Category Archives: Speechifying

Romney vs. JFK

Almost 50 years ago another candidate from Massachusetts explained that he was an American running for President, not a Catholic running for President. Like him, I am an American running for President. I do not define my candidacy by my religion. A person should not be elected because of his faith nor should he be rejected because of his faith.

Mitt Romney said that today, in his much-hyped, high-stakes speech about … well, he said it was about "Faith in America," but of course it was about "Faith in Mitt Romney," and whether that would be a barrier to his election. Even if he hadn’t invited the comparison to the JFK speech, it would certainly be compared — particularly since it was offered under such similar circumstances, and for nearly identical reasons.

I’ve read and watched (well, sort of watched — more like listening while working) both speeches. Having done so, I wonder whether a fair comparison is possible. I find myself much more impressed by the Kennedy speech, but a great deal of that is a matter of style. Kennedy spoke with such unabashed authority and intellectual rigor, but then he led in a time when the alpha male, take-charge style of leadership was accepted and nobody apologized for it. He came across as Yes, I’m smart as hell; isn’t that what you want in a president? There’s also a slight undertone of being righteously ticked off at having to address the matter, combined with complete confidence in the rightness of what he’s saying.

By contrast, Romney’s delivery is blander, more tentative, less threatening, using tones that you might use in speaking to a class of schoolchildren (but then, I so often think today’s politicians sound like they’re speaking to a particularly slow group of third-graders). As he talks about religion, I’m reminded of how Mr. Rogers might have spoken had he been a televangelist. But this (aside from the hair) is not anything particular to Mr. Romney, I think, so much as it is what public life seems to demand today. He seems to be a little more ingratiating in his desire to be liked — again, in the modern mode.

Beyond that, the speeches in substance have much in common. Both express a fundamental belief in the separation of church and state. Both make historical references. But there are a couple of key differences. Romney feels compelled to "witness" in the evangelical manner to his personal belief in Jesus as the son of God and Savior:

There is one fundamental question about which I often am asked. What do I believe about Jesus Christ? I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind. My church’s beliefs about Christ may not all be the same as those of other faiths. Each religion has its own unique doctrines and history. These are not bases for criticism but rather a test of our tolerance. Religious tolerance would be a shallow principle indeed if it were reserved only for faiths with which we agree.

Kennedy in no way felt compelled to air his own faith in such specific terms.

This stands out in the Romney speech in particular in light of his assertion, immediately after he did that, that he doesn’t believe in doing such things: "There are some who would have a presidential
candidate describe and explain his church’s distinctive doctrines. To do
so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the
Constitution." Yes, I know what he’s thinking: He’s thinking of polygamy and other things from Mormon history. But if there is no religious test, why did he have to say what he did about Jesus? Because there was a higher priority for him than asserting the principles that Kennedy set out: Soothing the Christian right. He was explaining that he believes just what they believe; in other words, he was acting as an apologist for the orthodoxy of his faith. And within this political context, that struck me as unseemly.

Then there was the "multicultural" passage, in which he reached out and stroked everybody and told them that their religion was very fine, too:

And in every faith I’ve come to know, there are features I wish were in my own: I love the profound ceremony of the Catholic Mass, the approachability of God in the prayers of the Evangelicals, the tenderness of spirit among the Pentecostals, the confident independence of the Lutherans, the ancient traditions of the Jews, unchanged through the ages, and the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims. As I travel across the country and see our towns and cities, I’m always moved by the many houses of worship with their steeples, all pointing to heaven, reminding us of the source of life’s blessings.

Kennedy didn’t bother condescending thus to other people’s faith. As for his own church, he cited it and its teachings quite specifically and not in generic pieties, but he only did so insofar as it affirmed the bright line between its magisterial authority and secular power in America:

I ask you tonight to follow in that tradition, to judge me on the basis
of my record of 14 years in Congress, on my declared stands against an
ambassador to the Vatican, against unconstitutional aid to parochial
schools, and against any boycott of the public schools (which I have
attended myself)— instead of judging me on the basis of these pamphlets
and publications we all have seen that carefully select quotations out
of context from the statements of Catholic church leaders, usually in
other countries, frequently in other centuries, and always omitting, of
course, the statement of the American Bishops in 1948, which strongly
endorsed church-state separation, and which more nearly reflects the
views of almost every American Catholic.

Overall, for what he was trying to do and his political and cultural context, I suppose Romney did all right. But I think Lloyd Bentsen would probably say that he’s no Jack Kennedy.

Here’s the text of the Romney speech as delivered, and here’s the video.

Here’s the text of the Kennedy speech, and here’s that video.

2010 election update

2 Replies

Catching up on last week’s doings…

House Speaker Bobby Harrell was the keynote speaker at the Columbia Urban League‘s Equal Opportunity Day banquet last Thursday night at Seawell’s, as mentioned previously. How did he do? Well, by the abysmal standards of recent governors and would-be governors, I’d say he did a middlin’ job.

It was only the second time I’ve heard him give a set speech — last time was to my Rotary a while back — and he was better then. I suspect he read that one, and was therefore more confident in his material. This time, he trying doing the off-the-cuff thing, riffing on what had been done and said earlier in the evening, and while he didn’t say anything to embarrass himself, he came across as a little jumpy, a bit ill-at-ease in his bonhomie.

Mind you, he’d have to go some to beat the worst speech I ever heard delivered to that group, and I don’t think he was feeling that ambitious. The standard for sheer, mortifying awfulness, of course, was the infamous "Let’s Make a Deal" address delivered by Jim Hodges back in 1999. The few folks with the Urban League who got an advance look at it begged him throughout the dinner not to deliver it, but he went ahead. Here’s a link to our editorial on the subject (which I think I wrote, but it’s hard to remember).

But enough with the nostalgia. As I said, the Speaker’s speech wasn’t bad; it just wasn’t his best. He tried winging it — with impromptu comments about folks he saw in the audience — and if he gains any handlers between now and election time, they should probably revoke his winging-it privileges. One good thing about it, though — he did give my blog a plug.

And on the whole, he made friends there that night, and that’s the point of such speeches at this stage of the game, right?

Anyway, this prompts me to engage briefly in the parlor game of naming the likely gubernatorial candidates at this time. Remind me if I’m forgetting anybody. There’s…

GOP

Bobby himself. I don’t look for him to declare himself unless and until
some of these other possibilities bow out. Who would give up the real
power of being Speaker for the ceremonial honor of being governor if
it’s not a sure thing?

David Wilkins — The former speaker is said to be eying a triumphant march back below the 49th parallel.

Billy Wilkins — The distinguished jurist and brother of the ambassador to the Great White North is also being mentioned.

Gresham Barrett — The congressman has been known to make gubernatorial noises similar to those of Mr. Harrell.

Jim Ritchie — Best known for his forward-looking green buildings initiative and the immigration issue, this Upstater is the one state senator known to be considering a demotion.

DEMS

Joe Erwin — Little known outside of the party structure, this former chairman will have to live down his association with payday lending.

James Smith — The former House Democratic leader would be the one candidate able to claim war-hero status.

Inez Tenenbaum — The Democrats’ top proven vote-getter — who incidentally was one of the folks Mr. Harrell singled out to say nice things about from the podium last week, she’d probably have the best shot at the nomination if she wants it. She’d be pinning her general election chances on it NOT being a presidential election year, unlike her last outing.

Dying is easy; comedy’s hard

3 Replies

Boy, did I bomb today at Rotary! My face is still red, and I have a powerful urge (an instinct left over from early childhood, I believe) to lay my head down and pretend to take a nap, but in the interest of the no-holds-barred ethic of blogging, I come here to confess my failure to you, o my brothers (and sisters).

I agreed to do another year on the Health and Happiness committee of the Columbia Rotary. I did this because it is a form of "service" that does not require attending meetings. All you have to do is show up about once a quarter, step up in front of the largest civic organization in South Carolina (more than 300 members), and try to be funny.

This is especially difficult, because it has to be clean and wholesome — suitable for all audiences. The kind of stuff that may crack us up in an editorial board meeting, or in the State House lobby, won’t work. It has to be everyone-will-laugh-and-no-one-will-feel-bad humor, which is a tough destination.

The thing is, I’ve done this with success in the past — compared to today, wild success. I step down off the podium, and collect handshakes and grins all the way to the back of the room. This track record builds upon itself, because such positive feedback creates confidence, and confidence is essential to getting a big crowd of nice people to crack up over fairly bland fare. Well, I’ll be in the hole, confidence-wise, next time I get up in front of this crowd.

That confidence, I believe, was my undoing, because it led me to step boldly to the lectern with what I knew was sorry material, believing that I could sell it with my delivery, no matter how bad it was. And then, when I saw it wasn’t working, I just totally fell to pieces. In the world of comedy, there’s nothing worse than bad material, badly delivered.

How bad was the material? Well, if you demand it, I’ll send you the full routine as I had it written out before me. But believe me, you don’t want to suffer that much. Basically, it was one extended bad joke — which meant I had nothing to fall back on once it started going bad. Real high-wire stuff, but I was so cocky I thought I could carry it off.

The joke was, I know y’all are tired of all these people running for president (got a little applause on that), so I’m going to save you from choosing from all those people by running myself.

I had thought about being halfway serious and pushing either the Energy Party or the UnParty, but decided to be completely (and, I hoped, obviously) satirical, as follows:

I am seeking the nomination of the Birthday Party. Elect me, and every day will be just like your birthday. And that’s not just because after I finish raising taxes on you, all you’ll have left is your birthday suit…

Yes, it was that bad. In fact, that was probably the height of it. But as bad as it was, I still might have sold it, but I just wasn’t feeling right. I think I was just a tad over-caffeinated or something. (Or it might have been an attack of conscience — I was bothered a bit by the fact that the "humor" depending upon trashing the world of politics, and I feel like we media types have done too much to give public service a bad name. I had tried to brush this off by thinking, "They’ll all know it’s a joke," but I had qualms all the same.) Anyway, I had a very negative attitude from almost the first line, and the dead silence with which I was greeted shattered what ability I might have had to salvage it with a sterling delivery. I fell to pieces. I started just reading, rather than riffing, not looking people in the eye, and racing through it as fast as possible to get it over with. Once that happens, you’re dying a thousand deaths, and it gets worse with each second. Talk about your cold sweats.

Fortunately, this is a very polite crowd, so there were no spoiled vegetables flung at me. But the silence was just as bad. And it was all my fault. These are people who want to laugh, and will meet you more than halfway. When you bomb with these folks, you’ve really bombed.

When I got down, someone brushed past me and said — in order to have something nice to say — that he liked my column Sunday. Wow. Then Dr. Sorensen, who was our main speaker, set up something he was saying by mentioning my "Birthday Party," and adding only "As Forrest Gump would say, ‘That’s all I have to say about that.’"

Ow. Et tu, Andrew?

Listen for me on the radio

9 Replies

Over the next two days, I’ll be on three radio shows, starting with this one:

Hello, Brad. My name is Christian Bladt and I am the producer
for The Dennis Miller Show, which airs on 119 stations for Westwood One radio. I
wanted to extend an invitation to
appear on our show for a phone interview that
would last between 10 and 15 minutes. We do the show from 7am-10am Pacific /
10am-1pm Eastern, and as you would probably have imagined we would have you on
to discuss John Edwards, whom Dennis has spoken about on numerous occassions.
Ideally, we would love to have you on Thursday morning. Let me know if you would
be available.

I said yes, and I’ll be on at 11:15 a.m. Eastern Time Thursday. That one should be fun.

Then, at 5:30 on the same day, I’ll be on this one:

Brad-

My name is Shawn Stinson and I’m the executive producer with the Danny
Fontana Show in Charlotte, North Carolina. I’m writing to schedule an interview
with you to discuss your blog talking about why you see John Edwards as a big
phony.

We broadcast from 3 – 6 p.m., Monday through Friday and the interview will
last around 6 to 8 minutes.

I confess I’m not familiar with that one, but I seldom turn town public appearances, especially when I can phone them in.

Then, on Friday sometime after 9, I’ll be back with sidekick Andy Gobeil on S.C. ETV Radio, as compensation for having ruined his regimen, as he griped in this message:

Brad,

I’m very upset with you. You’re column -and the voluminous responses-
are keeping me from my run this afternoon (actually, that’s not a bad
idea…it’s too darn hot today).
Great piece…I think you touched on a concern many people have with Edwards.
I’d like to try to make some time for you Friday morning.
Hope you’re doing well.
-A

Hey, I fully intend to work out every day, and don’t, and you don’t see me going around blaming it on other people… But maybe I should blame Bush. It seems to work on everything else.

Anyway, all these shows want to talk about the Edwards column, which, if you’d asked me when I was writing it Sunday night, I would have told you in no uncertain terms would have been forgotten by now. It just wasn’t all that deep — just me explaining how I formed the perfectly subjective impression that this one guy is a phony. Well, as Dennis Miller once said, "There’s nothing wrong with being shallow as long as you’re insightful about it."

I got your “choice” right here

59 Replies

Somebody came up to me after last night’s "school choice" forum saying he’d like to get together and discuss the subject, perhaps over a lunch, from the Club for Growth perspective.

I did NOT hit him, and I’m very proud of that. In fact, he and I conducted a very civil chat, from the auditorium aisle out into the Richland Northeast High School parking lot, for almost another hour. We were joined by a nice lady from SCRG who had always wanted to meet me and ask a few questions.

So, that brings my tally to this in the last couple of weeks: Two-and-a-half hours with my bishop over dinner, with me talking almost the whole time (and aware each moment how rude that was on my part, as his guest); three hours and 20 minutes with three representatives from SCRG on Wednesday, and three hours last night.

All on the same subject: Vouchers and tax credits for private education. And how many hours have I spent in intense debate over substantive education reform ideas, such as funding parity, consolidating districts, greater leeway for principals and superintendents in hiring and firing teachers, merit pay for teachers, and the like?

None.

I am a microcosm. My wasted time represents the time and political energy that South Carolina has wasted on this useless debate over a very bad idea. There is so much we need to do about improving educational opportunity in South Carolina. But we’re not even talking about the real issues.

As for what was said (in vain) at the forum last night — well, it’s hard for me to take a lot of notes when I’m participating like that. Suffice to say that you’ve pretty much heard it all before. What I can do is share with you the notes from which I spoke. I learned at the last minute that I had to have a five-minute opening statement, so I wrote the following, pretty much stream-of-consciousness:

choice talk notes
2/22/07

What are we talking about here? Choice? I’m always suspicious of that word. In politics, it ends to be used to dress up the otherwise indefensible. I could elaborate on that, but that would probably make for more controversy than those who invited me were counting on.

What do you mean, school choice? Want to talk the merits and demerits of open enrollment? Fine. But it’s certainly not the most important thing to be talking about – much less sucking up all the political oxygen available for the discussion of education reform. I’d put something like revamping our whole system of taxing and spending in order to provide some parity of education opportunity between rural and suburban kids an awful lot higher on the list.

But we’re talking school “choice.”

Well, we’ve got choice, as proponents of vouchers and tax credits keep saying – for the affluent. Their point is that the same choices available to the wealthy should be made available to everyone else – with the government paying for it.

They don’t call it that. They say, “We’re just giving people back their own money.” They’re talking about the tax credits, which would only be fully available to the middle class, because they’re the only ones who pay enough in taxes to get it. But even if that didn’t leave out the poor, it is indefensible.

It’s not their money. It comes from the taxes they paid – mandated by a duly elected representative government – for the funding of the essential infrastructure of a civilized, secure society (the sort of society without which wealth and personal security are impossible to maintain). Like roads and public safety, public schools are an essential part of that infrastructure – in South Carolina, education is actually a mandated part of that infrastructure.

Now, to vouchers – that would clearly be an expenditure from the public purse, and a singularly irresponsible one. Critics of the public system often complain about throwing money at schools. Taking the money out of our accountability system and handing it to folks and saying spend this wherever it strikes you to spend it, without any controls to protect the taxpayers’ interest in this vital function for which the taxes were raised in the first place – now that’s throwing money.

Back to infrastructure: Say that we committed ourselves to providing a fully effective, comprehensive system of public transportation. We’ve done nothing of the kind, of course, but say we did. There would still be well-off people who would prefer to drive a Lexus or a Mercedes or a Hummer (assuming that government actually kept the roads up), and would have the means to do so. Should we then provide tax credits to folks who could only afford a Chevy to buy something pricier? Of course not. That would be crazy. So is this.

Unlike with public transit, we HAVE supposedly committed ourselves to providing education. We’ve just never followed through to the point that fulfills the promise – particularly in rural areas. To divert a single dime from the legitimate governmental purpose of funding public education – the only kind of education that can possibly be held accountable to taxpayers – is unconscionable, as long as we have such severely underfunded schools in our rural areas.

You’re not satisfied with the quality of public education we’re providing in those rural schools, or in some of our inner-city schools? Neither am I. So let’s fix them. We CAN fix them, because they belong to us. We can do whatever we have the political will to do with them.

Taking finite resources out of that system and throwing it at anybody who comes in and says they’ll start a private school in order to take that money makes no sense at all. And there’s no reason for us to do it.

Patterson on “Homeboy” Clyburn

8 Replies

In Washington and all over South Carolina, everybody is falling all over themselves so talk about what a big shot Jim Clyburn is, now that he’s the U.S. House majority whip.

But not Kay Patterson, who has a few home truths to share about his "Homeboy" Jim. He provides an excellent example of the quotation he cites from a prophet having no honor among his own. Of course, it’s all in fun…

This was at the Urban League‘s annual MLK Day breakfast, which is sponsored by the former BellSouth, and hosted this year at Brookland Baptist‘s new banquet and convention facility in West Columbia. It’s a very nice facility, although the lighting is sort of low for videographic purposes…

Hey! What’s with the racket? I’m tryin’ to TALK here!

4 Replies

What do you think of this? I’m supposed to speak to a group in Camden on Thursday at breakfast. You know what day Thursday is, don’t you? I’m told that the members of the club are quite aware of the significance of the date, since they are mostly somewhat senior to me.

Anyway, that’s not the weird thing. The weird thing is that the place where the group meets is called "Battleship Road." I am not making this up. I don’t know the name of the place yet, but if it turns out to be the "Arizona Grill" or some such, I’m going to ask for a last-minute change of venue.

Galivants Ferry III: Biden column

71 Replies

06stump_043 Biden hopes even ‘red states’ want ‘competent government’

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
THE AMERICAN people “have written off” the Bush administration, U.S. Sen. Joe Biden told a parking lot full of Democrats Monday at Galivants Ferry.
“Part of me says ‘good; they figured it out,’” he said. But “In a sense it’s a shame, because we’ve got George W. Bush as our president for the next two and a half years.”
One woman called out, “No, we don’t!”
There we have the two-party system, and all it’s done to America, in three words. I don’t know who it was, but I know the voice of a poster child when I hear it.
It’s obvious, probably even to partisans, that if the guy who’s going to be commander in chief for the next two and a half years is falling apart, it’s probably not a cause for celebration, seeing as how that could be somewhat detrimental to our troops who are laying it on the line overseas. So diehard partisans figure it’s best to deny the situation: No he’s NOT!
That way there’s no problem.
But there is a problem, and as Sen. Biden said, “It goes beyond right and wrong…. This administration is not competent.” You can’t just say he’s-wrong-and-we’re-right-so-let’s-applaud-his-failure. The cost of a failed presidency at this moment in our history is too great for us all.
Some of his speech I had heard — and agreed with — before, such as “History will judge George Bush harshly not for the mistakes he has made… but because of the opportunities that he has squandered.”
Those include the opportunity to pull the world together on Sept. 12, 2001, to “plan the demise of Islamic fundamentalism,” as FDR or JFK or “even Ronald Reagan” would have done. Or to ask us all to sacrifice and shake off “the grip of foreign oil oligarchs,” instead of giving us tax cuts. “Do you believe anyone in America would have refused?”
“Rich folks are every bit as patriotic as poor folks,” he said. “They got a tax cut they didn’t ask for.”
But a lot of what he said was new — he showed me his scribbled notes. And some of what was new, and most welcome, to me was decidedly not the usual fare for a partisan event.
“Did you think you’d ever live to see the day when we would be defined in terms of red and blue” states? We’re “not that way,” he insisted. He blamed Karl Rove for that false construct, but he also — in a gentler way — bemoaned the fact that “the Democratic Party is different from what I remember.”
There are Democrats who want to “make our base more angry so that more will turn out.”
“They may be right; that may be the way to win,” he admitted. But he’s not going that way.
“The country can be reunited.”
Later in the week, he confirmed by phone from Florida that he’s decided to pursue “a general-election strategy from the start.”
“I’m gonna be coming down a lot” to South Carolina, he said. He’s not predicting he could win here, but he’s convinced that to win the White House, a Democrat must “become credible in a dozen or more red states.” By “credible,” he means “45 percent of the vote or more.” He sees opportunities in Mississippi, Arkansas, Colorado, Ohio, Kentucky, Montana and others he rattled off too quickly.
There’s room for a candidate who believes in America in the 21st century and values doing the job right more than scoring partisan points, he suggested. Across the ideological spectrum, “Americans realize they want and are entitled to competent government.”
That the Biden message appeals to frustrated independents there can be no doubt. “He talked about sacrifice,” said Paul DeMarco, a Marion physician and thoughtful regular contributor to my blog, at the Monday night event. “I like it when politicians talk that way.” I wondered how many politicians he had heard talk that way since January 1961, but I kept quiet because he was on a roll. “I’m one of the people who got the tax cut,” he said. “And I didn’t really want it.”
It was a good October 2008 speech. Will Sen. Biden’s fellow Democrats let him get that far? I don’t know. But he got a warm welcome by the banks of the Pee Dee last week. It took him an hour after his speech to tear away from all the well-wishers.
Of course, these were South Carolina Democrats, and he was the guest of honor, and it was the sweetest weather I’ve yet seen at a Stump, and some of the Styrofoam cups in the hands of Inner Party members contained something that smelled a lot stronger than RC Cola, and I couldn’t head back to Columbia until I’d stood for a moment with hostess Russell Holliday doing nothing more active than frankly admiring the way the razor-cut sliver of moon rose over the piney bottomland in a sky so deep-ocean blue…
I’ve also been in Iowa in January. It’s different. We’ll see. 06stump_040

McClatchy execs say all the right things

5 Replies

I’ve got good news — for me. I think it’s good news for you and all readers of The State as well. CEO Gary Pruitt and two other top McClatchy executives visited the paper this afternoon, and they said all the right things.

I wasn’t taking notes, but here is the gist: McClatchy believes in hiring good people and leaving them alone to run their newspapers. This is great to hear because we’ve already got good people here, and Mcclatchy_001_2 there is no more important value in this business than local autonomy.

That’s the way Knight Ridder ran — or didn’t run — things when I joined it in 1985. That gradually became less so over the years, as the company was battered about by unrealistic expectations on Wall Street. It’s still a better newspaper company than many, just not as tremendous as it was.

I will say this for Tony Ridder and KR, though: They never broke their promise about preserving editorial independence of the papers. They started meddling here and there with most of the other executives — publishers, ad directors, etc. — but they left me alone. (And that’s what counts, right?)

The best part of the general employee meeting was when Mr. Pruitt asserted, strongly and eloquently, his own belief in editorial independence. I liked it so much that when he and the others met privately with the executive staff later, I asked him to say it again. He did, and I then sat back and shut up; I had no other questions. (I believe a videotape of the broader meeting exists. I intend to get the exact quotes, and hang onto them.)

I had been slightly worried because I had heard a rumor to the contrary (and I couldn’t check it out Mcclatchy_002 because, until the sale is final, we’re not supposed to have any contacts with McClatchy folks not pre-approved by KR, which still owns us). And indeed, once upon a time, when it was a smaller company, there was a certain amount of editorial coordination (I guess that’s what you’d call it) among the California papers in the group. I am reassured that that is not the case today, and apparently has not been corporate policy since the mid-90s, when Mr. Pruitt became the top guy.

While it might be counter-intuitive to people in other lines of work (based on the kinds of questions I get all the time), people who understand the newspaper business understand that it is a local business, and the quickest way to lose credibility is to have your editorial stances change according to the whim of a bunch of pezzonovantes off in some corporate office.

The new boss used an analogy that I’ve used a number of times in the past to explain the importance of editorial consistency: We are like the court system; we respect precedent. You might have a new publisher or a new editorial page editor once in a blue moon, but in making decisions, those folks and the others on a local editorial board should respect the vote of the paper itself as an ongoing, living entity — a quintessentially local entity that can’t be fully understood outside the community. As you might expect — but that made it no less good to hear — this philosophy was also endorsed by VP for News Howard Weaver (another of our visitors today, along with new operations VP Lynn Dickerson).

On a related note, I spoke to a lunch meeting of the West Wateree-Lugoff Rotary today. I Mcclatchy_005 had been asked "to come talk to our club about the recent developments with Knight Ridder and McClatchy newspapers." So that’s what I did. Here’s the text of my speech
— or rather, the notes from which I spoke. Although it’s written mostly in complete sentences, I quit reading it after the first few paragraphs — but stuck to the basic thrust.

I could have told those folks a lot more about the future of The State under McClatchy if they had asked me to speak tomorrow instead of today. In any case, the hopes I expressed in what I did say were borne out by what the McClatchy folks said this afternoon.

Of course, in the newspaper business, we have a saying: "If your mother says she loves you, check it out." So we have yet to see whether encouraging words are backed up by reality. We won’t know that until after the sale is final, which will be sometime in July or later. And truth be told, you can find bad news within McClatchy if you look hard. (But to me, the fact that the folks in charge in Minneapolis made one bad call just backs up what the honchos told us about local autonomy; McClatchy folks are apparently free to screw up — to a point, anyway).

I’m not normally a guy to say good things about any kind of corporate types. To put it another way, there is a reason why my boss made me move to the opposite end of the table from where Gary Pruitt was to sit before he came in for the senior staff meeting (to steal a line from a certain other blogger, I am not making this up).But for me, right at this moment, I’m feeling as good about the new company as I’m ever likely to feel about such a thing. It’s not as good as owning the paper myself, but it’s good.

It’s not just the thing about local autonomy; it’s the way they explained why they have such an approach. They showed that they get it. That is a fine and rare thing, so pardon me while I savor it.

Oh, one last thing: I neglected to ask the new jefe which was his favorite Ramone. Maybe next time.

Sell the furniture

3 Replies

I meant to send this out yesterday, but got too busy. Fridays are that way. I seldom get time to read Peggy Noonan’s pieces in the WSJ, but I managed to get a little over halfway with this one on Friday, and then finished it this morning.

I like the way she writes, because it transcends the partisanship, even though her own affiliation is not in doubt. I mean, the Jimmy Carter and Rev. Joseph Lowery comments were one of those things that come up every day which neatly splits the partisan hordes. On this one, Democrats cheer and Republicans fume. They know to do this automatically; they’re preprogrammed. No need for any marching orders to go out. It’s a neat system, because the partisans are able to go about truly believing that they’re thinking for themselves (HAR!).

Ms. Noonan does think for herself, and what is her reaction to the incident? She celebrates it, in a way that most people who are capable of independent thinking can join with her, and be warmed by the spirit that moves her to write these things. Sure, she criticizes and even gets snarky now and then. But there’s a thoughtfulness and a warmth moving through it all that helps you not only forgive, but enjoy those things.

Dig the way she gently criticizes the son of her ex-boss:

People sometimes marvel at the grace of George H.W.
Bush. He is a warm and gracious man, and he’s old enough to appreciate
the humor in everything. He’s old enough to appreciate life.
But it is also true that when you attack him or his son from the left
he doesn’t get mad because in his heart he kinda thinks you’re right.
Attack him from the right; you won’t be overwhelmed by his bonhomie
then.

President Bush was fine, his eloquence of the formal
kind. He needs to find the place between High Rhetoric and off-the-cuff
plainspeak. He always does one or the other. But there’s a place in
between, a place that’s not fancy and not common, that would serve him
well if he could find it.

And the way she both trashes and embraces the Clintons, here:

Bill Clinton was, as always, the master. Say what you will, he is the
only politician in America with the confidence to call Episcopalians
"the frozen chosen" and know everyone will laugh and take no offense.
Amid all the happy bombast he was the one who pointed at the casket and
said, "There’s a woman in there." He talked about Mrs. King in good
strong plain terms. Yes, he caused a quarter-second of awkwardness when
he said of the beautiful Coretta that even at age 75 she still had the
goods, but in moments of exuberance we all forget our own history.

And here:

If you don’t understand that Mrs. Clinton was
rehearsing her 2008 announcement speech, then you are a child and must
go home and have a nice cup of cocoa.

This is what is coming: I have had a blessed life.
And like so many people I could choose, after all these years, a life
of comfort. Watch it from the sidelines, tend to my own concerns, watch
the garden grow. But our nation calls out. And if we are to be
Americans we must meet the call. "Send me."

With Bill nodding beside her, his hands clasped
prayerfully in front of him, nodding and working that jaw muscle he
works when he wants you to notice, for just a second, how hard it is
sometimes for him to contain his admiration.

God I love them.

She groks the fullness of all, and takes it in with a love for life as it is, then shares it with us to help us see it the way she does.

I wish she were syndicated. If she were, I’d sell the office furniture to be able to afford to run her. But she’s not.

In the interest of fairness

11 Replies

OK, now that I’ve filed a post criticizing the governor’s rhetorical style (but not his substance, please note, Lee‘s non sequitur about my reviewing his speech in advance notwithstanding), let’s detail some of my own gaffes in the course of this day preceding the State of the State. (I’d go ahead and tell you something of the substance of the speech, but it’s embargoed.)

How many ways can one man screw up in one day? Let us count them. Or some of them — I’ll let myself off the hook on a few things:

— I was late for the annual pre-speech briefing for editorial page editors. Not my fault, but then you have enough such incidents that "aren’t your fault" and you develop a certain kind of reputation anyway. I have one of those reputations. In fact, my boss, the publisher, has mandated that I have a weekly session with our VP for human resources, one of the most organized people I have ever met, in an effort to straighten myself out. At our last meeting, my coach said my assignment for the next meeting would be to think about what I want to get out of these meetings. This caused me to make a note to myself not to spend the next meeting free-associating.

— Anyway, I comforted myself with the thoughts that the luncheon was set for 11:30, and no one would actually start eating that early, and in the past these things have featured 20 or so minutes of standing about with drinks (generally soft in recent years, despite the guest list) before getting down to business. Also, I recalled that at the first such meeting after his election, lunch had been buffet-style, which gave me a little more wiggle-room. I was wrong, as you’ll see in a moment.

— An aside: I should count myself lucky that the guard outside let me pull my disreputable ’89 Ranger through the gates at all. I’ve come to appreciate the mere fact of actually getting into the governor’s mansion ever since one evening in 2002, just before the election. I was at the time a member of the Columbia Urban League board. It was the night of the CUL’s biggest event of the year, and as a minor part of the festivities I was to be honored with the organization’s John H. Whiteman Award for "outstanding leadership" as a board member (sort of a nice going-away present, really, since I was about to cycle off the board). Gov. Hodges had agreed to hold a reception at his place before the banquet out at Seawell’s. The guards looked at my invitation, heard my name, and said I wasn’t on the list, so I couldn’t come in. I remonstrated, and they made a phone call, and told me I definitely was not to be let in, and that I could take it up with the governor’s office in the morning, if I were so inclined. Worse, they wouldn’t let Warren Bolton in, either, apparently because he was with me. Well, I was cool and mature about it. I decided we should stand just outside the gate, and give a straight answer to any arriving or departing guests who asked us why we were standing there. They all shook their heads in apparent disbelief. It didn’t stop them from going in, though, as I recall.

— Anyway, after I pulled into the grounds, another guy in a Smokey the Bear hat waved me into a space. I hopped out and headed in. He said, "Your license plate is expired." I said, "What?… Oh… yeah… I think that sticker’s at the house somewhere." He told me he didn’t mean anything bad by telling me: "I’m just trying to save you fifty bucks." OK, uh, thanks, I said as I kept going toward the front door, but then I slowed down as it occurred to me that it was an ethical violation on my part to accept such a discretionary reprieve when I was a guest of the governor. I was about to turn around when I remembered: These governor’s Protective Detail guys dress like Highway Patrolmen, but they’re not actually troopers, and don’t have powers to enforce highway laws anyway. That is, I don’t think they do. I went in. I was late enough.

— And even though I couldn’t have been more than 15 minutes late, I’m sure, they were
already well into the salad course — everyone seated at the formal
dining table — and in mid-conversation regarding the governor’s
agenda. The only good thing was that I slipped in quietly enough that
the governor didn’t notice me until I had asked my first question, well
into the main course.

— Of course, my question turned into one of those mini-debates with the governor, which went on an embarrassingly long time before I could make myself stop arguing with his answers. Meanwhile, everyone else sat quietly waiting to ask their questions, and probably thinking about what an ass I was making of myself at their expense. I don’t know why I do that, but I do it everywhere I go. I can’t just make like a reporter, write down the answer, and shut up. But I should. Sometimes I should.

— I almost left the digital recorder I had turned on and slid down the table, but the governor called out, "Somebody leave a recorder out here?" Mine. Thanks. At a previous such lunch during the Hodges administration (before I was barred from the grounds), I had left my recorder. I never saw it again. This one was its replacement.

— To make up for my performance inside, I decided to make friends with the governor’s dogs on the way out. One consented to be petted; the other stood off and regarded me with healthy suspicion. Warren and Cindi Scoppe, who had come in a separate car in order to be on time, waited for me. I finally realized they were waiting because we needed to have a quick huddle to decide what, if anything, we wanted to say about the speech for the next day (to avoid interfering with the production of the news pages, our pages need to be done well before time for the speech), and they knew I was planning to go to Harry Lightsey’s funeral at 2:30. I told them I had time to meet them back at the office and discuss it there before heading for Trinity Cathedral. Then I stepped over to my truck, and realized I didn’t have my keys.

— Warren and Cindi waited while I barged back into the mansion without knocking (the faux pas just keep piling up, don’t they?) and searched around under the dining room table while the staff was clearing it. They said they hadn’t found anything. I guessed the answer to the mystery on my way back to the truck. Yep, my keys were in the ignition. Don’t even ask why I had thought it necessary to lock my truck
inside these well guarded grounds, because I don’t have an answer.

— Fortunately, Warren and Cindi were still waiting — they know me well — and we had the opportunity to fully discuss the next day’s editorial while I rode in Warren’s back seat back to the office. I had explained the situation to the guard at the gate, and he said it would be OK to get the truck later. I knew there was an extra set of keys in my desk.

— What I also knew, but forgot until we got all the way back to the office, was that I also carry yet another spare key to the truck’s doors in my wallet, for just such emergencies. Sure enough, as I found standing stupidly back in my office and rummaging around through credit cards, there it was. In my pocket all the time. Great. No one would have ever had to know, if I had just remembered that.

— So I had to ask my boss, the publisher,…

Oops, just realized that if I don’t run home NOW, I’m going to miss the State of the State itself. I have to watch to make sure he actually delivers the speech we’re commenting on tomorrow. Have to finish this tale of serial humiliation later…

Exploring new depths

14 Replies

It was kind of scary to read this quote from Jim Merrill in this morning’s paper, regarding the governor‘s State of the State speech tonight:

"It could maybe be a little less erudite and a little more grass-roots."

Less erudite? How is that possible?

I mean, the governor’s a smart guy and all that, but he’s a pretty lame public speaker. Well, at least he’s pretty lame when he has a speech to read. His past SOS efforts have been kind of painful to listen to.

The odd thing is, he’s fine talking to a group without notes. He tends to repeat the same Sanford_budget_1 catchphrases a lot, but then, what politician doesn’t? The odd thing is how badly he stumbles through a speech he has prepared in advance.

Even odder than that is that this is one of the few things he has in common with predecessor David Beasley. Mr. Beasley was fine getting up in front of a crowd and connecting with them, but his speeches were unbearable. But for a different reason. Mr. Beasley always seemed phony in prepared addresses, as though he had over-rehearsed. Gov. Sanford seems like he’s never seen these words before in his life, and isn’t at all comfortable with them.

Well, we’ll see how it goes tonight.

Oh, you want to know the substance, instead of just the style? Well, I don’t know much about that, although I suppose I’ll know more after a briefing over at the governor’s place in — well, in about 40 minutes. I guess I’d better stop and move that copy for tomorrow’s page…

bradwarthen.com

All The News That Gives You Fits