After forty years of marriage, Aland Tipper Gore are separating, the couple announced in an e-mail to friends Tuesday morning.
“This is very much a mutual and mutually supportive decision that we have made together following a process of long and careful consideration,” the former vice president and his wife said in the email first reported by Politico. “We ask for respect for our privacy and that of our family, and we do not intend to comment further.” Gore’s spokeswoman later confirmed the validity of the e-mail.
The news stunned many political watchers — the duo’s mutually affectionate manner on the campaign trail did much to enliven Al Gore’s stuffy image — but also good friends.
“I’m shocked — beyond shocked,” said Chris Downey, a close friend for many years who said she spoke to Tipper last week. “This is the least likely course of events I could imagine.”
I certainly can’t say I was close to them — I never met Tipper, even though I got to know her husband fairly well covering him for years back in Tennessee. But knowing Al, and watching her from afar, she always seemed like the more approachable, open and personable of the pair. I always respected Al’s intellect and command of issues, and was glad when my paper endorsed him for the Senate in 1984, but he wasn’t exactly a guy to light up a room. Which suggests that the big loser in this split is Al.
And of course, their family and all those who care about them.
Quick, what do Seth Rose and Scott Winburn have in common that makes them both look like smart, capable candidates?
Yes! They both advertise on bradwarthen.com. That, of course, should be all you need to know, but then, how could you choose between them?
What else do they have in common? Well, they’re both young lawyers who happen to be Democrats. I interviewed each of them over breakfast this week. And both of them are running for the 5th District Richland County Council seat being vacated by Kit Smith.
They are not the only candidates running in the Democratic primary for that seat (which by the way IS the election, since no Republicans are seeking it). Moe Baddourah and Kayin Jones are also on the ballot, and Mr. Baddourah has some catchy signs you may have seen around town. For all I know, one of them could end up in a runoff, but without any polling or anything else to go on, my sense is that most of the energy in this contest belongs to Rose and Winburn (a Free Times piece this week on the back-and-forth between Rose and Winburn didn’t even mention the other two candidates).
So, what separates the two candidates? Quite a bit, actually. For instance:
The Kit Smith factor… Rose started running for this seat before Kit Smith said she was ready to vacate it. Why? Because, he says, he didn’t think she was visible enough in the community. He says his model for a good council member is his city council rep, Belinda Gergel — whom he says he sees everywhere at community functions. By contrast, Winburn — who didn’t announce until Mrs. Smith decided not to seek re-election — has her endorsement.
Last time I looked, Seth seemed to have a lot more yard signs than Scott. That could be because he’s raised a good bit more money.
Scott may not be old Columbia, but he’s old South Carolina. My uncle knows his mama and daddy up in my hometown of Bennettsville. In fact, my uncle called me last weekend to tell me to expect a call from Scott. (Initially, Scott had wanted to talk to me to get advice on how to get The State’s endorsement. I had to break it to him that The State wouldn’t be endorsing in his race. The overworked remnants of an editorial board are only endorsing for governor, attorney general and solicitor.) To cite another connection I have to him: My uncle serves on the board that supervises Scott’s father, who is Director of Disabilities and Special Needs for Marlboro County.
By contrast, Seth never knew his father, and his mom was 18 when she had him. He was born in West Virginia and raised in Florida by his mom and aunt. His grandfather was in a pipefitter and a union man, which Seth credits with helping start him down the path to being a Democrat. He also credits his background with having instilled in him a strong work ethic.
Seth went to USC on a tennis scholarship, and he made All-American. Scott went to Clemson, like fellow Bennettsville Democrat Doug Jennings.
Since I mentioned that I have indirect personal connections to Scott, I should mention that Seth is in my Rotary Club, and like him, my Dad went to a South Carolin college on a tennis scholarship (Presbyterian College). Dad still follows SC tennis, and when he saw his yard signs recently, asked, me, “Isn’t he the tennis player?”
Scott is in private practice with Rep. James Smith. Seth is a prosecutor in the 5th Circuit solicitor’s office.
Winburn claims the support of both Smiths (James and Kit), as well as former Gov. Jim Hodges and such conservation activists as Ann Timberlake. (He has in the past worked for Hodges and the Coastal Conservation League, and clerked for Ed Cottingham.) In contrast to that constellation of white Democrats, Rose cites the backing of Todd Rutherford, Chris Hart, Vince Ford and I.S. Leevy Johnson. I’m not saying there’s a racial thing going on, but it did strike me that there was that contrast among the first names each cited when I asked who was supporting them.
As for the “issue” that has emerged between the two… Winburn supporters have accused Rose of the “Don Tomlin candidate” because the developer has given his campaign $1,000. This, of course, is muttered darkly by the conservation-minded folk who back Winburn and have long supported Kit Smith. Rose indicates this all took him by surprise. First, he doesn’t personally know Don Tomlin. Then, once the name came up, he did a little research and found that Mr. Tomlin has given to other Democrats as well — including James Smith and Kit Smith, in 2006.
As an issue, that sounds kind of like a wash to me. I see no indication that Rose is another Brian Boyer. Mr. Boyer, if you’ll recall, was the young veteran who actually was in Tomlin’s employ when he ran against Belinda Gergel in 2008. By contrast, Rose is a great admirer of Mrs. Gergel, the historic preservationist. He also says he has worked to obtain limits on development in his community.
So I think those of you who live in Richland County’s 5th District will have to make your decision on the basis of something else. Check out their websites, which are linked from their ads, and from the first reference to their names above.
SOUTH CAROLINA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE ENDORSES HOUSE CANDIDATES AHEAD OF PRIMARIES
Columbia, S.C. – The South Carolina Chamber of Commerce, the state’s largest broad-based business organization, is pleased to announce the endorsements of the following House of Representative candidates who have primary challengers.
District 2 – Bill Sandifer, (Oconee)
District 10 – Dan Cooper, (Anderson)
District 17 – Harry Cato, (Greenville)
District 26 – Henry Wilson, (Pickens)
District 35 – Keith Kelly, (Spartanburg)
District 36 – Rita Allison, (Spartanburg)
District 38 – Joey Millwood, (Spartanburg)
District 39 – Marion Frye, (Saluda)
District 41 – Boyd Brown, (Fairfield)
District 55 – Jackie Hayes, (Dillon)
District 61 – Lester Branham, (Florence)
District 62 – Robert Williams, (Darlington)
District 75 – Jim Harrison, (Richland)
District 80 – Jimmy Bales, (Richland)
District 83 – Bill Hixon, (Aiken)
District 84 – Roland Smith, (Aiken)
District 86 – Jim Stewart, (Aiken)
District 87 – Todd Atwater, (Lexington)
District 98 – Chris Murphy, (Dorchester)
District 106 – Nelson Hardwick, (Horry)
District 112 – Mike Sottile, (Charleston)
District 123 – Richard Chalk, (Beaufort)
“South Carolinians who want good jobs and a strong economy should proactively support pro-business candidates,” said Otis Rawl, president and chief executive officer of the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce. “Candidates endorsed by the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce have demonstrated their support for priorities that support a strong economy and a competitive Palmetto State. These House candidates are committed to representing the people in their respective districts who each need good jobs, a competitive state economy and a pro-prosperity working environment to ultimately raise their individual incomes.”
The Chamber will issue further House endorsements after the primaries on June 8. In the race for governor, the Chamber has endorsed Gresham Barrett (R) and Vincent Sheheen (D). Visit www.scchamber.net for more information.
What do all of these candidates have in common? They’re all incumbents, or running in races without an incumbent. In District 26, incumbent Rex Rice is running for Congress; in District 87, Nikki Haley is running for governor; and in District 98, Annette Young is not seeking re-election.
It’s a shame the Chamber didn’t dig a little harder to make some real discernments (or at least give us some reasoning for its choices in the cases where there was no incumbent), because endorsements such as this WOULD mean more than usual this year, if they’d only put some thought into it. That’s because we won’t be getting an such fodder for thought from The State. This year, my former paper is only endorsing for governor, attorney general and 5th circuit solicitor, near as I can tell. And that leaves a big vacuum. I wish I could fill it, but I’m only one guy. And despite what that Lois Lane keeps saying, I am NOT Superman.
State Senator Vincent Sheheen has now opened a modest lead over two other hopefuls in the Democratic Primary contest for governor of South Carolina with less than three weeks to go. But nearly one-out-of-three primary voters remain undecided.
A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Democratic Primary Voters in South Carolina finds Sheheen with 30% support, closely followed by State Superintendent of Education Jim Rex with 22%. State Senator Robert Ford trails with four percent (4%) of the vote.
Twelve percent (12%) prefer some other candidate in the race, with another 32% undecided.
This, of course, is what I’ve been saying here for some time, although I had little to go by other than his leading in fund-raising and my gut — and the fact that Jim Rex seems to have dropped off the radar screen. I’d try to sell him an ad to give him a boost, but at this point I’d feel a little guilty taking his money. But only a little guilty.
I’d had a similar gut feeling about Nikki. Rasmussen seems to be working full-time to confirming my gut impressions.
Just got this release from our friend Phil Bailey:
Senator Leventis Condemns Attack on Spratt
Sumter, SC – South Carolina Senator Phil Leventis (D-Sumter) today condemned the National Republican Congressional Committee for their attack on Congressmen John Spratt. NRCC spokesman Andy Sere attacked Congressman Spratt by implying that his “memory must be failing him” and calling him “Amnesiac John” in a press statement on Monday.
Senator Leventis issued the following statement:
“Statements like that should have no place in our political debate. To denigrate a man who has committed much of his adult life to serving his state and his country is troubling. This type chicanery has no place in a public forum. No one from the National Republican Congressional Committee lives here and none of them would call a family or friend amnesic just because they have a disease which is well controlled.”
“It’s not the dog in the fight, it’s the fight in the dog. My good friend, Congressman Spratt, has one of the keenest minds in the Congress. His understanding of complex issues and ability to navigate the halls of government has served our state well. And disgusting comments like the ones from the Republicans are to be condemned.”
###
Amen to that.
This episode aside, I get really tired of John Spratt having strong opposition every two years, no matter what. That sounds really undemocratic of me; I know. Doug would say I’m defending perpetual incumbency, and it’s a good thing when these “career politicians” have opposition to keep them on their toes. But I say it for these reasons:
John Spratt is, and has been for as long as I can recall, the strongest member of South Carolina’s House delegation, both in terms of ability and service to the state and country. And he’s one of the brighter, soberest, least partisan members of Congress.
Other members of our delegation NEVER get the kind of strong, well-funded opposition that Spratt gets — certainly not Joe Wilson or Jim Clyburn. (And if you think Rob Miller constitutes strong opposition, you haven’t taken a close look at him. The fact that he has money just means that a stronger candidate can’t emerge.) It would be MUCH better for the state and country if hyperpartisan reps like them had strong opposition than Spratt.
The REASON Spratt always has this opposition is not because his district is dissatisfied with him, but because the national Republican Party always has him in their sights. The national GOP believes that district should belong to it, rather than to the people of the 5th District.
So that’s why I get tired of it. All that money spent, all that energy, every two years, just because Washington Republicans want another hashmark in their column.
While I was at a long lunch for the Azerbaijani journalists sponsored by the Columbia World Affairs Council, I got the following two e-mails in quick succession:
That good news was coming from the spokesman for the Republicans in the Senate and his Democratic counterpart. And while they passed it on without comment, it was an occasion for rejoicing across party barriers.
This is a rare moment when the SC Legislature actually overcomes barriers and its own inertia to do the right thing. It happens so seldom that we should celebrate it.
Sure, there are plenty of ways to denigrate this accomplishment, and I’m familiar with all of them. A few:
It took only what, a decade? In spite of the fact that we’ve known for years that three-fourths of South Carolinians favored it?
In fact, 70 percent have indicated in polls that they would have gone all the way to the national average — an increase of twice this much — but the Legislature never even seriously considered doing that at any time.
Far too much of the discussion over the years has been over how to spend the money, even though that was irrelevant to whether the tax should be raised. The point in raising it was to price cigarettes beyond the reach of teen, and experience in other states has indicated that raising the price via taxes is a very effective way of accomplishing that.
Probably more than a few legislators voted this way, in defiance of their own inclinations, just for the pleasure of stuffing it down Mark Sanford’s throat.
But let’s set all that aside. The fact is that we no longer have the shameful distinction of being the one state that does the most to make sure kids have access to cheap cigarettes. And some lawmakers understood the importance of this opportunity to do the right thing for once. For instance, I share this other Tweet from Phil Bailey:
Dang, I wish I hadn’t posted that Sheheen video earlier, because now that I have a good comment from him on Sanford’s veto of the cigarette tax increase (the increase that only goes half as far as 70 percent of South Carolinians want it to go, but at least is better than the 30-cent we almost had to settle for), it looks like this blog is all Sheheen, all the time.
Anyway, here it is:
“Gov. Sanford’s veto of the cigarette tax is absolutely indefensible,” said Sheheen. He continued:
“I don’t know what world the governor is living in, but here in South Carolina, we’re facing unprecedented budget shortfalls — cutting vital medical services for many South Carolinians and laying off teachers, including my own child’s third grade teacher. Increasing our state’s lowest-in-the-nation cigarette tax will qualify our state for millions of dollars in federal matching funds for health care while reducing teen smoking and smoking-related health care costs. It’s the responsible thing to do.
It’s time for us to elect a governor who will be committed to the people of this state rather than committed to an unbending political ideology that ignores the basic needs of everyday South Carolinians.
Yeah, what he said. And yeah, this does illustrate why South Carolinians need to be really, really careful for once about electing a governor. And it’s why we can’t even consider Nikki Haley, and increasingly — and I hate this, because as you know, I like to have a dog in every party’s fight — ALL of the Republicans seem determined to disqualify themselves from being considered by rational independents (I discussed that previously back here).
And as soon as I get a good comment — heck, any comment — coming over the transom from someone else, I’ll post that, too.
By the way, it just so happens that my office door these days actually does have a transom. I don’t think it opens any more, though…
The actual transom over the actual door of my actual office.
No, that’s not the name of my band that I’m going to form once I come up with a new name, although I think I might put it on the short list…
This is just me free-associating from one post to the next.
Back on this one, I said something about how some politicians seem to have a sixth sense about when a camera is pointing at them. Or at least, they did back in my reporting days (when I, more often than not, was my own photographer).
That got me to thinking about this picture that I ran across recently while sorting through old files. It’s a print I made from a shot I took at the Democrats’ mid-term national convention in Memphis in 1978. This was that didn’t go well for Jimmy Carter, whereas Ted Kennedy was greeted lovingly. They went wild for his presentation before a panel on health care reform (yes, we’ve been talking about it that long), during which I took the shot below (I wish I could find the negative from which I cropped this image of Kennedy, because as I recall, one of the panelists behind him was a baby-faced guy from Arkansas named Bill Clinton). Two years later, the party’s left wing would unite behind Kennedy in full-scale revolt against their own incumbent president.
And yes, I realize the Kennedy picture is low-quality. But I shot it on Tri-X with low ambient light, and blew up this portion of the frame, so gimme a break…
Anyway, where was I? … oh yes, the Sixth Sense.
I was looking around and saw Jody Powell sitting on that table at the back of the room a few feet from me. He was unnoticed for the moment by everyone else, and he was relaxing with a cigar and a bottle of beer. As I aimed and focused the Nikkormat and manually adjusted the exposure (and yes, Burl, it was the Tiger tank of cameras; I loved the one that the paper assigned to me), without looking at me, he very deliberately moved the beer in his right hand down to where I couldn’t get it in the picture. I mean, heaven forbid anybody from the Carter White House should be seen having a good time.
Dang. But I took the picture anyway.
And yes, I realize both of these guys died this year, so consider this their official blog elegy.
You may recall that I haven’t been too impressed with Mullins McLeod. I’ve generally dismissed his campaign as being… what’s the word… trite, I suppose. His campaign releases have sort of struck a generic populist pose, trying to project him as a regular guy who’s tired, just as you good people out there are, of all them blamed politicians and their shenanigans.
That pose is tiresome enough when done well, but as I said, his populist pronouncements have been so vanilla, as that genre goes, so as to be easily forgettable five minutes later. As I said back here, Mullins just hasn’t been able to get a hit in his few at-bats.
Well, he made a concerted effort to get on base yesterday, when he told Gresham Barrett to “shove it” on the Gitmo prisoners issue. Well, Gresham certainly deserved to have someone call him on his really ugly NIMBY ploy for attention, but while it might be cool for, say, a Dick Harpootlian to say something like that (except that Dick would be more imaginative, and he’d say it in Dwight’s behalf, not Mullins’), that’s not the kind of language we need from one who would be governor.
So basically, Mullins has managed briefly to get our attention by passing first and running the basepaths, but he’s immediately alienated us by coming into seconds with sharpened spikes high, a la Ty Cobb. In other words, the first time he gets our attention, he fails the civility test.
Hey, if we wanted a guy who talks like this as governor, we could turn to Joe Wilson.
One thing you’ve got to hand to Mark Sanford — he looks like a governor, even though he has generally not acted like one. This is a key to his electoral success.
I remember back before he was elected — I guess it was about this time in 2001 — he sent out Christmas cards with pictures of himself with his family. As soon as he received his, Sen. John Courson said to me (and you’ve got to imagine that booming bullfrog voice of his saying it), “Faaahhhn lookin’ family! Kennedyesque…” and said that on the basis of that picture, he expected Sanford to be our next governor.
Anyway, I’m reminded of that today, having just seen a picture of Jon Corzine for the first time (this was on the front of the WSJ). As I previously noted, unlike the national media, I don’t pay attention to state elections in other states because they have nothing to do with me. People elect their governors for their own reasons (sometimes things as superficial as how they look, although of course that’s not the only reason South Carolinians went for Sanford in 2002), reasons that I cannot infer meaningfully from afar, so I don’t try to do so.
Anyway, my reaction on seeing this guy for the first time as he was on his way out (having lost yesterday, for those of you who pay even less attention than I do), was this: “What? This guy is the governor of an actual state? You’re kidding. He looks like a college professor, and maybe not even an American college professor at that. He looks more like Leon Trotsky than a guy who could get elected in this country.” And what’s that he’s got in the back in this picture? Is that a ducktail?
I realize that standards of political pulchritude vary from state to state, that we would elect people in South Carolina that New Jerseyites (or whatever you call them) would never take a second look at, and vice versa. But if I had tried to imagine somebody who could get elected up there and not down here, I would have pictured a guy who would have looked at home hanging around in front of Satriani’s Pork Store with Tony Soprano. Yeah, I realize such stereotypes are the bane of New Jerseyians, who deserve better, but that I could have believed in. Whereas this Corzine guy … if Tony had shown up for his first therapy session and his shrink had looked like this instead of like Lorraine Bracco (and that’s the only role I could imagine a guy who looks like this filling on that show about north Jersey), he would have turned around and walked out.
No wonder this Trotsky-looking character lost. That Christie looks like a regular guy, a guy you might actually imagine being in the, uh, sanitation business.
Rex, the state superintendent of education, is known by more of those surveyed than the other Democrats running for governor. More than 60 percent recognized his name. Forty-one percent had a favorable impression of Rex. In contrast, a majority of those surveyed did not know the four other Democratic contenders — Columbia attorney Dwight Drake, state Sen. Robert Ford of Charleston, Charleston attorney Mullins McLeod and state Sen. Vincent Sheheen of Camden.
… I thought, No, there are not four other contenders. Really, there are two — Sheheen and Drake.
News stories can’t say that, because the reporters aren’t allowed to say that Robert Ford would never be a serious factor (and if you think otherwise, you apparently haven’t followed his career or listened to him), and Mullins McLeod, in spite of having an AWESOME South Carolina name and being the nephew of Walt McLeod (one of the coolest people in the Legislature), hasn’t caught on and seems increasingly unlikely to do so.
I could prove to be wrong about this, of course. McLeod could suddenly kick into gear, or Ford could start acting very unFordlike. But if that happens, I’ll say the position has changed and include them. Right now, I wouldn’t be too concerned about them if I were one of the other three.
Rock Hill lawyer Chad McGowan, a Democrat, jumped into the U.S. Senate race Monday, vowing to take on Republican incumbent Sen. Jim DeMint.
McGowan, a trial attorney who has primarily handled medical malpractice cases, says he is a conservative Democrat willing to vote with Republicans or Democrats to improve conditions for South Carolina’s working and middle classes.
“I don’t think anybody can rationally say the middle class is being represented by anybody in Washington,” he said.
McGowan’s list of complaints about Washington politics includes a nearly $12 trillion national debt and the bailouts of the automobile and financial services industries, which, he said, have proved to be “a bill of goods.”
Still, McGowan supports Democratic causes, including health care reform, with or without a public option.
“To do nothing is not an option,” McGowan said. “To do everything is not possible.”…
Over on his blog, Wes Wolfe says it’s not bloody likely that any Democrat can do what Inez Tenenbaum failed to do. And he’s probably right, barring unforeseen circumstance. Of course, life is all about unforeseen circumstances…
I see that most of the money that has unfortunately flowed into the coffers of Joe Wilson and Rob Miller came from out-of-state:
Over the next 21 days, through the Sept. 30 end of this year’s third quarter, Wilson and Miller combined to raise $4.34 million – more than Democratic Rep. John Spratt and GOP challenger Ralph Norman collected over two years for their 2000 election in what had been the state’s richest U.S. House race ever.
No less remarkably, the vast majority of the largest donors to Wilson or Miller live outside South Carolina – 77 percent of Wilson’s new backers, and 86 percent of Miller’s recent supporters…
Nothing remarkable about it. It stands to reason — out-of-state donors don’t know these guys.
A more discriminating, local giver would probably wait and give to a candidate who could provide better representation to the 2nd District (ahem!). These ideologues from elsewhere couldn’t care less about the 2nd District or any other part of South Carolina; they’re just doing their bit to keep the partisan spin cycle spinning.
A donor who’s giving money to Joe Wilson because he yelled “You lie!” probably wouldn’t give it if he knew that normally, Joe is not a natural vessel for delivering such hostility. He’s a fairly mild-mannered guy who lost control for a moment, and initially did what came naturally and apologized, before getting swept up in something ugly.
A donor who wishes to express outrage over what Wilson does probably wouldn’t give to Rob Miller if he knew what a weak candidate he was. (My prediction: If no other candidates get into this — and unfortunately, with them sitting on all this money now, probably no one will — Miller will probably lose to Wilson by almost the same margin by which he’s trailing him in fund-raising. $2.7 million to $1.69 million — well, maybe the Democrat would do a little better than just under 40 percent, but he still will lose substantially.)
This morning I ran into Dwight Drake yet again at breakfast — I swear, all that guy does is eat — and he told me that he exceeded his goal of raising $250,000 in the past quarter, reaching $300k.
Then, at another Kaffeeklatsch in Five Points with Steve Benjamin and Jack Van Loan, Steve told me that he raised $100,000 in the same period — which he says Richard Gergel tells him is a record, although he doesn’t know for sure.
Here’s what I told both of them: Hey, guys; you’re missing the boat: Just shout an insult at the president of the United States, and you can be rolling in the dough…
Can you believe this guy? As I said this morning on Twitter:
How does Joe Wilson live with himself, KNOWING he’s cashing in on something he did that was inappropriate?
He knew he did wrong as soon as he yelled “You lie!” His first instinct, and it was the right one, was to apologize. The Joe Wilson I know, while he’s an excitable guy, is better than that.
But then he got a taste of the wages of demagoguery, and he was ruined. Now, he basks in the adoration of those who celebrate the degradation of political deliberation in our country.
It’s disgusting. And while a guy who’s unemployed like me could use $2.7 million (and think about what an UnParty candidate could do with that — he’d have the chance to really torpedo this crazy partisan system), I honestly don’t see how he looks himself in the mirror as it comes pouring in.
This morning I had a very pleasant breakfast at the usual place with Philippe Boulet-Gercourt, the U.S. Bureau Chief for Le Nouvel Observateur, France’s largest weekly newsmagazine. I forgot to take a picture of him, but I found the video above from 2008 (I think), in which I think he’s telling the folks back home that Obama was going to win the election. That’s what “Obama va gagner” means, right? Alas, I have no French, although I’ve always felt that I understand Segolene Royal perfectly. Fortunately, Philippe’s English is superb.
It was my first encounter with a French journalist since I shot this video of Cyprien d’Haese shooting video of me back in 2008, in a supremely Marshall McLuhan moment. If you’ll recall, I was interviewed by a lot of national and foreign journalists in the weeks and months leading up to the presidential primaries here. (You may also recall that a lot of them came to me because of my blog, not because I was editorial page editor of the state’s largest newspaper. Philippe, of course, also contacted me because of the blog, although he was aware of my former association, and expressed his kind concern for my joblessness.)
He had come to Columbia from New York, which has been his home for 14 years, to ask about “this summer uprising among the conservatives, peaking with the Joe Wilson incident,” as he had put it in his e-mail.
Well, to begin with, I disputed his premise. I don’t think there has been a resurgence of conservatives or of the Republican Party, which is still groping for its identity in the wake of last year’s election. What we’ve seen in the case of Joe Wilson — the outpouring of support, monetary and otherwise, after the moment in which he embarrassed the 2nd District — was merely the concentration of political elements that are always there, and are neither stronger nor weaker because of what Joe has said and done. Just as outrage over Joe’s outburst has expressed itself (unfortunately) in an outpouring (I’m trying to see how many words with the prefix “out-” I can use in this sentence) of material support for the unimpressive Rob Miller, the incident was a magnet for the forces of political polarization, in South Carolina and across the country.
What I tried to do is provide historical and sociological context for the fact that Joe Wilson is the natural representative for the 2nd District, and will probably be re-elected (unless someone a lot stronger than Rob Miller emerges and miraculously overcomes his huge warchest). It’s not about Obama (although resistance to the “expansion of government” that he represents is a factor) and it’s not about race (although the fact that districts are gerrymandered to make the 2nd unnaturally white, and the 6th unnaturally black, helps define the districts and their representatives).
In other words, I said a lot of stuff that I said back in this post.
We spoke about a number of other topics as well, some related, some not:
He asked about the reaction in South Carolina to Obama’s election. I told him that obviously, the Democratic minority — which had been energized to an unprecedented degree in the primary, having higher turnout than the Republicans for the first time in many years — was jubilant. The reaction among the Republican minority was more like resignation. Republicans had known that McCain would win South Carolina, but Obama would win the election. I explained that McCain’s win here did not express a rejection of Obama (as some Democrats have chosen to misinterpret), but simply political business as usual — it would have been shocking had the Republican, any Republican, not won against any national Democrat. I spoke, as I explained to him, from the unusual perspective of someone who liked both Obama and McCain very much, but voted for McCain. I think I drew the distinction fairly well between what I think and what various subsets of Republicans and Democrats in South Carolina think…
That got us on the topic of McCain-Bush in 2000, because as I explained to Philippe, I was destined to support McCain even over someone I liked as much as Obama, because I had waited eight years for the opportunity to make up for what happened here in 2000. Philippe agreed that the world would have been a better place had McCain been elected then, but I gather that he subscribes to the conventional wisdom (held by many of you here on the blog) that the McCain of 2008 was much diminished.
Philippe understood 2000, but as a Frenchman, he had trouble understanding how the country re-elected Bush in 2004 (And let me quickly say, for those of you who may be quick to bridle at the French, that Philippe was very gentlemanly about this, the very soul of politeness). So I explained to him how I came to write an endorsement of Bush again in 2004 — a very negative endorsement which indicted him for being wrong about many things, but in the end an endorsement. There was a long explanation of that, and a short one. Here’s the short one: John Kerry. And Philippe understood why a newspaper that generally reflects its state (close to three-fourths of those we endorsed during my tenure won their general election contests) would find it hard to endorse Kerry, once I put it that way. (As those of you who pay attention know, under my leadership The State endorsed slightly more Democrats than Republicans overall, but never broke its string of endorsing Republicans for the presidency, although we came close in 2008.)
Anyway, when we finished our long breakfast (I hadn’t eaten much because I was talking too much, drinking coffee all the while) I gave him a brief “tour” of the Midlands as seen from the 25th floor of Columbia’s tallest building, then gave him numbers for several other sources who might be helpful. He particularly was interested in folks from Joe’s Lexington County base, as well as some political science types, so I referred him to:
Rep. Kenny Bingham, the S.C. House Majority Leader who recently held a “Welcome Home” event for Joe Wilson at his (Kenny’s) home.
Rep. Nikki Haley, who until recently was the designated Mark Sanford candidate for governor, before she had occasion to distance herself.
Sen. Nikki Setzler (I gave him all the Lexington County Nikkis I knew), who could describe the county’s politics from the perspective of the minority party.
Blease Graham, the USC political science professor who recently retired but remained plugged in and knowledgeable. (Philippe remarked upon Blease’s unusual name, which started me on a tangent about his ancestor Cole Blease, Ben Tillman, N.G. Gonzales, etc.)
Walter Edgar, the author of the definitive history of our state.
Neal Thigpen, the longtime political scientist at Francis Marion University who tends to comment from a Republican perspective.
Jack Bass, the ex-journalist and political commentator known for his biography of Strom Thurmond and for his liberal Democratic point of view.
I also suggested he stop in at the Gervais Street Starbucks for a downtown Columbia perspective, and the Sunset Restaurant in West Columbia.
I look forward to reading his article, although I might have to get some of y’all to help me with understanding it. With my background in Spanish and two years of Latin I can generally understand French better when written than spoken, but I still might need some help…
As y’all know, I pretty well dismissed John Edwards early on, to avoid the rush. Therefore I had nothing to say when he crashed and burned later.
But I do find myself wondering something when I read this:
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — A man who once claimed to have fathered the child of John Edwards’ mistress says in a book proposal the former presidential candidate is the real father and that he and Edwards worked with his campaign finance chairman to hide that secret, according to a newspaper report published online Saturday….
What I wonder is, Why would anybody have bothered to lie about that? I mean, if you admit (finally) that the affair happened, why on Earth bother to deny being the father if you were the father? What would be the point? Are we to believe that Edwards was calculating that if we just thought he was fooling around with a woman sufficiently loose as to be carrying on a separate affair with one of his aides while his wife was campaigning her heart out for him during a recurrence of cancer, then just maybe he could salvage his political prospects — but if he was technically (as opposed to morally) responsible for impregnating her, we just couldn’t forgive him?
I don’t know. And I don’t care. But I can assure you that, with or without the sensational teasers, I will not read this book. So don’t bother.
Well, this is interesting. I followed a link on Facebook that said:
Stand Against Joe Wilson
And it led to this Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee page. All it was was a generic party come-on urging folks to give money to “send a message to Republicans like Congressman Joe Wilson.” In other words, it wasn’t actually about the 2nd District or about South Carolina at all; it was about something I couldn’t care less about — whether there are more Democrats or more Republicans in Congress overall.
But I did like that it didn’t mention Rob Miller. There was no reason why it should, since it wasn’t really about this race. But as useless as parties are (and as shamelessly as they try to whip up and cash in on outrage), I was glad to see in this case, to the extent it was about the 2nd District at all, it was NOT about one particular candidate.
The 2nd District needs options. It doesn’t need a fait accompli, whether it’s Joe Wilson or Rob Miller. And it has disturbed me that up to now, people who wanted to express their opposition to Joe have given money to Rob.
Not that I’d recommend giving to this fund, either. As I said, I wouldn’t give two cents to help either party achieve or maintain majority status. I think the ideal in Congress would be a dead tie, with a handful of independents (like my man Joe Lieberman) in position to call the shots. Hey, I can dream, can’t I?
The first time I met Rob Miller, he was still a captain in the United States Marine Corps. He was having breakfast at the Capital City Club with Samuel Tenenbaum and Bud Ferillo. They were talking with him about his plan to leave the Corps and run for Congress in the 2nd District. He was in civvies — a blue blazer and conservative tie, as I recall — but he was marked as a Marine by two things: His head was shaved, and he compulsively called every man he addressed “sir” in a way that made you feel like he was just barely containing himself from saluting. (Marines always do this, and I find it disconcerting. I’m a lousy civilian; I should be calling them “sir,” not the other way around.)
When next I met him, a few months later, his hair had just started to grow out, and he was both a civilian and a candidate for the 2nd Congressional District. About all I knew about him was that he had been a Marine, he was a combat veteran, having served two tours in Iraq, and he was Bobby Hitt’s nephew (I had worked for Bobby when he was managing editor of The State in the late 80s) — and that some prominent Democrats had taken an interest in his campaign, at least to some extent.
Other than that, he was a blank slate for me, so this interview did a lot to form my impression of him as a candidate. It was not a strong impression. I did not feel like he was ready to run for this office. He seemed uncertain in talking about why he was running, and had to grope for answers to questions that simply asked him to elaborate on what he had said in his opening remarks. He had this trouble in spite of having a little notebook with him, to which he repeatedly referred.
Now, in complete fairness to Capt. Miller: This was very early in his transition to civilian life. I thought he seemed more poised and confident later in the campaign, such as in the October debate with Joe Wilson that I helped moderate. (The header photo above is from that event.) Unfortunately, the link to that video no longer seems to work, and I lost everything that I had put on my laptop in September and October of that year when my laptop was stolen (although I don’t think I had anything on him from that period anyway). So the one thing I have to refer back to is this video from May of that year.
We did not endorse Capt. Miller in the primary, which is what this interview was about. We endorsed Blaine Lotz, who had had a somewhat more extensive military career than the captain (he had retired from the Air Force as a colonel), and a far greater grasp of national security issues — after the Air Force, he had a distinguished civilian career at the Pentagon specializing in intelligence, and in 1998 he was appointed by Secretary of Defense Cohen to be Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Oversight. Of course, he was still in that position under Donald Rumsfeld, for which S.C. Democrats were apparently unwilling to forgive him. Or maybe they didn’t even know that; he didn’t seem to get as much exposure in the campaign as did Capt. Miller. In any case, Miller won.
Even though he made a better impression in the fall, we still did what many of you will no doubt consider unforgivable — we endorsed Joe Wilson. It was a tepid endorsement, but an endorsement all the same. In that same editorial, we also endorsed Jim Clyburn (also unenthusiastically) and John Spratt (wholeheartedly). An excerpt:
Newcomer Rob Miller seems poised to give incumbent Joe Wilson a real contest this year. The Democrat is an ex-Marine, an Iraq combat veteran and a member of a prominent South Carolina family (his uncle used to be managing editor of this newspaper). He seemed uncertain about issues in the primary campaign, but still managed to beat a former Air Force general [I don’t know where that came from, since his bio online says he retired as a colonel] with an impressive resume. He has gained confidence in the intervening months with an aggressive, populist, anti-establishment message. Combine that with the Obama Effect, and you have a candidate with a chance.
But we endorse Republican Wilson, who demonstrates a greater command of the issues, and is much more attuned to the wishes of voters in the district’s gravitational center, Lexington County. Yes, he’s a hyper-Republican, and we’d like to see a less partisan candidate with competitive credentials. But Rep. Wilson is a hard-working, earnest representative who is truly devoted to serving his district and his country, and voters will be better served to re-elect him.
In the 6th District, we see both strong similarities and a stark difference. The similarity is that the incumbent, Jim Clyburn, is just as partisan as Mr. Wilson, and much more successful at it — he’s the third-ranking Democrat in the U.S. House, the majority whip. It’s his job to line up votes for Speaker Nancy Pelosi; he takes the job seriously and does it well.
Where this district, which runs from Richland County through the Pee Dee and down the I-95 corridor, differs from the 2nd is in the fact that Mr. Clyburn is strongly supported in every part of it. He is closely attuned to his district’s wants and needs, and passionately devoted to serving its people. Consequently, he faces weak opposition in Republican Nancy Harrelson, who is running on a populist platform in some ways similar to Mr. Miller’s.
We endorse Mr. Clyburn, a highly experienced and savvy public servant who is clearly better qualified.
By the way, about that reference to “a populist platform in some ways similar to Mr. Miller’s” — while he seemed more confident and polished by the fall, the persona he had adopted was that of the somewhat ticked-off champion of the common man, which was sufficiently at odds with his previously self-effacing junior-officer demeanor that it seemed contrived. At least, that’s the way I remember it. I wish I could find that video to check my memory.
Anyway, my point in sharing all this is to answer the question that a couple of folks have asked, which is, what do I mean when I say Rob Miller was unimpressive, and that I’m distressed that Joe Wilson’s outburst has now put so much money in his campaign coffers that it seems no other, stronger challenger is likely to emerge?
Again, I offer the caveat that this video is from very early, but this is how I initially formed my impression of Rob Miller. After that my impression was modified, but not entirely. Bottom line, I think it’s a lousy situation that here we are in the market for a replacement for Joe Wilson — a moment in which a challenger might have a chance — and the flood of money to Rob Miller (because he happened to be the guy standing there at the time) has probably precluded the possibility of a stronger candidate emerging.
Joe Wilson’s outburst last week should have created an opportunity to upgrade our congressional representation in the 2nd District (which is where I live and vote).
Unfortunately, the dynamics of the perpetual partisan shoutfest centered in Washington have utterly precluded that. The fix is in, all we have to look forward to in 2010 is more of the same.
Thanks to the way the partisan spin machines have manipulated this affair (mutually supporting each other in their common cause of constant political conflict), Joe Wilson and Rob Miller have both raised enough money to make each a fait accompli for his respective party’s nomination. This is it, the choices we will get.
The choice will be between Joe Wilson, as reflexive a party follower as you’re likely to find in the GOP, and Rob Miller, who is a nice young man who deserves our deep gratitude for his service as a United States Marine, but (from what I’ve seen so far) is no more capable of expressing independent thought that goes beyond his party’s cliches than Joe is.
Our chance to improve the quality of representation in the 2nd District has been blown away by this hurricane of money — a hurricane driven entirely by the mutually-supporting partisan spin cycles of the two parties, and NOT by the interests of the people of the 2nd District. (It works just like a hurricane, too — first you get furious winds tearing at you from one direction, then after the eye passes and you think it’s over, furious winds tear at you from the opposite direction. But it’s all the same storm.)
If it weren’t for the constant, furious spinning of those machines (which are really one machine ultimately, since neither can “justify” its existence without the other — do you think I’ve made that point in enough parenthetical asides yet?), this past week might have been a time for some thoughtful individuals to step forward and send up test balloons about a possible candidacy. But that won’t happen now, with the way the knee-jerkers on both sides have inflated the campaign warchests of these two.
You know, if I could figure out how to put groceries on the table while doing it (which is sort of my top priority these days), and if I thought there was some possibility of wresting attention away from these well-financed inevitabilities, I would run, win or lose, just so the voters of the 2nd District would have a real choice, one that offers a break from absurdity as usual … But those are two really big ifs.
