Category Archives: Strategic

Puttin’ on the heat

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We’re hearing a lot from groups that are using the wide-open presidential race to try to twistRamsburgh_2 candidates’ arms (gently, but insistently) to talk seriously about the issues that have been most assiduously avoided in this
country: health care, education, and the like.

Today, it was a group pushing the issue dearest to our hearts here at Energy Party
HQ.

Visiting more or less under the auspices of Conservation Voters of South Carolina were the following:

Their message about the need for a rational, comprehensive energy policy is a most timely one, in three ways:

  1. Voters across the spectrum are ready to demand real answers from candidates.
  2. You can’t win the War on Terror without it.
  3. It’s necessary to save the planet.

Read more about their movement here.

NayakParticularly with Democrats Obama and Dodd starting to say some things that make sense (although Dodd’s "Corporate Carbon Tax" is a ideological copout — everybody needs to pay more for wasting energy, or you accomplish nothing), while Biden
long has done so, and McCain has been trying to do something for some time in the Senate, and even Bush (who’s he) getting on board, I’ll be listening with some anxiety to hear what some of these other folks who actually could be president have to say tonight.Timberlake

The conservation groups are not putting their collective imprimatur on anybody’s plan, much less endorsing candidates. They’re just insisting that candidates have a plan so we can have a real discussion for once, extending beyond ideological platitudes.

Here’s what I think: We’ll have to do every practical thing that any of theseChamblee candidates are talking about, and then a whole lot more, just to begin to get real and have the necessary effect to win the war, save the planet and other important stuff.

And yes, we should start with the plan Tom Friedman and other pundits keep pushing: A big ol’ honking tax to bring the price of oil up permanently. Most of the rest of a get-real energy plan would flow from, or at least be encouraged by, that essential move. Here’s a taste of his latest on that subject:

Everyone has an energy plan for 2020. But we need one for 2007 that will start to have an impact by 2008 — and there is only one way to do that: get the price of oil right. Either tax gasoline by another 50 cents to $1 a gallon at the pump, or set a $50 floor price per barrel of oil sold in America. Once energy entrepreneurs know they will never again be undercut by cheap oil, you’ll see an explosion of innovation in alternatives.

For the rest of the column, you’ll have to read the paper tomorrow.

Energy Video III: Bill Barnet

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Bill Barnet is the former business leader who helped start the education accountability movement before he ran a write-in campaign at the very last minute for mayor of Spartanburg … and won.

He’s one of those guys who doesn’t need his job, and in fact doesn’t need politics at all. He does it to try to make the world a better place. That’s why he came to see us with Joe Riley to talk about global warming.

Energy Video II: Joe Riley

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This video has been available to you since this morning, but you may have missed the link from this column, since there was no graphic link.

So I’m drawing a little more attention to it.

The Charleston mayor came to see us with Spartanburg Mayor Bill Barnet to talk about the global warming issue from a municipal leadership perspective.

Energy Video I: Lindsey Graham

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This is the first of three videos I’m highlighting from recent interviews with politicians who would be excellent candidates for the Energy Party, talking about our No. 1 issue.

This interview was largely, but not entirely, the basis for my column of Feb. 25.

Best line:

"The French — 80 percent of the power needs of France are met by the nuclear power industry. They are the model. I never thought I’d hear myself say this. They are the model; we should follow the French when it comes to nuclear power."

Pontificating Putin piece

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Graham_032

Pontificating Putin pushes Graham

toward energy platform

“Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations — military force…. Primarily the United States has overstepped its national borders, and in every area…. They bring us to the abyss ….”
                    — Vladimir Putin

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
VLADIMIR PUTIN is pushing Lindsey Graham toward the Energy Party, and I feel fine.
    Sure, that anti-American diatribe at the Munich security conference on Feb. 10 was the biggest step back toward Cold War since Nikita K. took off his shoe, but I like to look at the bright side.
Putin_munich
    “The biggest threat to everybody in the room wasn’t al-Qaida, or Chechen rebels, it was the United States,” our senior senator said in an interview last week, marveling at the neo-Stalinist’s international demagoguery. “It was a blatant pitch at trying to divide Europe and the United States, because he sees us as weak.”
    “Which takes us to energy independence,” I said.
    “Which takes us to energy independence,” he nodded.
    I like the way this guy thinks.
    As regular readers know, I recently called for the creation of a new political party, one that would get serious about our greatest strategic vulnerability, while saving the world from global warming at the same time.
    Sen. Graham’s still a Republican, but we might have to nominate him anyway.
    He had thought plenty about this stuff before Munich, but that one intemperate speech (followed immediately by an Iranian dissertation on democracy that seemed to come from some other planet) jacked up his resolve. “Whatever doubts I had about us being energy-independent were put away,” he said. “I don’t think he ever made that speech unless he sensed weakness.”
    So how do we get strong?
    He says the United States government must use economic incentives to encourage hybrid technology, biofuels, hydrogen, nuclear power — pretty much any viable alternatives that we can embrace that neither strengthen the worst bad guys in the world nor pump out more greenhouse-promoting carbon dioxide.
    He would promote the transition to hybrid cars — and eventually hydrogen — on three levels:

  1. Research. Grants for improving the technology.
  2. Wholesale. Tax incentives to encourage manufacturers to make the new vehicles.
  3. Retail. More tax incentives for individuals to buy them.

    He makes sure to point out that South Carolina can play a pivotal role in all this. We’re well positioned to help develop the technologies for a hydrogen economy. Meanwhile, we can grow and process switchgrass and other plants for biofuels.
    He sees “a whole economy in energy-efficiency,” one that South Carolina could help lead.
Beyond that home-team advantage is the bigger picture: “It is in our long-term national security interest to get people thinking about alternatives.”
    It’s not just cars. We need to make more efficient, cleaner refrigerators, computers and every other item that uses electricity.
    As for that, “Most of our power comes from coal-fired plants.” We need to “give nuclear power the same tax advantage we give solar and wind.” Like those usual green suspects, nukes don’t emit CO2, either.
    Expensive, yes, but he’s convinced that the economic cost of global warming is far greater than the 1 percent of gross domestic product that a full transition away from emitters would cost.
    So how do we pay for it?
    Well, he said, we can’t do it by “cutting waste” in the discretionary budget — what most people think of when they say “federal spending.” There’s just not enough there.
    You have to go where the  real money is: entitlements. “Change the structure of our debt,” he said. “Give people like me and Joe Lieberman and others some breathing room on Social Security,” room to do the kinds of politically unpalatable things that are necessary to save it without pulling us further into the fiscal black hole.
    Can we produce our way out? No. “Yes, there’s gas and oil, but it’s a drop in the bucket,” he said, no matter how deep you drill in the ANWR or offshore. “They’re sort of just one more drink” for the hopeless alcoholic.
    What about increasing the gas tax, to promote conservation and raise money for incentives? No. “Gas taxes will put some businesses at a competitive disadvantage with China and India.” Besides, “it’s not progressive.” It hurts the poor.
    “The next president of the United States should declare a war of energy independence,” he said, evoking the usual metaphors such as the Manhattan and Apollo projects. We had such a war once against a king. Now we should “declare a war of independence from the dictators and sheiks.”
    The next president? So he’s given up on this one? He didn’t say that, but I will. He said President Bush has addressed the issue, but only in a “piecemeal” fashion.
    As for Lindsey Graham, he says he’s doing what he can, such as working “with McCain and Lieberman to strengthen the conservation part of their global warming bill.”
    But ultimately, he’s just one of 100. “The real megaphone is for the person who’s going to be president.” Does that mean John McCain, his preferred candidate for the GOP nomination? Yes, partly: “He’s led on global warming like no other Republican.” But “I’m urging all the candidates.”
    OK, so I didn’t start this discussion. Mr. Putin did. But that doesn’t mean the Energy Party’s not going to grab the opportunity thus created to strengthen national security and save the Earth.
Neither should you. So go ahead. Jump right in.

Graham_002

Iraq resolutions: Three views

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Still catching up on notes and video from the Monday and Tuesday meetings with Sens. DeMint and Graham. Here’s what Sen. DeMint had to say about the anti-Surge nonbinding referendum:

And here’s what Sen. Graham had to say:

For an interesting, other-than-the-usual contrast, here’s what fellow Republican Bob Inglis had to say over on the House floor explaining why he voted FOR the resolution. Either follow the link to the whole thing, or be satisfied with this excerpt:

The President has ordered an increase in troop strength in Iraq.
He thinks a surge in troops will give breathing room for the development of a path to progress.
I’m concerned that a surge will have the opposite effect—that it will give breathing room to the death squads, that our service men and women will be caught in the crossfire and that the surge will end right where it began.
In fact, that’s what happened in Baghdad in August and September of 2006.
I’m concerned that a surge sends a conflicting message. On the one hand we’re telling them, “You don’t have forever; you’ve got to make progress in solving these political questions; you’ve got to stop legging up on your enemies; it’s your country.”
By surging, we may be saying, “Not to worry, we’re increasing the size of that American security umbrella; there’s no urgency; we’re here to stay; in fact, more of us are coming.”
I want all Iraqi factions and leaders of factions to worry.
I want them to see us reaching for the button that would bring that umbrella down.
I want them to imagine the click of that button and the feel of the wind from the descending umbrella.
The resolution before us isn’t written the way I would have written it, but it’s the resolution before us.
Resolutions are the way that Congress discharges its constitutional responsibility to communicate with the President.
This resolution says, “We disapprove of the surge.”

You decide which one you think is right. I’ve got a column to write for Sunday, on another subject.

Doing what we CAN do…

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Note that today’s op-ed page
deals entirely with issues of central concern to the Energy Party. (MikeOped_page
was out yesterday, so I picked the content and put that page together myself. Therefore it reflects my obsessions.) It also provides an opportunity to say again what our platform is, and what is isn’t.

Someone who doesn’t think long enough about it might say the two pieces are at odds. Jim Ritchie sets forth his excellent set of initiatives for our state to do its part in promoting energy-efficient buildings, hybrid cars, and such, and Robert Samuelson says beware of politicians announcing grand plans to save the Earth from global warming.

But they actually support each other, and together sort of explain why I take the approach I do in proposing this party.

True, proposals such as "cap and trade" that politicians are likely to get behind (because they see the parade marching that way) will not stop or reverse global warming. Even if you do all the "politically unrealistic" things I propose, the trend will likely merely slow down, and surely not reverse in our lifetimes. Of course, that’s all the reason to do everything we can (and NOT just what we want to do, or think we can afford) to put the brakes on the trend. Otherwise, things get worse, and at a faster rate.

But as Sen. Ritchie makes clear, what we CAN do is grab hold of our energy destiny. What he proposes won’t completely solve the problem, but it’s a damned good start from the perspective of what state government can do. And the broad coalition he’s got behind it is extremely encouraging — not only in terms of Energy issues, but others where we’ve been stymied by partisanship and ideology.

Pragmatism is on the march. Let’s all join. Except, let’s get at the head of the parade and start a new, double-time pace. Otherwise, the battle will be over before this rapidly coalescing army gets to the field — and we all will have lost.

Out with the UnParty, in with ENERGY!

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Nobody’s proposing a comprehensive energy plan, so I guess we’ll have to do it ourselves.

I’ve had this idea percolating lately that I wanted to develop fully before tossing it out. Maybe do a column on it first, roll it out on a Sunday with lots of fanfare. But hey, the situation calls for action, not hoopla.

So here’s the idea (we’ll refine is as we go along):

Reinvent the Unparty as the Energy Party. Not the Green Party — it’s not just about the environment — but a serious energy party. Go all the way, get real, make like we actually know there’s a war going on. Do the stuff that neither the GOP nor the Dems would ever do:

  • Jack up CAFE standards.
  • Put about a $2 per gallon tax on gasoline.
  • Spend the tax proceeds on a Manhattan project on clean, alternative energy (hydrogen, bio, wind, whatever), and on public transportation (especially light rail).
  • Reduce speed limits everywhere to no more than 55 mph. (This must be credited to Samuel Tenenbaum, who bent my ear about it yet again this morning, and apparently does the same to every presidential wannabe who calls his house looking for him or Inez).
  • ENFORCE the damn’ speed limits. If states say they can’t, give them the resources out of the gas tax money.
  • Build nuclear power plants as fast as we can (safely, of course).
  • Either ban SUVs for everyone who can’t demonstrate a life-or-death need to drive one, or tax them at 100 percent of the sales price and throw THAT into the win-the-war kitty.
  • If we go the tax route on SUVs (rather than banning), launch a huge propaganda campaign along the lines of "Loose Lips Sink Ships" (for instance, "Hummers are Osama’s Panzer Corps"). Make wasting fuel the next smoking or DUI — absolutely socially unacceptable.
  • Because it will be a few years before we can be completely free of petrol, drill the ever-lovin’ slush out of the ANWR, explore for oil off Myrtle Beach, and build refinery capacity — all for a limited time of 20 years. Put the limit in the Constitution.

You get the idea. Respect no one’s sacred cows, left or right; go all-out to win the war and, in the long run, save the Earth. Pretty soon, tyrants from Tehran to Moscow to Caracas will be tumbling down without our saying so much as "boo" to them, and global warming will slow within our lifetimes.

THEN, once we’ve done all that, we can start insisting upon some common sense on entitlements, and health care. Change the name to the Pragmatic Party then. Whatever works, whatever is practical, whatever solves our problems — no matter whose ox gets gored. Leave the ideologues in the dust, while we solve the problems.

How’s that sound? Can any of y’all get behind that?

Iraq “Surge” Column

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It’s a sound plan,
but Bush can’t sell it

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
WE HAVE in place much of what we need to succeed in Iraq. We have a new, comprehensive plan that corrects many of the mistakes of the past three years. We have new leadership on the ground, in the form of a general who has shown that he knows what it takes to win this war.
    We just need a better salesman.
    If you saw and heard President Bush’s address to the nation live Wednesday night, and listened with an open mind, you probably still went away saying, “Huh? How is this going to improve the situation?”
    I’m glad that wasn’t my first impression. I missed the live broadcast. And before watching a replay of the Bush speech, I called U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham.
    George W. Bush has two, and only two, virtues as our commander in chief: He understands, on some fundamental, gut level, how important it is that we succeed. And he won’t give up. Those are fine, but they’re not enough.
    We need someone in charge who is able to communicate to the nation why we need to be in Iraq, how we need to proceed, and why that course of action can work. He needs to persuade fair-minded people to believe him, and to follow.
    Of course, he has to have a good plan to start with. If I had heard him tell about it first, I would doubt that he does.
    In fairness, it helps if you start by asking the right question. The president was trying to talk to a nation that polls tell him is asking, “Why on Earth are you sending more troops?” I asked Sen. Graham, “Why on Earth do you think 20,000 will be enough?”
    Sen. Graham and his friend and ally Sen. John McCain have maintained that we need more troops in Iraq. The senator from Arizona has insisted that it needed to be a lot more. But Sen. Graham had indicated he was pleased with this smaller “surge.” Why? Because it’s a part, and not the largest part, of a comprehensive new approach that stresses diplomatic, economic and political initiatives.
    The military mission is specific: Put in enough troops to provide security in Baghdad and increase our muscle over on the Syrian border, in Anbar province.
    Here are some critical points related by Sen. Graham that the president failed to get across:

  • Tremendous pressure is being placed on the Shia-dominated Iraqi government to ensure Sunni leaders that their people will get their cut of the country’s oil wealth. Assure them that their tribe will not starve out in the cold, and you remove ordinary Sunni Arab insurgents’ motivation to kill Shiites. That removes the cloak of legitimacy from the Shiite militias, which their communities will no longer see as essential to their protection. Extremists — Shia and Sunni — become isolated. Neighbors start dropping a dime on IED factories. We destroy those, and we largely eliminate the cause of 80 percent of current U.S. casualties.
  • None of the above can happen without the capital being secure. How would such a small surge make that happen? It would double the U.S. combat capability in the capital, a force that would be multiplied by embedding the U.S. troops in the Iraqi units that will have the job of actually kicking down doors and cleaning up militant neighborhoods (one idea taken from the Iraq Study Group). As the president did mention, those neighborhoods will no longer be “off limits”; the Maliki government can no longer protect the Sadr militia.
  • The brigade sent to Anbar would have interdiction as a large part of its mission. Amazingly, we have never shut down the terrorist superhighway flowing out of Syria; this would address that.
  • The pivotal role of the new U.S. commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus. Sen. Graham describes the plan not as what President Bush wants to do, but what Gen. Petraeus wants to do. He doesn’t say Congress needs to listen to the president. He says “Listen to this new general; give him a chance to make the case.”

    Who is David Petraeus? He’s a West Point graduate with a Ph.D. from Princeton. He’s the former commander of the 101st Airborne Division. Under his command, the 101st was described by the author of Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq as the one Army outfit that was doing it right — providing security in its area, and winning hearts and minds. The general himself is the author of the Army’s new manual on counterinsurgency, which applies practical tactics that work.
    The president didn’t do an awful job in his speech. He explained how things went wrong, emphasizing the critical bombing of the Golden Mosque. He mentioned increased diplomatic efforts, the fact that we need to hold as well as clear dangerous areas, and that troops will now go wherever they need to go to get the job done. He let us know that even if things go perfectly, there will be more casualties.
    But a wartime president who has lost the people’s trust to the degree that he has needed to go a lot farther, and the president did not. He failed to draw a clear, bright line between his past failure and a future in which we have a realistic expectation of success.
    Why the president didn’t even mention the name “Petraeus,” explaining what a departure he was from the discredited Rumsfeld approach, is beyond me.
    After talking to Sen. Graham, I feel a lot better about our future in Iraq. I’m still not positive that six brigades is enough, but I now have sound reasons to believe we’re finally on a better track.
    I’ve put a recording of that interview on my blog. I urge you to go listen to it — and don’t miss the senator’s column on the facing page.

For that, and observations on last week’s inaugural activities, go to http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/.

Graham phone interview

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This is a test. We’re going to see just how big a wonk you are.

I have, to the best of my ability, given you full access to the audio of a phone interview I conducted with Lindsey Graham on Thursday morning. I was restricted by certain challenges. The interview is 28 minutes long, and I have no sound file compression software. I DO have video software that compresses things as a matter of course in saving them. So I put the audio in a video file, and added some recent still photographs from the wire, just to see if I could.

The only way I knew how to give you access to the audio without you having to download the whole gargantuan file was to stream it from YouTube. Trouble is, YouTube won’t take files longer than 5 minutes, no matter how they’re compressed.

So here you go — it’s in seven parts, and the audio and photos aren’t nearly as nice as they were before I compressed them. But you can still hear it. I recommend that you give it a try, because it’s pretty interesting.

The background for the interview: I was seeking input before we decided what we would say in Friday’s editorial. As it happens, the interview only had an indirect — although significant — impact on the editorial, since the person who wrote it was not involved in the interview. All he had was what I had briefly told him about it. In other words, my impressions of Graham’s views had an influence on the forming of consensus that led to our conclusions, but you won’t find much trace of it in the paper. That’s the way it is with most of the things that go into editorials — the factors are too many for all to be mentioned.

But I thought it was particularly interesting and helpful, so I’m working on a followup column based on the interview. Yeah, doing it this way is pretty weird and awkward, but bear with me. I’m just exploring new ways to make this blog useful and worth the time, both yours and mine.

Please do your bit for the blog by doing two things:

  1. Listen to the interview, or as much of it as you have time for.
  2. Then comment to let me know whether it worked, and whether you found it helpful. Or to say whatever else you want.

Thanks.

Anyway, that’s Part I up at the top of the post. Here’s Parts II-VII:






Why do you think YOU’RE here?

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Iraqstudygroup2

At first, one is inclined to read this paragraph of the letter from the Iraq Study Group co-chairs and nod enthusiastically with a few "amens" thrown in, for contained within it is a sermon that our nation badly needs to heed:

What we recommend in this report demands a tremendous amount of political will and cooperation by the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government. It demands skillful implementation. It demands unity of effort by government agencies. And its success depends on the unity of the American people in a time of political polarization. Americans can and must enjoy the right of robust debate within a democracy. Yet U.S. foreign policy is doomed to failure — as is any course of action in Iraq — if it is not supported by a broad, sustained consensus. The aim of our report is to move our country toward such a consensus.

But then my less-impressionable, more-critical side kicks in, and I have to say:

Hey, if we had:

  • a tremendous amount of political will and cooperation by the executive
    and legislative branches of the U.S. government;
  • skillful
    implementation;
  • unity of effort by government agencies;
  • unity among the American people instead of
    political polarization; and
  • a broad, sustained consensus.

We wouldn’t need y’all to be making suggestions.

The reason everybody has overhyped the ISG report for the last couple of weeks, acting like its suggestions were going to be brought down from the mountain on stone tablets, is that we don’t HAVE any of those things.

If our country weren’t so polarized, and if our elected officials were working together — challenging each other at every step, but with the ultimate goal of the good of the nation ahead of all other considerations — the Iraq Study Group would never have been formed in the first place.

Washington’s Iraq situation

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Hadley

Is a stable, functioning democracy
still an option — in America?

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
THE IRAQ SITUATION has become so chaotic, such a tangled knot of irreconcilable competing factions and contradictory indications that it’s almost impossible even to know what’s really going on, much less determine what ought to happen next.
    The great moment of optimism following historic elections has faded. It’s bad enough to tempt even the most stalwart advocate of democracy to want to declare the capital city a lost cause and withdraw immediately.
    But we can’t, because we’re not talking about Baghdad, but about Washington.
    In that strife-torn city by the Potomac, it’s gotten hard to tell who wants to do what, much less what will or should happen next, or when. Confused? Well, that means you’re starting to get it.
    Look at just one development of the past week.
    On Wednesday — the eve of President Bush’s meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki — the lead story in The New York Times was headlined, “Bush Adviser’s Memo Cites Doubts about Iraqi Leader.”
    “His intentions seem good when he talks with Americans,” National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley wrote of Mr. Maliki, “But the reality on the streets of Baghdad suggests Maliki is either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action.”
    In other words, our boy either can’t deliver or won’t. Bad either way. But, insisted the “administration official” who gave the five-page memo to a Times reporter despite its being “classified secret,” the administration “retains confidence in the Iraqi leader.”
    The very fact that the memo was released the way it was and when it was (weeks after it was drafted) suggests just how difficult it will be to chart a new course for Iraq, even while everybody from newly elected Democrats to administration officials to friends of the president’s daddy are trying like crazy to find one.
    Read about the memo, and the following thoughts are likely to occur in quick succession:
    Oh, there goes The New York Times again, undermining the nation’s ability to act effectively in a time of war by revealing critical secrets at critical moments. No, wait — this looks like an authorized, carefully spun leak. So the administration deliberately put it out there just as the president is about to meet with this guy to tell him he’s doing a heckuva job.
    Little wonder Mr. Maliki canceled the first of his scheduled sessions with the president. He has no more confidence in our friendship than we do in his.
    Obviously, the administration doesn’t know what to do next. But it’s hardly alone. Nobody else seems to know either (except the folks in the “pull-out-now” wing, whom you can watch get increasingly furious over the coming weeks as they realize that the Democrats who won the election aren’t that irresponsible).
    The incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee doesn’t know, although he insisted to the Columbia Rotary Club last week that he’s the one guy who does know.
Joe Biden told of confidently laying down the law to Mr. Bush:
    “Mr. President… if the Lord Almighty came down in the middle of the table here in the RooseveltPhoto_112706_001
Room, and looked you in the eye and said, ‘Mr. President, every single jihadi, every single member of al Qaida has been wiped off the face of the earth,’ Mr. President, you’d still have a full-blown war. A full-blown war. In Iraq. And it’s a civil war, Mr. President. And all the king’s horses and all the king’s men will not be able to…” etc.
    But most of what he had to say about Iraq was stuff we already knew: The factions must find a way to work together and trust each other (or at least check each other, via a loose federal system), we won’t solve it through military force alone, and so forth.
    He wants to start drawing down U.S. troops sometime soon, but he sets no deadlines. Why? He understands the stakes too well.
    Back to the Times: A news analysis on Friday concluded that “the idea of a rapid American troop withdrawal is fast receding as a viable option” — certainly within the administration, but also among some key Democrats.
    More importantly, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group that so many who want out have pinned their hopes on apparently will avoid timetables as well. I say “apparently” because the group hasn’t released its report yet — all that authoritative prattling you’ve been hearing has been based on leaks.
    So what do we do from here? As Sen. Biden told the Rotarians, when it comes to Iraq, “We’re gonna have to choose to hang together, or we’re all going to hang separately.”
    The factions in Washington seem to find it as hard to work together as do those in Iraq — even without all that literal bad blood. To be sure, there is a common drift — among Democrats and on the study group — toward a vague plan that talks about redeployment, but sets no timetable.
    That’s hardly a firm consensus on a clear course. One thing is clear, though: As various factors — the study group’s report, the administration’s reassessment, the convening of a Democratic Congress — converge in the coming weeks, we have to come up with something that we can agree upon, and that works.
    President Bush will have to listen to people he doesn’t want to listen to, and then those people are going to have to unite behind him — as distasteful as that will be for them — as everyone works to implement a course that won’t entirely please anybody.
    Sound impossible? Perhaps so. But either those things happen, or we might as well kiss this whole risky nation-building enterprise goodbye.
    And once again, I’m not talking about Iraq. I mean this shaky republican experiment called the United States of America.

Never give up column

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Flagsiraq

We can’t cut and run from
our public schools (or Iraq, either)

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
THE CRITICS SEE themselves as realists, and can’t imagine why those of us who believe we must continue to slog on refuse to see things as they are.
    The whole thing is futile, they say, and it would be madness to keep sacrificing billions of dollars, much less all those fine young people, on our stubborn hubris.
    Don’t we know that “those people” will never embrace the opportunity we’ve sacrificed so much in order to give them? Chalk it up to DNA, or simply growing up in horrific poverty and having never known any other way. Either way, we’re wasting our time.
Karenpost
    Look at the generations — the centuries — of culture and tragic history that we’re presuming to overturn.
    It would be better, they say, to begin a phased withdrawal.
    The more sensible among us over in the “never say die” camp — those of us who believe we would be sacrificing our society’s future to cut and run — agree that mistakes were made. But rather than put it in such passive, Reaganesque terms, we know whom to blame. We are appalled at the “stay the course” fanatics who dig in their heels against new tactics.
    We want new approaches — but in the pursuit of success, not surrender. The odds are long, we know. Progress is slow, and sometimes — such as in recent weeks — it doesn’t look like progress at all. We see how it could look to some as though our best efforts have led to nothing but ruined lives and wasted money.
    To keep going takes determination, resolve, and a practically Churchillian refusal to give up.
    Of course, we’re talking about public education in South Carolina. Oh, you thought this was about the war in Iraq? Fine, because it is. I see both struggles in the same terms:

It’s not optional. South Carolina has no choice but to provide the opportunity for a good education to all of its young people. We know we can do education well; just look at the public schools in our affluent suburbs. More relevantly, look at how successful Richland 2 is at educating even the disadvantaged. We must duplicate that kind of success throughout the state, particularly in the most stubborn pockets of resistance — the poor, rural areas.
    Invading Iraq was optional. We once had the choice of other ways and other places to insert the lever of change in the Mideast (our strategic objective; 9/11 taught us that our old strategy of promoting stability in the region was suicidal). But we didn’t, and now the choices are success, or handing a titanic victory to Islamist terrorists, tribalists and totalitarian thugs. Success is going to be extremely difficult to achieve at this point, but failure is unthinkable.
    The I-95 corridor is South Carolina’s Sunni Triangle. We have to figure out how to succeed there, or we fail.

If we don’t do it, no one will. No one’s going to help in Iraq; that much has been made quite clear over the last three years. Certainly not the feckless Europeans. Even the Brits are just barely hanging in there with us, thanks to the courage and vision of Tony Blair. The only other entities with a motivation to stabilize any portion of Iraq are people we would not want to see doing so — Iran’s mullahs, or the Ba’athists in both Iraq and Syria.
    Universal education can only be achieved by pooling our resources as a society and doing it, inSoldieriraq
spite of the odds and the cost. The fantasy that the private sector would create wonderful schools in communities that can’t even attract a McDonald’s is dangerously delusional. The amazing thing is that this approach is espoused by people who insist they believe in markets, when market forces are precisely why those areas have fallen so far behind. The state has to do the job — the market lacks the motive.
    The appointment of a new secretary of defense may not get the job done, but it’s a very encouraging sign. So is the election of a state superintendent of education committed to real reform.

We can win, but it’s going to take a long, long time. We’re talking about a generational (at least) struggle here, both in Iraq and S.C. public schools. Anyone who expects us to either win quickly or pull out simply doesn’t understand either the odds or the consequences of failure.

We can’t quit. South Carolina has too many problems — we are at the bottom of too many rankings — to give up on educating our people so that they can attract, get and hold good jobs.
    In this profoundly dangerous post-Cold War world, history’s most powerful and essential republic cannot be weakened by another Vietnam. After three years of horrific mistakes, President Bush has now done two things worthy of praise: He dumped Donald Rumsfeld, and he went to Vietnam (finally) and drew this distinction between the two conflicts: “We’ll succeed,” he said, “unless we quit.” Iraq isn’t Vietnam, but there’s a sure-fire way to change that fact: Give up.
    We could pull out of Vietnam in the middle of the Cold War, and the Russians still knew we had all those nukes pointed at them. So the world didn’t fall apart, even though our nation’s ability to affect world events atrophied for many years.
    Today, too many forces of chaos, from al-Qaida to totalitarians with nukes, are poised to fill any vacuum we leave behind.
    So we can’t quit — either here or over there.

Rexpost

Robert Gates column

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Gates1

The return of the professional

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
“AMID TAWDRINESS, he stands for honor, duty and decency,” another author once wrote of John le Carre’s fictional hero George Smiley.
    George was the master Cold Warrior brought back in from retirement to save British intelligence from the liars, self-dealers, ideologues, social climbers and traitors who had turned it inside out. He did so quietly, humbly and competently. Then he went his way, with little gratitude from the system.
    With Robert Gates’ nomination to replace Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, old George seemsGates3
to have come back in from the cold yet again, although in different form.
    Mr. Gates is a Smileyesque professional. He was the only Director of Central Intelligence ever to have come up through the ranks. He had spent two decades in the Agency, from 1969 through 1989, with a several-year hiatus at the National Security Council. He received the National Security Medal, the Presidential Citizens Medal, the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal (twice) and the Distinguished Intelligence Medal (three times).
    I trust professionals, particularly those who have devoted themselves to national service. Not in every case, of course — there are idiots and scoundrels in every walk of life — but if all other things are equal, give me the pro from Dover over someone’s golf buddy every time.
    Perhaps that’s why I sometimes lower my standards from the le Carre level to enjoy a Tom Clancy novel. Jack Ryan moves in a world peopled by competent, heroically dedicated public servants. Most wear uniforms — soldiers, sailors, Marines, cops — but others are costumed in the conservative suits of the FBI, CIA or Secret Service. The ones you have to watch out for are the politicians; they always have agendas that have little to do with protecting the country or the rule of law.
Rumsfeld
    This has a ring of truth to me. I grew up in the Navy and have spent my adult life dealing with a broad variety of people from cops to lawyers to FBI agents to politicians to private business types. I know a lot of fine politicos and private-sector executives, but as a percentage, I’ll more quickly trust the honor of public-service professionals.
    Of course, they often don’t trust me — at least not at first — and I don’t blame them. The press spends too much time with publicans and sinners, and absorbs too many of their values. As a group, for instance, we tend to love it when a special prosecutor is appointed. That means fireworks, and fireworks are news.
    Call me a heretic, but I’ve always wondered why we don’t just let the professional investigators do their jobs. Do we really think the FBI — not the political appointees at the top, but the career agents who do the work — can’t investigate corruption? Sure, a politician can try to get such a civil servant fired or transferred to garbage detail, but such overt efforts to subvert the system tend to get noticed, a la Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre.”
    Mr. Gates has had his own run-ins with politicians and special counsel. He withdrew from consideration to become Ronald Reagan’s CIA director in 1987 because he had been senior enough for the Iran-Contra affair to have cast its shadow over him. He was under formal investigation in that connection when he was nominated again under George H.W. Bush. No one ever pinned any wrongdoing on him, and he was confirmed by the Senate.
    This time, the Democrats who are likely to line the gauntlet he must again run to confirmationGates2
were generally supportive of his nomination. Of course, look at the act he’d be following. Mr. Gates is described as a soft-spoken, yet tough-minded, “pragmatist and realist,” an antithesis to the civilian ideologues who have been running the war.
    In Thursday’s news reports, the Gates nomination was treated as another sign of “the ascendancy of the team that served the president’s father.” There’s truth — and reassurance, for pragmatists — in that. He has for the past several months served as one of the “Wise Men” reviewing and critiquing the conduct of the Iraq War, along with former Secretary of State James Baker. That makes him particularly, if not uniquely, well prepared to run the war more successfully.
    Of course, he’s not a Defense professional. But the Pentagon might be an exception to my general preference. In that particular case, the real professionals — the uniformed leaders, the warriors —spend their careers trying to stay out of the Pentagon. I worry about the ones who do otherwise. Beyond that, it’s probably best that Defense not be headed by a general or admiral, to preserve the principle of civilian oversight. But it would be nice if they had a boss who would listen to them.
    Given those conditions, who would be better than a pragmatic national security professional who possesses mastery of the entire spectrum of intelligence gathering and analysis, and has been studying in depth what has gone wrong in Iraq? He just needs to help the president pick a direction. The generals and admirals will know how to get the job done from that point.
    They’re professionals, too.

Rummy

Instead, we get THIS insanity

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I had my previous post fresh in my mind when I read about this pandering insanity. For those of you too lazy to follow links, here’s the gist:

WASHINGTON, April 25 — President Bush announced a series of short-term steps on Tuesday intended to ease the rise in energy prices, including a suspension of Bushoilgovernment purchases to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a relaxation of environmental rules for the formulation of gasoline and investigations into possible price gouging and price fixing.

This is as bad as when Al Gore got Bill Clinton to loosen up reserves to help him get elected in 2000.

I say "as bad as" because I can’t quite decide which is worse: For a president at war in the Mideast to do this, or for a guy who pretends to care about the environment and sensible energy policy to do it in peacetime. Each action has its own loathsome qualities.

Rationing? Even better

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Gas1"Look!" wrote my colleague Mike Fitts in an e-mail yesterday. "– an idea even less popular than your huge gas tax hike!"

"And even better, in my book," I wrote back.

He was referring to this letter on today’s page:

After reading Mike Fitts’ excellent column, (“U.S. helping to keep
oil prices marching upward,” Friday) on the woeful consequences, both
economic and diplomatic, of rising oil prices and of the inevitable oil
shortages to come, I’d like to put another option on the table: oil
rationing, which could bring a variety of benefits.

Many lament the fact that the only ones called upon to sacrifice in
this time of war are those on the front lines (and their families).
Rationing gas would call on everyone to sacrifice, just as during World
War II, when we all had ration cards, not only for oil but for many
other of life’s necessities such as meat, clothing and tires.

Fitts tells us that demand for fuel keeps going up, despite the
steadily rising price, which means leaving it to the market to control
supply and demand isn’t working. So perhaps only the government can
bring this control.

Fitts also points out that since our country consumes 25 percent of
the world’s oil, we can’t lecture other countries on the need to
conserve. But we can lead by example.

Rationing could give us some short-term breathing space as we labor
to find alternatives for the long haul. Yes, it is a political hot
potato, but isn’t it time to at least bring it to the table for
discussion?

HARRIET KEYSERLING
Beaufort

Mike was also referring to my enthusiasm for the idea floated by such disparate voices as Charles Krauthammer, Tom Friedman and Jim Hoagland, advocating a huge increase in the federal gas tax to take the already uncomfortably high gasoline pump prices high enough to depress demand. This would in turn create an oversupply, driving down prices. But (at least in the variant I like), you’d keep the tax rate up and use it additional for such sensible things as reducing the deficit, paying for a Manhattan/Apollo-style project to find and develop viable alternatives to petroleum, and pay for other aspects of our underfunded war — you know, like, put enough troops into Iraq and Afghanistan to get the job done. And note that I call military operations "other aspects" of the war. Reducing our energy dependence and taming deficits are as important to our strategic position as our ability to project force.

Oh, yes: Krauthammer would use the revenue to cut some other tax. But he has to say that; he’s a neocon.

Former Rep. Keyserling’s idea is even better in one respect — everyone would share the pain. With a high tax, the rich would keep on driving Hummers, and the poor would have a lot of trouble getting to work. The main benefit would occur among the middle class, who would make the choice of driving less and, when they bought a car, buying a much more fuel-efficient one. With rationing, everyone would be limited in their consumption. And it would be a more overt, deliberate way of saying, "We’re all in this together, and we’re doing something about it together," rather than letting the market pressure of high prices sort things out.

But then, it wouldn’t produce the revenue. So I qualify my flippant remark to Mike: The higher tax still might be better.

Rummy column

199 Replies

A generals’ revolt may be ugly,
but who else has the credibility?
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
SO YOU WANT to impeach President Bush?
    Well, for the first time, I can see one way that ditching him might be helpful, and not hugely destructive, to a nation at war:
    It would put Dick Cheney in charge, and he might have what it takes to fire Donald Rumsfeld.
    Sure, they are old comrades and longtime Bush family retainers, and the family’s loyalty fetish has mutated in this generation to the point that it is valued above the good of the nation. But they are not Bushes by blood, and Mr. Cheney would as soon shoot a pal in the face as look at him.
    OK, yes, I’m being facetious — about the veep and about impeachment. But serious and likely solutions are scarce right now.
    The secretary of defense must go. He should have gone two years ago (as this editorial board said at the time). He went into Iraq with no realistic idea of how to secure the country after the inevitable collapse of the Iraqi army, and hasn’t learned a lesson yet.
    Our troops adapt constantly to their adversary’s changing tactics. But Mr. Rumsfeld is too smartRumsfeldhubris to learn anything. Just ask him; he’ll tell you. If he doesn’t say it out loud, he’ll say it with the set of his stony jaw, the swagger of his shoulders even standing still, the contempt in his aquiline eyes.
    You want to talk hubris? Robert McNamara had an inferiority complex next to this guy.
    His attitude has always alienated at least half the nation, and pretty much all of our allies. His decisions, his actions and his inactions have alienated many others, including those (like me) who believe completely in our nation’s mission in Iraq, and are sick of watching him screw it up.
    His abstract notions of the proper size and shape of the military do not yield to battlefield realities — or to anything else. Sure, he’s right about some things, such as the wisdom of leveraging our exponential advantage in technology and the expansion of Special Forces and other light, flexible elements. But if only he were one-tenth as flexible as a Navy SEAL, or an Army Ranger, or a typical Marine.
    But light and high-tech isn’t a slice of the pizza to him; it’s the whole pie. Special ops, precision-guided weapons and air superiority are critically important. But so is securing the country after the battle — sealing potentially hostile (i.e., Syrian) borders, guarding ammo dumps, placing MPs at every important crossroads and on and on (your know, all those low-tech tasks we performed so well across Europe in 1944-45).
    This administration went into office promising not to engage in any nation-building, and although that policy ostensibly changed after 9/11, “Rummy” still acts as though he aims to keep the promise. That Iraq has come as far as it has is a testament to the dedication of American troops, and the courage of ordinary Iraqis. (Ironic, isn’t it? In Iraq, civilians risk their very lives for democracy; in America, it’s only our heartbreakingly few young people who serve in uniform. The rest of us get tax cuts and whine about fuel prices that are still lower than in most of the world.)
    But isn’t this just more of the ranting from “the anti-war left” that Charles Krauthammer was decrying the other day? He appropriately highlighted the fact that anti-war types who never before trusted anyone wearing stars are suddenly greeting the dissent of six retired generals as wisdom from on high.
    Well, you got me, Charles.
    Except that I have never been “anti-war” by any conventional political application of the term. (I’m ticked that the military isn’t big enough to credibly threaten Iran or protect Darfur.)
    Except that we endorsed George Bush twice. (Although I’m still appalled that the major parties didn’t offer us a better choice.)
    Except that I embrace the outlook of real conservatives (such as Lindsey Graham and John McCain, who had to force this administration to remember how the good guys are supposed to treat prisoners).
    And so forth.
    Look, I’m not any happier than Mr. Krauthammer to see six men who have recently worn the uniform speak against civilian leadership. But in an environment in which civilian criticism is dismissed as coming from the “other side,” ex-military officers may be the only ones with the neutrality to lift us out of the partisan mire. They are credible because they have shunned politics.
    Still, speaking up has to feel to them like breaking the code. It all makes for an unseemly spectacle — their broken silence, the media rush to ask other generals what they think, and the Rumsfeld defenders’ rush to point out commanders who support the official line. Generals shouldn’t have had to do this. But we needed someone with standing to do it.
    You say you like Rummy? Well, early in this war, I enjoyed him, too. I liked his unapologetic, we’re-gonna-do-what-it-takes demeanor. I even took guilty pleasure in the “old Europe” crack, even though I could see it was strategically harmful.
    But over time, it got to where it just wasn’t cute anymore. I didn’t see pride in country; I just saw pride. He’s got to go.

Grownups column

35 Replies

Reprinting lousy drawings
just doesn’t make good sense
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
I WAS SORT of disappointed at Kathleen Parker’s take on the whole Danish cartoon/Islamic riots thing (see facing page) — not because I felt strongly about it one way or the other, but because it seemed so unlike her.
    When I received the column from her syndicate, it was only the second expression of that particular sentiment I had seen since this craziness started (I’ve seen others since). The first cameCartoons4 from sometime radio host Michael Graham. That did not surprise me; it was just like him.
    But I’ve had the opportunity in the past to speak with Kathleen about the philosophy that underlies her writing. On each occasion, I have appreciated (and identified with) the fact that although she is commonly labeled “conservative,” in fact that she does not think of herself as liberal or conservative, Democratic or Republican. She describes her outlook as simply a matter of “being a grownup.” It’s my belief that her writing is generally consistent with that, which is why I like to read her.
    That’s why I was disappointed to see her saying, essentially, that we editors should republish these cartoons because we can, because we are free and (by implication) because “they” don’t want us to. Or, to put it another way, to prove we are not “sensitive.”
    That hardly seems like the grown-up response. It’s more like the eternal cry of the adolescent.
    I choose not to republish those lousy cartoons. And they are lousy, by the way — typically European, most are by U.S. standards not even fully developed cartoons. They are lame illustrations, the kind a page designer might drop into a page just to break up the gray text.
Robert0212_1    When I run cartoons on this issue, they’re going to be good ones with a point, such as the seven we’ve run in the past week from our own Robert Ariail and others.
    While I defend the right of those Danes to publish what they wanted, their decision to undertake the project was childish. Seriously, what grownup goes out of his way to mock anyone’s religion? And what did it accomplish? It put the rest of the West in the position of having to defend an immature editorial decision in the face of the even more infantile reaction of the kinds of lunatics who are all too common in Islamic circles. Personally, I’d rather defend something nobler than that.
    I mean, if they wanted to decry the fact that Europeans were wusses about Islamist madness and show they weren’t going to be a part of that, why not criticize Islamist actions, rather than mocking the religion? There’s plenty to say within that arena — things worth saying.
    And there would be nothing “fine” about cartoons mocking the Holocaust. As for “Piss Christ” and the like, my own personal reaction is that such “art” provides a good argument for reviving the Inquisition. (Maybe we can manage that now that we papists have taken over the Supreme Court.)
    Anyway, I choose not to publish the lousy drawings. I take the grown-up perspective: I am free to publish them, but I’m even freer than that, which means I am free not to publish them. I do not feelCartoons3_2 constrained by any need to prove I’m man enough to cock a snook at a bunch of pathetic idiots running around screaming in foreign cities. Nor do I feel the need to be “sensitive.” I do feel a need to be pragmatic and strategic, as someone who deeply wants my country to prevail in this war on terror.
    That’s why I have written in the past that while people in the United States who loudly protest the war in Iraq have every right to do so, they need to be grown-up enough to recognize the consequences: They encourage terrorists and Baathists in Iraq to keep killing Americans (and Iraqis), because our enemies assume (with reason) that if they inflict just a few more casualties, we will cave. Protesters have the right to express themselves, but in the real world of cause and effect, they are encouraging the enemy.
    It’s also why we said the president should have ditched Donald rumsfeld
after Abu Ghraib, even if one can’t draw a direct line of responsibility to him. Only a gesture such as that would have shown the world — and the people of Iraq, our proteges in the project of democracy — how seriously we take these things that happened on his watch. Showing that we stand firmly behind the ideals we espouse is far more important strategically than Rummy keeping his job. In fact, if he were replaced by someone who believed in sending over enough troops to get the job done to start with, we’d probably be better off.
    (All of this follows the same reasoning we use when adults tell their teenage daughters not to go out dressed like that. Girls may see doing so as their right, but grownups know that, the world being unfair, exercising that “right” would make them more likely to draw the attention of evil men who would do them harm.)
    The unifying principle in all these cases (except the parenthetical)? I want us to win the war.
    Am I saying newspapers in the U.S. shouldn’t publish the cartoons because we don’t want to offend a bunch of idiots in the Arab street? No. I’m saying I see no sensible reason to do so.
    Not to cast aspersions, but those people over there are nuts. They’ve been nuts for as long as I Cartoons5_1can remember. One could provide all sorts of excuses for them if one were inclined to be “sensitive” — they are traumatized by alienation, by poverty, by propaganda, by an inferiority complex at their once-proud culture becoming subordinate to the West in so many ways — but hey, nuts is nuts. There’s absolutely no excuse for reacting violently to a few stupid drawings. But republishing them just to show we can is no way to lead them to sanity.
    If you actually haven’t seen them, and want to, you can easily find them on the Web. If you do, I predict you’ll be sorry that you wasted the time.

Judicial independence column

38 Replies

America must uphold judicial
independence at home, too
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
WHAT DO Viktor Yushchenko, Saddam Hussein, Clement Haynsworth and Samuel Alito all have in common?
    Judicial independence.
    That is to say, all have been at the center of events that illustrate the importance of that criticalUkraine2 element, which anchors our republic in the rule of law.
    This is what was on South Carolina Chief Justice Jean Toal’s mind when she spoke to the Columbia Rotary on Monday.
    She started off with last year’s Ukrainian election, which ultimately led to Mr. Yushchenko’s election as president — but not until the bully boys behind Viktor Yanukovych had tried everything from election fraud to assassination by poison to keep the people’s choice from power.
    What saved the day? Well, the “Orange Revolution” in the streets had a lot to do with it, as did international pressure from the United States and others. But ultimately, there would not have been a happy ending for democracy if the Ukrainian supreme court Ukraine1had not stepped in — after the central election committee had refused to hear fraud complaints — and ordered a second runoff election, declaring the results of the crooked first one invalid.
    “How did the Ukraine Supreme Court have the courage and the tools to conduct this important judicial review?” Chief Justice Toal asked. “Many credit the… strong decision for the rule of law to their training by a team of American judges and lawyers sent on an outreach mission to newly emerging democracies to school their judges in the art of creating and operating an independent court system.”
    It is commonly understood that “America is exporting Democracy in the form of free elections” all over the world, to Afghanistan and Iraq certainly, but also less visibly to Bosnia, Saudia Arabia, and so on, she said. But just as importantly, we are “also exporting the idea of the importance of a stable court system.”
    Saddam Hussein knows that, and so do his most violent supporters. That’s why Baathists assassinated a judge involved in charging the former (and would-be future) dictator. It’s also why Saddam has done so much to challenge the viability of the court trying him, from theatrics in the courtroom to refusal to show up.
    The old order in Iraq knows that an independent judiciary that enjoys broad public confidence isSaddam_trial yet another nail in their coffin.
    The chief justice’s remarks remind me of something Sen. Lindsey Graham told me recently. While others measure progress toward success in terms of Iraqi army battalions and police forces trained and effective, he has thought in terms of a functioning cadre of judges who value law over the will of men. That’s one reason he thinks of American disengagement in terms of years rather than the months that political expedience would dictate.
    As Ms. Toal put it, America must be “a beacon to the world,” shining a light on “what living by the rule of law can contribute to the liberty of all.”
    But for the judiciary to be effective, it must enjoy public acceptance — which is not at all the same as “agreement.”
    That’s why she worries about the intersection of politics and judicial selection in Washington.
She tries to stay hopeful, and has seen recent signs that things can go well, even inside the Beltway. She said it will “be interesting to see whether (the nomination of) Alito follows the same positive process” as that of Chief Justice John Roberts.
    “One can only pray for the republic that that is the way it proceeds.” Mr. Roberts was eminently qualified, and was treated accordingly. Ms. Toal said she doesn’t know all there is to know about Mr. Alito, but “what I do know suggests that he is in the cream of the cream,” she said in a Thursday interview.
    But she worries that Senate Democrats, frustrated that they found no chinks in Mr. Roberts’ armor, are determined to make up for it now. And when politicians make up their minds to do that, the stuff is going to fly.
    She’s seen it before — when South Carolinian Clement Haynsworth was nominated by Richard Nixon in 1969 to replace Abe Fortas on the nation’s high court.
    She was working in the Haynsworth firm at the time, and her husband was Judge Haynsworth’s clerk. She watched as her fellow Democrats “drummed up” all sorts of bogus accusations at Judge Haynsworth, who was “revered and highly respected” by both sides of the political fence.
    But after Republicans had succeeded in blocking Lyndon Johnson’s nomination of Justice Fortas to be chief justice, “Democrats vowed that they would go after the first nominee of Nixon as payback.” So they did, with Ted Kennedy and Birch Bayh leading the charge.
    This was long before the verb “to Bork” entered the language. But things have only gotten worse as the years have passed.
    “Too often, what we are doing is judging the judges on the basis of the hot-button issues,” said Ms. Toal, when “The real examination ought to be, is he fair and will he call them as he sees them?”
    Many will remember that as a politician, Ms. Toal was a Democrat. But she was “an anomaly — a pro-life Democrat.” So she was never one to embrace the litmus tests of Washington.
    Being a judge, and one who is particularly devoted to her calling, strengthens her aversion to what she fears the fight over Mr. Alito could become.
    But you don’t have to be chief
justice to agree with her. All you have to be is someone who respects the rule of law to understand that you’re not supposed to try to “put someone on there who will sing your song.”