Category Archives: S.C. Democratic Primary

Video about the Obama endorsement

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Andy Haworth did another nice job of putting together a short video of me talking about our endorsement of Barack Obama, which will appear in Wednesday’s paper. This was done very much on the run — minutes before the endorsement would appear online — but Andy managed to edit it to make my rambling seem halfway coherent, for which I thank him.

If the image above doesn’t start playing automatically, click here.

The clip was shot in our board room, with me sitting in the chair in which Sen. Obama sat yesterday before heading to the Statehouse for King Day at the Dome.

Later today, I’ll post my column about our discussion of this endorsement. I’ll be talking about it in other venues as well — for instance, I’m supposed to do a live phone interview with C-SPAN at 7:10 a.m. Wednesday.

We endorse Barack Obama

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Here’s a link to The State editorial board’s endorsement of Barack Obama, folks. As promised, we put it up on thestate.com early. Formally, it will appear in the paper on Wednesday’s editorial page.

Please read it, and react. Needless to say, elaboration follows — in column and video form, as we did with the Republicans.

To read my column about how our board’s discussion of the endorsement, click here.

For a video clip of me talking about the endorsement, click here.

Hillary, we hardly knew ye, either

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Yeah, I know I’m repeating myself (with regard to headlines). But so is the news. Last night’s slap-a-thon in Myrtle Beach was the last we’ll see of Hillary Clinton. As in the GOP contest, an erstwhile front-runner is abandoning us for greener pastures shortly before the vote.

In this case, at least Hillary Clinton is leaving her husband behind, which among South Carolina Democrats may be just as good (if not better). I did get a primary-day phone recording from Mitt’s wife, also, but it just didn’t mean as much.

Personally, I am disappointed that I didn’t check my external e-mail address yesterday. By the time I saw the note from Zac, I had missed this great chance to see Bill:

And I don’t just mean it would be fun to see a real-life enactment of the "Bill at McDonald’s" sketch Phil Hartman did so long ago on SNL. Anyway, the former pres is eating healthy these days. I just thought it would be a chance to watch a master at work — Bill Clinton, out amongst the folks in their everyday lives. He has a gift that his wife, and indeed most politicians, lack. I certainly lack it, which helps me appreciate it more in others.

(Check this (the video) — I thought for a moment that somebody else was monitoring his e-mail better than I was, but apparently this was shot at sometime other than when the ex-pres was there.)

It’s even more disappointing that South Carolinians will not be treated to the same head-to-head, personal competition between the main candidates that we had with Huckabee and McCain in those last days. And after all this build-up.

Anybody getting nasty calls about Hillary?

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We were all on alert last week for nasty stuff in the GOP primary, on account of the history of what happened to John McCain in 2000.

Now, I’m getting whiffs of something on the Democratic side, as we shoot through the home stretch to Saturday. Three people — one at work, one a caller to the office, the other a relative — have told me of getting recordings that just unloaded a garbage truck full of stuff on Hillary Clinton. Tales of screaming fits in the White House, a bunch of junk everybody’s heard before about Vince Foster, and on and on. Highly offensive.

Thing about it is, at least one of the people who reported this voted in the Republican primary, so it’s a little strange that they would get these calls this week. If they’ve already voted, what’s the point? If it’s pitched toward the general election, why not wait a while, and see if she’s the nominee?

Or better yet, why not just not stoop to stuff like this at all?

Winner of Democratic debate: John McCain

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You know, I was happy that the guy we endorsed in the Republican primary won in SC, but I sort of thought he had several more tough contests to go through before he had the GOP nomination in the bag.

Not according to the Democratic contenders tonight in Myrtle Beach: It’s John McCain this, John McCain that. Edwards says you’d best pick me ’cause I can take John McCain on in rural areas. Hillary says I’m the only one strong enough on defense to go against John McCain.

Has anybody told Huckabee and the rest about this? They might as well surrender at this rate….

Demsseated

New ‘reality show:’ Beat on Obama

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Hillary_hits_obama

Have y’all been watching this debate out of Myrtle Beach? I don’t believe I’ve seen the like of it before, without a certain key supporter of Mike Huckabee being involved. Hillary Clinton and John Edwards have a tag-team thing going on the guy in the middle.

Personally, I don’t think Barack Obama’s health care plan goes far enough — but I don’t think theirs are anything to write home about, either.

As for that snarl-a-thon on the economy, I’m not sure I got anything out of it.

Now they’re competing to see who can sound least responsible on Iraq, but Edwards always wins that contest — it’s hard to top a guy who wouldn’t even leave anybody to keep training Iraqis. The sad thing is that if you get them off the stage, either of the other two can make a certain amount of sense on the issue. But all this I-was-against-the-war-first-oh-no-you-weren’t stuff isn’t exactly moving us closer to a political solution in Baghdad. And I have to wonder, do even the antiwar folks they’re trying to appeal to with that like this nyah-nyah stuff?

Anyway, I’ll keep paying the best attention to this I can under the circumstances. My two-week old twin granddaughters are visiting, and they’re more entertaining, and more in touch with basic, everyday economic issues — they keep competing to be the one to nurse first.

Anyway, I invite y’all to weigh in on this slapfest from the Grand Strand.

Edwards_hits_obama

Photos of candidates at King Day (only SLIGHTLY better than video)

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Again, I had a lousy angle, at too great a distance, for my camera, but this still photos are slightly (very slightly) better than the video I just posted, in case you’ve like to get some rough idea of what the candidates looked like on this occasion. You can hardly see them at all on the video (although I hope you can hear them OK).

They are in the order in which they spoke. I was farthest away for Sen. Obama, but managed to work a little closer by the time Mr. Edwards and Sen. Clinton spoke. I left in a little of the bright sky behind Edwards when I cropped him, so you can see the backlighting problem I had with the exposure. In the third photo S.C. NAACP Chairman Lonnie Randolph is introducing Sen. Clinton.

Obamaspeak_3Edwards_2

Hillary

Video: Obama, Edwards, Clinton at the State House

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Brokaw

We had a long, cold wait for the candidates to speak at King Day at the Dome today, although it wasn’t as long or cold for me as for some.

Barack Obama had met with our editorial board earlier (I’ll post about that later today, or tomorrow), and I couldn’t get away from the office for another hour after that, so when I arrived at the State House a little after 11, some folks were already leaving. One acquaintance told me he thought the candidates had been there and left. It seemed pretty clear that the candidates weren’t up there on the steps, but I also surmised that they were yet to speak. The security was there — a real pain, because they artificially compressed the crowd and limited movement so that it was difficult to get close to the steps, and impossible (as it turned out) to get into a good position for my camera. Wherever I stood, the speakers were in shadow, and worse, sometimes backlit. (NOTE: Because of the lighting problem, and the position from which I was shooting with my little camera, this is very low-quality video!)

So the security was still there, and the TV cameras were still in place. I ran into Warren Bolton who had arrived about the same time as I, and we were still wondering whether there was indeed anything to stick around for when Warren nudged me and pointed out Tom Brokaw a few yards away in the crowd (see photo above, which is higher quality than the video because he was in sunlight, and close by). We figured if the hopefuls had spoken before us, Brokaw would have left by now, so we stayed.

Speakers we could not identify from where we stood droned on, saying the things they usually say at these events, and I was beginning to resent the NAACP for letting all these folks (myself included) stand around waiting for what so many had come for. Remember, others had been there much, much longer. I was hardly the only one to feel the crowd was being abused. Warren overhead somebody leaving, muttering about it, and saying the NAACP was going to hear about this the next time he heard from them asking for a contribution.

Finally, just after noon, the main attractions came on. My wife, who was at home comfortably watching on TV, later said she assumed they had waited to go on live at the noon hour. Perhaps that is the logical, fully understandable explanation. Anyway, it was explained that the three candidates had drawn lots to determine their speaking order. Here they are, in the order in which they spoke. The videos are rough, incomplete and unedited, as I wanted to hurry and get them out (and the video quality wasn’t that great anyway); I just provide them to give some flavor of the event:

Barack Obama:


John Edwards:

   

Hillary Clinton:

Which do you want, JFK or LBJ?

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By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
BARACK OBAMA and Hillary Clinton decided last week to put their spat over MLK, JFK and LBJ behind them. That’s nice for them, but the rest of us shouldn’t drop the subject so quickly.
Intentionally or not, the statement that started all the trouble points to the main difference between the two front-runners.
    And that difference has nothing to do with race.
    Now you’re thinking, “Only a Clueless White Guy could say that had nothing to do with race,” and you’d have a point. When it comes to judging whether a statement or an issue is about race, there is a profound and tragic cognitive divide between black and white in this country.
But hear me out. It started when the senator from New York said the following, with reference to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.:
    “Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done.”
    The white woman running against a black man for the Democratic Party nomination could only get herself into trouble mentioning Dr. King in anything other than laudatory terms, particularly as she headed for a state where half of the voters likely to decide her fate are black.
    You have to suppose she knew that. And yet, she dug her hole even deeper by saying:
    “Senator Obama used President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to criticize me. Basically compared himself to two of our greatest heroes. He basically said that President Kennedy and Dr. King had made great speeches and that speeches were important. Well, no one denies that. But if all there is (is) a speech, then it doesn’t change anything.”
    She wasn’t insulting black Americans — intentionally — any more than she was trying to dis Irish Catholics.
    To bring what I’m saying into focus, set aside Dr. King for the moment — we’ll honor him tomorrow. The very real contrast between the two Democratic front-runners shows in the other comparison she offered.
    She was saying that, given a choice between John F. Kennedy and his successor, she was more like the latter. This was stark honesty — who on Earth would cast herself that way who didn’t believe it was true? — and it was instructive.
    Lyndon Baines Johnson was the Master of the Senate when he sought the Democratic nomination in 1960. If he wanted the Senate to do something, it generally happened, however many heads had to be cracked.
    LBJ was not made for the television era that was dawning. With features like a hound dog (and one of the most enduring images of him remains the one in which he is holding an actual hound dog up by its ears), and a lugubrious Texas drawl, he preferred to git ’er done behind the scenes, and no one did it better.
    Sen. Johnson lost the nomination to that inexperienced young pup Jack Kennedy, but brought himself to accept the No. 2 spot. After an assassin put him into the Oval Office, he managed to win election overwhelmingly in 1964, when the Republicans gave him the gift of Barry Goldwater. But Vietnam brought him down hard. He gave up even trying to get his party’s nomination in 1968.
    But he was a masterful lawmaker. And he did indeed push the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act into law, knowing as he did so that he was sacrificing his party’s hold on the South.
    He brought into being a stunning array of social programs — Medicare, federal aid to education, urban renewal, and the War on Poverty.
    So, on the one hand, not a popular guy — wouldn’t want to be him. On the other hand, President Kennedy never approached his level of achievement during his tragically short tenure.
    You might say that if Sen. Obama is to be compared to President Kennedy — and he is, his call to public service enchanting young voters, and drawing the endorsement of JFK’s closest adviser, Ted Sorensen — Sen. Clinton flatters herself in a different way by invoking President Johnson.
    They are different kinds of smart, offering a choice between the kid you’d want on your debating team and the one you’d want helping you do your homework.
    Sen. Obama offers himself as a refreshing antidote to the vicious partisanship of the Bush and Clinton dynasties. That sounds wonderful. But Sen. Clinton has, somewhat less dramatically, formed practical coalitions with Republican colleagues to address issues of mutual concern — such as with Lindsey Graham on military health care.
    Sen. Clinton, whose effort to follow up the Great Society with a comprehensive health care solution fell flat in the last decade, has yet to live up to the Johnson standard of achievement. For that matter, Sen. Obama has yet to bring Camelot back into being.
    As The Washington Post’s David Broder pointed out, in their debate in Las Vegas last week, the pair offered very different concepts of the proper role of the president. Sen. Obama said it wasn’t about seeing that “the paperwork is being shuffled effectively,” but rather about setting goals, uniting people to pursue them, building public support — in other words, about inspiration.
    Sen. Clinton talked about managing the bureaucracy and demanding accountability.
    Sen. Obama offers a leader, while Sen. Clinton offers a manager. It would be nice to have both. But six days from now, South Carolinians will have to choose one or the other.

Evidently, I talk with my hands

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Just finished a taped interview with Michele Norris of "All Things Considered." Listen for it this afternoon — maybe. At last word Michele says today’s broadcast isn’t set yet. I’m betting I don’t make it if they have anything else that’s decent at all. I’m not exactly at the top of my game today.

To give you a taste of it, here is a clip that undoubtedly represents the worst video I have ever shot. I learned two things this morning:

  1. It’s very easy to forget you’re holding a camera, and that it’s turned on, when you are the interviewee rather than the interviewer.
  2. Obviously, I talk with my hands.

Anyway, that was my third radio thing this morning — I did Andy Gobeil’s show over at ETV studios and a phone thing with a station out of Little Rock, Ark. The Arkansas station wanted to hear about Mike Huckabee. I told them they should be telling me.

I’m back at my normal job now, for the rest of the day. I’ll blog as I can. Getting a little tired, though. I’ve got a lousy cold. Here we are with this historic opportunity — with South Carolina in position to make a major difference in both parties’ nominations — and today I’m sort of wishing this were the 27th.

Oh, one last thing — Michele mentioned reading my blog when she first contacted me. So did her sound woman, Andrea Hsu, when I met her today. Once again, I’m struck by the fact that, in spite of the much-lower readership numbers (a fraction of a fraction), the blog is cited more and more by people who contact me. So maybe this thing does have an impact, and isn’t just a useless symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Time to do a Ned Ray on the Clintonistas

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We’re still waiting, waiting to get Hillary Clinton in for an endorsement interview. We want to give her every opportunity, yet still get our endorsement published in time for folks to digest it.

Here’s my e-mail correspondence over the last few hours with Zac Wright of the campaign. (And Zac is by no means the only Clintonista I’m pestering.) Zac’s an ol’ boy from West Tennessee, where I spend the first decade of my career (’75-’85), so I’ve tried to speak in terms he would fully understand:

ME: Zac, we’ve GOT to get Sen. Clinton in here for an editorial board meeting!
    What’s our status?

ZAC: Brad,
    Pursuing logistics, but no further developments at this point.

ME: Doggone it, Zac, what would Ned Ray McWherter say about all this lollygaggin’?

ZAC: Now that was spoken like a man with real West TN roots!  I’m working on it and hope to know more COB today.  Monday is the absolute latest, correct?

ME: It would be damnably hard to go any later. But if you have something later to propose (say, early Tuesday) at least run it by us so we have the chance to refuse.
 
Our plan at this point — and mind you, this is already plan B, or maybe C — is that the board will assemble here at the paper (it’s a newspaper holiday, so people would be coming in just to deal with this) to meet with Sen. Obama at 11. Figuring that would be the latest candidate we’d see (because Obama wasn’t going to be in SC this week, and we thought Sen. Clinton would be), we were going to go straight into making a decision. (And don’t think having the last word gives him a leg up; McCain had the last word in 2000, and we went with Bush). Then Mike and I would stay the rest of the day to get everything written, but we would not publish until Wednesday, to give other board members a chance to see proofs — and to give me a chance to record a video as we did with McCain, and post online early (3 p.m. Tuesday).
 
A Wednesday endorsement is really late, in terms of giving folks a chance to respond. But we moved it back to there to give the leading candidates what we thought was plenty of EXTRA time in which to get here. Remember, we had really wanted to endorse on Sunday.
 
When you talk with the folks in your organization, deal with them the way Ned Ray would have when he was Speaker. I remember once the House was having trouble moving along on an issue the way he’d like, so he rumbled something like, "Y’all better get it together before I come down there and rip off some arms and beat you about the head and shoulders with ’em."

What did Hillary say that was so wrong?

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Democrats_debate_wart

So Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have put their spat over race behind them. That’s good, but it still leaves me with a question that I guess only a Clueless White Guy could ask: What was that all about?

Maybe it’s that when it was all brewing I was too busy with the GOP primary to take notice. It seemed to happen late last week, when I was trying to get our endorsement of John McCain decided, written, elaborated upon, discussed in multimedia, and put on the Sunday page.

That’s got to be it. There’s got to be something I just missed entirely. That’s why I find myself still asking, What did Hillary Clinton say that was so wrong? (And note that I’m not even getting into Bill Clinton saying Sen. Obama
was peddling "fairy tales." Supposedly, that was taken by some as
racially insensitive also. But Mr. Clinton say
anything about anybody’s race? He did say "fairy," but it
seems that would offend a whole other demographic group, and then only
if it was really, really willing to stretch to be offended.)

Correct me if I’m wrong, but did this controversy not erupt when the senator from New York said:

    "Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson
passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done."

And did it not only deepen when she said:

    “Sen. Obama used President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr. to criticize me. Basically compared himself to two of
our greatest heroes. He basically said that President Kennedy and Dr.
King had made great speeches and that speeches were important. Well, no
one denies that. But if all there is (is) a speech, then it doesn’t
change anything.”

This was deemed offensive by some, and the nature of the offense was racial, apparently because Dr. Martin Luther King was mentioned. Or maybe because Sen. Obama is black, or not, depending on who’s keeping score.

Where did the offense lie? Haven’t all great, inspirational leaders been followed by more prosaic types who did much to make the dream a reality? Did Moses not have his Joshua? Did Jesus — whose sudden execution essentially left his movement, at first, in shambles — not have his St. Paul? And do any of us think that, because he essentially invented the idea of a "church" as something Gentiles could join, that St. Paul was greater than Jesus? I would hope not.

And correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t MLK, in the most famous passage of one of his most inspirational speeches, compare himself to Moses? And was that comparison not specifically with regard to the fact that, while he had led the movement right up to the border, someone else might have to lead it into the Promised Land? ("I may not get there with you.")

Or did I miss something? It’s highly possible that I did, which is why I’m asking. I’ve looked at several stories on this subject, but it’s certain that I haven’t read them all.

But if I didn’t miss something, then I think Sen. Clinton caught a lot of grief she didn’t deserve. She might be called all sorts of things, by those who are inclined to criticize her — overbearing, perhaps. Condescending, maybe. But racist? I don’t think so.

By the way, that was what I didn’t like about the Ariail cartoon that I showed you in sketch form yesterday: I thought it was way unfair to Mrs. Clinton. Of course, it is in the essential nature of caricature to exaggerate, and even to offend. But I thought the Ariail cartoon we actually used made the same point (with which I disagree, but what Robert wants to say is Robert’s business), and since it left out the emotional hand grenade of the lawn jockey, it did so in a way more likely to be clearly understood. But it’s hard to be sure about such things, which is why I asked y’all about it.

Democrats_debate_wart2

Consensus forms regarding Edwards

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You’ve heard me speak of how we work by consensus on the editorial board. Usually, this is based on face-to-face interaction, but here’s an example of a consensus forming in writing.

This morning, Mike Fitts sent this group e-mail message to his fellow associate editors and me:

    Do we owe John Edwards an op-ed piece? His staff has submitted this.
    To recap: An Obama op-ed ran in August, I think, and Hillary’s around the 1st of the year, and Brad called Edwards a big phony.

What?!?! Can I never live that one thing down? Anyway, before I had even seen Mike’s message, Warren and Cindi had both replied. Warren wrote:

I’ve only skimmed it and it seems like his stump speech. That said, I think he does deserve a shot

Within two minutes, Cindi said:

    I’m inclined to agree with Warren. That said, I’d say the sooner the better in terms of running it.

To which I said (is this starting to sound sort of like the Little Red Hen? in that case, who’s Turkey Lurkey?):

Sure. Does this mean I get to call him a big phony again?

Kidding aside, I haven’t read it yet, but I trust the others. I’ll read it on the proof.

Democratic endorsement delayed

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Much to my disappointment, we will not be ready to endorse in the S.C. Democratic Primary on Sunday as planned.

As blog readers should be aware, the only Democratic candidate we have had an endorsement interview with thus far is Joe Biden, and being the current-events whizzes y’all are, you know he dropped out after Iowa. Now if you’re wondering why he’s the only one to have come in before the last-minute crunch (he last visited us on Oct. 1), that’s a good question. If you come up with an answer, let me know. All the major candidates have had standing invitations since well before the first of the year.

Anyway, we have not taken the position that "You should have done your homework before the January crush rather than waiting until the last minute." (No way I could have any moral standing there, as I always do stuff at the last minute, which is one reason I’m in the deadline-oriented newspaper biz.) We’re still doing our best to get folks in here. We’ve grown accustomed in recent elections to having that opportunity, and while we realize the insane front-loaded primary schedule we have this year is pulling them in far more directions than we’re used to, we’re not comfortable with endorsing someone we haven’t had the chance to interview as a board.

As of now, the one remaining candidate we have scheduled is Barack Obama — on Monday morning, MLK Day. His campaign says he won’t be east of Nevada before that. We continue to hope for something earlier if his plans change, but right now this is what we’ve got. I’m hoping rather fervently that we can get Hillary Clinton in before Obama, so that our decision won’t be further delayed, but no time has been set yet. (That this is on MLK Day is ironic, because it underlines the fact that Biden and Chris Dodd were here last MLK Day, campaigning their rear ends off, months before Obama and Clinton entered the race as automatic front-runners, thus crowned by the inside-the-Beltway media without having lifted a finger to seek the votes of South Carolinians.)

As those are the front-runners, those are the two we are really pressing at this point. Our standing invitation remains open to John Edwards (for the rest of this week anyway), but as time runs out, we’re pushing the ones who have the greatest chance of actually becoming president. And as I said last, week, South Carolina is now about these two candidates, as the GOP one is about McCain and Huckabee (don’t look at me; look at the polls).

This is not what I wanted. I wanted both of the endorsements to run on Sunday, as the McCain one did. That gives maximum exposure to something that has high reader interest (our endorsement was the top-rated item on thestate.com over the weekend, I believe), and also gives some time for letters and other reaction before the vote.

But right now, our best-case scenario is that our endorsement will run on Wednesday, Jan. 23. We would also put it online early, as of 3 p.m. Tuesday, as we did with the Republican one.

Speaking of the Republican endorsement — we entertained the idea of delaying that one as well. I brought it up to my colleagues late last week. But the situation was different. We had already met with the two front-runners, and the remaining candidates showed little interest in coming in, even late. No campaign suggested, as Sen. Obama’s did, coming in at the first of the next week. If we tried to go ahead on schedule with the Democratic endorsement the way we did with the GOP, we’d do so with a dearth of input.

(Personally — speaking only for myself here, not my colleagues — I am really counting on these meetings to help me make up my mind. Y’all know I always liked McCain, and hoped that was where we would end up as a group — those meetings for me were about testing my preference through dialogue with him and Huckabee, my second choice. With the Democratic race, I truly don’t know which one I’d pick right now even if I could wave a wand and make it so without regard to the other members of the board.)

So that’s the way things stand. I’ll tell you if I learn more.

Would you run this cartoon?

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Aria08sketch8

Here’s one of the many cartoon ideas Robert Ariail had today, in sketch form. We went for something else in the actual paper for tomorrow, but this was one of the sketches Robert gave thestate.com for use in this package.

I made sure senior editors down in the newsroom were aware of the cartoon (thestate.com is part of the newsroom, and therefore separate from my department), so they could make a conscious decision about it before it appeared.

The question I had raised about the cartoon earlier with Robert was … well, never mind the concern I raised. I’d rather not prejudice your response. After y’all have a chance to say what you think, I’ll tell you what I think. (I’ll only tell you that if you’re one of those simple souls who don’t know me at all and think all newspaper editors are about political correctness, you’ll probably guess wrong as to what my concern was.)

So … whaddya think?

Our plan for letters

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Just FYI, in case you’ve sent in a letter to the editor related to the primaries…

Normally, we avoid running letters related to an election on the day of, or even the day or two before, to avoid getting into a situation of running something that quite fairly demands a reply, and there would be no time left for that (and while that is usually self-evident from the text of the letter, it isn’t always). But give the high interest in these votes, and the pace at which things are happening, I came up with this plan for the next few days, which we’ll try to implement to the extent that letters fitting these categories are available and confirmed in time:

  • Wednesday’s and Thursday’s pages: Give preference to letters about the GOP primary, with a particular preference to folks replying to our Sunday endorsement of John McCain.
  • Friday’s and Saturday’s pages: Continue to run letters on the GOP primary (which, of course, is Saturday), but give preference to those that are an argument for a candidate, rather than attacks and criticisms of other candidates (there being no opportunity for anyone to respond).
  • Sunday’s, Monday’s and Tuesday’s pages: Turn to letters on the Democratic primary, which is the following Saturday. Most letters on the GOP primary would be outdated and/or irrelevant after that vote has already taken place, particularly since they would not reflect the results. (Note that our production schedule demands that the Monday page be done before the Sunday one.) These letters would have to be in by Friday morning at the latest, since the MLK holiday forces us to have all pages done through Tuesday by the time.

By the way, the holiday will not be a day off for us, even though it is for the newspaper buildingwide. We’ll all be here dealing with endorsement stuff. But because we’re in here to deal with that, there would be no time for redoing the Tuesday pages. As it is, getting letters ready for publication to meet this schedule is going to be a stretch for our staff.

Anyway, in case you’re still a snail-mail person (and believe me, lots and lots of folks are), that’s the plan.

And of course, as you know, this venue is open to you 24/7.

Rasmussen: McCain widens lead; Clinton gaining on Obama

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Right after I posted this video of McCain talking about 2000, I ran across evidence that things are definitely looking better for him this time than last time. Rasmussen has him up nine points over Huckabee. (And for you Fred fans — Thompson’s numbers have improved, too.)

Meanwhile, the race on the Democratic side is seen as tightening up. with Hillary Clinton only five points behind Barack Obama.

Hillary needs to watch out for Maureen

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Over the weekend, I did a couple of things that I hadn’t had time to do during what we laughingly call the "working week," including going back to look at the "Hillary cries" video. I found it rather off-putting.

As it happened, so did Maureen Dowd, as she explained in this column last week. An excerpt from the piece, headlined "Can Hillary Cry Her Way Back to the White House?":

    … There was a poignancy about the moment, seeing Hillary crack with exhaustion from decades of yearning to be the principal rather than the plus-one. But there was a whiff of Nixonian self-pity about her choking up. What was moving her so deeply was her recognition that the country was failing to grasp how much it needs her. In a weirdly narcissistic way, she was crying for us. But it was grimly typical of her that what finally made her break down was the prospect of losing.
    As Spencer Tracy said to Katharine Hepburn in “Adam’s Rib,” “Here we go again, the old juice. Guaranteed heart melter. A few female tears, stronger than any acid.”
    The Clintons once more wriggled out of a tight spot at the last minute. Bill churlishly dismissed the Obama phenom as “the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen,” but for the last few days, it was Hillary who seemed in danger of being Cinderella. She became emotional because she feared that she had reached her political midnight, when she would suddenly revert to the school girl with geeky glasses and frizzy hair, smart but not the favorite. All those years in the shadow of one Natural, only to face the prospect of being eclipsed by another Natural?…

I share this now because it reminded me of something: For the last few years, Ms. Dowd has been beloved by the left and hated by the right for her regular skewering of "W."

Whenever I get those calls (why don’t you ever run Maureen Dowd and stop running that horrible Maureen Dowd), I think back, and seem to recall her having a field day slicing and dicing Bill Clinton. But I always forget about it before going back through archives to see if I remembered right.

Whatever she wrote back then, I get the sense that were Hillary Clinton elected, Maureen would be the bane (OK, one of the banes) of her existence…

The Media are the Message

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Folks, I’m sorry I haven’t posted today, and that it will likely be several more hours before I DO post again. Reaction to our endorsement, plus the increased national and international media interest in South Carolina because of the primaries, are combining to eat up the little bits and pieces of time in which I usually blog while doing my actual job.

(For those who don’t know, I’m the editorial page editor of South Carolina’s largest newspaper, which means I have a lot to do even in normal times. No, the job is NOT simply about sitting around cogitating and then spouting opinions at random; I don’t care what you may have heard.)

… OK, long interruption there. I typed the above around 2:20 p.m.; it’s now 5:40; I’ve been in meetings ever since…

But one thing that took up time this morning — time I might have used to do a blog post or two — was kind of fun. Which brings me to what I was going to write this post about: the intense media interest (and voter interest, I might add, in the South Carolina primaries: Just FYI, here’s what I’ve run into in the last few days…

  • This morning, I was interviewed by Cyprien d’Haese of French television — precisely, CAPA presse tv. Cyprien’s one of these triple-threat guys — he conducted the interview, and was his own camera and sound man. The interview was about our McCain endorsement. You can see and hear above a video clip I shot of him shooting video of me (talk about medium being the message). This was sort of last-minute thing — someone called me to set it up while I was at breakfast.
  • Also during breakfast, I got a call from John Durst with the Columbia Rotary, to which I belong, asking if I would give a presentation at today’s meeting about endorsements. This I did, using most of the time for Q and A, which makes it easier on me and more interesting for the audience — there are always plenty of questions. Cyprien came along to shoot some footage of my presentation — after the interview, he had wanted some extra footage, and I suggested that would be more interesting than me sitting at a computer editing copy.
  • As I stepped down from the podium at Rotary, a young Danish woman named Sara Schlüter who works for this outfit (I give you the link because I’m not sure which is the name of her employer — is it "Avidsen," or "Nyhedsavisen" or what?) gave me her card, said she was on her way back home but wanted to call me later in the week for an interview. I said fine and gave her my contact info.
  • Just after 7:30 a.m. Sunday, I did a live interview via phone with C-SPAN about our endorsement. I’m sure you were watching then, so I won’t go into any more details…
  • Last Wednesday, I got a call from NPR’s All Things Considered wanting me on the show that day — something to do with my column that day — but by the time I called back they had lined up somebody else. Bill Putman with the show said he’d call back if they changed again and needed me. Unfortunately, I didn’t check voice mail or e-mail again until late in the day — Mr. Putnam had called me back three times, e-mailed me at least twice, and Michelle Norris had e-mailed me to say, in part, "I am a big fan of your blog [isn’t everyone?] and I think you are just the right person for this segment. Bill is having a tough time reaching you…." So I missed my chance there. But Ms. Norris said she’d be in town this week and would probably call…
  • One night last week (it tends to be night usually before I can return phone calls) I gave an interview with Jennifer Rubin with Human Events, which I’ve never read. When I mentioned this to my colleagues, Mike observed that "Human Events makes National Review look like Pravda." Be that as it may, she sent me a link to her story, and here it is.
  • Linda Hurst with The Toronto Star called, also about midweek. She had seen my video from talking to Ted Sorensen (or maybe it was Andy’s video, which is better), and wanted to talk to me about the parallels between JFK and Obama (which she frankly thought were sort of overblown). Here’s the story that she was working on.
  • I’m going to be on KARN radio in Little Rock this coming Friday morning at 8:40. Something called "First News with Bob Steel." The guy who contacted me said, "We’re looking to get a picture of what the citizens in your state are looking for in the Republican candidates, with a little extra interest in our local man, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee." OK.
  • Karen Shiffman of public radio’s "On Point" (I think it’s in Boston) wants me on the show in the 10-11 a.m. slot this Wednesday. I can’t remember where we left that…
  • I had to cancel something with a radio station in Boston this past Friday; we’re supposed to try again this week. I forget the station. Host’s name is Robin Young, and it will be live. They haven’t called back, but I guess it’s on.
  • Morgan Till with "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" e-mailed me last week wanting an interview this week. I forget where we left that one, too…
  • I’m supposed to be on "The Dennis Miller Show" again Thursday. Awaiting details.
  • Carrie Bann, who blogs and produces for NBC, wanted to get together, but that hasn’t happened yet.
  • Finally, I’ll be on ETV live with Andy Gobeil, as per usual, for the primary results the next two Saturday nights.

OK, so you’re not all that interested. I just needed to make myself a memo of where I was with all that stuff, and since I hadn’t posted anything today, I figured I’d put it on the blog. Also, I thought you might like the video clip with Cyprien.

It’s about Clinton and Obama, too — but later

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Obama_2008_kerry_wart

As previously noted, Barack Obama was down in Charleston today picking up John Kerry’s endorsement. Somebody remarked to me this morning that meant he was dissing his former running mate — which made me pause to think, that guy’s still running?

After Tuesday night, the South Carolina Democratic primary is about Obama and Hillary Clinton. So is the Democratic nomination overall.

But we have another week to think about that. With our GOP endorsement coming up Sunday, which means I’ve got a lot of writing to do about that over the next day or so, I’ve been concentrating less on the Democrats this week. That will soon change.

(Trivial footnote: The picture above is from this morning at the Cistern. The one below is from Tuesday night. The Associated Press has not moved a single picture of Hillary Clinton since then. There’s probably a logical explanation, but it still strikes me as odd.)

Clinton_2008_new_hamp_wart