I believe in it now as I watch it. You probably will, too. Look at her face as I ask her to clarify — was it Harry Cato who killed your bill. Yes, she nods, with wide eyes, evincing reluctance at seeming to tell tales, then smiling winningly.
The thing is, it’s so convincing that I still believe that she was sincere. I mean, look at her. But that sincere young woman who spoke of how much she was learning as a novice legislator has been very little in evidence since she found “the power of her voice” as a Sarah-Palin-style demagogue who despises experience and nuance, and speaks almost entirely in bumper stickers.
The Nikki Haley on the video was … smarter than the one we hear today. And more believable. She was almost… wonkish. Definitely our kind of gal, the sort we’d be sure to have an editorial crush on.
And I still marvel over how she’s changed.
Bottom line… I have a lot of experience observing Nikki Haley. So when I tell people who just recently discovered her that she isn’t all that she seems, and that it would be a bad idea to elect her to higher office, my assessment has very deep roots. It took me a LONG time to realize just how problematic Nikki Haley was. And voters just haven’t had enough time with her. It’s like being a pilot — I’ve got a couple of thousand hours with this particular aircraft, and it’s hard to explain all that I’ve learned about her idiosyncracies to anyone who’s had less than a hundred.
Which is why I wish Election Day were a little farther off. Eventually, I believe everybody will see all the sides of Nikki Haley. But after Tuesday, it will be too late to help our state.
The latest from Cyndi Mosteller’s group, which seems to speak for a lot of Republicans I hear from and about, but who are not as loudly on the record as this bunch:
Columbia, SC—Conservatives for Truth in Politics announces a “Truth Alert” for the people of South Carolina. “TIP is appalled at the recent actions of the Haley campaign to mislead the people of SC on very important issues facing our state,” said co-chairs Cyndi Mosteller and David Woodard. Specifically, TIP is referring to a negative ad paid for by the Haley campaign that criticizes Sheheen on two votes: one raising the tax on cigarettes by 50 cents a pack and the other on Act 388, the property tax relief act, that is very controversial because it did not address commercial property and second homes.
“The hypocrisy of Ms. Haley might be her most transparent characteristic,” said Mosteller. “Haley is critical of Sheheen for supporting a cigarette tax but she herself has said she would support a tax on groceries? Enough is enough. She will not pull the wool over our eyes anymore.” Ms. Haley claims to be an outsider but her actions tell a different story. What we do know is that Ms. Haley is in the back pocket of big tobacco. She was part of a small minority that worked to defeat the cigarette tax—the tax that was the lowest in the country.
“She carried the water for big tobacco but she won’t carry the water for working families of SC,” said Woodard. “As a parent with three teenage daughters, I was one Republican that understood the clear thinking involved when the legislature put an additional tax on cigarettes. Anything we can do to discourage kids from picking up this high-risk habit is a good thing. I applaud Mr. Sheheen for his vote and I think most people of SC feel the same way. My memory is that 80% of people support a tax on cigarettes to the southeastern average,” said Mosteller.
What Ms. Haley won’t tell you is that she wants to place a tax on groceries in a time in which SC families are struggling financially. This tax will cost all SC families hundreds of millions of dollars on the most important necessity—food. And what does she want to do with this tax money that is coming out of families’ pockets? Yes. Give it to big out-of-state corporations by eliminating the corporate income tax. “Let me make this clear to all. Ms. Haley supports taxing your food and giving it to large out-of-state corporations and then has the nerve to criticize Sheheen for supporting a cigarette tax? I can’t believe she calls herself a conservative Republican,” said Liana Orr, Secretary and Director of TIP.
“As the campaigns come to an end with Election Day just around the corner, TIP will increase its efforts to call anyone out that is distorting the truth,” said Woodard.
TIP is a 501 c 4 advocacy organization. To learn more about this issue and other issues that we are questioning the candidates on, go to www.sctruth.com
A number of times recently when I’m being interviewed — informally at a cocktail reception, or formally on radio or the tube — I make reference to the fact that Nikki Haley peaked on May 14, 2010. I was there; I saw it.
It was the Friday evening when Sarah Palin came to call.
It was also the moment, three-plus weeks out, when it first became evident to me that she was going to win the primary.
I don’t think I wrote about that particular epiphany at the time. Instead, I wrote about how disturbingly alienated I felt at that Tea Party event. There was something really unpleasant going on, something different from the usual obnoxious nonsense one hears at political gatherings — that is to say, something that was obnoxious in a different way — and I felt compelled to analyze it. Nikki’s political fortunes weren’t so much on my mind at the moment, although I did remark on the startling change in her:
A little over a year ago, Nikki Haley was just an idealistic sophomore legislator who was touchingly frustrated that her seniors in her party didn’t roll over and do what she wanted them to do when she wanted them to do it. It didn’t really worry me when I would try to explain to her how inadequate such bumper sticker nostrums as “run government like a business” were (based in a lack of understanding of the essential natures not only of government, but of business, the thing she professes to know so well), and she would shake her head and smile and be unmoved. That was OK. Time and experience would take care of that, I thought. She was very young, and had experienced little. Understanding would come, and I felt that on the whole she was still a young lawmaker with potential.
I reckoned without this — this impatient, populist, drive for power BASED in the appeal of simplistic, demagogic opposition to experience itself. It’s an ugly thing, this sort of anti-intellectualism of which Sarah Palin has become a national symbol. This attitude that causes her to smile a condescending, confident smile (after all, the crowd there is on HER side) at protesters — protesters I didn’t even notice until she called attention to them — and tell them that they should stick around and maybe they would learn something. If a 65-year-old male intellectual with a distinguished public career said that to a crowd, everyone would understand it was ugly and contemptuous. But Sarah is so charming about it, so disarming! How could it be ugly?
Whenever I had met with her in the past, she had been so … demure. She was the idealistic young lady who was just deeply shocked that those mean old men at the State House didn’t understand that she was trying to do the right thing and that they should just be gentlemen and help her do it…
Which perhaps was her reading of what I wanted her to be, so she played that part. But I had thought it was real. And we endorsed her — twice.
Anyway, I didn’t write “Nikki’s going to win this thing” at the time, but it was on my mind. One reason I didn’t come out and SAY it, I guess, was that, well, that was Brad the INTP at his most intuitive. It would have driven the engineer types like Doug nuts, and when they demanded the geometric proof, I would come up a little short on evidence.
But personally, I had sort of learned over the years to trust that impression. I first experienced it covering my first statewide race, in 1978 in Tennessee. All the experienced reporters at the big papers were saying the race between Lamar Alexander and Jake Butcher was too close to call. But I had been closely covering both of them — I had spent a full week with each, sometimes 20 hours a day, riding in the cars and campaign planes with them, eating with them, standing right next to them when they interacted with voters, being right there in their good moments and their bad… (We used to do that sort of thing in the old days. It was called “covering an election.” News organizations don’t spend that kind of money any more, and campaigns don’t allow that kind of access to candidates. Now, most people follow the “Nixon in ’68” approach. That’s why the media loved John McCain — he let the walls down.) Anyway, I had seen in Alexander a candidate who was winning, and in Butcher a furtive, uncomfortable guy who couldn’t possibly be winning.
It was a look in the eye, a note in the voice, a certain energy.
And it turned out I was right.
Anyway, Nikki had that on May 14. Just watch and see if you see it. Sure, there were rough spots — such as the Freudian-sounding slip when she says “You know, I’ve spent the last six years trying to get people to understand the power of my voice,” then hastily corrects, “the power of their voice” — but on the whole, you’re looking at a candidate who is in the zone.
When you watch this, you will hear most of the things you’ve now grown tired of hearing her repeat. Only back then it had a freshness, magnified both by her confidence and the uncritical cheers of the crowd — a crowd that did not and never would challenge her self-shaped myth of the great businesswoman who had much to teach government as she chastised it.
Nikki defenders will say, “She’s still GOT that energy, and you’ll see next Tuesday.” But no, not really. That was her peak, back then. The only question since then has been the rate at which the air would run out of that balloon. She was flying so high then, the issue ever since has been how much altitude she could afford to lose by Election Day. She’s been losing air all along; her bumper-sticker sound clips have seemed a bit staler, a bit more brittle, with each repetition. (You’ll note some really sharp ironies, such as when she calls for income disclosure for legislators, or talks about what a great accountant she is…)
Right now, it looks as though she has enough altitude left to make it through Tuesday — although for all the many reasons cited on this blog the eventual crash is inevitable. (What worries me, as I wrote back here, is that the crash will come in early 2011 instead of before Election Day, leaving us with 3-plus years of a lame-duck governor, when SC needs so much more.)
But whatever happens Tuesday, this was the day on which she was flying the highest.
While walking me back to the studio to tape the Friday radio show at ETV yesterday, the engineer asked me whether I was “as ready for next Wednesday as we are.”
Rather than giving the usual sort of “You bet!” that such a remark generally prompts, I thought for a second and said No, actually I’d like a little more time, thanks.
This morning, an attorney friend also asked whether I was ready to have it over with, and I took the thought further: I think South Carolina could use about one more month, so that it can make a well-considered decision.
As they focus on this gubernatorial decision, more and more voters are realizing what those of us who obsess over politics to an unhealthy degree realized long ago: Vincent Sheheen is easily the better candidate, and there are enough problems with Nikki Haley to make even the staunchest Republican run the other way.
The more they know, the more likely they are to make that decision.
In fact, I’ll go further: I think eventually we will reach a very clear consensus on this in South Carolina. The terrible thing is, I’m afraid we’re going to reach it sometime after next Tuesday. Now if you’re one of the less thoughtful Republicans — one who thinks the thing is for someone with an “R” to win the election, no matter the consequences — you say, “Yay!” to that. But many of those who would cheer today are going to deeply regret that choice sometime in the not-too-distant future, if Nikki wins.
This is inevitable. Every new thing we’ve learned about Nikki the last few months — everything personal, professional, political — has indicated that she falls far short of being the kind of person one would trust with such responsibility. As she is subjected to further scrutiny, I expect this to get worse. She just doesn’t bear close examination.
I’d rather the voters not have to go through that painful buyer’s remorse. I’d rather they reach that decision now. Because I don’t care which team wins elections (the Dems won big in 2008; the Repubs will win big this year; the Dems probably again next time… whoop-ti-frickin’-do; who could possibly think it matters?). What I care about is South Carolina.
We’ve been through too many painful realizations AFTER the fact in South Carolina — after David Beasley, after Jim Hodges, after Mark Sanford. For once, we need to realize the truth BEFORE the election, and choose wisely. We need good leadership more than any other state I can think of.
So it is that when, minutes after that conversation with the attorney, as I was getting off the elevator and another friend asked whether I thought I could survive another week, I said Well, actually, I’d like it to be a little longer…
The third and final debate will be held tonight at 7:00PM in Florence. The debate, sponsored by Francis Marion University, Coastal Carolina University, WBTW-TV and the Morning News, will be broadcast live on WBTW News 13, C-SPAN and SCNow.com. Anchor Bob Juback will moderate the debate, which will feature a media panel as well as voter-submitted questions.
The ad, of course, doesn’t ad anything to our knowledge, but then political ads never do. At least, not for people who actually pay attention to politics. No, campaigns raise all this money, and spend most of it on television, in order to communicate to people who simply are not paying attention. Which is depressing…
It would be great if Vincent had a chance to be elected just by emphasizing his own virtues, but if I were advising his campaign, I don’t know what I would tell them to do differently. The thing is, his positive traits are not simple, bumper-sticker things. At this stage in the campaign, the reasons NOT to vote for Nikki are so very many and so sharply defined that they are much, much easier to communicate to those distracted souls who have not yet made up their minds.
So he goes with trust. On one level, that’s a good thing, because I’m hard-pressed to think of anyone at the State House I trust more than I do Vincent. But I wish our political debates went deeper than this. Sure, there are more than enough reasons for people to go to great lengths to avoid having Nikki Haley as their governor. The reasons are objective, indisputable and nonideological. No sensible person who wants the best for South Carolina — regardless of his or her ideology — would want her to be our governor, knowing all the things we now know. Some of you will object to that categorical statement, but I’m sorry… you see, I’ve been paying attention. I’ve seen how the facts have given the lie to every virtue she has claimed, one after another.
And yet people — people who would protest that they DO know the score, and they DO care what’s best — will vote for her. It’s stunning the degree to which people will allow foolish, shallow distractions — party, gender, what have you — prevent them from focusing on her utter unsuitability.
So Vincent Sheheen, who is capable of greater depth, keeps it simple in the hope that if you keep stating the PAINFULLY OBVIOUS, people will act rationally.
And if they don’t, well… combine that with what happened with Alvin Greene, and I may end this year beginning to have real trouble with my lifelong faith in the Democratic process.
So we’ve heard Vincent Sheheen say there are only about 800 something state Department of Education employees, and Nikki comes back that no, there are eleven hundred and something (going by memory, since I can’t see my DVR from here).
And you think, “Whoa! Surely she wouldn’t give an actual NUMBER if it’s not true!” That is, you think that if you’re one of those simple folk who think numbers represent a special kind of truth.
And if you don’t know our Nikki, who is completely unbothered by actual facts.
Debate issue: # of employees @ SC DOE? Dept. says 1,179 FTEs authorized, many slots vacant. Filled: 449 in bus shops, 434 administrative.
Those of you inclined to be overly kind will say, “Then they were both right!”
No.
The context in which this keeps coming up has to do with Nikki repeating the canard that our wicked, evil public education system never lays off “bureacrats,” but always lays off teachers first, because… well, just because it’s mean and evil.
Which, like most of what she says, is not true. The Department of Education — you know, the place where you find people actually enforce all those accountability rules and regulations that people who don’t trust public education have instituted over the years — actually employs far fewer than it’s authorized to employ.
And half of them (actually, more than half) keep the buses running. Just as Vincent keeps explaining.
She also drew a comparison between working with lawmakers and raising children.
“That’s what it’s all about — letting them know what would happen,” she said, adding most lawmakers, like kids, will do the right thing if the consequences are clear. “If they mess up, I will burn them.” [Emphasis mine.]
Remember what I said about how Nikki, being female and petite and couching things as a “Mom,” gets away with saying things that coming from a man would sound incredibly presumptuous, megalomaniacal and bullying? This is another of those things…
She’s trying to sound fair and reasonable, but the rabble-rousing, storm-the-Bastille rhetoric that won the hearts of the Tea Party keeps coming out…
Just noticed something on the S.C. legislative website. On the page with links to House members’ bios, there is an interesting difference in the way distaff members are listed:
Jeff D. Duncan
Tracy R. Edge
Shannon S. Erickson (Mrs. Kendall F.)
P. Michael “Mike” Forrester
Marion B. Frye
Laurie Slade Funderburk (Mrs. Harold Williams)
Michael W. “Mike” Gambrell
Wendell G. Gilliard
Jerry N. Govan, Jr.
Anton J. Gunn
Nikki Randhawa Haley (Mrs. William Michael)
Daniel P. “Dan” Hamilton
Nelson L. Hardwick
I never noticed that before, and I wonder why. Is it because they didn’t DO it that way before, or because I just never looked up any female members, or I just wasn’t being observant?
Anyway, it jumped out at me just now, when I went to try to answer the question raised by a reader back here (but I did not find the answer).
I wonder what y’all think of it.
Me, I like it. I think it’s genteel. But then, I would have been at home in the England that Patrick O’Brian and Jane Austen wrote about, when ladies were ladies and gentlemen were gentlemen. As long as I got to be a gentleman. (I think if I took an aptitude test that tested for all occupations throughout history, I would test as perfectly suited to being an English gentleman who did nothing but ride to the hounds and collect his rents — that is, let his man of business collect them for him, of course. I feel it in my bones. And you know what? In that whole year I was looking, I never saw a job like that.)
At lunch today, when I said something about how Vincent Sheheen has to be careful not to seem to be TOO aggressive with Nikki Haley, my ADCO colleague Lora Prill gently suggested that my sensibility with regard to matters of chivalry is a relic of a bygone era, which means of course that I’m way old. Which I’m not; I’m just quixotic.
At any rate, say what else you may say about it, it’s very South Carolina.
That’s what Sheheen’s campaign claimed this morning. At the same time, they released the results of a new Crantford poll showing Vincent well within the 3.8 percent margin of error, right on Nikki Haley’s heels:
If you were able to watch the debate that just ended, it’s clear on who should be your next governor. Vincent Sheheen scored a decisive victory. He showed that he’s the only candidate that understands the issues and more importantly, the one candidate voters can trust.
The debate is not the only victory for Vincent this week. A new poll released today shows Vincent Sheheen continues to capture the momentum in South Carolina’s race for governor. The news comes a day after pre-election campaign contribution reports demonstrated Vincent Sheheen raised more contributions than Nikki Haley from South Carolina donors.
South Carolinians are now paying attention to this race. Voters are informing themselves about the candidates, and they are excited about Vincent Sheheen.
The new survey, conducted by Crantford & Associates, shows Haley’s lead has dropped to just two points, 43%-41% with 16% undecided. While Vincent’s support is growing, Haley’s continues to decline drastically.
Well, I missed the debate last night, and all day I’ve been catching flak about that (not “flack,” Kathryn) from people who think Sheheen thumped Haley and want to see me write about it.
I’ve mumbled something about how I advocated for debates for all those people who for whatever reasons had not focused on the candidates’ relative strengths and weaknesses, not for my benefit… which hasn’t gotten me anywhere with anyone.
So now, near the end of the day, I’m finally about to view the debate at the WSPA website. I’ll offer some thoughts when I’m done. But if y’all would like, you can go ahead and weigh in now.
Note that while Rotarian Julian Walker’s question doesn’t actually say “UnParty,” there’s no question that he is referring to it in spirit. Also, he says that I “once said in an editorial that he doesn’t particularly care for political parties.” Well, I’ve said it a whole lot more than once. But I’m glad the message got across.
Enjoy Julian’s question, and be edified by Nikki’s answer. She does a good job of segueing to one of her favorite bits, talking about what a transparency heroine she is (until, of course, she is asked to be transparent).
There’s an interesting bit at the end of her answer in which she boasts about how she faced down legislative leaders and bullied them into doing what she wanted.
It sounds great when she says it, especially if you are one who believes (as her most loyal supporters do), that everybody in the Legislature except Nikki is a Neanderthal crook who has to be coerced into doing the right thing. That is, of course, an essential element in her narrative.
But think about this — and this is not relevant to whether you should vote for Nikki (in fact, it could definitely be used as a selling point in her favor); I just think it’s an interesting sociological sidenote: How would that sound coming from a bull-necked, gruff-sounding man telling the same story in a thick country accent? It would sound like the tale of a bullying blowhard.
But from Nikki, it sounds like Joan of Arc. Women can sound wonderful saying things that make you want to hurl hearing them from a man. This ability to be personally appealing saying things that would sound bad coming from others is what has gotten her this far. This is the magic that won the primary for her. Which is why now is a great time to set what a great tale she tells of herself as a heroine, and how all the wonderful things she says compare alongside what we know about her record as a lawmaker and as a businesswoman, in terms of what she’s actually achieved.
If you were able to watch the debate that just ended, it’s clear on who should be your next governor. Vincent Sheheen scored a decisive victory. He showed that he’s the only candidate that understands the issues and more importantly, the one candidate voters can trust.