Category Archives: Republicans

David Herndon, S.C. House District 79

Sept. 11, 1 p.m. — OK, I’m really going to try to keep these endorsement interview posts shorter so that I can get them done and not fall behind the way I did in the last couple of election cycles (resorting to such cheap tricks as running nothing but pictures when I ran out of time).

David Herndon should be a good one for me to practice this new resolution on, since he didn’t have that much to say different from what he said in our primary interview. (And that’s not a bad thing at all, since we ended up endorsing him then.)

An overview of what we talked about:

He said he was better qualified for the House because of his experience in business and in life.
He said opponent Anton Gunn — a "super nice guy" is less qualified because he’s spent his work life out of the private sector, in politics and the community organizer field.
He feels very comfortable with his district. He said that (like Caesar’s Gaul), there are three distinct communities within the Kershaw-Richland district, and at various times he’s lived in all of them.
He thinks the governor’s trying to get the Legislature to come back to prioritize budget cuts is political posturing.
On education, he agrees with most of Jim Rex’s proposals. He sees himself as having a broad perspective on the issue, with one child in military school, another home-schooled, and one in public elementary school.
He sees his job as maintaining his district’s attraction for economic development and as an attractive place to live.

I’m going to force myself to stop right there.

Michael Koska, S.C. House District 77

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Sept. 11, 11 a.m. — When he first came to see us during the primaries, Michael Koska made a good impression — an especially good impression given that he was a newcomer to electoral politics. He had made himself expert on the issues that had gotten him involved — especially Richland County road needs — and showed a passion for learning about more.

He made an even better impression this time, and here’s one of the reasons why: As he said himself a couple of times in the interview, he’s learned and grown on the campaign trail. For instance, he expressed a tendency toward supporting vouchers. But it was fairly obvious at the time that he hadn’t really thought the issue through. Now, he doesn’t see himself supporting either vouchers or tax credits (last time he didn’t know the difference between them) "in the foreseeable future." He believes that our first priority should be fixing the public schools that need fixing.

Mr. Koska is the Republican nominee in a district that has long been strongly Democratic. But his views are not inconsistent with those of moderate South Carolina Democrats, and he goes out of his way to praise such Democrats as Joel Lourie and Anton Gunn (regarding a recent op-ed by Mr. Gunn in our paper, he said "ditto.") He maintains that if voters elect him instead of opponent Joe McEachern, he will be more likely to get things done, being a member of the majority party in the Legislature.

About the only other time he said anything about his party affiliation was when he expressed enthusiasm for his party’s vice presidential nominee. Much as Democrats have spoken of an Obama Effect this year, he predicted that Sarah Palin would do a lot of good for down-ticket Republicans such as himself.

But mostly he talked about his passion for better roads and affordable health care. His advocacy for fixing Hard Scrabble Road had won him a position on the citizen’s panel on transportation that recommended the sales tax hike, and he feels betrayed that County Council (led by Mr. McEachern) didn’t put the issue to a referendum. He said he believes the $550,000 spent on the study, not to mention the "valuable time, time spent away from their families" by the volunteers like himself, to have been cavalierly wasted. He is also critical of Mr. McEachern and the council for having bungled the county’s representation on the Council of Governments that doles out what road money there is in the area, allowing Lexington County to get the lion’s share of the funding for the next 10 years.

The council’s decision to borrow $50 million for new parks (including one in his area), and to do so without a referendum, while people are still dying on Hard Scrabble is to him an outrage.

He has a small business owner’s perspective on health care. His own personal experience and that of his acquaintances convinces him that the state must act now to make health care more affordable (he has no patience for waiting for the feds to do anything). It was like deja vu when he told about his daughter’s recent $1,800 x-ray, which sounded an awful lot like the x-rays for MY daughter, the one that ate my "economic stimulus check," if you’re recall. He was particularly incensed that when he asked the folks at the hospital in advance what the x-rays would cost, no one had any idea. Speaking of outrages, he thinks (as do I) that the stimulus checks were "the stupidest thing." If only, he says, that money had been devoted to upgrading the nation’s infrastructure…

Energy is another area where he has no interest in waiting on the federal government to act. He says the state should push to have natural gas filling stations built around the state. Natural gas, he maintains, is "probably going to be our bridge off foreign oil," but you can’t get anywhere without the retail infrastructure.

Michael Koska is a good example of what you get when a regular citizen not only gets worked up about an issue, but goes out of his way to get informed and try to do something about it. That’s why we endorsed him in the spring. Of course, we also endorsed his general election opponent, so that makes this race particularly interesting to us.

Carol Fowler: An uptick explained

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Before I left the office last night, I glanced at my stats page in Typepad and noticed something odd: I was getting a lot of hits from Google on a year-old post headlined "Carol Fowler and the Dark Side" (which, now that I look back at it, was an odd headline for the subject).

Later that night, I realized why — the quote from Ms. Fowler on Politico. Sheesh. What a bunch of nothing — my post last year was more interesting.

Folks, compared to the usual overheated rhetoric from Democrats of a certain persuasion about those of Fowlercarol
us who oppose abortion, this was nothing. When I heard the quote on TV (my wife watches TV news, even local "if it bleeds it leads" TV news, usually when I’m not in the room; but there I was trapped in my recliner holding a grandbaby and begging somebody to pop in a DVD — I ended up staying up way too late to rewatch "The Graduate"), I thought sure it would be something provocative. When I heard, "Choosing someone whose primary qualification seems to be that she has…," I thought the next thing would be a reference to some distinguishing feature of female anatomy. But when I then heard, "…n’t had an abortion," I could not freaking believe that someone was making an issue of it.

Come on, folks — at least what Don said was offensive, and I was fairly dismissive of that meaning anything, either. As any rational person who knows the way human beings talk with friends would be.

Anyway, that explains the uptick in interest over Carol Fowler. Again, sheesh.

And again, I will urge the partisans: Get over it. Democrats, quit your whining about "Swiftboating," which, I’m sorry to tell you, is not a real word, much less something for you to keep wetting your pants about, expecting the GOP to do it to you at any minute. That "quit picking on me" pose doesn’t work on anybody but your whiniest base. (And Barack, dismissing the GOPpers for acting hurt about "lipstick," then whining yourself about "Swiftboating" is about as petty as I’ve heard you get.)

And Repubicans, get over your crying about the lipstick and the Fowler remark and the mean media and the pregnant daughter and the rest.

And then let’s try to have a grownup election, OK?

Sarahmania

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Continuing on the subject of interesting pics, and shamelessly willing to post whatever it takes to drive traffic (within limits), here’s one I just ran across that encapsulates Sarahmania more than any other I’ve seen. It’s from the same rally as the shot in the previous post, by the way.

Perhaps irrelevantly, doesn’t her smile in this one look a little like that of the nice, attractive girl whose Mom made her go out with the geeky guy, and he’s having an AWESOME time, and she’s gamely trying to see it through, all the while thinking, "Can I plead a headache yet? Would he believe me if I said my father wanted me home by 7:30?"

Speaking of Sarah, I think the coolest shot of her since she came on the scene is the one below that I put on the Monday letters page. It’s emblematic of someone young and new and fresh being sprung on the world. She looks kind of like a smart kid in a spelling bee, standing on the stage, hands at her sides, waiting for the next word with no fear, no fear at all. Botticelli put Venus on the half-shell; a Republican artist would present Sarah Palin to the world this way.

Palinstand

Art for art’s sake, GOP edition

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Remember when I shared the photo of the Obama supporter with the T-shirt outside the stadium, just because I liked the picture?

Well, here is its perfect Republican complement. Beyond the fact that I like the picture, there is something about it that invokes the essence of support for the McCain-Palin ticket in the same way that the hip, youthful, stylized image of the Obama supporter did that ticket.

Do you agree?

Anyway, I actually managed to get this one into the paper — a black-and-white version of it, anyway. It will be on tomorrow’s op-ed page, with a Kathleen Parker column that it didn’t exactly go with, but sort of did.

DeMint sticks up for Sarah Palin

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If you’re a Republican looking for cred on Iraq, then you want Lindsey Graham to stand up and tell everybody you were for the "surge" when nobody else was — as Lindsey did for best buddy John McCain last week.

But if you’re looking to bolster your rep as a fiscal hawk, then you want South Carolina’s junior senator.

Jim DeMint has made a name for himself nationally as the scourge of earmarks. So it is that Sarah Palin’s got to be grateful for his op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal this morning, headlined "Yes, Palin Did Stop That Bridge." An excerpt:

In politics, words are cheap. What really counts are actions. Democrats and Republicans have talked about fiscal responsibility for years. In reality, both parties have a shameful record of wasting hundreds of billions of tax dollars on pork-barrel projects.

My Senate colleague Barack Obama is now attacking Gov. Sarah Palin over earmarks. Having worked with both John McCain and Mr. Obama on earmarks, and as a recovering earmarker myself, I can tell you that Mrs. Palin’s leadership and record of reform stands well above that of Mr. Obama.

Joan had an AWESOME time at the convention!

Surfing in Minnesota

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By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
LISTENING to John McCain’s acceptance speech Thursday night was like surfing. That is, it was like surfing if you’re me:

Paddle, paddle, here comes the wave, can I catch it, paddle, paddle, I’ve got it, I’ve got it, I’ve got it, can I get on my feet, yes I’m getting up, I can’t believe it I’m standing, I’m doing this, can I straighten up, yes this is it, whoa, whoa, yow, WIPEOUT, long fall forward, interminable period way under water, scraping on coral, pop back up, swim to board, paddle, paddle, paddle….

Exhausting.
I haven’t surfed since 1971, because that’s the last time I was in Hawaii, therefore the last time I saw a wave worth the effort. A long wait. But I’ve waited my whole life for someone to give the speech Sen. McCain set out to give Thursday night. And, in stretches that practically made my heart stop — stretches where I thought, he’s going for broke, standing up, can he ride it all the way? — he actually gave it.
Earlier in the week, I had thought I’d have to settle for Joe Lieberman’s paean to post-partisanship, the best bits of which went over like a lead butterfly with that partisan crowd. Most of the week was just like the week before in Denver, the usual party pooge. Sarah Palin did a great job for a rookie her first time at bat, but hers was the usual veep role — take down the opposition.
But in the hours leading up to the McCain speech, the word went out that he was going to try the thing that had not been tried before: to accept a major party’s nomination while simultaneously rejecting and opposing all the vicious nonsense that parties have stood for over the past 16 years. Just minutes before he started, I read on The New York Times Web site: “McCain Plans to Speak of Dedication to Bipartisanship.” He was going to try the thing that I had hoped Barack Obama would try the week before — but which, except for a few encouraging passages, he passed on, delivering a pretty standard crowd-pleasing acceptance in Denver.
McCain was better positioned to attempt the unprecedented. Poor Obama had to please all those Clintonistas who hadn’t wanted him. McCain had greatly appeased those in his party who least wanted him with his choice of Gov. Palin, which freed him to reach out over the heads of the convention delegates to the rest of America.
And for the first 26 minutes and 44 seconds, he delivered a speech that was all that I’d hoped for. “I don’t work for a party,” he said, and you knew he meant it.
Then, just when you thought he had decided to give a speech that told all partisans where to get off, wipeout, he’d spend several moments underwater. But then he’d climb back up and gamely start paddling again.
There were so many indelible impressions to be gained from that speech, but here are some of the highs and lows for me:

He mentioned, as so many had before him (to the point of monotony), his reputation as a “maverick,” saying “Sometimes it’s meant as a compliment; sometimes it’s not.” That was a mild way to describe the central ironic tension of the moment. That hall was filled with people who had long despised him for going his own way, and now he was their nominee, and what could they do but grin and bear it?
The passage about education was just embarrassing, a wipeout of stupendous proportions. In almost the same breath, he promised the ideologues who hate public schools their “choice” and then implied he’d improve public schools by renewing the teacher corps — attracting and rewarding the best, running off the worst. Let me give you two clues, John: First, the American taxpayer will never foot the bill for both turning around failing public schools and paying people to leave them; it’s one or the other. Second, Ronald Reagan had it right — the federal government has no business trying to run our schools.
“Despite our differences, much more unites us than divides us. We are fellow Americans, and that’s an association that means more to me than any other.” No one could doubt that this man truly believed that. He has lived it.
“His plan will force small businesses to cut jobs, reduce wages, and force families into a government-run health care system where a bureaucrat… stands between you and your doctor.” Oh, spare me. The one thing wrong with what Obama wants to do on health care is that he doesn’t have the guts to say, “single-payer” — and nothing short of that will solve the problem. At about this point, I started thinking how Obama and McCain are a complementary pair: One can sound dangerously naive on foreign affairs, the other on domestic.
The very best part was the part that could have gone very bad: talking about his own heroism. He made it a parable of why radical individualism is a dead end. “I thought I was tougher than anyone. I was pretty independent….” But God sent him misfortune as a gift. “I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t even feed myself. They did it for me. I was beginning to learn the limits of my selfish independence.” And that’s when he truly learned to love his country.
At other points he vacillated between the self-centered ideology that Obama has decried as “you’re on your own,” and assurances that he’d make “government start working for you again,” even extending New Dealish assistance to those workers displaced in the shifting global economy.

On the whole a noble effort, but the occasional dunkings in waves of cold ideology left me worn out. I’m so glad these conventions are over. Maybe once they escape the suffocating embraces of their respective parties, both Obama and McCain can better remind me of why I wanted them to win those nominations to start with.
McCain made a good start on that Thursday.

Go to thestate.com/bradsblog/.

What did you think of John McCain’s speech?

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Well, I’m exhausted. Exhausted from holding my breath through the speech that started — and finished — with such promise. In the middle, it let me down several times, such as with that silly litany about "I will do this; Obama will do that." (Yeah, a certain amount of that is called for — a candidate is obliged to tell us why we should vote for him and not the other guy — but that bit was contrived.)

This was … a great speech, delivered by someone who is not a great speaker… with bits and pieces that dragged it back down to mediocrity (and sometimes worse). If he’d cut out about a quarter of it, maybe less (and cut the right parts), it would have been magnificent. In the morning, when I have the full text in front of me, it might be an interesting exercise to see what a little editing can do…

The great parts (or the ones that leap to mind; I’m sure I’m forgetting some; I look forward to reviewing it in the morning):

He called repeatedly on Americans to come together, to reject the foolishness of partisan estrangement. In those parts he was in touch with his essential Joe-ness, his UnPartisanship.
He dealt with a heckler by saying the American people want us to come together.
He spoke unflinchingly of the failings of his own party.
When he decried the failed policies of the past and taking on the culture of Washington in which he has so often been a misfit, it was clear he was talking about the failures of Republicans AND Democrats.
He told his story of heroism not in terms of his own achievement, but of how it taught him that radical individualism, his worship of himSELF as opposed to something larger, was a dead end.

Where the speech disappointed was where he extolled the values of that same selfishness, and did it in ways that were downright schizophrenic, from the prattling about tax cuts to that bizarre passage in which he promised private school "choice" in one breath, and promised to fix public schools by encouraging and rewarding good teachers and getting rid of bad ones (two news flashes: America will never pay for both, and education is NOT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S BUSINESS!).

Those bits made the speech sound like it was written in places by a committee, one engaged in a tug of war between vision and cant.

He inspired when he spoke of foreign affair, and he sometimes sounded dangerously naive when speaking of domestic. That sort of makes him and Obama a complementary pair. Yes, that’s an oversimplification (if Obama really knew what to do domestically, he’d push for single-payer).

So I was often deeply inspired, and at other times saying, DOH! Why’d he say that?

So I’m exhausted. I’m so glad these conventions are over.

What did y’all think?

All of you whiny partisans: Get over it!

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A normally sober fellow blogger helped me crystallize something when he posted this on a recent post of mine:

C’mon, Brad, after devoting a whole column to how disappointing you
found Obama’s speech, and your conviction that McCain is The One Who
Can Reach Across The Aisle, I want to hear what you have to say about
the hatred that filled that room last night. Forget the hug.

"The hatred?" You know, I never know when you guys are kidding. You are kidding, right?

Because if you Dems are serious about the stuff I’ve seen about
"hate" (a verb that I believe, translated from the Democratese, means
"to disagree with me"), and you Repubs are serious about the… well, I
don’t even remember the words, but there were a lot of stupid ones
about how mean and nasty "the media" was supposedly being to your
precious Sarah (come on, Dems, remind me of some of the dumb words they
used), then I think all of y’all need to take a chill pill.

Dems, the woman delivered a boilerplate veep speech. I’ve tried to
think back and remember what she said that y’all might think was so
mean, and all I remember was something about a mayor being like a
community organizer but with responsibility, and a candidate who’s
authored two memoirs but no major legislation, both of which seemed
like solid, above-the-belt shots to me. This is what veep candidates
do, people — they criticize the opposition. The question about Palin
was whether she could do it. She could.

And you whiny Repubs, give me a freaking break with your Spiro Agnew
Revisited hyperventilation about the fact that the "media" — which,
although you don’t believe it, is a plural word, and does not refer to
a monolithic beast — was so terrible and awful to this woman. Come on.
She sprang from McCain’s brow like Minerva from Zeus. Nobody knew squat
about her, and there was a huge, sucking vacuum demanding such info. Of
COURSE her daughter’s pregnancy was reported when she made a statement
about it. (What I objected to in a previous post what that anyone was
idiotic enough to mistake that for an "issue." Here’s a handy-dandy
guide: Abuse of power as governor, issue. Daughter’s reproductive
status: Not an issue. Think you can keep that straight, folks?)

Or did you mean, Tim, the reaction of the GOP partisans in the room?
They like stuff like that, Tim. Just as the Dems in Denver like shots
at the GOP team. They’re partisans. They cheer. Seems like you could
let them have their moment; it’s the first time anybody in that party
has looked even mildly animated this year. Dems have been cheering themselves
hoarse since about 2006.

‘Fear our Fecundity’

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Years and years ago, way back before immigration was anywhere near the issue it is today (or was last year, anyway; seems like I don’t hear nearly as much about it in this season), I read a piece either in the Atlantic or Harper’s. Written by a Mexican-American, it explored resistance in this country to immigration from south of the border (the "South of the Border" Gene Autry sang about, not the one in Dillon County). I don’t remember whether it was talking about illegals or not, but based on what I do remember from the piece, legality was probably irrelevant.

Anyway, the part I remember went like this: "They fear our fecundity." I remember it because I had to look up the word. I had seen it for years and never been sure of its meaning. Having learned it, I made a note to use it sometime. Having five kids of my own, I thought it might come in handy.

Twins_007 It never did. I don’t think I’ve ever used it in the newspaper, and it doesn’t creep into my daily
conversation, even around the twins. (That’s them at the right, by the way, from over the weekend — just in case you haven’t had your full allotment of Cute today. Note the serious expressions — they’re thinking about politics. That’s Baby A on the left, Baby B on the right.)

But the word popped into my head when I saw the photo above. It’s of the McCain and Palin families together. It’s almost like they’re saying to Democrats, Fear our Fecundity…

Here’s a key to the photo, courtesy of The Associated Press:

The families of Republican presidential candidate, Sen., John McCain, R-Ariz., and his running mate, Alaska Gov., Sarah Palin pose for a photograph at the airport in Minneapolis, Minn., after McCain arrived for the Republican National Convention Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2008. Left to Right: Doug McCain, Bridgett McCain, Meghan McCain, Sidney McCain, Jack McCain,Jimmy McCain, Cindy McCain, Andy McCain, Sen. John McCain Gov. Sarah Palin, Todd Plain, Bristol Palin, Levi Johnston, Willow Palin, Trig Palin, Piper Palin, Track Palin.

But hold on! Fear not, Dems! Joe Biden can top them without any help from the four Obamas. Do not try to out-fecund us Catholics, baby! Unfortunately, AP did not bother to list all the members of the Biden clan in the caption to this photo…
Biden_fam

The Hug

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Yes, I know what you were thinking when John McCain and Sarah Palin hugged on stage last night: Does this mean she’s got Bush cooties now?

That’s not what you were thinking? Well, what then? Surely you were thinking something.

You say it didn’t strike you as worth thinking about? Then you’re just not trying. Someone on PBS last night — I forget which of the talking heads — DID see it as fraught with meaning. It was noted that Walter Mondale scrupulously avoided hugging Geraldine Ferraro during the 1984 campaign. The point being, apparently, look how far we’ve come, yadda-yadda…

Here’s what I was thinking: I noted the expression on Gov. Palin’s face. It seemed to say, "Yeah, OK, I’ve got to hug this guy; it’s expected. But I don’t have to like it. And don’t get any ideas, buster…"

Or something along those lines. I admit, my ability to read minds isn’t perfect. But I’m pretty sure she wasn’t delighted.

In any case, it’s an expression I haven’t seen on her face at any other time, so far.

Why do these conventions run so late?

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So once again, the only thing of the evening I want to see at the convention is on at 10 p.m. Like waiting for my man Joe last night. These people are keeping me up past my bedtime.

And why is that? It’s certainly not for the benefit of the delegates. The state delegations — South Carolina, anyway — have their daily meeting at some ungodly hour like 7:30 a.m., and then the next thing worth paying attention to is some speech at 10 p.m., and they all go out afterwards. No way to live, even for a week. It’s never made any sense to me.

Do the parties not think that maybe, just maybe, kids ought to be able to watch these things and learn a bit about their country’s political system? Yeah, I know, that’s a setup for cynical jokes about things not being fit for children’s eyes, but seriously — for good or ill, it’s educational.

Anyway, the schedules make no sense to me. But neither do a lot of other things about political parties.

But I’ll stay up. Hey, if I hadn’t stayed up last night I would have missed Joe, and that was the best speech of either convention so far. No, Joe’s no barnburner of a speaker, but it was what he had to say. The partisans in the hall didn’t know whether to clap or not at his best lines, because it was an UnParty speech, and not their sort of thing at all. I loved it.

Please don’t tell me there are people who think Palin’s daughter is an ‘issue’

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A day or so after John McCain announced his choice of Sarah Palin, sometime over that long weekend, I remarked to someone that her great disadvantage was that she was a blank slate, and the Very First Thing she said — that is, the very first thing anyone focused on — would be blown out of all proportion and define her for the rest of the campaign, if not the rest of her life.

Joe Biden — or Joe Lieberman, or McCain, or anyone we’ve known, or think we’ve known, for years — can say something outrageous, and we’ll set it alongside all the other things we know he’s said or done, and it won’t be a make or break thing (and the reason Joe B. came first to mind is that one of the things we know about ol’ Joe, from long experience, is that he has a penchant for saying things that some regard as outrageous).

Not so with Sarah P. The first thing she says or does that makes an impression — which hasn’t happened yet — will fill up the vacuum in her "conventional wisdom" dossier.

Therefore, the stakes for her speech tonight would be extremely high. And so it should be; we don’t have years to get to know her.

Of course, I reckoned without the idiocy of the 24/7 TV "news" spin machine. It has to have something to masticate EVERY SECOND OF EVERY DAY, and whatever it’s chewing at a given moment is by its foolish definition THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD, so it couldn’t possibly wait until her speech Wednesday night.

If she had made the mistake of saying sometime since Friday that she doesn’t like the color blue, THAT would be the object of endless, fascinated conjecture, "analysis" and "judgment" by the talking heads: How could she not like blue? What sort of person is this? Everybody likes blue — all Americans, anyway. And what hypocrisy to be running with a Navy man, not liking blue! Or will she now claim, implausibly, that it’s only SKY blue that she dislikes? Watch for campaign releases claiming that she’s always liked NAVY blue…

And so forth. The cable TV talking heads make me think of Ford Prefect’s theory about Earthlings: "If they don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working."

So yesterday — or the day before; I get all confused in weeks that contain holidays — we heard that Sarah Palin’s daughter is pregnant. To which I responded — to myself — Uh-huh. Well, I’m sure that’s been hard for them. And then I continued with my life, waiting for someone to say something that actually had any bearing whatsoever on this young woman’s suitability to be vice president.

But, apparently because her speech wasn’t until tonight, the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s daughter, of all absurd things, was dubbed an "issue" worthy of discussion, and even more implausibly, sufficient grist for snap conclusions as to Sarah Palin’s viability as a candidate. And yet it’s not even anything that I had deemed relevant (OR appropriate) to discuss on the blog, and as y’all know, I don’t have a high standard for such things.

Yes, I know; I should have expected this. Yet I was actually surprised when I picked up newspapers this morning and read that the McCain campaign (which had known about the pregnancy, the husband’s DUI, etc., and didn’t think any more of it than I did) was actually having to COPE with this "issue," that it was causing consternation throughout the GOP convention, yadda-yadda.

Oh, come ON, people! Get a freakin’ life!

Get back to me when you have something of substance to say about this woman…

What the locals say about Palin (not much)

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As you know, the nation dodged a bullet last week — at least, a rumored bullet — when John McCain didn’t go off his rocker and choose Mark Sanford as his running mate.

Even though his status as a likely choice was the figment of fevered imaginations on the WSJ editorial board and elsewhere on the libertarian fringe, they mentioned him often enough, and their pulpit was bully enough, that I still worried a tiny bit right up to the last. In that corner of my mind, I pictured myself turning into Paul Greenberg, the Arkansas editorialist who has spent years of his life explaining to the country what a mess Bill Clinton is.

I didn’t want that role.

Anyway, having that perspective, I was curious as to what the Alaska press would tell us that we didn’t know about Sarah Palin. Editor & Publisher anticipated that curiosity on my part, but its first offering in that vein is pretty vanilla. The closest thing to a local insight provided by the Daily News-Miner in Fairbanks — going by the E&P excerpt, was this:

There was also some pandering right from the start.
“I told Congress `Thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere,’ ”
Palin reported to the crowd in Dayton, Ohio. “If our state wanted a
bridge, I said, we’d build it ourselves.”

But the state kept the bridge money. That’s because
Alaskans pay federal gas taxes and they expect a good share to come
back, just like people do in every other state. We build very little by
ourselves, and any governor who would turn that tax money down likely
would be turned out of office.

That’s it? The woman’s been governor for two years and that’s all you’ve got to tell us that we didn’t know? That could have been written by somebody in Washington, for Pete’s sake! E&P says that’s the first installment in a series; let’s hope later installments get into some substance. It’s not like I’ve got time to browse Alaskan Web sites.

Anyway, until I read something out of Alaska in the vein of what I wrote about the Sanford rumors, I’ll assume McCain did all right choosing Sarah Palin.

Yelling at the television

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By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
THE DEMOCRATIC convention forced me to an unpleasant realization: I’ve become one of those crotchety old guys who yell at the television in helpless frustration: “Lies! How can they say such things? How can anyone sit still for this stuff?”
And this week, I’m in for more of the same with the Republicans.
What sets me off? Oh, take your pick — the hyperbole, the self-importance, the us-against-them talk, the stuff that Huck Finn called “tears and flapdoodle.”
Take, for instance, this typical bit from Hillary Clinton’s speech:

My friends, it is time to take back the country we love. And whether you voted for me or you voted for Barack, the time is now to unite as a single party with a single purpose. We are on the same team. And none of us can afford to sit on the sidelines. This is a fight for the future. And it’s a fight we must win together. I haven’t spent the past 35 years in the trenches… to see another Republican in the White House squander our promise…

Let’s deconstruct that a bit.
Take back the country? From whom? Did I miss something? Did the Russians roll right on through Gori and into Washington? No? You say Americans are still in charge, just the “wrong” Americans, of the wrong party? But your party controls Congress! Take it back from whom?
… a single party with a single purpose. Now there you’ve hit on the biggest lie propagated by each of the major parties, the conceit that there is something coherent and consistent about such loose confederations of often-incompatible interest groups. Did you not just spend the last few months playing with all the force you could muster upon those very differences, those very tensions — between feminists and black voters, between the working class and the wine and cheese set? What single purpose, aside from winning an election?
This is a fight… No, it isn’t, however much you love to say that. Again, I refer you to what the Russians are doing in Georgia — that’s a fight, albeit a one-sided one.
… that we must win together. Actually, that raises a particularly pertinent point, which is that the only “fights” that “must” be won are the ones in which “together” is defined as all Americans, or all freedom-loving peoples, whereas such divisive factions as your party and that other one that will meet in St. Paul militate against our being able to win such fights together.
I haven’t spent the past 35 years in the trenches… You’re absolutely right; you haven’t. So spare us the war metaphors.
… to see another Republican in the White House squander our promise… Like that’s what matters, the stupid party label. Like there isn’t more difference between you and Barack Obama in terms of philosophy and goals and experience and what you would bring to office than there is between John McCain and Joe Biden. Come on! Please!…
Sigh. Fume. Mutter.
This stuff wouldn’t upset me quite so much if not for the fact that this was to be the year that we rose above this stuff. That’s why I so happily supported both John McCain and Barack Obama in their parallel bids for the White House. Both men offered themselves as alternatives from the incessant, bitter, destructive partisan warfare of the Clinton-Bush years.
John McCain is the man the GOP’s partisans love to hate, the guy they call a “Republican In Name Only,” the man they stooped to new lows to destroy in 2000, the senator who’d just as soon work with Democrats as Republicans, the candidate who, coincidentally, has been giving Sen. Clinton a lot of love in his latest campaign ads.
Barack Obama was the Democrat who made it abundantly, eloquently clear that he was not running in order to “fight” against his fellow Americans. So all week, I looked forward to his acceptance speech, and when it came I was… disappointed.
Maybe I had built it up too much in my mind, depended too much on it to wash away the bad taste of all those boilerplate party speeches I had heard. He said many of the right things. He said “Democrats as well as Republicans will need to cast off the worn-out ideas and politics of the past,” but as for most of it — well, read David Broder’s column on the facing page.
When he said “part of what has been lost these past eight years… is our sense of common purpose,” I thought, yes, but it’s been happening a lot more than eight years, and you know that. But he said it that way because of his audience. That’s what made the speech flat, by Obama standards. He had to avoid offending the kind of people who love the bitter politics that he had been running against.
What I had wanted to hear was the kind of thing that caused me, while blogging on live TV the night of his South Carolina primary victory, to write “What a TREMENDOUS victory speech!” A sample of what impressed me so that night:

“We are looking for more than just a change of party in the White House…. We are up against decades of bitter partisanship that cause politicians to demonize their opponents… That kind of politics is bad for our party, it’s bad for our country, and this is our chance to end it once and for all.”

That sort of anti-partisan vehemence would not have played well in Mile-High Stadium. Maybe, as he escapes the gravitational pull of Denver, the Obama of January will come out to inspire us again. I hope so. In the meantime, on to the Republicans….
Just moments ago as I write this, as he announced he’d chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate, Sen. McCain promised the GOP crowd that he’d “fight for you.”
Lord help us.

Go to thestate.com/bradsblog/.

You know who Sarah Palin reminds me of?

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Those of you who did not like my referring to Sarah Palin as a "babe" yesterday probably won’t enjoy this post, either. But I am honor-bound to be honest with you, my readers. Also, I have a journalistic duty to tell y’all as much as possible about a candidate about whom so little is known, even if it’s based on nothing but my overactive imagination.

I had never before seen a picture of Sarah Palin, and yet from the first moment I saw her, she looked familiar. Did she to you? If so, you’re dating myself. It’s not so much that Gov. Palin looks like a particular individual. But she’s a dead-ringer for a stock character that frequently appeared in sit-coms back in the ’50s and ’60s. If you’re my age, you’ve seen that character dozens of times.

Here’s a summary of a "Beverly Hillbillies" episode which featured that character (I’ve bold-faced the relevant part):

It’s Spring Tonic time, and Granny hands it around to the family, giving Jed a double dose because he made a mean comment on it. Meanwhile, at the bank, the secretary Gloria Buckles, who has worked on the Clampett account, has said she can take the paper work to Jed. When she gets up there, she transforms herself from a plain secretary to a gorgeous one, with her sights set on Jed’s money. She flirts with Jed, telling him that she needs a mountain man to make her happy. The family is worried about this young gold digger, and the fact that Jed has had a double dose of tonic. They call Drysdale and he rushes over, not recognizing Gloria. She reveals that her and Jed have discussed marriage, and when questioned, Jed says it is true. Gloria asks when they should set the date, and Jed says a few years, because that is when Jethro will be of marrying age. Jethro runs off with Gloria, and Jane runs after them to get her man back. Elly asks her father why he doesn’t want to marry her, and he says you have to start worrying when the bait starts chasing you.

Do you recognize her now? Yes, she’s the frumpy secretary who first appears in a conservative business outfit, wearing glasses, with her hair tied up on top of her head, who, at a critical moment in the plot, suddenly removes her jacket, whips off the glasses and lets her hair come tumbling down, and immediately looks like Miss America.

Of course — and this was the really cheesy thing about this plot device — she looked like Miss America when you first saw her, just Miss America with glasses and her hair done up. I never could decide whether the sitcom writers really thought America was stupid enough to be surprised by this plot device, or whether we were supposed to see through it, and see the transformation-to-glamour coming — you know, so that the folks at home would say, "I know what’s going to happen — watch this!"

That’s what made me realize that’s who Gov. Palin reminded me of. She IS beautiful, obviously so, and the specs and the tied-up hair are simply devices meant to say to us, "I’m serious; I’m not just a babe; you can vote for me."

The bad thing about this is that on some level, deep down, some of us who grew up on 50s and 60s TV are thinking, "This is gonna be good — watch this!" (And subconsciously, we’re expecting a scene in which she suddenly lets her hair down and removes the glasses, and of course, Cindy McCain walks in at that moment and says, "John! Who is THIS?" and a befuddled McCain goes "Hominahominahomina," and the laugh track plays.) Or maybe that’s the GOOD thing, in terms of keeping voters interested in the ticket. I don’t know.

By the way, I couldn’t find a picture to illustrate what I was talking about, but here’s video of the relevant part of the Beverly Hillbillies episode. The transformation of Gloria Buckles occurs toward the end of the first part:

LikeTelevision Embed Movies and TV Shows

Choosing Sarah Palin

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Folks, I’m absolutely swamped, this being Friday morning, but I thought I’d give those of you with the time a place to discuss McCain’s choice of … let me go check her name again… Sarah Palin to be his running mate. Here are some conversation-starters:

One thing’s for sure, I don’t have any video to share with you of Gov. Palin. Never met the woman.
For a brief moment this morning, I thought maybe Bobby Jindal was back on the short list, when I saw this piece by him in the WSJ. (I know that’s not logical, but the human mind is susceptible to the suggestion of coincidences.) That would have been cool, because it would have made the two tickets perfectly symmetrical — McCain playing the role of Biden on the GOP ticket, and Jindal (young, charismatic, ethnic) playing Obama.
Do you think McCain made a big mistake not beefing up his ticket’s economic cred with Romney?
Not that I want to attach a lot of importance to her gender, but it would seem that McCain is really, really serious about going after those disaffected Hillary voters, the ones who took HER gender very, very seriously.
Where’s Wayne Campbell when you need him for expert commentary on whether she, if elected, would qualify as the first babe to be a heartbeat from the presidency?

Talk amongst yourselves.

But what are Obama’s Top Five?

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The Republican National Committee seems to think it has some sort of "gotcha" with this frivolous little item from Entertainment Weekly , apparently based upon a stunningly shallow interview with Barack Obama.

This is apparently part of a series of RNC releases that they call "Audacity Watch," which provides further proof of the lack of wit among partisans, as if any were needed.

Anyway, here’s the "article" from EW that the RNC refers to. The implication on the part of the GOPpers seems to be that Obama has been caught discussing something silly and beneath the dignity of one who would be president.

But I don’t see it that way. Unlike our pal Lee (such things are beneath him), I think a person’s cultural proclivities are indicative of character, and I do want to know about them. My complaint with EW, and the reason I call the interview "shallow," is that it doesn’t go deep enough even into this shallow end of the character pool.

They don’t even provide a Top Five list! That’s just inexcusable. So he likes "The Godfather" — big deal. That tells us nothing. Everybody (except bud) likes "The Godfather." The real clues to his character — the test as to whether he has the judgment and, dare I use the word, discrimination to be president — is in the OTHER four movies on his "Top Five" list.

And what about TV shows — assuming Obama has ever watched TV, which many Americans doubt? (And no, I don’t watch it, either, but I did when I was younger.) We are informed that he likes "The Dick Van Dyke Show" — an excellent, primo choice — but that is listed AFTER the saccharine, anachronistic, smug "M*A*S*H," one of the lamest hits in the history of the idiotic box. Where are his other picks? Does he redeem himself? We are not told.

The item does tells us that there are lists on Obama’s Facebook page, so finally we get somewhere. His Top Five movies:

Casablanca
Godfather I
Godfather II
Lawrence of Arabia
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Good. Very nice touch with "Cuckoo’s Nest" — very cool, not too obvious. But "Lawrence of Arabia?" Respect it as a David Lean masterpiece, fine. But who lists it as a favorite? Seems pretentious to me, the sort of thing that one reads that he should like it, and puts it on the list to impress people. And, given the subject matter, what does this tell us about his likely Mideast policy? Must give us pause.

And mind you, I’m not even going to get into his choosing Stevie Wonder on a list with Miles Davis (pretentious again), Coltrane and Dylan. I’ll let Jack Black’s Barry, purveyor extraordinaire of Top Five lists, pass judgment on that.

Now, does anybody know where we can find a similar list for John McCain? This could be important, people, so get on it.

Working around the governor

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At first glance, when I saw this story this morning, and my eye fell on the word "governor," I thought, "Hey, that’s new — Sanford working with others to grow the knowledge economy in South Carolina."

Then I actually read the story. An excerpt:

Legislative, business and education leaders Tuesday announced a new
partnership designed to draw high-paying technology and research jobs
to South Carolina — the types of jobs, lawmakers said, Gov. Mark
Sanford and the Department of Commerce have failed to bring to the
state.

The
new effort was the brainchild of House Speaker Bobby Harrell,
R-Charleston; Rep. Dan Cooper, R-Anderson; Senate President Pro Tem
Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston; and Senate Finance Chairman Hugh
Leatherman, R-Florence — arguably the state’s four most influential
lawmakers. The idea was also endorsed by new University of South
Carolina president Harris Pastides and others in the business community….

So it was, of course, the work of every state leader except the governor. The governor, of course, maintains through those who work for him that he and his Commerce Dept. are getting the job done. But they are the only ones in state government, or apparently in academia, who think so.

It’s really unfortunate for Gov. Sanford that the state is run by Republicans. He would be much more at home with a Democratic Legislature, so that his dismissals of criticism as "political" would be more readily accepted. For instance, I might be able to dismiss the complaints of my friend Samuel. Samuel, as you probably know, was the guy who came up with the idea of the endowed chairs. He served on the governing board of that until the gov replaced him. But he’s a Democrat who’s been dumped on by the gov, so you take his complaints about the gov not caring about economic development with a grain of salt, right?

But as things are, the governor doesn’t work well with others, period, regardless of party.

And that’s why others work around him.

bradwarthen.com

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