Category Archives: South Carolina

McCainiacs at play

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Mccainnhparty_007

As I mentioned back here, I tried dropping by some of the campaign gatherings last night. I had received e-mail invitations to gatherings the McCain and Obama folks were having (both of them anticipating wins), and I thought I’d swing by any others I could find.

Seeing the lights on at the Romney HQ, I stopped there first, but my timing wasn’t good. I had first dropped by my daughter’s place to hold my grandchildren for an hour, so I was out of touch. To my surprise, as I walked in, Mr. Romney was giving his NH concession speech. As bad as my timing was (seeing as how I wasn’t invited), I bugged Will Holley yet again about getting the candidate in for an interview before Friday, then left, seeing as how no one was in much of a chatting mood.

I then went by the McCain gathering at The Back Porch, which was the only place with a crowd, so I shot these pictures just as McCain was giving his victory speech. No one seemed to take much notice of the flash (which I hate using, because it’s generally so intrusive), with all that was going on. Then it hit me that I needed to go redo the editorial page, so I split.

After I left the paper again, a little after 10, I went looking for the Obama "party." Needless to say, there wasn’t one. There had been an intended party, at Damon’s, but by the time I got there I saw only 4 or 5 people standing around looking dazed. I decided to head to Obama HQ, but on the way I called Zac Wright, the only Clinton staffer whose number I had programmed into my Treo. I figured the Clinton people were probably having a party that would make the McCain gathering look like a funeral. But I couldn’t get Zac. (Haven’t been able to get him today, either — although Warren has talked to Darrell Jackson.)

At Obama HQ things were quite subdued. I only saw one person I knew at first — top staffers seemed to be in a back room in a conference call or something. I did chat with Inez Tenenbaum as she passed through the entrance area on her way out, but I’ve already mentioned that.

So all I have to show for all that would-be party-hopping is these few snaps from the short while I was at the McCain thing. Make of the photos what you will. You probably already knew that Speaker Bobby Harrell, Attorney General Henry McMaster, Sen. Mike Fair, Rep. Gloria Haskins and ex-Rep. Rick Quinn were in the McCain camp, and that B.J. Boling and Buzz Jacobs were on staff (The staffers reminded me that the last time I’d been to the McCain HQ — which is right next door to The Back Porch — it was a much lonelier place). I didn’t know about Glenn McConnell, but then for all I know he was just looking for a free drink on the night of the first day of the legislative session. I didn’t ask; I only saw him (and snapped the pic) on my way out the door.

And yup, that is TPS blogger Adam Fogle whose McCain sticker the attorney general is pointing at in the picture at top. The rest of the pics follow…

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The Hillary cartoon that wasn’t

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08ari0109

Last night, while I was making the rounds of campaign HQs in Columbia, it suddenly hit me that I needed to come in and revamp the editorial page for today, which at that point had gone to the pressroom hours earlier.

The first thing that hit me was that a couple of passages in my column for today were wrong — more about that in a minute. But the thing that would have really hit you in the eye and make you wonder what we’d been smoking was Robert Ariail’s cartoon. What you see above is what would have landed on your doorstep today if I hadn’t gone back in to the office a little before 10 p.m.

When Robert had left for the day, the cartoon was as fine as prognostication could make it. The polls almost uniformly had said, right up until the day of the New Hampshire primary, that Obama and McCain were going to win up there, and that Obama would win by a bigger margin than McCain. All of the talk about Democratic Party insiders was about how Mrs. Clinton would probably have to skip South Carolina, conceding it to Obama, and concentrate on the big states coming up in February.

By 8:30 or so, it was becoming obvious that even if Obama won New Hampshire, it would be close. An hour later, it was looking increasingly like Hillary had achieved an upset win. And this morning, I have yet to find anyone who offers a plausible explanation as to why that happened. People mention the tears, but to me, that remains implausible. I guess I just don’t want to admit voters can be so swayed by something that that. Perhaps I should know better.

Here’s the cartoon I put in place of the Hillary one (it’s also reproduced below) — fortunately, Robert had finished it earlier in the day, only deciding to do the Clinton one late. All I had to do was scan it in and put it on the page.

Due to a glitch in software that automatically searches for each day’s cartoon and puts it on thestate.com, some of you may have already seen the Hillary cartoon. But we’ve fixed that, and at least I was able to keep it out of the paper.

Oh, yes, here are the changes I had to make in my column. Originally, the relevant passage in my column went like this:

    Let’s do Republicans first, since y’all face S.C. voters first (on the 19th) and come back to the Democrats (assuming, of course, that Barack Obama hasn’t sewn up the nomination before this column lands on your doorstep).
    We’d like some specifics beyond the vehement claims that pretty much each and every one of you is “the real conservative” in the race.
    We’ll start with John McCain, the likely winner (as I type this) in New Hampshire Tuesday.

Once again, that was based on the best info available at the time our page needed to go to meet our normal production schedule. Here’s what it changed to:

    Let’s do Republicans first, since y’all face S.C. voters first (on the 19th) and come back to the Democrats (after the cliffhanger night Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton just went through, they could probably do with a rest today).
    We’d like some specifics beyond the vehement claims that pretty much each and every one of you is “the real conservative” in the race.
    We’ll start with John McCain, the big winner in New Hampshire Tuesday.

As the world keeps changing several times a day over the next couple of weeks, this sort of thing is likely to keep happening. I just hope I can always catch it before an error is published.

08ari0109a

Each Republican faces a different challenge in S.C.

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By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
TO ALL THE candidates seeking the presidency of the United States of America: Welcome to South Carolina. Iowa is behind you; so is New Hampshire, and we understand that we are to have your undivided attention for the next couple of weeks, which is gratifying.
    So let’s take advantage of the opportunity. The South Carolina primaries have little purpose unless we learn more about you than we have thus far, so we have a few matters we’d like you to address while you’re here.
    Let’s do Republicans first, since y’all face S.C. voters first (on the 19th) and come back to the Democrats (after the cliffhanger night Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton just went through, they could probably do with a rest today).
    We’d like some specifics beyond the vehement claims that pretty much each and every one of you is “the real conservative” in the race.
    We’ll start with John McCain, the big winner in New Hampshire Tuesday.
You’re a war hero, and you’ve got the most experience in national defense and foreign affairs. You take a back seat to no one in fighting government waste. You were for a “surge” in Iraq long before the White House even considered the idea, and you weren’t afraid to say so. It’s no surprise that you lead among retired military officers, and others who have been there and done that.
    But folks who are not retired would like some reassurance that the oldest man in the race, with a spotty medical history, is up to the world’s most demanding job.
    Most of all, though, South Carolinians need to better understand your position on immigration. You’re the one who decided to try to lead on this radioactive issue in the middle of a campaign, and plenty of folks around here don’t like the direction you chose. Start explaining.
    Next, Mike Huckabee. You have qualities that Sen. McCain lacks: You’re (relatively) young, fresh, new and exciting. As a Baptist preacher, you’re definitely in sync with S.C. Republicans on cultural issues. More than that, you are on the cutting edge of a new kind of Republicanism, one that is more attuned to the concerns of ordinary working people, from health care to education.
    But let’s look at some headlines from this week: The U.S. Navy almost had to blow some Iranian gunboats out of the water. Hundreds are dead in Kenya, one of the few African countries we’d thought immune to such political violence. Pakistan, nuclear power and current address of Osama bin Laden, continues to teeter on the edge of chaos after Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. I could go on.
    Every day, something that threatens the security of this country happens in yet another hot spot, calling for a depth of knowledge and experience for which on-the-job training is no substitute. Those blank looks you’ve given when asked about current events are disturbing. Reassure us. We know you don’t get daily intelligence briefings yet, but you could at least read the paper.
    Mitt Romney, you come across as Central Casting’s idea of a Republican: Perfect coif, square jaw, a private-sector portfolio that confirms your can-do credentials. Moreover, as governor of Massachusetts you presided over health care reform that many other states are looking to as a model.
    But increasingly, 21st century Republicans are less impressed by a business suit, and I think you’ll find South Carolinians a lot like Iowans in that regard. You’ve got to have more to offer.
    Also, voters here would like to hear more positive reasons to vote for you, and less about what’s wrong with everybody else. In all the years since I’ve been getting e-mails, I have never seen anything like the blizzard of releases from your folks trashing this or that rival.
    After the nasty whispering campaign that sank Sen. McCain in 2000, South Carolinians have had a bellyful of the whole “going negative” thing. Just forget the other guys, and tell us what’s good about you.
    As for Rudy Giuliani, we know you’re a tough guy, and a tough guy can be a good thing to have in the White House. You inspired the nation through some of Gotham’s darkest days, and you took on all Five Families at once as a mob-busting federal prosecutor, which is why John Gotti and some others on the Commission wanted to have you whacked. You’re definitely a man of respect.
    But if you do bother to campaign down here, South Carolina Republicans might be forgiven for wondering whether you’re one of them. You were doing OK in polls a couple of months ago, but let’s face it — that was just the early national media buzz, and we’ve gotten past that.
    You need to do some fast talking — we hear New Yorkers are good at that — about some of those “cultural issues” that, to put it mildly, distinguish you from candidates who happen to be Baptist preachers.
    Finally, Fred Thompson — you certainly have no need for a translator. As your wife, Jeri, reminded me when she dropped by our office Tuesday, you speak fluent Southern.
    But there’s a reason y’all were campaigning down here rather than up in New Hampshire: After the biggest “will he or won’t he” buildup in modern political history, your campaign failed to catch fire nationally after it finally got rolling.
    That could be because, while you can play a “conservative” well on TV, you have yet to communicate exactly what you bring to the campaign that other candidates don’t bring more of. Are you better on national security than McCain, or more in tune on abortion than Huckabee? And if what the party was crying out for was a guy who was tough enough on immigration (as your supporters keep telling me), why didn’t it go for Tom Tancredo?
    Once again, welcome one and all to the Palmetto State. Whether you go on from here may depend in large part on how you answer the above questions.
For my blog, go to http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/.

South Carolina just became more important — to everybody

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Tonight’s surprise-twist ending in New Hampshire tonight just upped the odds at stake in South Carolina. No more talk about Hillary skipping South Carolina; she’s going to be going for a knockout punch; Obama will be if anything even more determined to win here.

Over on the Republican side, after a split decision between Iowa and N.H., South Carolina is looking more make-or-break for everybody.

I left the office tonight intending to drop by the McCain and Obama results-watching parties, having received e-mail notices of both. On the way, I stopped by the Romney HQ on Gervais when I saw the lights on. My timing wasn’t the greatest. The first place I had stopped leaving work was my daughter’s house, to visit the babies, and I didn’t realize what was happening in N.H. until I got to Romney’s place — just as Mr. Romney was on the tube giving his concession speech (rather gracefully, the part I heard). After asking Will Holley again to try to nail down a time for an endorsement interview ASAP, I bowed out.

The McCain gathering was a real party, the only one I saw tonight. Henry McMaster, and pretty much everybody I talked to, said there was now no question about it — McCain was going to win S.C. Of course, Romney and Huckabee (who was leading polls here last time I looked) will do their best to have something to say about that.

On the way to Obama HQ, I tried getting Zac Wright on the phone to see if there was a Clinton celebration somewhere, but no luck. The mood at Obama’s place was subdued, but not the end of the world. They, too, say they’re going to win here.

In any case, everybody on all sides are going to be busting their buns to do that, even harder that we thought when today began.

Top S.C. Dems see little hope for Hillary in state

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Folks, it’s been a long day, and I haven’t had a chance to something I had resolved to blog about early this morning:

On my way to breakfast, I ran into two former Gov. Jim Hodges and former Democratic nominee for Attorney General Steve Benjamin, and both said the same thing — if Obama won today in New Hampshire by as much as expected, Hillary Clinton has no chance in South Carolina.

Without naming names, Gov. Hodges said that based on his conversations, watch for some of Sen. Clinton’s black support in S.C. to suddenly declare "neutrality" in the contest. Neither S.C. Democrat would be surprised if Sen. Clinton, who had dominated the polls here for most of the past year, decided to skip the state altogether, in a last-ditch effort to stop Obama on Super Tuesday.

The big question, Mr. Benjamin said, was whether Mrs. Clinton would go negative on Obama. He speculated that that might be what John Edwards will be counting on, if he stays in it — mutual destruction by his rivals.

Video: DeMint on why he’s for Romney

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Shortly after Mrs. Thompson left today, Jim DeMint dropped by The State to talk about his support for Mitt Romney.

While The Wall Street Journal cast doubt over the weekend on the political value of Romney’s business-executive reputation, Sen. DeMint remains sold on it. In fact, he sees such a background as key, not only to solving domestic problems, but foreign policy. At one point, he said "More important around the world than democracy is free enterprise."

As for Gov. Romney’s turnaround on abortion, all the better: "That’s a wonderful thing," he said. "Reagan was pro-choice." In other words, converts to the cause are welcome.

To hear the senator elaborate on these and other points, see the video.

Small world — or a small state, anyway

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My brother just called. It seems that about the time Jeri Thompson was here, his wife and their younger daughter ran into Jeri’s husband at a Starbuck’s in Greenville.

That is so South Carolina. Everybody runs into everybody else, often at the same time.

In fact, my sister-in-law and niece had their picture taken with the candidate, whose campaign bus had stopped there before heading down for a Lexington event early this afternoon.

Unfortunately, I can’t share the picture with you — the staffer contacted my sister-in-law later to beg her forgiveness. It seems that after he got back on the bus, he realized he had missed the shot because the card on his digital camera was full.

Sheesh. These amateurs…

Anti-school forces have one less lawmaker to pick on: Bill Cotty to give up seat

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This release just came over the transom:

S.C. REP. BILL COTTY ANNOUNCES HE WILL NOT RUN FOR RE-ELECTION
COLUMBIA — House District 79 Representative Bill Cotty announced that he
has accepted a private sector job opportunity that will result in his not
seeking re-election in 2008. 
    "Over the Holidays one of my long-time clients made me a wonderful business
offer," Cotty said. While the terms we agreed on will allow me to serve out
my current term, I’ve promised to work with them full time after the House
adjourns in June."
    "I’ve been blessed by voters to have the honor of serving in elected office
the past 20 years, eight on the Richland Two School Board, and the 14 in the
House.  It’s time now to give someone else a chance and I wanted to let
folks now immediately so anyone interested in running has time to decide
before filing deadline at the end of March."
    "This is an opportunity for me to work on innovative land use planning
projects that incorporate new technologies for recycling and resource
conservation practices, something I’m very passionate about.  My wife and I
have places to go and grand babies to hug, the fifth of which is expected in
May."
    Rep. Cotty is a Columbia Attorney and was first elected to the House in
1994.  House District 79 encompasses Kershaw and Northeastern Richland
counties.

                    -30-

I certainly wish Mr. Cotty well in the future, but he will be missed in the Legislature. The Richland Republican has been a stalwart supporter of public schools in an era in which out-of-state, anti-public-education money has been spent by the bucketload to try to get rid of real conservatives (the kind who support society’s fundamental institutions, as opposed to the libertarian radicals who want to tear them down) like him.

So that’s a few thousand bucks that SCouRGe and its fellows will save in smearing Mr. Cotty’s name in this year’s primaries.

Beyond that, it will be interesting to see if Anton Gunn takes time away from the Barack Obama campaign (which we assume will still be going strong at the time) to make another run at the seat. He was a very promising newcomer, make District 79 one of those few districts with an embarrassment of riches — a choice between two very good candidates, rather than the all-too-common opposite situation.

Dave Barry meets Dick Harpootlian

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Colbert_082

Thought y’all might enjoy checking out this column, headlined "Harpootlian to take New Hampshire," by funnyman Dave Barry that appeared in The Miami Herald Saturday. In it, Dave has no end of fun — with Dick’s name:

    The political landscape has been severely shaken up. To help you
understand what is going on, here’s a summary of the situation, with
key names and concepts in capital letters:

    On the Democratic
side, HILLARY CLINTON, who was the FRONT-RUNNER based on her EXTENSIVE
EXPERIENCE being married to her HUSBAND, BILL CLINTON, totally got
pulverized in Iowa by BARACK OBAMA, who has been a U.S. SENATOR for
like FIFTEEN MINUTES during which he acquired many NEW IDEAS such as
CHANGE.

    Also he has a supporter named DICK HARPOOTLIAN, which has to be one of the best supporter names ever…

And to think, people accuse me of being shallow in my analysis…

If Dave only knew some of the stories about Dick — especially the ones he tells on himself — he’d have all sorts of fun. He would have to use one of his stock punchlines — "I am not making this up" — so often, he’d wear it out.

Oh, by the way, in keeping with the in-depth reporting you’ve come to expect on this blog, here’s video of Dick talking about his support for Barack Obama. (This was at the Colbert brunch back in October, previously reported here):

It’s now-or-never time for our endorsement decisions

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By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
ON TUESDAY, New Hampshire votes. On Wednesday, presidential candidates will descend on South Carolina in such numbers as we’ve never seen, and stay for the duration — the Republicans until the 19th of this month, the Democrats through the 26th.
    Time for us to get busy on The State’s editorial board. Not that we’ve been slacking off, but our pace starting this week is likely to make the past year look like a nice, long nap.
    Watch for more columns than usual from me on this page or the facing one. And between columns, keep an eye on my blog. But the main work of the next two weeks will be interviewing the remaining viable candidates and writing our endorsements. Our plan, from which we will deviate only under the most extreme circumstances, is to endorse in the GOP primary a week from today, Jan. 13, and to state our choice in the Democratic contest Jan. 20.
    But, asked regular gadfly Doug Ross on my blog last week, our endorsements have “already been written,” right? And as another writer, who goes by the pseudonym “weldon VII,” asked, “Why would Romney waste his time coming to see you, Brad?”
    Such are the pitfalls of blogging. Some folks mistake my passing observations for final conclusions and (an even greater mistake) my opinions for those of the whole editorial board.
    Right now — since I have not once asked any of my colleagues whom they currently prefer in the two primaries (I want that discussion to happen after the last interview — it makes for a more intense debate, but a much better-informed one), and since they haven’t hinted aloud or in print, I don’t know how near or far we are from our eventual consensus. (Ask me next week this time.)
    As for “weldon’s” comment — well, let’s be frank: He’s thinking of my oft-stated respect for John McCain. You don’t have to read the blog to know about that; it’s been stated here often enough.
    But I’ll say two things about that: First, I had good things to say about Mike Huckabee, too, after I met him for the first time on Sept. 20. He made a stronger impression than expected; he’s made a similar impression on a lot of other people since then.
    Secondly, I was a big admirer of Sen. McCain back in 2000, too — but we ended up endorsing George W. Bush.
    Let me tell you about that — and also answer another question Doug asked: Who breaks a tie on the editorial board?
    It generally doesn’t come to a tie, because we work really hard for a consensus. Some of us change our minds during the discussion, while others concede to a second choice, seeing that their first isn’t going to carry the day. It’s complicated.
    I can think of only two times when we had a “tie” to break, and one of them was in February 2000. Gov. Bush came in at 8 a.m. on the Wednesday before our endorsement; Sen. McCain joined us Thursday afternoon. (Alan Keyes had been in the previous week.) The moment Sen. McCain left, we began our final discussion.
    The previous weekend, I had written and e-mailed to my boss, the publisher, a 4,000-word memo explaining why I believed we should endorse Sen. McCain. I did so knowing that he (this was two publishers ago, I should add) was just as firmly for Gov. Bush. But he was leaving the question open until after the interviews.
    We went into those meetings with most of the group leaning toward McCain (based on comments volunteered to me). It’s amazing what a good meeting can do for a candidate, or what a bad one can do to a candidate. That Wednesday, George W. Bush had the most “on” hour of his life. I have never seen the man, before or since, present himself so well, or so articulately. (Maybe it was the time of day; maybe it was the two cups of coffee we watched him drink; most likely it was his firm knowledge that this was a make-or-break moment.)
    John McCain was in a funk on Thursday. I’ve never seen him so “off” as he was that day. In a downcast voice, he spoke of a young boy who’d come up to him that day and told him the senator had been his hero, but not any more, after what a caller had told the boy over the phone. (Neither he nor we fully appreciated yet the devastating impact that smear campaign would have.)
    The publisher had come prepared for our internal debate. He had a six-inch stack of documents he had gathered to support his position. When he was done, and I was done, we went around the table. Two people had changed their minds. It was a tie. And in a tie in which the publisher is on one side and the editorial page editor on the other, the publisher’s side wins.
    Do I make my decision solely on the basis of a single meeting? Of course not. But some of my colleagues don’t pay the kind of attention to these candidates that I do day after day; that’s not what they’re paid to do. They come in with relatively fresh perspectives.
    And while it doesn’t happen often, I’ve been known to change my mind in these meetings. I’m wary of this, and reluctant to give it too much weight. But if I don’t give it some weight, what indeed is the point of the interview?
    We’re working with the campaigns to firm up the appointments, but I’m hopeful that we’ll have spoken with Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson by the end of the day Thursday. Once those are out of the way, we hope to see Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — and John Edwards, if he’s still in it after Tuesday.
    I don’t know exactly how it’s going to go, but I know this is going to be interesting.

Jake Knotts shocker!

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Mccainbus_135

Were you shocked to read on Friday that state Sen. Jake Knotts just endorsed John McCain?

Well, I certainly was — on account of the fact that I was under the impression that he had been openly and visibly supporting Sen. McCain for quite some time.

Unless we have an even more incredible case of "separated at birth," that’s him standing behind McCain, next to Adjutant Gen. Stan Spears, in these pictures I shot at a McCain event in Lexington on Sept. 17.

Maybe he was just there to be polite.

Mccainbus_169

What do you want this blog to be for the next three weeks?

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You’ll notice that today’s column — which I mistakenly backdated to yesterday morning rather than this morning, but have now corrected — was an elaboration on a blog post. Watch for more of that; over the next three weeks — between now and the Jan. 26 Democratic primary here — I plan to write more columns than usual, and as often as not, the blog will be the place where the column ideas first take shape.

I also plan to post more than usual. I’m shoving as many of my other duties aside as possible to concentrate on covering (in my own way, which will differ from what you see in news) and writing about the primaries, both for the blog and the paper. (You would have seen more last night and this morning here, but my personal life has been rather full — and joyful — the last 26 hours or so.) I will not, of course, be as free as a reporter would — I’ve got to jam in time for as many as five candidate interviews in preparation for endorsements on the 13th (Republican) and 20th (Democratic). But those interviews should produce a lot of fodder for this venue as well.

I want to make the most of all this effort, and make what I’m doing as useful as possible. I won’t just be doing this to be busy; I’ve got granddaughters to rock, you know. So I’d like y’all’s suggestions as to what you would like to see here. More video? More accessible format? More links to news and other opinions? More pictures of grandchildren (sorry, that just slipped out)? Think particularly in terms of what the editorial page editor of South Carolina’s largest newspaper might contribute that you wouldn’t get elsewhere; there’s little use in my duplicating stuff you can get already.

One thing I want to get done this weekend is replace the Stephen Colbert video that’s at the top of my main page (that guy’s campaign just went nowhere) with some sort of quick-start daily briefing. Maybe links to latest news, latest posts of interest, latest issue-oriented posts, or something like that. Something that you would find useful and that’s doable without my dropping everything else to spend my days coding.

Anyway, I’m looking for ideas, so please pitch them my way.

Pay attention to the man behind the curtain — please

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Baker

Howard Baker and me — Des Moines, Iowa, January 1980

By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain,” said the great and powerful Oz. But I say it’s the guy voting in the privacy of a booth that we should heed. It’s the Iowa caucuses we should ignore.
    As I write this [we’re talking Thursday afternoon, folks], I don’t know who won last night, and don’t care. I’ve got my eye on New Hampshire — and, of course, South Carolina.
    The Washington Post’s David Broder had it right in his Thursday column when he called the caucuses a “double-distortion mirror” on the campaign. The turnout is tiny, consisting only of people who are willing to attend a two-hour night meeting during the week and declare their preference in front of the world.
    Forget what happened last night if you were watching to see which candidate has the strongest support among voters of either party. All the caucuses measure is who can most effectively corral the most highly committed, vocal partisans at a given moment. It tests organization — and a very specialized form of it at that. Organizational skill is important — but it’s hardly everything. [Note this amendment today to this opinion.]
    I used to believe in the Iowa mystique, but I learned my lesson. As a reporter for a Tennessee paper in January 1980, I spent a few days following Sen. Howard Baker as he campaigned among the frozen chosen of Des Moines and Dubuque. Ronald Reagan had made the “fatal mistake” of not contesting Iowa. My deadline story on a GOP candidates’ debate began with the solemn pronouncement that while it was difficult to determine the winner, it was clear that Gov. Reagan was the loser, because he had not shown up.
    I really felt vindicated when George H.W. Bush emerged as the caucus winner. (Remember the “Big Mo”?) Needless to say, my perceived political I.Q. dropped precipitously over the succeeding weeks.
    I witnessed the partial unraveling of my thesis up close and personal at another set of caucuses — in Arkansas. At a congressional district caucus in a motel in Jonesboro, I saw what a subversion of the popular will a caucus could be.
    A lot of people in the room favored Mr. Bush after his Iowa win. If the participants (a tiny subset of Republicans in that district) had stepped immediately into voting booths upon arrival, he likely would have come in a weak first or a strong second.
    But the Reagan people and the Baker people had done a deal. They voted for each other’s delegates, giving Mr. Reagan a huge win, boosting Sen. Baker (whose candidacy was essentially over at this point) to second, and giving Mr. Bush — in a gesture that seemed consciously intended to add insult to injury — exactly one delegate.
    The head of the Baker team on the scene smiled slyly in response to my questions and said golly, he couldn’t help it if his people and the Reagan people just happened to like each other’s delegates, could he? It was the first time I’d ever met Don Sundquist, but he was obviously headed for bigger things (Congress, and governor of Tennessee, to be precise).
    But you couldn’t fool George Herbert Walker Bush. He showed up at the caucus for what had been intended as a triumphal appearance. Instead, he kept it jarringly short, then tried to dodge the press. We had to do an impressive bit of broken-field running through the chairs and tables of an empty restaurant to head him off. Trapped, he answered a couple of questions, but he practically had smoke coming out of his ears as he did so.
    He was ticked, and who could blame him? He knew exactly what had been done to him — and it was something that no one could have done in a primary.
    I was peeved myself eight years later, when — having moved back home to South Carolina — I was shut out of the state Democratic Party’s process of choosing delegates to its 1988 national convention.
You may recall 1988 as the year South Carolina vaulted to a national significance that rivaled the influence of Iowa and New Hampshire. South Carolina gave the furious loser I had last seen fulminating in Jonesboro the momentum he needed to win the nomination and the presidency.
    That year’s primary also gave a boost to the state’s Republican Party as then-Gov. Carroll Campbell — who had helped engineer the Bush victory — built it into a force that would dominate South Carolina politics.
    Things were different in the other party. I’m not saying the fact that Democrats chose the insular, insider-oriented caucus path over the GOP’s successful “y’all come” primary caused its slide from relevance. But it didn’t help.
    Personally, I hated the caucus approach because I value my right to vote, and the caucuses disenfranchised me: The editor supervising The State’s political writers could not attend a party caucus and publicly declare for a candidate.
    But there’s a larger point here than my own predicament: Even if they weren’t professionally disqualified from participating, few independent voters will declare themselves at a caucus when they have the option of voting anonymously in a primary.
    Whatever happened last night in Iowa, it can hardly be seen as the collective will of that state’s voters.
    But, you say, the caucuses last night do matter because in such an absurdly compressed nomination process, Iowa can give one candidate a critical image boost on the eve of New Hampshire, and prove a fatal stumbling block to another, with no time to recover.
    Exactly. Iowa shouldn’t matter, in that it does not provide a fair contest of any candidate’s true electoral appeal. But to the extent that it does matter, it constitutes a disservice to the republic.

Must we fight about evolution AGAIN?

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This morning I was in the men’s library (to use an old Knight Ridder Washington Bureau euphemism) perusing The New York Times. Turns out it was the NYT of Dec. 19, but under such circumstances beggars can’t be choosers.

Anyway, I ran across a piece about Mike Huckabee’s famous "floating white cross" TV commercial. We’ll set the cross controversy aside for the moment. What struck me was the Times‘ assessment of the potential downside of the ad:

While that may work in Iowa, the religiosity of the message may turn
off more-secular voters elsewhere, and remind them that Mr. Huckabee
has been dismissive of homosexuality and indicated that he does not
believe in evolution.

We’ll also, if you don’t mind, set aside the homosexuality thing. What got me going was the bit about how "he does not
believe in evolution."

What does that mean — "believe in evolution?" As an overriding credo — as opposed to, say, believing in God? If so, then put me in the disbeliever’s corner with Mr. Huckabee.

Or does it mean believing in evolution as a mechanism through by which organisms have developed into their present shapes? If so, yeah — I believe in evolution. But I can certainly understand why Mr. Huckabee has been dodgy on the issue, saying such things as "I believe God created the heavens and the Earth. I wasn’t there when he did it, so how he did it, I don’t know."

Or at least, I can understand why I would be dodgy about the issue, were I in his shoes. I would resist every effort to pin me down on one side or the other of what I see as a false choice: That between religion and science.

To me, this dichotomy is as bogus, as pointless and as unnecessary as the chasm that the MSM tell us exists between "liberal" and "conservative," "Democrat" and "Republican," or what have you. I’ll tell you a little secret about this universe: Very few things that are true fit into an either-or, yes-or-no, black-or-white model. At least as often as not, it’s "both-and" or "neither."

Trying to make a Southern Baptist preacher either offend secularists by asserting that the world was created in six days or dismay his co-religionists by saying that’s a metaphor is a lot like those wise guys asking Jesus to offend either his followers or Caesar with the trick question about taxes. I’ve gotten nothing against asking a guy to be clear; I do have a problem with a question that seems designed to make the questioned a bad guy either way.

In fact, in the interest of clarity, here’s what I believe:

  • Evolution seems to me exactly the sort of majestic, awe-inspiring way that God would have created us.  He’s no magician doing parlor tricks, as in Poof, here’s a man! or Zing! There’s a mountain; he’s the actual Master of Space and Time (and more; I just can’t explain it, being trapped as I am in space and time). He’s the only Guy I know who can complete a project that  takes billions of years. Therefore evolution has his handwriting all over it. It’s his M.O.
  • I believe in "natural selection," if by that you mean mutations that adapt an organism to his environment and enable him to
    survive to reproduce are the ones that prevail. The guy who can
    outrun the saber-toothed tiger is the one who gets all the grandkids.
  • I do not believe in "natural selection" if by that you mean "random chance." I don’t believe those  aforementioned mutations just happen. That offends me intellectually. So many adaptations seem so clever, so cool, so inspired, that there’s just gotta be somebody out there to congratulate for having come up with the idea. Yeah, 4.54 billion years gives random chance a lot of room to work with, but not enough to satisfy me. If you put an infinite number of monkeys in a room with a typewriter you do not get Shakespeare; you get an infinite amount of monkey poop smeared on a perfectly good sheet of paper.
  • I believe that, judging by this photograph, Charles Darwin may indeed be descended from an ape. Check out the brow on that guy!
  • I believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God, in that it describes better than any other book the development of a continuing relationship, a blossoming revelation, between Man and  God over a period of thousands of years.
  • I do not believe that Adam and Eve were actual individuals, living at the same time, whom you could photograph if you had a time machine, the way you could photograph Benazir Bhutto if you dialed that same machine back a couple of weeks (and had a plane ticket to Karachi). I read a lot, you see, and I’ve developed a knack for telling poetry from prose, hyperbole from understatement and the like. And reading Genesis, it’s pretty clear that this is an allegory that describes truths about our relationship to God, not a court stenographer’s version of what happened in a leafy garden in Mesopotamia one week long ago. Have you never noticed that novels often tell us more true things about how life is lived in the world than, say, nonfiction textbooks about geology or algebra do? There is great moral truth in Genesis, and that’s what we’re supposed to take away from it.
  • I do believe that some wise guy asked Jesus (who was probably known as "Yeshua" among friends) the aforementioned trick question about taxes. That has the ring of a very real situation, one that takes its meaning from the particular political situation in which a first-century rabbi would have found himself. It was clever, but not nearly as smart as his answer, and it’s just the sort of thing his friends would have remembered and told about him later. It also contains great moral truth, as does the story of the Garden of Eden.

Well, I could go on and on, but suffice it to say that I get offended when someone is questioned in a format that seems designed to make him choose sides between the "godless Darwinists" or the "Bible-thumping rubes."

Finally — and this is really where I was going with all this; the Huckabee stuff was just my way of warming up — do we really have to have another stupid, pointless argument over evolution in the classroom? This story I read over the holidays seems to indicate that we do. May God deliver us.

McCain with the WSJ editorial board

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Here’s an account of what John McCain had to say to the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal the day before he came here to announce the endorsements of all the brass:

    Mr.
McCain is 71. But the tired, sluggish, former front-runner you may have
read about was nowhere in evidence when the senator came to the
Journal’s offices yesterday. In his place was a combative
and–yes–straight-talking candidate with no qualms about rising to a
challenge or speaking his mind. In short, he looks once again like the
spry 63-year-old who nearly knocked off front-runner George W. Bush
eight years ago….

He said some of the same things he said here, but of course the interview was more wide-ranging, more like the session we had with him back in August.

And over in the horse-race department, it’s interesting that he tells folks up on Wall Street how important South Carolina is to his chances:

The
senator says he doesn’t worry too much about the electoral tactics, but
he does know what lies ahead. "We’ve got to win New Hampshire," he
says, or at least exceed expectations there. "And then I think we can
do well in South Carolina. In South Carolina we’ve got the base this
time. The Attorney General, the Speaker of the House, Lindsay Graham,
most of the base."

Whether
that’s true or not, Mr. McCain still trails by 15 points on average in
South Carolina. But assuming he can do well there, "then I think we’re
obviously very much in the game. What happens to Huckabee, what happens
to Rudy, what happens to Romney–all this stuff is in such flux now
that it’s very difficult to predict and so we’re not paying a lot of
attention, obviously." Still, he’s paying some attention, apparently.

It’s interesting how, whenever anyone takes a careful, dispassionate look at McCain, he looks good. But for the immigration issue, he’d still be the nominee apparent. There is actually a significant number of Republicans who would decide who should lead this country on the basis of that, rather than the broad range of critical issues, is amazing to professional observers from The Economist to the Journal to little ol’ me.

Of course, that’s just a bonus for the immigration hotheads, because they tend to be folks who don’t like professional observers any more than they like illegal Mexicans.

If McCain doesn’t make it, I’ll be able to do what he’s doing on the surge now — saying "I told you so." But I’ll get a lot less satisfaction out of it. Back when he stepped out front in an effort actually to solve the immigration problem rather than demagogue on it, I asked him why — trying to lead on that issue would only earn the enmity of those who find any practical, sensible approach to be anathema.

Of course, his answer was what it always is when he steps out of everybody else’s comfort zone on an issue — he saw it as the right thing to do.

Save this woman’s life! Vote for McCain

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Dropping by the Starbuck’s on Gervais after this morning’s McCain event, I found his national press secretary, Brooke Buchanan, standing outside smoking while other aides were inside picking up the senator’s joe. I had a rather stern chat with her about her nasty habit, and she promised to give it up as soon as Sen. McCain wins the nomination, a pledge I captured on video so she couldn’t wriggle out of it later.

So now it’s up to you, the voter. The fate of this lovely, vibrant young woman with her whole life before her (the NYT says she’s 26) is in your hands. To save her, you must vote for McCain in the Jan. 19 primary.

Doesn’t this just make the choice so much simpler?

The brass come out for McCain

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Mccainadm

This morning, I turned out for a campaign announcement by John McCain, and realized when I got to the State Museum that I should have dressed better — or at least shaved. He was there with four admirals, representative of the 110 admirals and generals who are endorsing his campaign.

It wasn’t just the brass; there were some impressive people from the ranks as well. Command Sergeant Major James "Boo" Alford, formerly of the U.S. Army Special Forces and veteran of Korea and Vietnam, was among them. That’s him pictured below with Tut Underwood, P.R. guy for the museum.

Here’s video from the event:

And here’s an excerpt from the release (which you can read in its entirety here):

Today over 100 retired admirals and generals endorsed John McCain for President of the United States at a press conference in Columbia, South Carolina. These distinguished leaders supporting John McCain come from all branches of the armed services and include former POWs, Medal of Honor recipients and former members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

John McCain was joined today in Columbia by five distinguished military veterans: Admiral Leighton "Snuffy" Smith, USN (Ret.); Vice Admiral Mike Bowman, USN (Ret.); Rear Admiral Tom Lynch, USN (Ret.); Rear Admiral Bob Shumaker, USN (Ret.); and Major General Stan Spears, USA, Adjutant General of South Carolina.

"This nation is at war and we’d better damn well understand that fact," said Admiral Leighton "Snuffy" Smith, USN (Ret.). "John McCain understands it, and he is the only candidate that has not wavered one bit in his position regarding the importance of victory in the war against Islamic extremism or in his commitment to the troops who are doing the fighting. He has consistently demonstrated the kind and style of leadership that we believe is essential in our next Commander in Chief. Our nation faces a growing array of serious foreign policy challenges. John McCain is the ONE candidate who, in our view, truly understands the strategic landscape and is fully prepared to deal decisively and effectively with those who wish to be our friends and, importantly, those who wish us harm."

RobertadamsThe event was held on the museum’s fourth floor. Sen. McCain and the admirals stood behind a twisted
steel beam from the World Trade Center — what you might call a way of focusing civilians’ minds on what’s important. (Inset, at right, you see Green Diamond opponent and McCain supporter Robert Adams and his kids by the beam.)

Anyway, when the event was over, I paused only to grab a quick coffee before going straightaway to get a nice short, regulation haircut. Next time, I’ll be ready.

Alford

Whoa! Didn’t Sorensen just GET here?

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People come and go so quickly here. Don’t know if you’ve seen this news….

    University of South Carolina President Andrew Sorensen plans to announce at 3 p.m. today that he intends to retire in the second half of next year.
    Sorensen took office in July 2002, following six years as president of the University of Alabama. His formal investiture as USC president took place Dec. 14, 2002.
    He will be 70 years old next July. He has set July 31 as his retirement date, according to board chairman Herbert Adams.

… but it strikes me that he just got here, and he’s started some good stuff, but it’s just gotten started. So how can he leave?

Quick thoughts about S.C. State

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When I learned that S.C. State’s trustees were coming back into session at 5:30 today, I had to cancel plans for a live editorial (that is, one for Friday’s paper), for fear that it would be outdated by events that could occur Who Knows When tonight. At this time of year, it becomes necessary to work ahead so we can make it through the holiday, so holding pages past usual deadlines militates against that. Besides, we try to be deliberative and include the full board in decisions, which constitutes another reason to avoid late-night, off-the-cuff, pontification. One hardly wants to be as precipitous and reckless as the S.C. State board now appears to be, does one?

But here are three main points that would have been included in that editorial, and are likely to appear in one at some future date:

  1. S.C. State University is a state-funded institution of post-secondary education, which is another way to say it is a public institution. The trustees, alumni, donors and others involved have no right and no business to run it as though it were a private club. The trustees, in particular, have a clear and compelling obligation to explain their actions in firing Dr. Hugine. The president is not their personal, private employee; he is employed by the taxpayers of this state.
  2. Once again, we are reminded of the need for a Board of Regents to run all of this state’s higher-ed institutions (and to close some of them), rather than having them run by autonomous respective boards of trustees.
  3. The steady erosion of public funding for public higher ed is probably a contributing factor in this tendency of institutional boards to misunderstand their fiduciary duty to all of the state’s people. When most funding comes from tuition and grants (even when the original sources for those funds are public), it can be easier for those in positions of immediate responsibility to fail to see their obligation to be accountable to the state.

A bit of perspective on our place in the world, by the numbers

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Energy Party consultant Samuel sent me this, which figures. Samuel is the guy who came up with the idea for the endowed chairs program, which bore impressive fruit yet again this week. He’s still the most enthusiastic cheerleader of that program, even after our governor replaced him on the panel that oversees it:

This video — really, sort of a powerpoint presentation, only on YouTube, is worth watching. There are some figures in it that I find suspect (I’m always that way with attempts to quantify the unknowable, which in this case applies to prediction about the future), but others that are essentially beyond reproach, and ought to make us think.

What they ought to make us think is this: So much of what we base the selection of our next president on — party affiliation, ideological purity, our respective preferences on various cultural attitudes — is wildly irrelevant to the challenges of the world in which this person will attempt to be the leader of the planet’s foremost nation. Foremost nation for now, that is. If we don’t start thinking a lot more pragmatically, it won’t be for long.