I’m not going to have a lot of time for blogging today, but I thought I’d share this with you, from my good friend Robert Ariail.
It ran a couple of days ago, but I just now saw it. As you see, it’s on the same subject that Gail Collins was having fun with last week.
… or at the very least, inconsistency.
I’m not going to quote the whole thing because of the language that he used, but here’s part of what someone named Jonathan Valania had to say about Joe Wilson’s vote against Sandy relief last week:
… this despite the fact that South Carolina has had 13 major disaster declarations and two emergency declarations in the last 30 years, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The worst storm to ever hit the Palmetto State, Hurricane Hugo back in 1989, caused over $13 billion in damage and left nearly 60,000 people homeless.
Guess who picked up the tab?
And back in 2003 when the South Carolina suffered through a severe drought, all 46 counties in the Palmetto State were declared federal disaster zones at Wilson’s urging. In 2005, he voted for a $10.5 billion Katrina relief package.
“The compassion, generosity, and solidarity of the American people during difficult times are one of our most cherished blessings as citizens of our great nation,” Wilson said after the Katrina relief bill passed the House. “As we now face the severity of this historic natural disaster, Americans must do what we do best: help each other.”...
That was then and this is now.
Indeed. That was before the Tea Party, and before Joe decided he must do its will. And this is now, after Joe has followed the Four Freshman (OK, so now it’s Three Sophomores) through the looking glass.
Remember how I mentioned the other day, with unbated breath, that Joe Wilson was going to unveil his agenda for this session of Congress? Well, here it is:
Wilson’s Agenda for 2013:
Create Jobs Through Economic Growth: Cut excessive red tape and regulations to help small businesses grow; Work with county, regional and state agencies to attract businesses to South Carolina; Protect South Carolina’s “Right to Work” laws; Defund the Government Healthcare Takeover Bill
Reducing Washington’s Out of Control Spending: Require a vote on Congressional pay; Make the government more accountable by sponsoring legislation calling for biennial appropriations; Support a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution; Efficiencies within federal government agencies
Energy Independence and Efficiency: Promote construction of Keystone XL Pipeline; Fight to ensure South Carolina does not become our nation’s dumping ground for Spent Nuclear Fuel; Work to promote clean energy across our state via Energy Saving Performance Contracts
And right next to that in my Inbox, I see that the the Republican caucus in our state Senate have an agenda, too:
Senate Republican Caucus unveils jobs and reform agendaColumbia, SC – January 8, 2013 – The Senate Republican Caucus today announced a six-point legislative agenda, centered on growing the economy and reforming government.Jobs and the Economy:Transportation Reform – The Caucus will support structural and funding changes to our state’s infrastructure maintenance and construction process to make sure every dollar is maximized and allocated based on merit. The Caucus will explore mechanisms for increasing funding to meet growing infrastructure needs without raising taxes.Spending Caps – Congress’ recent inability to deal effectively with the Fiscal Cliff could have paralyzed the country’s economy. South Carolina needs a real spending cap to provide for sustainable and predictable growth in state spending. Doing so protects taxpayers, businesses and those served by government by helping guard against unexpected tax increases or cuts to services.Cyber Security – It’s critical that taxpayers and businesses know their information is secure when they interact with government. The Caucus will make it a priority to enhance cyber security so that people can conduct business in South Carolina with confidence.Government reform:Ethics Reform – The Senate, the House, and the Governor’s Office are all in the process of reviewing our state’s antiquated Ethics laws and making recommendations to modernize them for the 21st Century. The Senate Caucus believes strongly that voters need more transparency and information about the people representing them in order to hold their elected leaders accountable for their decisions.Ballot Reform – The Senate Caucus will act quickly to fix state law in regards to ballot access, to make sure candidates are not again denied access to the ballot as hundreds were this year. In addition, the Caucus plans to correct the disparity in filing requirements between incumbents and challengers.Department of Administration – Last year, the Senate passed the first bill by either legislative chamber to completely eliminate the Budget and Control Board and create a Department of Administration. The Caucus believes that we need clear lines of accountability in state government.Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler noted that with a one-seat GOP pickup in the Caucus that the agenda stands a good chance for passage this year:“These are issues that all conservatives should be able to agree on, and they’re issues that the people of South Carolina clearly want us to move forward with,” Peeler said. “I am committed to making sure these items remain a priority throughout the session, and that we work with the House to move these bills to the Governor’s desk.”In addition to announcing its agenda, the Caucus also re-elected Senator Peeler to the post of Senate Majority Leader. Peeler named Senators Danny Verdin and Shane Massey as Majority Whips.On the Web: http://www.scsenategop.com/2013-agenda/ ###
Agendas, it seems, are like opinions (or something): Everybody’s got one. Except yours truly, of course.
As Washington media gather the soundbites on the Obama administration’s nomination of Republican Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense, one of the first gathered is Lindsey Graham’s:
“This is an in-your-face nomination by the president. And it looks like the second term of Barack Obama is going to be an in-your-face term.”
Of course, that quote is distinctly lacking in substance. Here’s what Graham said further on CNN’s “State of the Union”:
“Chuck Hagel, if confirmed to be the secretary of defense, would be the most antagonistic secretary of defense toward the state of Israel in our nation’s history,” Graham said. “Not only has he said you should directly negotiate with Iran, sanctions won’t work, that Israel should directly negotiate with the Hamas organization, a terrorist group that lobs thousands of rockets into Israel. He also was one of 12 senators who refused to sign a letter to the European Union that Hezbollah should be designated as a terrorist organization.”
Beyond Graham, those Republican senators vocalizing opposition to Hagel include Roger Wicker of Mississippi, John Cornyn of Texas, Ted Cruz of Texas, David Vitter of Louisiana, and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma.
In the plus column are Democrats Carl Levin of Michigan, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Dianne Feinstein of California, and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia.
That’s all according to The Washington Post.
Much of the animus toward Hagel dates from his opposition to U.S. involvement in Iraq. Then there’s his opposition to Iran sanctions. Then there’s his “Jewish lobby” quote. And gay rights advocates are still mad about something he said in 1998.
Evidently, the Susan Rice experience didn’t diminish the president’s willingness to engage in a nomination fight as his second term begins…
There was an interesting tidbit in the Smart Politics piece that I mentioned in my last post:
For although DeMint was simply 1 of 100 in the senate, he was also an unofficial voice of the Tea Party, one of the most vocal critics of Barack Obama, and among the Top 10 most mentioned senators in broadcast media reports.
That made me think, Yeah, but I’ll bet Lindsay Graham is mentioned even more.
Sure enough, when I followed that link, Graham was at No. 6, and DeMint was ninth. (John McCain came in first, followed by Marco Rubio. Only two Democrats, Harry Reid and John Kerry, made the Top Ten.)
These two young fellas have made quite a mark, even though they are newcomers by our accustomed Thurmond/Hollings standard.
Tim Scott will have a lot to live up to.
This ran a couple of days ago, but was only brought to my attention today:
Tea Party favorite Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina has departed, too, even though his term was only half over, to answer the siren call of a seven-figure job at the helm of the Heritage Foundation.
Thanks to the blog Smart Politics, I am able to report that this is normal behavior in South Carolina: one-third of all U.S. senators from South Carolina have resigned over the course of our history. (South Carolina is also the state that gave us the guy with the cane back in 1856.) DeMint was replaced by Representative Tim Scott, whose seat will be filled in a special election this spring. Right now one of the possible candidates is Mark Sanford, the governor who we all remember for flying to Argentina for an assignation with his lover while his staff claimed he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail.
Another much-discussed potential contender is Jenny Sanford, former wife of the above. People, while you are praying for a safe, sane and peaceful new year, I want you to make a small exception and pray that Jenny and Mark Sanford run against each other…
The “guy with the cane” thing was a reference to Preston Brooks, who practically beat Charles Sumner to death on the Senate floor — which made him wonderfully popular back home (northerners, not understanding the ways of Southern gentlemen, were outraged). Which is kind of SC politics in a nutshell.
I found the piece over at Smart Politics interesting — the one about how a third of SC senators have resigned (The last was Strom Thurmond, who promptly ran again and was elected back to his seat). Even though, of course, we’ve only known four senators in the past 46 years. No wait, five counting Tim Scott now.
This happened a couple of weeks ago, and I haven’t figured out why it happened either time.
The first time, Joe Wilson sent me a release via email with a headline and an introduction to a statement from Joe, but no statement.
This time, there was the headline — “Wilson to Unveil Legislative Agenda for 2013” — followed by nothing but this:
Normal 0
Which sort of read like a joke at Joe’s expense: The usual. Nothing.
Just as last time, way down on the email, there was a link where I could go read the actual release, which basically said Joe is having press conferences tomorrow in West Columbia, Aiken and North Augusta. Where he’ll talk about his agenda.
As much as all of the Four Tea Party Freshman in the SC congressional delegation (I guess after yesterday, they are technically sophomores) like to dis the GOP leadership in the House, with Joe Wilson tagging along behind them, only one of them refused to vote for John Boehner for another term as speaker.
That was Mick Mulvaney. Why? Well, he’s not talking about it:
WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Mick Mulvaney declined Thursday to support giving U.S. Rep. John Boehner a second term as House speaker, joining 11 other Republican lawmakers who protested the Ohioan’s leadership…
Nine Republican lawmakers voted for someone other than Boehner, three of them backing his deputy, Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia.
Mulvaney, by contrast, declined to vote for anyone despite being present in the House chamber. Raul Labrador of Idaho, like Mulvaney a tea party favorite who first gained election in 2010, chose the same tactic…
Mulvaney, who represents South Carolina’s 5th Congressional District, later declined to respond to subsequent requests for comment from reporters.
“Mick won’t be available to speak,” his press secretary, Stephanie Faile, told McClatchy. “He is spending the rest of the day with his family.”…
I wonder whether he sat up the night before this, thinking, What would be even more petulant and pouty than declining to vote for speaker? I know! Declining to vote, then refusing to say why!
I guess it beats pulling Boehner’s pants down and shoving him into the ladies’ room…
Note that the House Republicans, who have abused, undermined and humiliated the guy every which way over the last couple of years, have given John Boehner another term as speaker:
House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) on Thursday formally won reelection to a second term overseeing a chamber that has proved difficult to manage, just days after several insurrections from rank-and-file Republicans left him in a less powerful position heading into critical negotiations this year.
Boehner survived the defections of a handful of Republicans from the most conservative wing of his party, winning the final vote tally 220 to 192 over House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) received three votes.
I guess they just love kicking that guy around. He must like it, too.
I didn’t really see the above SNL skit from a few weeks ago as all that much of an exaggeration.
To the extent that anyone is inclined to congratulate the Congress for voting at the 13th hour to avert the “fiscal cliff,” they should carefully avoid directing any positive vibes at the SC delegation.
They were predictably petulant, recalcitrant and useless. Far be it from them to be part of anything that might be construed by anyone as getting anything done.
As you can see on this nifty interactive map provided by The New York Times, Joe Wilson and the Four Freshmen all voted “nay.” One would be tempted to pat Jim Clyburn on the back for being the grownup in the room, but the fact is that he is as wedded to his own rigid partisan attitudes as they are to theirs, so his vote was just as predictable.
But at least he voted to do something.
Here, by the way, is what Clyburn had to say about the vote last night:
Mr. Speaker, it is tempting to say it’s about time the House put aside extreme partisanship and work together on compromise to address the nation’s most pressing issues. But in reality, it is far past time that we put aside its extreme partisanship. Throughout the entirety of the 112th Congress, the Republican Leadership repeatedly put its own narrow political interests ahead of the public interest.
So here we are on New Year’s night, with the clock running out on the very existence of this Congress, finally considering bipartisan legislation to provide middle class tax cuts, require the wealthiest to once again pay their fair share so we can grow the economy, create jobs and protect the most vulnerable in our society. It is indeed well past time we got about the people’s business.
Mr. Speaker, in 2011, I served on the Biden group of both Republican and Democratic Representatives and Senators who worked with the Vice President on our nation’s fiscal issues. We made good progress in those talks until our Republican friends walked away, fearing the wrath of the Tea Party Caucus here in the House.
I also served on the bipartisan Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, the so-called supercommittee that spent countless hours discussing these issues in detail. It was very clear that the elements of a fair and balanced fiscal plan were achievable. But at the end of the process, the Republican leaders refused to compromise and the supercommittee failed.
So here we are. While this bill is not perfect, and I have serious concerns about some of the cuts it contains, it does contain the element of fairness. This bill protects the middle class and working people with a more progressive tax code than we’ve had in a very long time. And this bill prevents the meat axe approach of budget cuts that could do severe damage to our national defense and important domestic priorities.
Mr. Speaker, I hope that the partisanship of the 112th Congress will end this week with the end of the 112th Congress. And I am hopeful that the 113th Congress can work together toward honorable compromises that get the people’s business done. I urge a Yes vote.
-30-
I have not yet received any releases on the subject from the GOP members.
While I was out with the flu, we had a good-news-bad-news situation arise here in South Carolina.
The good news was that Jim DeMint was leaving the Senate.
The bad news was that, incredible as it still seems every time I’m reminded of the fact, Nikki Haley is actually the governor of our state.
But looking on the bright side even of that, Gov. Haley inadvertently explained something important yesterday (while meaning to say the opposite):
COLUMBIA, SC — Gov. Nikki Haley said Thursday (sic — since this was in this morning’s paper, I’m assuming she actually said it Wednesday) that political experience is not a requirement for the successor to resigning U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint.
Haley will name that successor, and two of the governor’s five reported finalists for the coveted seat – former first lady Jenny Sanford and state agency head Catherine Templeton – have not held elected office.
“It is not about time in office, which I think is the wrong way of looking at government,” said Haley, who was a political newcomer when she won a state House seat in 2004. “It’s the effect and the result they can show in office.”…
Focus on that last sentence: “It’s the effect and the result they can show in office.”
Indeed. In fact, in deciding who might be suited to public office, you have no better guide than what you have been able to observe that person doing in public office in the past. Nothing else is truly useful.
Of course, if she were to elaborate, the governor would no doubt say that what she meant was “the effect and the result they SAY they can show in office,” since with populist ideologues of her ilk, it’s all about the talk and the theory.
But no practical person gives what a candidate says he will do even a hundredth the weight of what the observer has actually seen that candidate do under real-world conditions.
That’s the test.
A reasonable person would not insist upon experience in a school board or city-council candidate, although it’s nice to have. One can excuse the lack of it in a state legislative candidate, if one doesn’t have a better alternative. But the United States Senate? Jimmy Stewart’s Mr. Smith aside, when you have a universe of qualified people out there to choose from, there is NO excuse for choosing a public-office novice. None whatsoever.
And for any who don’t understand the difference, experience running a business — or running your husband’s gubernatorial campaigns, or occupying a government job to which your friend the governor appointed you and in which you have not under any stretch of the imagination distinguished yourself — are not the same as having been elected by the people to public office and spent observable time in that fishbowl, discharging the duties of that office.
South Carolina’s U.S. House delegation is nearly full of relative neophytes (the governor’s kind of people) who at least have spent a couple of years each in an office that is a reasonable precursor to the Senate. Beyond that, the Republican Party has in the past generation produced a large number of potential senators with better resumes that that.
Under the circumstances, there is no excuse at all for choosing inexperience.
Just to get something new up on the blog for discussion, I thought I’d share something I read in the WSJ today. It was about Susan Rice, and, this being the WSJ, it didn’t exactly build her up.
In fact, it was (if to be believed) a pretty damning account of her handling of a crisis situation in Sierra Leone during the Clinton administration.
Basically, she stood up for, championed and espoused a deal involving, and rewarding, a revolutionary faction that apparently would make other child-soldier-exploiting, limbs-hacking, baby-raping elements in Africa look good by comparison. And it all came to a bad end very quickly, so that the U.S. was completely discredited as an arbiter in that country, and Tony Blair had to send the Tommies in and, in Blair’s own words, “sort out” the bad guys and put things to rights.
So… more abuse heaped on poor Susan Rice by a columnist who carries water for the other side of the aisle, right?
But here’s the thing I’m noticing about Susan Rice…
There is so much stuff out there that makes her look bad.
First, there’s her getting it wrong about Benghazi days after she should have gotten it right. But if there’s only that, well, I suppose we can dismiss that as McCain and Graham chasing a Great White Whale. The guys are just obsessed, right? Anyone’s entitled to a bad day on national television.
But then there was the Rwanda stuff, which truly did not make her look good.
Then, while I’ve been sick, apparently other stuff has come out bearing on Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo. According to Bret Stephens anyway, who wrote this column today as well as an earlier one on those incidents.
Think about this…
Susan Rice is being talked about to replace Hillary Clinton. Now, there’s a woman with some political enemies. Ask her; she’ll tell you. Ask any Democrat, for that matter.
And yet, think about it… Has anyone ever gone around telling story after story about her indicating gross ineptitude, a political tin ear, aggressive cluelessness? I mean, they might have hated her, but no one ever said she was bad at the job — any job — per se.
In fact, I’m trying to think whether I can recall a secretary of state nominee ever who was dogged by so many stories — true or not — of fouling up royally in the course of conducting U.S. foreign policy. I can’t.
Which is disturbing.
OK, that’s it. I’m worn out; going to bed. But I wanted to throw out something new for y’all to talk about. Show I’m still kicking.
This morning, there was an op-ed piece by Rand Paul (not Paul Ryan; the other one with very similar name and identical ideas) suggesting that we need not necessarily “wring our hands in despair at the possible fiscal cliff.”
Then later today, I get this from Gary Johnson, the guy who ran for president this year as a Libertarian:
Since the election, I’ve been able to spend some time at home in New Mexico, recharge my batteries a bit, and most important, watch what’s going on in Washington, DC – which is really nothing good.
Gary Johnson
The news is filled with stories about the “looming fiscal cliff”. Of course, in Washington, their definition of a “cliff” is that government spending will be cut next year by slightly more than $100 billion – IF Congress and the President don’t come to an agreement to cut spending by LESS than that. With a $16 trillion debt and trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, only in Washington would cutting $100 billion be viewed as an impending disaster.
The real disaster – the real “fiscal cliff” – is the one we face if spending ISN’T cut by far more than $100 billion… There are talking heads on TV saying, with a straight face, that cutting spending by a few small percentage points will devastate the economy. Where were those talking heads when the Democrats and Republicans were conspiring to run up an unsustainable $16 TRILLION national debt. Who is pointing out the obvious: That ridiculous levels of spending have already devastated the economy – and that the so-called fiscal cliff is a pothole compared to the real cliff that our Thelma and Louise government is driving us over.
And so forth. Somehow, I am not consoled by these assertions. Nor am I pacified when some of our friends on the left (and more libertarian elements of the right) say it’s just fine if military spending is eviscerated.
Call me wacky, but count me among those hoping that the Dems and Repubs will work out a way to avert this booby-trap they set during their last major failure to be reasonable on fiscal matters — you know, the one that let to the downgrade of the nation’s credit rating.
Don’t know if you saw this at The Onion. What grabbed me about it is that it is in no way an exaggeration. There are hundreds of Republicans across the nation who are actually, sincerely torn by the horns of this very “dilemma,” even though they wouldn’t describe it in the same words:
Congressman Torn Between Meaningless Pledge To Anti-Tax Zealot, Well-Being Of Nation
WASHINGTON—Amid ongoing negotiations in Congress over the looming “fiscal cliff,” Rep. Tom Reed (R-NY) told reporters Wednesday he is “completely torn” between his commitment to conservative activist Grover Norquist’s meaningless anti-tax pledge and the general welfare of the entire country. “On the one hand, you have a nonsensical promise to blindly oppose tax increases regardless of circumstances, but on the other, you have the well-being of more than 300 million people and the long-term stability of the entire U.S. economy,” said Reed, adding that he is “really stuck between a rock and a hard place” now that he must decide between his loyalty to a dogmatic political lobbyist and his responsibility to serve the best interests of his constituents. “At the end of the day, it’s a question of whether a nonbinding signature on an outdated and worthless pledge written 26 years ago is more important than preventing the nation from completely going to hell. I just don’t know what to do here.” When reached for comment, Norquist urged the pledge’s signatories in Congress to “remember what’s really important” before sacrificing utterly irrational principles for the sake of the country’s future.
Juan Williams (isn’t he a TV guy?) wrote a piece that appeared in The Wall Street Journal today about what has led to the irrelevance of Republicans in the U.S. Senate. After noting that John McCain and Lindsey Graham can huff and puff all they like, but won’t be able to blow Susan Rice down, Williams says of Senate Republicans in general:
They have only themselves to blame. Six months ago, a GOP takeover of the Senate was plausible. Yet in the Nov. 6 elections, Democrats expanded their hold, to 55-45, from 53-47. (Two independents caucus with the Democrats.) By any pre-election reckoning, Democrats should have lost seats. They had to defend 23 seats while the GOP had to defend only 10.
In the aftermath of the vote, there is no better place than in the U.S. Senate to observe the current war over the future of the Republican Party.
The 2012 vote was the second cycle in a row when the GOP had a clear shot at winning control of the Senate but blew the chance by nominating ideologues. Conservative activists who dominate the GOP primaries selected hard-line, right-wing candidates without any regard for their ability to win the general election and increase the number of Republicans in the Senate…
This, of course, is what Jim DeMint and his ilk have wrought, running about the country pushing extremists.
And as we all know, one of the prime targets of such efforts is our other U.S. senator:
And now conservative and tea party activists look to be doubling down for 2014. They are already talking about primary challenges to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican; to Maine Sen. Susan Collins; and to Mr. Graham in South Carolina…
Mr. McConnell is far from alone in this fight for the future of Senate Republicans. Sen. Graham is known in Washington for his battles with Mr. Obama over everything from budgets to Benghazi. But the head of the conservative group Club for Growth, Chris Chocola, said in September that his group “has a lot of interest” in finding a more conservative candidate to take the Senate seat for South Carolina. “Our first focus is open, safe Republican seats,” Mr. Chocola said. “Our second focus is incumbents behaving badly. Regardless of whether you win or lose, you scare the heck out of the rest of them.”
Scaring incumbent Republicans from the right wing of the political spectrum is proving to be effective at keeping them in line. GOP senators know the danger of moderating their views—there is a political penalty attached to any political compromise with Democrats…
That seems to be a major pastime for extremists on the right — scaring people. Nikki Haley has referred to making mainstream pols afraid as “a beautiful thing.”
The column doesn’t mention Tom Davis. I guess he’s not quite on the national radar yet.
One wonders what they think they are accomplishing. It must be a terrible thing for one’s mind to be in the grip of an ideology. Sort of like the fable about the scorpion and the frog. That’s just what scorpions do, even if it means drowning themselves.
With most Americans pessimistic about the chances for a compromise that could avert the “fiscal cliff” — and inclined to blame Republicans for the failure — it’s worth noting that our own Lindsey Graham is among those trying to lead the GOP away from Grover Norquist and toward a somewhat more rational course:
A pair of congressional Republicans reiterated their willingness Sunday to violate an anti-tax pledge in order to strike a deal on the “fiscal cliff,” echoing Sen. Saxby Chambliss, the Georgia Republican who suggested last week that the oath may be outdated.
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said he was prepared to set aside Grover Norquist’s Taxpayer Protection Pledge if Democrats will make an effort to reform entitlements, and Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) suggested the pledge may be out of step in the present economy.
“I agree with Grover — we shouldn’t raise rates — but I think Grover is wrong when it comes to we can’t cap deductions and buy down debt,” Graham said on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos.” “What do you do with the money? I want to buy down debt and cut rates to create jobs, but I will violate the pledge, long story short, for the good of the country, only if Democrats will do entitlement reform.”…
Hey, Lindsey, I’ve got your entitlement reform right here: Eliminate the income cap on contributions to Social Security, and raise retirement age slightly. That would save that benefit, and would be a good place to start. Then, bada-bing, go raise some revenue for the general fund…
The nitty-gritty of greatness.
Over the weekend, I experienced the polar opposites of cinematic achievement: First, AT&T was having a free weekend for premium channels, and while I recorded a number of films I expect to enjoy, one of those channels also showed David Lynch’s execrable “Dune.” I had not watched it since that bitterly disappointing night in 1984 in a Jackson, TN, theater when it first came out. Those few minutes I watched over the weekend convinced me that it wasn’t just that my expectations had been so high at the time. This actually was the worst film I’ve ever seen in my life. Every line of dialogue, every visual touch, every gratuitous plot change from the book (“weirding modules”? Are you kidding me?), was so bad it had to be as intentional as those revolting pustules the make-up people put all over the Baron Harkonnen’s face (something else that wasn’t in the book). Every aspect of it was horrible.
So it was very nice, Sunday evening, to wipe that away by seeing one of the finest new motion pictures I’ve seen in years: “Lincoln.”
Everyone should see this. Every American should, anyway, because it tells so much about who we are and what led to our being what we are. And it tells us something I think we’ve forgotten, which is that great things can be accomplished through our system of representative democracy, even when the barriers and stakes are far greater than anything we face in Washington today.
I could go on and on about the way Daniel Day Lewis inhabits Abraham Lincoln and eerily embodies everything I’ve read about him, or how Spielberg has honed his craft to the very limits of film’s ability to tell a coherent story, while simultaneously making you feel like you’re looking through a time portal at the actual events.
But I’ll just zero in on one thing that contributed to making it so good: The political realism. Most specifically, the way the film not only avoids the temptation to make everything appear to be morally black or white, but rubs your nose in the messiness of real decisions made in a real world.
The main narrative has to do with Lincoln, after his second inauguration, pulling out all the stops to get the House to pass the 13th Amendment, which made slavery unconstitutional. To get the two-thirds, he needs at least 20 more votes even if every Republican supports the measure. This means not only peeling off some Democrats, each defection like pulling teeth out of a dragon, but somehow keeping the peace among the radicals (such as Thaddeus Stevens, played by Tommy Lee Jones) and conservatives (such as Preston Blair, played by Hal Holbrook) in his own party.
Every stratagem is used, starting with the hiring of some sleazy political operatives (I was amazed to realize after I saw the film that that was James Spader playing lobbyist W.N. Bilbo) to employ every trick they can come up with, starting with raw political patronage and moving on from there. (A key part of the strategy involved offering jobs in the second Lincoln administration to lame-duck members of the other party who had just lost their bids for re-election, but not left office yet.) The Lincoln team even stoops to a half-truth — told by Honest Abe himself — at a critical moment to keep the coalition from blowing up.
It’s very, very messy. No plaster saints here, and feet of clay all over the place. Yet through it all, the ultimate nobility of what is being done, in spite of all the odds, shines through irresistibly. We see how politics, with all its warts, can accomplish magnificent things. At a moment when Democrats and Republicans can’t even seem to do a simple thing like keep from going over a “fiscal cliff” with their hands around each others’ throats, we see how politicians (and they evince all of the worst things we think of when we use that term) can accomplish something great, even when (or perhaps, because?) the stakes are so much greater.
This film not only doesn’t flinch at moral complexity; it wallows in it, to wonderful effect. An excellent example is the scene in which Lincoln muses aloud before his team about all the convoluted, mutually contradictory, logical and constitutional boxes he put himself and the nation in when he decided to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. And the tension builds as we come to fully understand why the Amendment — which would fulfill the dream of freedom that the Proclamation could not — must be passed NOW, before the war ended. And we share Lincoln’s intense, focused urgency.
No significant aspect of Lincoln’s public character is missing from this portrait, including the delight that both he and his audiences took in his jokes. (But not all the people all of the time — Secretary of War Edwin Stanton storms out rather than listen to a funny story at a tense moment.) And at the end, after all the deal-making and maneuvering and fiddling and pushing and pulling and playing to venality and petty egos — one is left believing that Abraham Lincoln was a greater man than any marble statue could ever convey. I don’t know how to explain to you how the film achieves that; it just does.
I suppose there will be some people who just don’t get it — black-and-white, concrete thinkers who will be disturbed at the honest portayal of the messiness of politics as it was practiced in 1865. The neo-Confederates who think the Lincoln would originally have kept slavery if he could preserve the Union is some sort of great “gotcha” won’t get it. Nor will those like the local political activist who, a few days ago, said on Facebook that “Lincoln was not a good man” because his attitudes about racial equality weren’t a perfect match for those of a 21st-century “progressive.”
But seeing “Lincoln” may be among the best chances they’ll ever have to see that reality is broader, and often more inspiring, than their narrow perspectives on it.
No-holds-barred 19th-century lobbying in all its grubby glory.
Cindi Scoppe first raised the question in her column yesterday headlined, “Is SC computer breach transforming Gov. Nikki Haley?” The column was made possible by one of the first signs of new maturity in our governor — a phone conversation with editorial writers (as opposed to her usual pep rally with her admirers on her Facebook page), to engage in actual dialogue about the Department of Revenue hacking mess:
… (F)rom her first public utterances, Gov. Nikki Haley insisted that there was nothing anyone in state government could have done to prevent the breach.
Even more troubling were her assurances that weren’t so absurd on their face. She said that hacking experts told her thieves usually use stolen data within six to eight months and that “Usually after a year, they don’t see anything,” but security experts say that while that’s true with credit card numbers, just the opposite is true with Social Security numbers. She insisted that leaving Social Security numbers unencrypted was an “industry standard” in the banking industry, but some banking officials disputed that. She said other states didn’t encrypt their data, but failed to mention that our go-to comparison neighbors, North Carolina and Georgia, do.
I’ve never been comfortable with the governor’s tendency to speak in absolutes, of her black-and-white sense of certainty. But there’s a world of difference between being careless or misleading when defending yourself from political attacks or engaging in policy debates and doing the same thing when what you say affects how 4.25 million current and former South Carolinians make potentially life-changing decisions about their personal financial security.
So it was a relief earlier this month when, confronted by comments to the contrary by an investigator hired by the state, the governor told reporters that she didn’t yet know enough to say whether anyone could have prevented the breach. Of course, she also insisted that she had never said otherwise. Still it was a start.
Then during a conference call with editorial writers on Friday, Ms. Haley gave an uncharacteristically tentative answer to a question about the hacking and added: “Understand that I can’t speak in absolutes because I feel like I learn something new every day.”
“I hesitate on saying whether there was something internal or external, because the one thing I think I’ve learned in this is you can’t talk in absolutes,” she said a few minutes later, noting that after she thought she knew everything about the hacking, “the second day they added more, the third day they added more … .”
Yes, as Cindi noted, the governor still doesn’t know how to acknowledge her mistakes. She follows more the Orwellian approach of adopting a new line and insisting it has always been her line. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia…
But let’s embrace the encouraging new signs. This is a major development, for Nikki Haley to base her perceptions of the world on actual facts and experience, rather than her ideological, self-affirming preconceptions. For an unsullied ideologue like our governor, for whom truth has been whatever aphorisms help to get her elected, to start learning a little more each day, and recognize she’s doing so, and actually apply the lessons she’s learning, makes for a great day in South Carolina, compared to what we’ve known.
After trying out her new approach on editorialists, our governor has gone public with it:
Columbia, SC — As more South Carolinians learned that hackers hold their tax return data, Gov. Nikki Haley admitted Tuesday that the state did not do enough to protect their sensitive financial information and accepted the resignation of the agency director in the middle of the controversy.
“Could South Carolina have done a better job? Absolutely, or we would not be standing here,” said Haley, who had insisted in the first days after revealing the cyber attack that nothing could have prevented the breach.
Hackers possess Social Security and other data belonging to 5.7 million people – 3.8 million taxpayers and their 1.9 million dependents, Haley said. The number of businesses affected has risen slightly to nearly 700,000. All of the stolen tax data dating back to 1998 was unencrypted.
The theft at the S.C. Department of Revenue is the largest known hacking at a state agency nationwide…
Note how she can’t resist using the word “absolutely,” even in connection with an assertion that is the opposite of what she’d said earlier (which means either it’s not absolute, or she was absolutely wrong earlier).
But hey, when your child starts to speak, do you castigate her for immature pronunciation? This is a start, and I’m inclined to celebrate it, and hope our governor continues her journey out of her hothouse bubble and keeps engaging the world as it actually is.
Gov. Christie on SNL over the weekend.
There’s an interesting NYT story today about how Chris Christie got a chilly reception at the Republican Governor’s Association meeting in Vegas. It also goes into just how much the Romney campaign people blame him for their loss. Some experts:
But in the days after the storm, Mr. Christie and his advisers were startled to hear from out-of-state donors to Mr. Romney, who had little interest in the hurricane and viewed him solely as a campaign surrogate, demanding to know why he had stood so close to the president on a tarmac. One of them questioned why he had boarded Mr. Obama’s helicopter, according to people briefed on the conversations.
It did not help that Mr. Romney had not called Mr. Christie during those first few days, people close to the governor say.
The tensions followed Mr. Christie to the annual meeting of the Republican Governors Association in Las Vegas last week. At a gathering where he had expected to be celebrated, Mr. Christie was repeatedly reminded of how deeply he had offended fellow Republicans.
“I will not apologize for doing my job,” he emphatically told one of them in a hotel hallway at the ornate Wynn Resort…
Inside the Romney campaign, there is little doubt that Mr. Christie’s expressions of admiration for the president, coupled with ubiquitous news coverage of the hurricane’s aftermath, raised Mr. Obama’s standing at a crucial moment.
During a lengthy autopsy of their campaign, Mr. Romney’s political advisers pored over data showing that an unusually large number of voters who remained undecided until the end of the campaign backed Mr. Obama. Many of them cited the storm as a major factor in their decision, according to a person involved in the discussion.
“Christie,” a Romney adviser said, “allowed Obama to be president, not a politician.”…
Gee, folks, do you think it could be, as this story suggests, something as simple as the fact that Obama was taking an interest in what was happening in New Jersey, and his opponent was not?
Just read Kathleen Parker’s column from over the weekend about how the GOP doesn’t need focus groups to figure out why it lost the presidential election; it just needs to look in a mirror.
I liked this part:
Some Republicans stubbornly insist, of course, that the problem was that Romney wasn’t conservative enough. Really? In his heart, this may be true. I never believed Romney was passionate about social issues. He embraced them because he had to, but he had no intention of pursuing a socially conservative agenda.
But the real problem is the Republican Party, which would not be recognizable to its patron saint, Ronald Reagan. The party doesn’t need a poll or a focus group. It needs a mirror.
The truth is, Romney was better than the GOP deserved…
I agree. While Romney wouldn’t have topped my list of candidates (if I were allowed to choose the field, rather than having that crowd of undesirables that actually ran for the GOP nomination this time), he’s a relatively decent sort of guy, and no sort of nut. And the traumatized party that has been spinning off into irrelevance since the rise of the Tea Party did not deserve him.
Of course, I don’t agree with her that it was the gross missteps by a couple of GOP candidates (who were not running for president or vice president) on Culture War issues that best illustrated what was wrong. As she put it, in her most colorful passage:
Party nitwits undermined him, and the self-righteous tried to bring him down. The nitwits are well-enough known at this point — those farthest-right social conservatives who couldn’t find it in their hearts to keep their traps shut. No abortion for rape or incest? Sit down.Legitimate rape? Put on your clown suit and go play in the street.
No, the GOP has long been on the right on social issues — although perhaps not as given to such bizarre ways of expressing itself — and remained a mainstream party, for a long, long time. That’s nothing new. What’s new is the way it’s gone off the deep end on fiscal issues, and other attendant weirdness such as refusal to be reasonable on immigration (which is WAY far away from being the party of Ronald “Amnesty” Reagan) that distinguishes the spin-off into irrelevance in the last handful of years.
The pre-2010 GOP might have deserved Romney. The post-2010 party, not so much…
