Category Archives: The Nation

So it has come to this…

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You can read, or see video, of all the devastation — the flood waters, the bodies in the streets. You can see the refugees from the path of the storm, right in your own community. You can participate in debates about whether New Orleans should be rebuilt, and if so, how. But sometimes it’s the little things — the truly insignificant things, really — that tell you just how far gone a once-vibrant, unique city has gone compared to what it was.

To many people, the beverage associated with New Orleans is bourbon. But I haven’t been there since I lived there in junior high school, so I have a different association. To me, New Orleans is about sitting in front of the Cafe Du Monde and drinking coffee with chicory while looking out across Jackson Square. In fact, since about a year or so ago, when I suddenly realized I could get it over the Internet, that’s what I’ve drinking at home. I’ve been wondering whether I’ll have to give it up, but that’s seemed hardly worth talking about in light of all the real suffering out there.

(Cafe Du Monde already had nostalgic associations for me when I first discovered it at that young age. That’s because the cafe itself — or something that looked just like it — was used in the logo of French Market brand coffee, which my grandfather had sold when I was even younger. It meant a lot to me to be sitting in the actual place in the picture.)

But this morning, I heard this report on NPR. To my shock, an actual denizen of the city — a columnist at the Times-Picayune — stated on coast-to-coast radio that the four hours each day that Starbucks is open is "the best four hours of the day." The point of his commentary was to portray the extent to which his city is no longer the home that it was. Nothing could have communicated that idea more completely to me than that one detail — that someone actually OF that city, where distinctive coffee is a part of the community’s character, could speak so wistfully of the Wal-Mart of java. Hey, I’ve been known to drink Starbucks myself — even to go out of my way to get some, knowing that I have the true stuff at home. I suspect that, to paraphrase an old Mike Myers line, they put an addictive chemical in it that makes you crave it fortnightly.

But I don’t live and work in New Orleans. When someone who does is reduced to standing outside McCoffee waiting for it to open each day, you have to wonder whether the place will ever be anything like what it was, ever again.

FEMA column, w/ links & art

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Attempt to help evacuees
plagued by failure to communicate
By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
    THE MAN WAS walking around with a $2,000 FEMA check in his hand, and he didn’t have any idea what to do with it.
    That caused Nola Armstrong, a volunteer at the old Naval Reserve center that houses S.C. Cares’ many services for Katrina evacuees, to realize some folks needed more help than others. The Legal Services volunteers (who work out of the office pictured at right) came up with a way to provide it.Katrina_center_017
    What happened next illustrates a quandary inherent in trying to help the helpless: When someone is dependent upon you for the necessities of life, how responsible are you for what happens to them? Where is the line between compassion and condescension, between brotherly love and paternalism?
    From what I’ve seen at the S.C. Cares center, the volunteer “shepherds” know where to draw the line. But when they tried to make sure no one with mental problems got conned out of the $2,000 FEMA was sending to the head of each evacuee household, they ran into trouble with the feds.
    S.C. Cares chief Samuel Tenenbaum said that from the beginning of Columbia’s hastily organized effort, the main operating principle has been the Golden Rule: “How would I want to be treated?”
    It was decided these were not “refugees” or “evacuees,” but guests, and would be treated as such. They would not be herded into a communal shelter, but housed in motel rooms. Shuttles would Katrina_center_016take them back and forth between their motels and the center where they get medical care, eat a free meal, get reconnected with scattered relatives, make bank transactions without fees, and on and on.
    “What we set up was a community,” said Mr. Tenenbaum, and one that ran better than most.
    When it became obvious that some members of the community might be particularly vulnerable walking around town with $2,000, the organizers approached Probate Judge Amy McCulloch for help. They worried that while the center had a setup for helping the mentally ill, the checks were going to the motels. Judge McCulloch issued an order to change that arrangement. When FEMA heard about it, U.S. Attorney Johnny Gasser got involved.
    FEMA doesn’t dictate to local relief workers how to do the job, Mr. Gasser told me. “They leave it up to the locals to determine” pretty much everything, he said, including “what is the best way to distribute these checks.”
    He said FEMA had signed off on a local plan to have checks sent to the hotels. But when I sought a copy, Mr. Tenenbaum said “there was no written plan,” merely a hasty discussion on Labor Day in the mayor’s office, with planeloads of evacuees about to descend upon Columbia.
    Did Mayor Bob Coble know of any formal agreement with FEMA? “Absolutely not,” he said.
    Mr. Gasser said FEMA had two main problems with Judge McCulloch’s order: First, it departed from “the plan.” He said “FEMA’s in the crosshairs,” and feared a backlash if people who had been promised checks at their hotels had to get them somewhere else. Second, “the civil rights implications.” FEMA thought the language in the order created “a presumption that people had to prove their lucidness prior to receiving their money.”
    But “it was never about screening everyone,” said Judge McCulloch. The idea proposed by S.C.Katrina_center_008 Cares was that if the checks came to the center, where mental health services are available, conservators could be appointed for those who might need help handling money.
    “The issue was, how do we help these people to make sure nobody takes advantage of their dollars?” said Mr. Tenenbaum.
    Mr. Gasser sympathizes. “Everybody was well-intentioned,” he said. S.C. Cares’ concerns are “absolutely legitimate.” He said he told Judge McCulloch that local folks should “just get a new plan approved.”
    “It doesn’t take much time to type up an e-mail to FEMA,” he said. That doesn’t match the experience of those who tried.
    “There were many contacts, not only by me, but by people down there (at S.C. Cares), to contact FEMA” and work out the matter, Judge McCulloch said. “I personally made three phone calls to try to climb the chain” in Washington, she said. “The third person said, ‘We don’t have the authority to do this, and I personally don’t know who would.’”
    He recommended that she call the agency’s 800 number. At that point she issued the order that S.C. Cares had requested.
    “As soon as I issued the order, FEMA called me,” she said. It was the agency’s general counsel, saying “What are you doing?” She explained, and asked for help in getting the checks distributed in a more secure location, rather than leaving the job to “hotel clerks.”
    “Discussions were had,” she said. “People were asked.”
    “The next thing I knew,” she said, “I heard that the U.S. attorney’s office was going to sue me.”
    (When I called FEMA’s general counsel I got a
public affairs guy instead. “I’m not familiar with anyKatrina_center_001 plan,” he said. But, “Our policy is to mail the check to the individual where they are staying.”)
    Mr. Tenenbaum is indignant that anyone would think folks in Columbia were trying to deny anyone their “rights.”
    “Our whole philosophy was the opposite of that,” he said. The irony is, if S.C. Cares had treated its “guests” like “refugees” and kept them in a common shelter, the problem wouldn’t have arisen.
    “FEMA is incapable of getting outside the bureaucratic response and into the people response,” Mayor Coble said, adding that his advice to the agency would be: “Quit having meetings. Help the person in front of you.”
    For Judge McCulloch, “My biggest regret is that we have not solved the problem.”

Exchange with Ted Rall

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Since some readers regularly e-mail me samples of his work, I thought there might be interest in this piece that Ted Rall sent me yesterday, and in the brief exchange we had on the subject. I think he was hoping I would buy the piece. He doesn’t know I’m not in a buying mode. In fact, he has my sympathy because fewer and fewer papers are likely to be in a buying mode.

Anyway, my initial reaction to the piece was as follows:

Actually, Ted, the only way we’re going to win is if it DOES become "boring"
enough that al-Zarqawi can’t get coverage any more. He can’t win, except by
demoralizing the American public to the point that it just wants to quit. And he
can’t do that without coverage.

But rest assured, Katrina will eventually fade into the background enough to
return to the daily suicide bombing being repeated over and over on the 24/7
boob tube news. And al Zarqawi will be a happy man, and won’t have to try so
hard to depress us.

Mr. Rall responded thusly:

It depends on whether we view al Zarqawi as the leader of a movement or just one more personality heading up one particular pyramid of insurgent cells (guess which one I think it is). I think the Iraqi insurgency is intrinsically undefeatable, first and foremost because the US isn’t willing to commit the half million troops that would have been needed to enforce total domination and law and order.

To which I responded,

I cite him as the guy taking credit for the biggest recent attempt to get our
attention. He and al Qaeda are indeed but one of the factions hoping we’ll just
get demoralized and go away…

Mr. Rall is right that we (if he means our leaders) have never been willing to commit enough troops. And he’s right that the terrorist attacks over there haven’t garnered the same kind of overplay in the U.S. media to which the terrorists are accustomed (due to Katrina). But he’s wrong about the rest. The various insurgents — al Qaeda, other assorted foreign jihadists, Sadr’s people, never-say-die Baathists, and so forth — can’t defeat us. Not unless we become so demoralized that we decide to let them.

Let me take a swing at it

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In  endorsing John Roberts for chief justice, The Chicago Tribune focused first on the aspect that would most interest George Will:

Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee spent last week showcasing their keen grasp of baseball analogies while interrogating Supreme Court nominee John Roberts Jr. But the best analogy of the lot fell to court-watcher Dahlia Lithwick, writing about Roberts in the online magazine Slate: "Here’s a man long accustomed to answering really hard questions from extremely smart people, suddenly faced with the almost-harder task of answering obvious questions from less-smart people. He finds himself standing in a batting cage with the pitching machine set way too slow."

That’s pretty good. Of course, metaphors aside, I suspect that at least some of these senators are smarter than they look.
They just ask stupid questions because that’s what the unelected
interest groups yanking their chains expect them to do.

Of course, there’s an additional possibility to consider, which I will endeavor to express in the proper form:

Maybe Ms. Lithwick doesn’t give the committee’s pitchers the credit they deserve. Maybe it’s not that they can’t throw heat into the strike zone, but that they recognize a good hitter when they see one. It could be they’re taking David Broder’s advice and deliberately walking him so they can pitch to the president’s next nominee.

Nah. That would require more concentration than they can muster, what with the screams of the wild-eyed face-painters in the stands.

Has America supported its wars?

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This really should be required reading for anyone out there laboring under the illusion that there is something uniquely awful and unAmerican about our involvement in Iraq — or in Vietnam, for that matter.

You think the American public is turning against the Iraq War in a big way? Well, get back to me when we’ve had a reaction as awful as the New York draft riots that Abe Lincoln had to deal with.

John Prine was not expressing such an unusual sentiment when he sang: "We lost Davy in the Korean war/And I still don’t know what for, don’t matter anymore."

Basically, it’s tough to maintain public opinion in favor of military operations in a democracy, even when they are necessary. The reasons why a war may be just and necessary are usually far too complex to keep before the electorate for an extended period of time. That’s why you see oversimplifications. All anyone who is now against the war seems to remember is "WMD," when it was and is much more complicated than that.

Anti-war activists almost always have the advantage, because their message is simple: Stop the killing. That’s why in the long term,  opinion starts to sway their way. And that’s a serious problem when you engaged in something as extremely long-term as the War on Terror.

What about that speech?

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A regular correspondent name of Phillip observed in a comment on this post (it’s the fourth comment) that "the President’s comments to the UN get my vote for the most encouraging words I’ve heard from his mouth since he took office."

What I’d like to do here is pose this question to Phillip and others: What did you think of his speech last night from Jackson Square?

Of course, I’d like to know anyway, but I will sheepishly admit that I have an additional motive this time for seeking your input: Unbelievably, I forgot about the speech, and therefore missed it — I didn’t get home and start eating dinner until after 9, and started reading a book while I was eating, so it kind of got away from me. Now I’ll have to go back and read it, and watch it via streaming video on C-SPAN or something — which I haven’t had time to do yet, but will get to later.

(This is particularly vexing because this is one of the two things I have a TV for. I don’t watch TV "news," but I do watch speeches and debates and other live, newsmaking events in which I want to pick up on nuances not available from reading the text. And I watch movies. Oh, yeah, I recently picked up a third reason to turn on the boob tube — my wife and I like to watch "House." Now there’s a guy who would make a perfect blogger — rapid-fire, cutting opinions, without the slightest worry about pleasing anybody.)

Anyway, a colleague who is no fan of the president was telling me the speech was a good one. I’m curious what others think. If this is one of those moments when partisans agree on something, I’d like to cherish the moment. If it isn’t — well, there would be nothing new about that, would there?

Another promising sign

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Maybe it’s a little too soon to get excited, but this development made me a lot more hopeful for the course of our country.

I quoted Sen. Lindsey Graham the other day as saying, "I think the president is learning from Katrina. I see this president adjusting." I said then I thought I saw some of the same things.

I’m even more encouraged now. The president who refused twice to accept Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation after the Abu Ghraib debacle did enormous strategic harm to this nation and its warBush_culpa effort may actually be learning that sometimes you have to own up to mistakes, and act to rectify them.

I still don’t think he’d accept Sec. Rumsfeld’s resignation if it were offered again — after all, the Bushes value loyalty (a little too much), and Rummy’s too high up in the family — but the president’s recent attitude toward his administration’s handling of Katrina is at least encouraging.

Yet another column, w/ links

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Leadership wanted to explain need to succeed in Iraq
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
    “I DON’T KNOW how long it’s gonna take. It’s gonna take a while. And it’s gonna cost more money, and it’s gonna cost more blood.”
    That’s what U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham told the Columbia Rotary week before last regarding Iraq. During that meeting, and in subsequent interviews, he talked about how important it is that the Iraq_mp_1 nation’s leaders explain to the American people — over and over — the connection between what we’re doing in Iraq and the war on terror, the absolute necessity of staying there until a stable democracy is achieved, and just how long and costly that is going to be.
    Not that we have a choice to make: “The American people have no option. It was never an option.” The fight that we are engaged in in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere started long before this date four years ago.
    “The root causes of this war had been building over time,” he said. “We ignored them. We disengaged. There were plenty of signs the terrorists were getting stronger and bolder, and we sent them the wrong signal.”
    Until Sept. 11, 2001. After that, we fought back. But there’s a lot more involved in achieving peace and security than just fighting.
    “There are elements of the War on Terror beyond the use of military force, and they are going to be expensive,” the senator said.
     Those elements are also the ones likely to take the longest time, he believes. People in Iraq and other Islamic countries have to realize that “Winner-take-all politics is not a democracy” — or at least, not the kind that works. They have to get not only the politics right, but the fundamental notions of the rule of law. “A courtroom is a place for the unpopular cause,” he said. “How long does it take to get honest judges? A long time.”
     And what about the home front? He agrees that we have to have a better energy strategy, and that includes both drilling in Alaska and an emphasis on conservation. It is, the senator said, “imperative that we get away from fossil fuels in general and Mideast oil in particular.” And we need to turn back to nuclear energy. Other countries, including France, have not had our qualms about using that cleaner source of power. “Surely we can be as bold as the French,” he told the Rotarians to general laughter.
     And then there’s hydrogen, although that is a long-term strategy. “We in South Carolina are going to become, if I have anything to do with it, the Detroit of the hydrogen economy — without the crime.”
    Meanwhile, in Iraq, “The more troops in the country, the better,” for the foreseeable future, the senator said.
    His explanation for why polls increasingly show that the American people want to pull out of Iraq is that they are not getting an accurate picture of what is happening. All they see is quick images of mayhem on television or “a few words in the paper” about the latest car bombing, and they despair. They think, “These people can’t help themselves; why should we help them?” Especially when it costs American lives.
    But Iraq is worth fighting for largely because of the courage of the Iraqi people — the majority that wants their country to be peaceful and free. It is “the one place in the world where people are standing up to terrorists right in their own backyards,” he said. That makes it one place where we have to win if we’re going to win the larger war that we only fully engaged four years ago.
    Aside from roughly 1,900 Americans, thousands of Iraqis have died in this cause, and yet they keep on trying. We have to “stand behind those who are willing to put their lives on the line to build a better Iraq.”
    “If you talk about leaving soon, you don’t understand the situation,” he said. And more than once, he told me, “I want to fire the next general who talks about taking one troop out next year.”
“We’re talking about an exit strategy when we should be talking about a winning strategy.”
    But what about members of Congress, including those in his own party, who are looking at the polls and talking “exit strategy”?
    “Make ’em vote,” he said. “Take (Sen. Russ) Feingold’s resolution (to create a timetable for withdrawing troops) or something and make them vote for it.” He seems quit
e sure they won’t.
    OK, fine. So we have to win in Iraq, the American people don’t fully understand why, we need more troops rather than fewer, it’s going to be more expensive than most taxpayers realize, and we have an administration in place that can’t seem to explain that, and that wants to cut taxes and do everything on the cheap. What about that?
    First, Sen. Graham says he and other supporters of the war in Congress share much of the blame — for being too optimistic about Iraq going in, and for not explaining the stakes well enough to the public.
    He also acknowledges that the president hasn’t done all he should: “His challenge is a constant focus that has been missing.” President Bush used to talk about the “long haul”; more recently he soft-pedaled that.
    But he has seen the president change in recent days. “I think the president is learning from Katrina. I see this president adjusting.” Yes, I’ve seen some of the same things. I’ve actually seen him, for once, admit error, and work hard to make up for it.
    Still, while I agree with pretty much everything that Sen. Graham has to say on the subject, I am Bush_honor_guard not as confident as he is that George W. Bush will exercise the leadership necessary to the situation. I agree with the senator, for instance, that the president gave some very good speeches explaining the stakes in the first days right after Sept. 11, 2001. But that was a long time ago.
    All of that said, I hope Mr. Graham is right. Because this is the president we’ve got; we don’t have any choice there, either. If leadership does not emerge, from Congress as well as from the president, we will fail in this war. And this nation — indeed, the civilized world — can’t afford that.
    Ultimately, as the senator said, “History will judge us not by when we left, but by what we left.”

Perception or reality?

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Some additional thoughts I didn’t have room for in today’s column. In fact, these thoughts were actually central to the original idea for the column, but I ended up going in another direction:

A related issue: I’m sick of seeing perception spoken of as though it were substantial. If a poll shows that 57 percent of the country now believes a candidates’ stands on issues should be fair game for questioning (although they didn’t believe so in July, as if such fundamental principles were as mutable as the weather), that does NOT mean that they are fair game for questioning; it means 57 percent of the public didn’t (as of last week, when the poll was conducted) understand what is appropriate and what is not.

I realize that is likely to set off the small-D democrats out there, but the fact is that this country was established as a republic, not a pure democracy, for very good reasons. It wasn’t because those who are elected to represent us are necessarily smarter or better than the rest of us (no one who has spent as much time as I have over at the State House could believe that). It’s that the business of running a government is complicated, and requires more study and attention than the average citizen can devote to it in order to shape sound policy. You can take that same average citizen, and put him in the seat of an elected representative, and if he does the job he’s supposed to do, he will know things that the people who sent him there don’t know, no matter how smart they are. Why? Because they’ve got lives to lead, and he is the one they have delegated to study the issues more closely than they have time to do.

(This is why, for instance, some of the most conscientious Democrats in the Congress, such as Sens. Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, are far more committed to sticking it out in Iraq than many of the folks who voted for them. They have done their jobs, and gained expertise in international affairs, and therefore fully understand how disastrous it would be for us to pull out now.)

The Senate, unlike the House, is particularly intended to be shielded from the momentary whims of public opinion — of which this case, in which you have the public exhibiting entirely different sets of values from July to September, is a perfect example. (This is why senators are elected every six years instead of two, and also why they were originally not popularly elected at all, but appointed by legislatures.) And one of the things that senators who take their jobs seriously ought to know is that the suitability of Supreme Court nominees should be based upon their legal credentials, not their personal political opinions. But a weird thing apparently happens in the world of politics: If the president of the opposite party is seen as too popular to challenge, senators tend to toe the line in terms of the propriety of the questions they ask during confirmation hearings. And if the president’s approval rating is in the toilet, one is free to quiz them about anything and everything. To some people (including, according to that poll, a majority of the electorate as of last week), this makes perfect sense. But to the nonpartisan mind, it makes none.

More on perception versus reality: There seems little question that President Bush failed to exhibit the leadership qualities that we deserve in the first days after Katrina hit (although I give him credit for at least trying to hit the right notes since then). I mean, who the expletive cares about Trent Lott’s porch when there are poor folks floating dead in the streets of New Orleans? The answer to that is, the president. And that says some pretty awful things about his suitability as a leader.

But in a larger sense, did the federal government as a whole fail in its job? Well, yes, in the sense that what it did was inadequate to the unbelievably huge task before it. But given the resources (which thanks to budget-cutting, WERE inadequate) and information available to it at the time, was the effort to meet that challenge reasonable?

I don’t know. I realize that makes me sound like an idiot to people who’ve been watching 24/7 news coverage over the last week or so — something I have neither the time or inclination to do. But that’s precisely where my uncertainty comes in. There’s something about that 24/7 news coverage that can shape perception regardless of reality. Decent human beings (with too much time on their hands) who sit and watch hours of human suffering, and then take a lunch break and come back to the tube, say "Oh my God — those people still haven’t been helped yet?" Therefore relief efforts don’t meet their expectations.

But are those expectations realistic? That’s what I don’t know. I’ve heard more than one person who has been involved in such aid operations say that deploying assets within three days of their being requested is actually something of a logistical coup.

I believe there were screw-ups — as there always are in something this big (study the mistakes made on D-Day, or the Battle of the Hurtgen Forest, if you want to see governmental action at its most FUBAR). But was it more fouled up than we should expect? I don’t know, and that’s why investigations into what happened are worthwhile — after we deal with the more immediate problems.

Finally, I want to pin some more blame on the media in general — not just the TV cowboys who so often draw my ire. I’m including the press. Back in 1996, I reviewed a book by James Fallows called BREAKING THE NEWS: How the Media Undermine American Democracy. He wrote that "Step by step, mainstream journalism has fallen into the habit of portraying public life as a race to the bottom, in which one group of conniving, insincere politicians ceaselessly tries to outmaneuver another." More: "By choosing to present public life as a contest among scheming political leaders, all of whom the public should view with suspicion, the news media helps bring about that very result."

It’s a malignant application of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to American public life. Mr. Fallows said journalists tend lazily to cast every development in the news in terms of how it affects electoral politics. What may need to be reported are complicated facts that give readers and viewers the perspective they need to understand what happened. But that’s hard to do, whereas talking about the political implications is easy because journalists — particularly Washington journalists — live and breathe that stuff.

An example from the past week: When the president decided to name John Roberts as Chief Justice to replace William Rehnquist, the very first question that occurred to me (as a nonexpert on the subject) was, is this kosher? Has this happened before? Has the president ever named a rookie — one who hasn’t even pitched his first game in the majors, and for that matter doesn’t have much experience in the minors — to the top of the heap, over the heads of more experienced jurists?

I was very disappointed not to find the answer to that question in the first few sources I turned to — including The New York Times, which I usually trust to give me the perspective I seek on such matters. What I did find, however, was multiple references to the political implications of Mr. Bush’s declining popularity, and what that meant in terms of the reception his nominees were bound to get — which is what prompted me to write today’s column to begin with.

(By the way, it turns out I was all wet suspecting there was something unusual about a non-justice being named chief justice. Few of the 16 chief justices of the United States were actually on the court before their elevation.)

Today’s column, served Web-style

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Nation’s ‘leaders’ need to get priorities straight
By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
    If everyone in Washington had been as determined to rush help to Louisiana as they now profess to be about investigating how the Hurricane Katrina response failed, the disaster might not have been so bad.
— Detroit Free Press

    AN ANALYSIS in Wednesday’s Washington Post notes the stark contrast in the political reactions to 9/11 and Katrina.
    “When terrorists struck on Sept. 11, 2001, Americans came together in grief and resolve, rallying behind President Bush in an extraordinary show of national unity,” the piece by Dan Balz begins. “But when Hurricane Katrina hit last week, the opposite occurred, with Americans dividing along sharply partisan lines…. This gaping divide has left the president with no reservoir of good will among his political opponents at a critical moment of national need….”
    Yeah, I noticed.
    But it’s not just about Katrina. And for that matter, it’s not just about partisanship.
    The Congress is still in the control of Republicans, and Congress is about to shove other matters aside to hold hearings on FEMA’s response to the disaster. Why? Because GOP leaders aren’t about to get on the wrong side of the rising demand for somebody (besides Mother Nature) to blame. They don’t want it to be them. Meanwhile, the president wants to have his own investigation for the same reason. Republicans are harrumphing defensively, while Democrats do so with relish.
    Hearings. Now. When (and if you’re squeamish, don’t click on this next link) bodies are still floating through the streets of New Orleans, and thousands upon thousands of others are in desperate need of immediate help. And all they can think of to do is hold hearings.
    Well, I can think of something better: Let’s march them out of their hearing rooms, take them to the Gulf Coast and put them to work filling sandbags. Or manning pumps. Or picking up bodies. Or, more urgently, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, housing the homeless and ministering to the sick. (Bill Frist at least had the right idea on that.)
    Maybe they could use their golden tongues to persuade those who still refuse to evacuate. Or do something useful.
    Basically, I’m sick of the petty political nonsense — mostly, but not entirely, of a partisan nature — that keeps getting in the way of the serious, important, legitimate (and in the case of Katrina, critically urgent) functions of government.
    Consider the small matter of choosing two members of the Supreme Court. Advice and consent on this matter is one of the Senate’s most solemn and sober duties — or should be.
    So why do I keep reading that the recent decline in George W. Bush’s popularity means Democrats are going to be tougher on whomever he chooses for the second vacancy — and on John Roberts, too. The long knives are out, and anyone associated with Caesar had best not stand anywhere near Pompey’s statue. But the knives in this case aren’t aimed at preserving the Republic, but at destroying its civil base.
    Are we really this far gone? Why should the president — this one or any other — being in a “weakened position” be a valid reason for political opponents to beat up on his next nominee?
    Oh, I understand why, if we’re talking the law of the jungle. But our civilization, to the extent that we still have one, is supposed to be based on the rule of law, and we’re talking about a person who will have a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court. The relative heat of that person’s grilling should depend upon his or her qualities as a candidate, not upon the political weather. Senators should be tough on a weak nominee even if the president has a 90 percent approval rating — and respect a good choice even if the president is a pariah.
    Is it really too much to expect elected representatives to think about how to help the victims of Katrina rather than point fingers? Or consider the actual merit of nominees, rather than what the situation offers in the way of advantage for them and their parties (or the professional ideologues in the private sector)?
    Was the federal government’s response to Katrina inadequate? Yes, it was, and we’ve been here before. Remember the complaints about FEMA after Hurricane Hugo? I do. There are two big differences, of course. Hugo wasn’t nearly as bad as Katrina. And the local and state responses in Charleston and South Carolina were far more effective.
    Two things are simultaneously true: First, this was going to be bad, no matter what the government did. Second, there are things the government should have done, before and after the storm hit, that would have lessened the blow considerably.
    We need to sort that out, and fix it before the next Katrina. But in the meantime, there are far more urgent matters before us.
    Another quote, this one from The Chicago Tribune: “Democrats and Republicans returned Tuesday to a Washington scene changed dramatically by Hurricane Katrina and began maneuvering to seize control of the volatile political terrain, deflect blame and appear compassionate without seeming to politicize a national tragedy.”
    Seeming? Seeming? We know exactly what you’re trying to do, and we deserve better.

The BEST speech of Bush’s life?

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The New York Times opined yesterday that on the day before, "George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life …"

The speech was apparently the president’s attempt to empathize about the devastation wrought by Katrina, and the NYT reckoned it to be lame. Perhaps they were right. I don’t know, I neither read nor heard the address in question. Until now, that is. And I’m still not sure that it impresses me much either way.

But on the very day the Times delivered that judgment, Mr. Bush committed another public utterance that was nothing short of wonderful — nay, miraculous, considering the source. It’s Bushesclinton_1 something I’ve waited for an American president to say ever since World War II. Or rather, since 1953, since I wasn’t around eight years before that. OK, so I’ve mostly been waiting for an American president to say it since Sept. 11, 2001, but considering who the president was during the intervening period, I did not have high expectations. In fact, it’s doubtful that any U.S. president since Jimmy Carter would have responded in this fashion under similar circumstances, and maybe not even him. Certainly not Bill Clinton. He would have delivered a Katrina speech that would have knocked the Times‘ editorial socks off, because empathy was his specialty. But the guy who dipped into the strategic oil reserve to help Al "Earth in the Balance" Gore get elected despite rising gas prices probably wouldn’t have said this either.

So what did he say? I suppose this has been enough buildup, although it really was great. He said, and I am not making this up:

"Don’t buy gas if you don’t need it."

It was indeed, as The Washington Post noted today (in a news story, mind you, not an opinion piece), "a rare request for individual sacrifice." But it was all the sweeter for its rarity. And if you don’t believe it, you can listen to it if you’d like.

This gives me hope; it really does. If President George W. Bush can say that (and in fairness I’ll say he’s given a number of speeches since 9/11 in which he said many things that were just what a leader in wartime should say, with the huge exception that he has never asked us to sacrifice before), then isn’t that like the breaking of a levee? Could we not be about to see a flood of common sense about fossil fuels break out of its long imprisonment and wash across the land, cleansing us of our collective madness?

I mean, if he can say that, could we not see some serious CAFE standards soon? Could we treat Hummers in the same sensible fashion that we do fully automatic assault rifles, and ban them for all but military use? Could we — and forgive me, but I’m getting a little verklempt at the very thought — actually have ration books, the way we did the last time we were really serious about winning a war?

In other words, could we act like we really understand the strategic imperatives of our situation in the world? Could we do everything necessary to make ourselves independent of the regimes that finance the people who want to kill us all? I mean drill in Alaska, rebuild those rigs in the Gulf, conserve like crazy, ostracize fellow citizens who waste energy, build nuclear power plants, and kick efforts to develop the hydrogen economy into high gear.

OK, OK, I’m getting a little carried away, I know. But it really was great to hear him say it. That’s all I’m saying.

Friday column, with links

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Betsy experience in no way
prepared us for Katrina’s horrors
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
    I THOUGHT I knew what to expect from Hurricane Katrina. Boy, was I wrong.
    You see, I was there, at Ground Zero, for the last big blow to hit the Big Easy. That was Hurricane Betsy, 40 years ago.
    In fact, that experience at such a young age — I was starting junior high — is probably why I have such a jaded attitude toward weather. Or at least did have.
    I tended to sneer at people getting all worked up because a storm’s coming. And I definitely didn’t need those warnings that interrupt regular TV programming. Hey, I know when there’s going to be a thunderstorm — our remaining dog freaks out, yelping and demanding to come in. I did not share his attitude; as I saw it, the lawn could use the watering.
    And when I saw folks evacuate in the path of a storm that may strike their domiciles, I sniffed in a superior manner and thought:
    We didn’t run and hide back in ’65. We stood our ground — however untenable that ground may have been. We lived in an old barracks that had been converted into apartments for naval officers and their families — a big frame target that the Big Bad Wolf could probably have huffed and puffed away without trying too hard. It was located about a block from the Mississippi River levee, on a nearly defunct Navy base in Algiers, right across the river from the heart of New Orleans.
    The base had most likely been a very busy place during in the war that had ended two decades earlier. But you sure couldn’t tell that at the time I lived there. The base’s vital purpose was a thing of the misty past, and of no interest to a preteen. The base I knew was mostly abandoned buildings (for exploring, if you could dodge the Shore Patrol) and huge, empty fields for playing ball.
    My Dad was executive officer on the USS Hyman, DD-732, an old Sumner-class destroyer that was there to train reservists on weekends. That and an old diesel submarine were the only ships moored at the base.
    The night Betsy hit, Dad was aboard his ship, firmly held in place in the river by cables fore, aft and amidships, and with the engines fired up and running. (There hadn’t been time to put out to sea.) He and the crew spent the night trying to avoid being hit by civilian craft that hadn’t taken such precautions. They still got hit a couple of times. He recalls the shock on the bridge as one freighter headed upriver at eight or nine knots — breakneck speed in that sharply meandering stretch — particularly when the watch realized it was being blown against the current, with no one at the helm.
    My mother, brother and I spent the night in our rickety home with our flashlights and bathtubs full of water, listening to the wind tear and crack and howl around us. We experienced the eerie stillness of the eye passing over, then listened to the fury all over again, only in the opposite direction (at which point we closed windows that were now on the windward side, and opened the ones on the lee). I don’t recall being any more scared than I would have been on a ride at the Lake Ponchartrain amusement park. At my age, it was an adventure, and not to be missed.
    The next day, we saw what the storm had done. Enormous, aromatic red cedar trees across the street in my best friend Tim Moorman’s yard — his dad was a captain, so they rated a big house — were snapped in two. (We pulled off big shards and put them in our closets.) The only damage our apartment sustained was a rip to the screen on our porch, although other apartments in the building suffered from holes in the roof.
    I soon learned we had been among the lucky ones. Fifteen thousand civilian refugees — Ponchartrain spilled over that time, too — were housed for months in the base’s unused buildings and a mobile home village that filled the empty fields.
    My Dad’s destroyer was for several days New Orleans’ only official communication link with the outside world. (We weren’t able to call folks in South Carolina to say we were OK for a week.) The ship was called upon to help find a barge full of chlorine that had been lost — which Dad remembers as the most fouled-up operation he ever took part in. After the ship’s sonar and divers had located about a hundred other barges sunk by the storm, the one they sought was found in the one place everyone assumed the civilians had already looked: Right where it had been moored. The chlorine containers were intact.
    So all was well in the end. We had withstood nature’s worst (I thought), and life went on.
I had thought Katrina would be pretty much the same — especially with all the advance warning that modern technology provides. Sure, it was almost a Category 5 while Betsy was merely a 3, but the city only got brushed by the back side of the storm this time.
    And yet, as we’ve tried to take in the scope of this disaster in the last few days — thousands dead, devastation of apocalyptic proportions across several states — it overwhelms the mind.
    This has to be the worst disaster to hit the mainland United States in my lifetime. When was the last time a major city of this proportion had to be abandoned, possibly for months? And we still don’t fully know how bad things are in the less-populated areas that took the main brunt of this nightmare.
    This horror is so wide and profound that I really don’t know where to grab hold of it for an editorial point. Certainly, we should all seize any opportunity we can identify to reach out and help the victims. Beyond that, I really don’t know what to say.
    But from now on, I’m going to be less nonchalant about weather. Next time the dog starts yelping about a rising wind, rather than telling him to hush and calm down, I just may join him.

August 31 column, w/ links

1 Reply

Snippets from a conversation:
Bill Gates, innovation and leadership
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
    JOHN WARNER responded to my Sunday column about Inez Tenenbaum’s decision not to seek a third term as education superintendent by quoting Bill Gates.
    Specifically, he quoted from a speech the Microsoft honcho delivered to the National Education Summit on High Schools a while back. Everybody’s talking about it. In fact, Mrs. Tenenbaum was talking about it during our interview last week, holding up Mr. Gates’ efforts as an example of someone doing what she hopes to do once she’s left office — pushing for reform from the private sector. Here’s part of what Mr. Warner cited in comments on my blog:
    “America’s high schools are obsolete. By obsolete, I don’t just mean that our high schools are broken, flawed, and under-funded — though a case could be made for every one of those points. By obsolete, I mean that our high schools — even when they’re working exactly as designed — cannot teach our kids what they need to know today…. This isn’t an accident or a flaw in the system; it is the system.”
    I’m afraid my gut response was rather dismissive, along these lines: Yes, everyone’s heard or read what Bill Gates said about our secondary schools system. What I haven’t heard is an understandable explanation of what he would replace it with.
    To be fair to Mr. Gates, I went back to read the full speech. (Which you can also do by following the link from my blog.)
    I found that while much of what he said was interesting and wise, little of it struck me as new. I was pleased to see that he is as interested in equality of opportunity as we are on this editorial board:
    “In district after district, wealthy white kids are taught Algebra II while low-income minority kids are taught to balance a check book!” he said. “The first group goes on to college and careers; the second group will struggle to make a living wage…. (E)ither we think they can’t learn, or we think they’re not worth teaching. The first argument is factually wrong; the second is morally wrong.”
    I could also write that — along with what he sees as standing in the way of a solution: “The key problem is political will” (as in, the lack thereof).
    His prescription for what should be done sounds much like the central idea behind No Child Left Behind on the federal level, and a number of initiatives — such as more rigorous requirements for graduation — that have been in place in South Carolina since the turn of the century.
    “The idea behind the new design is that all students can do rigorous work, and — for their sake and ours — they have to,” he said, adding that the aim should be “to prepare every student for college.”
    Then, he spelled out the active ingredients of his prescription: “If we can focus on these three steps — high standards for all; public data on our progress; turning around failing schools — we will go a long way toward ensuring that all students have a chance to make the most of their lives.”
    Those are the same principles we’ve already put into action through the Education Accountability Act. It is laudable that Mr. Gates is putting considerable amounts of his own money where his mouth is, transforming hundreds of high schools across the country.
    But there’s only so much he can do, even with his resources. Turning around the dropout rate (which Mr. Gates correctly sees as a national epidemic, not just a South Carolina problem) and taking the next steps in making sure all kids are prepared for productive lives will take leadership in the political sphere.
    Mr. Warner bemoaned that “Today we’re making incremental improvements, and that is good but not sufficient to make the progress we need. There is no way an educational Bill Gates could emerge because there is no vehicle for them to pursue truly innovative ideas.”
    John, I wrote back, the entrepreneurial culture you envision is politically impossible. You know why? Because politicians and their constituents, being extremely jealous of every tax dollar, absolutely refuse to trust educators. Therefore we get rigid standards, tests, measurements and controls that force everyone to follow certain patterns. (I once wrote a whole column on the lack of trust as being the root of all evil in our society. I’ll put that on my blog, too.)
    Everything I’ve seen in my career about the politics of public education indicates that the state will never hire teachers, give them resources and say, “Go to town; be creative!”
    Mr. Warner agreed:
    “Brad, I have been talking to people about this for a long time too. I absolutely agree with you (about the lack of trust).
    “There is the trust factor you mentioned, not trusting educators. There is a lack of trust of parents to make the right decisions. There is also a serious lack of trust among minorities, especially older minorities, who have historical experience that honed their instincts to be wary. There (is) a large segment of people who are cynical in general and don’t trust anyone else, especially those in government. Some of our leading politicians in the state have made an art form out of tapping into this latent cynicism.
    “In a flat world, only innovation can keep us globally competitive. Public education needs to be a part of that culture. Somehow, we need to find a leader in this state who can empower people to begin to create a culture of innovation.
    “Dick Riley brought enlightened leadership to public education 25 years ago. And Carroll Campbell brought it to economic development 15 years ago. Without the next strong leader, it will be difficult for us to make significant progress.”
    What can I say to that, except that he’s absolutely right. This is why I hate to see a leader such as Mrs. Tenenbaum leave the public sphere, and why I worry about who will lead us to the next steps in the reform that is so essential to our state’s future.

Physicianow, heal thyself

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I was completely stunned when a regular correspondent shared this with me via e-mail. I could only respond thus:

What a presumptuous pile of pontification! How dare he presume to know the soul of another this way, and to pass judgment on it based upon such guesses? Does he think his literary license gives him the right to write omnisciently about real people the way he does fictional characters? Well, it doesn’t.

I’ve got major problems with this president, including many decisions he’s made (or not made) with regard to this crucial war. I often wonder whether I want us to succeed in Iraq more than George W. Bush does, and some days I’m quite sure I do.

But as healthy as my editorialist’s ego is, I would NEVER have the gargantuan gall to write something like this about another human being. I suppose one has to be a lionized author, sitting in the Hamptons contemplating in awe one’s own greatness, to produce rhetorical excess this extreme. Alas, we lesser lights must content ourselves with more humble assertions.

You know, he just plain looks a lot more intellectual than I do. Maybe if I grew back the beard, I could be more pompous, too. Not that I’d try to compete in HIS league.

The debate continues…

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Wow. I was so overwhelmed and lulled into a placid state by the kind comments in response to my Sunday column that I didn’t notice until just now that this debate was still going on (and this one, too, in a related vein).

Rather than continue to jump in with my answers and asides in the comments stream, I’m going to respond to a couple of my correspondents with this new posting — largely because I still haven’t mastered a way to insert links, much less files, conveniently into the comments format. I continue to admire those savvy folk who have figured it out.

Anyway, Portia said I had explained my lack of military service — one of the great regrets, or perhaps I should say gripes (since it wasn’t my choice), of my life — in a recent column, but she couldn’t get to it to provide a link. I’ve mentioned it more than once, but I have a feeling that this is the one to which she refers. If not, I’ll go back and look for another one.

Also, the link that Mike C provided was interesting, and I recommend it (although I got lost in exactly what the late William Jennings Bryan Dorn‘s namesake was urging Woodrow Wilson to do; I really need to bone up on that period). But I bring it up here because its title, and this passage …

The profound interpretation recognizes that if there is an invasion the decision for it and for its sweeping historical consequences will be in the hands of one man, The President of the United States, and that he – and he alone – must take complete moral responsibility for this massive intervention in the fate of our species. And this fact is conveyed in the title of Mr. Hammerschlag’s article: it will forever be Bush’s War, no matter what the outcome.

… reminded me of an older column of mine (and here’s where I really had to go to a posting rather than a comment, since I had to attach a Word file, that piece no longer being online).

Oh, and in answer to "Amos Nunoy‘s" last question, namely, "Did you know it wasn’t about mass weapons the whole time? You didn’t say," I most certainly did NOT write "Hey, there’s no WMD." Why? Because I thought, like everyone else, that Saddam had at least one variety of WMD (he had used it in the past, after all), and was working feverishly to develop others. In fact, we mentioned it editorially among the reasons to invade at the time — partly because that cause was more important to others on our editorial board than it was to me, but also because it WAS part of the argument. It just wasn’t what was important to me, and would not have been reason enough alone to justify invasion in MY mind. You can tell this by what I did stress at the time, such as (at least in passing) in the column linked in the paragraph above. Or, more to the point, this one. In fact, the latter is worth quoting here, in case you have trouble calling up that old file:

The answer to all of the above is: Sept. 11.

Before that, U.S. policy-makers didn’t want to destabilize the status quo in the Mideast. What we learned on Sept. 11 is that the status quo in the region is unacceptable. It must change.

Change has to start somewhere, and Iraq is the best place to insert the lever, for several reasons – geography, culture, demographics, but most of all because Saddam Hussein has given us all the justification we need to go in and take him out: We stopped shooting in 1991 because he agreed to certain terms, and he has repeatedly thumbed his nose at those agreements.

Iraq may not be the best place in the world to try to nurture a liberal democracy, but it’s the best shot we have in the Mideast.

That was written, by the way, the month before the 2003 invasion. You’ll notice, "Amos," that while I didn’t specifically mention WMD (because, once again, I thought that threat, while insufficient, was real) I DID say that the president, for Realpolitik reasons, wasn’t frankly stating exactly WHY we had to go into Iraq — or at least, wasn’t stressing it enough to suit me. That’s why that column was headlined, "The uncomfortable truth about why we may have to invade Iraq." I thought it was important to state those reasons more prominently beforehand, so I did.

Jim DeMint meeting

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I’ve had trouble this summer keeping up with my commitment, stated back when I started this blog, to let you know about meetings the editorial board has with newsmakers and other guests — although I have reported the main ones. I did mention Gresham Barrett the other day, and today I’ll catch up by telling you about Sen. Jim DeMint’s meeting with us back on Tuesday. (And by the way, Demint_2the picture is not from our meeting. It’s an AP photo of the senator talking about bringing a new nuclear power facility to the Savannah River Site during a press conference in Aiken a week earlier.)

It was fairly uneventful — Lee Bandy, who was there as an observer representing the newsroom, didn’t write anything live off of it — but there were a few items of interest worth sharing:

  • First, he was fairly proud of having held the federal highway bill’s gargantuan total down to something close to what the White House had wanted, while managing to help South Carolina out in some significant ways. Since Cindi Scoppe is going to address that S.C. impact in the paper in the next few days, I’ll leave elaboration on that point to her.
  • Rest assured, Gov. Sanford — this is one Republican who is not coming after your job. Rather than criticize the governor’s performance on ecodevo, or complain that he’s hard to work with in that area, Sen. DeMint said, "We work well with him." He added that "I feel we’re poised for incredible growth in the state." Besides, "We’re not easy to reach, either."
  • He said he thought it strange that Majority Leader Bill Frist, who generally keeps a low profile on issues and works for consensus within the caucus, should choose to get out in front on stem cells, of all things. He also noted that folks keep defining the issue inaccurately: "The issue isn’t whether we do research; it’s whether the federal government pays for it." Good point, that.
  • It was good to hear him say that he’s learned a lot from traveling to the world’s hot spots and learning about foreign affairs. "You’re expected as a senator to be involved with that," he said. I’m glad he realizes that now. Last year, when I asked him to talk about America’s role in the world, he sort of blinked and said something along the lines of, "You mean, besides trade?"
  • He talked for a while about his health plan, which he said stresses "individual ownership" and portability. But the most interesting thing he said on the subject — and somehow we got onto another subject before following up with questions (something I need to do the next time I talk to him) — was this: "We’ve got to go there (meaning something like his plan), or we’re going to go to national health care relatively soon, because where we are is not going to work." At this morning’s board meeting, we were discussing that, and sort of kicking ourselves that we didn’t get him to elaborate.
  • Scared me no end by suggesting it would be possible to draw down U.S. troops somewhat in 2006. I continue to believe that would be suicidal; we need to go the other way, if anything.

I’ve been getting comments from anti-war folks upset because in my Wednesday column I said that withdrawing from Iraq now would be like "spitting on the graves of the 1,800 who have already given their lives." Well, I stand by that statement, and I add a corollary: If Republicans pull us out of Iraq in order to help themselves get re-elected, they’ll be doing something even worse than that.

Wednesday column, with links

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Where have all the heroes gone?
Nowhere, actually
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
    APPARENTLY, there are no war heroes any more. At least, there are none that America feels like lifting up as examples and celebrating. This was the premise of a piece in The New York Times’ Week in Review section Sunday that explained some things to me.
    There are, of course, actual heroes in the war on terror. The Times piece gave the names of three of them.
    The problem is, I hadn’t heard of them. You probably hadn’t, either. And the contrast between that ignorance on our part, and the way Sgt. Alvin York and Audie Murphy (whose picture, portraying himself in the autobiographical Hollywood movie, “To Hell and Back,” was the dominant feature of the section’s front page) were lionized during and after their wars, is striking — and shocking. And stupid, if, as the story suggests, it reflects a deliberate policy decision on the part of our government.
    The three mentioned were:

    In an earlier age, Sgt. Hester would have been brought home and sent across the country to sell War Bonds. But we don’t do that today, and not only because there are no War Bonds. (Remember, in this war, the homefront is not being asked to sacrifice in any way whatsoever; instead, we have tax cuts and soaring deficits.)
    The NYT piece gave the following, admittedly speculative, “reasons” for this: “(P)ublic opinion on the Iraq war is split, and drawing attention to it risks fueling opposition; the military is more reluctant than it was in the last century to promote the individual over the group; and the war itself is different, with fewer big battles and more and messier engagements involving smaller units of Americans. Then, too, there is a celebrity culture that seems skewed more to the victim than to the hero.”
    Amen to that last. Who get portrayed as heroes? Jessica Lynch and football star Pat Tillman — both victims. One was wounded and captured, the other killed by friendly fire.
    And we hear about the mostly unsung victims who are killed, without any chance to fight back, by roadside IEDs. The message we get from that? “There’s just no use in continuing to try.”
    The actual heroes do get mentioned. President Bush spoke of Sgt. Peralta — a Mexican immigrant who enlisted the day after he got his “green card” — at the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast (surely you heard about it). And Sgt. Smith’s name pops up 154 times in the last two years in the news databases I searched. It’s sort of hard to keep the one Medal of Honor awarded in Iraq a complete secret, after all.
    But compare Sgt. Smith’s name recognition to Brad Pitt’s. Or Sgt. Hester’s to Janet Jackson’s. Or Rafael Peralta’s to Rafael Palmeiro’s. See what we elevate as worthy of our attention?
    Let’s confront another rationale the Times identified: Divided public opinion gives all the more reason to stress the nobility and achievements, not only of those who perform traditional acts of valor in combat, but of those who build schools, or train the new Iraqi army.
    Our leaders fear to confront attitudes such as this one, expressed by one Kevin Canterbury in a letter to The Boston Globe:
    “I am disgusted by the American media’s glorification of the blood sport we call war,” he begins. (What glorification? Has this guy seen the news?) “Truly sincere, honorable people like Sergeant Rafael Peralta, who make almost superhuman sacrifices to protect freedom and democracy in America, are used as props to personalize and humanize the big lie that the Iraq debacle is a just and noble endeavor.æ.æ.æ. There is nothing romantic about this war.”
    No war was ever romantic. It is always an unbelievably horrible, nasty, bloody business. Society used to hide that, and do its best to romanticize combat. But to me, heroism means a lot more when depicted against the brutal reality: Are you more impressed by Audie Murphy in the sanitized battle scenes of “To Hell and Back,” or by the portrayal of Dick Winters’ deeds in HBO’s painfully realistic “Band of Brothers”?
    Those of us who believe this war is necessary should not flinch from its horrors. We should hold up what heroes manage to accomplish in spite of it all. Are we squeamish about the fact that the heroism of Sgts. Smith and Hester involved killing the enemy? Yes, we are; even I am. But I think most Americans would appreciate what they’ve done, if they knew enough about them.
Confront directly the attitudes of those like Mr. Canterbury who take the untenable stance of “supporting the troops but not the war.”
    As a political tactic, this is a smart improvement over the Vietnam-era practice of spitting (figuratively if not literally) on returning veterans. But when people say “support the troops by bringing them home,” I see it as spitting on the graves of the 1,800 who have already given their lives. That’s what abandoning Iraq would mean.
    Soldiers kill. Soldiers get killed — and not in pretty ways, keeling over saying “They got me,” without a trace of blood. They get killed in the manner of Sgt. Peralta, whose remains could only be identified by a tattoo on his shoulder.
    If we can’t face that, let’s give up on the whole thing. Let’s disband the military altogether, and just hope the rest of the world decides to show its gratitude by being nice to us from here on.
    Or we can face a grim task, and openly respect those who distinguish themselves in performing that task for us while we sit on our broad behinds watching the Michael Jackson trial.
    On the day after Sgt. Peralta died, his little brother received the first and last letter the Marine ever wrote to him. “Be proud of being an American,” he wrote. Young Ricardo Peralta should take that advice. And America, returning the favor, should be proud of his big brother.

Saving kids’ lives AND taxpayers’ money

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I edited something out of today’s lead editorial before it got into the paper. Originally, it was the last in a series of bulleted items celebrating the few good highway safety provisions in the otherwise pork-laden federal highway bill. Here’s what I cut:

  • The government must study ways to reduce the problem of vehicles accidentally backing over children in driveways.

It’s not that I don’t want to save kids’ lives. It’s that I couldn’t see this newspaper going on the record as praising the idea of spending perfectly good money searching for an answer that is so painfully obvious that it makes you want to weep over humanity’s collective blindness.

You want to know, Mr. and Mrs. America, how to prevent most of these tragedies from occurring?

Stop driving SUVs!

Yes, it’s that simple. This provision came about because some advocates wanted to require TV cameras in the backs of SUVs so that their drivers could actually see little people behind them for a change, and others didn’t want to place that requirement on manufacturers and buyers. This absurdly unnecessary study was the compromise between the two positions.

I’ve seen these devices on high-end SUVs (they run about $1,500 to $2,000), and I just have to shake my head — what an extreme, Rube Goldberg sort of way to solve a problem that wouldn’t even exist if everybody just bought sensible cars to start with.

Of course, even "sensible" cars these days are being built with rear ends so high that it’s hard to see little ones. And why is that? They need the tall trunks as defensive measures, to keep SUVs from running up over them and crushing their occupants. But if where were no SUVs, this wouldn’t be necessary.

Just think, we could prevent these needless tragedies, save the ozone layer, reduce global warming and send a little less money to underwrite terrorism, through the simple expedient of facing the fact that we’re actually driving down the suburban street to the supermarket, and not hunting rhino on the Serengeti.

Anyway, I thought removing that improved the editorial. Don’t you agree?

Sunday, July 24 column w/ links

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It’s hard to find heroes in ongoing Rove saga
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
    WHEN IT FIRST happened 10 days ago, I just glanced over the story and shrugged at a classic example of how political parties distort policymaking to the point that no one in Washington seems capable of simply doing the right and reasonable thing for the good of the country.
    But when I went back a few days later and read more about it, I just got more disgusted. Here are some of the headlines:
    — Newsday: “Partisan battle on Rove; Democrats’ effort to strip Bush adviser’s security clearance fails as GOP retaliates with slap at top Dem.”
    — The Boston Globe: “… Democrats Foiled On Documents.”
    — The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “Democrats take aim at Rove….”
    What’s wrong with this picture? The issue was whether Karl Rove, President Bush’s political Karl_rove Svengali, should be stripped of his security clearance because he had some as-yet-undefined involvement in the leak of the name of a CIA officer.
    That’s a serious matter, deserving of serious consideration — not a partisan slapfest. My own gut reaction is that of course he shouldn’t have any sort of high-level clearance. He’s a political hack who just happens to hold the title of “deputy chief of staff.” (In the spy world, I believe that’s referred to as having “official cover.”)
    Mr. Rove, good buddy of the appalling Grover Norquist, may currently be at the top of the heap of political hacks, but that just puts him at the bottom of the list of people I would trust with sensitive information. I just don’t trust anyone of that breed, whether we’re talking Mr. Rove, James Carville or Lee Atwater.
    In a rational universe — or a rational republic, which I would settle for — this man would not have had a security clearance to begin with. And by “rational republic,” I mean one in which policy trumped politics, and the national interest did not have to compete with the constant jockeying for partisan advantage.
    But that’s not the way things work. On July 14, apparently frustrated that their campaign to get Mr. Rove fired wasn’t getting enough traction, Democrats presented legislation to deny access to classified information to any federal employee who discloses a covert CIA operative’s identity.
    This stems, of course, from the never-ending battle over whether Mr. Rove did or did not blow the cover of one Valerie Plame as retaliation for a report filed by her husband, ex-diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV, that supposedly undermined the Bush administration’s claim that Saddam Hussein had been trying to obtain material for nuclear weapons from Niger. Since an ongoing investigation has apparently pointed at Mr. Rove as having mentioned Ms. Plame (although not by name) to a reporter, Democrats want the president to fire Mr. Rove.
    They pin this demand not on Mr. Rove having committed a crime (it seems highly unlikely at this point that he would become the second person in history ever to be prosecuted under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982), but on Mr. Bush’s having said he would fire anyone in his employ who was involved in such a leak.
    On one level, that seems a reasonable expectation. I wish I thought that was all that was involved here. Unfortunately, I know Democrats want to make hay from demanding that the president do something they believe he’ll never do.
    This matter is of enormous importance to the president because he sticks by his friends even when he shouldn’t (see Don Rumsfeld), and of equally great importance to the Democrats because they want to embarrass and weaken the president as much as possible, whether Mr. Rove goes or not.
    Mr. Rove doesn’t have to have a title or even a desk in the White House to keep doing all the things that his opposition despises him for. This isn’t about substance, though. It’s about gaining partisan advantage.
    But if the unsuccessful Democratic initiative in the U.S. Senate on the 14th was tainted by partisan interest, it still didn’t smell as bad as the Republican response.
    Majority Leader Bill Frist put forth an amendment to strip Minority Leader Harry M. Reid and Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of their security clearances. There was no serious attempt to pretend that this was anything but naked retaliation. It was so bad that 20 of his fellow Republicans joined Wilson_1 Democratic senators in rejecting it, 64 to 33. (The vote on the “get Rove” proposal was along par
ty lines, 53-44.)
    The disgusting thing is that those 20 grownups who bucked their own leader’s idiocy are the only individuals involved in this that a serious, disinterested person can applaud. I certainly can’t cheer for the self-righteous Mr. Wilson, who declared on NBC’s “Today” show that “What this thing has been for the past two years has been a cover-up, a cover-up of the web of lies that underpin the justification for going to war in Iraq.”
    He neglects to mention that a bipartisan (oh, there’s a refreshing word) Senate intelligence committee report found that he has a problem with the truth himself. I quote from The Washington Post of July 10, 2004:
    “The panel found that Wilson’s report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson’s assertions and even the government’s previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush’s January 2003 State of the Union address.”
    Bottom line: No one should pay too much attention to what Mr. Wilson says. But some people will,Karl_rove_bush_1  as long as what he says is to their partisan advantage. And the president shouldn’t listen to what Mr. Rove says. But he does, and he will continue to do so, no matter how this little drama ends.

July 22 column, with links

2 Replies

Folks in high office keep getting
younger — in more ways than one
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
    I’M NOT USUALLY inclined to help partisans and ideologues, but the Democrats and “liberal groups” who yearn to stop President Bush’s choice for the Supreme Court obviously aren’t trying very hard.
    John Glover Roberts Jr. is flawed in a way that is so obvious, so irrefutable, that the seven Democrats in the “Gang of 14” should have no trouble citing this failing as an “extraordinary circumstance” that frees them from their promise not to filibuster:
    He’s too young.
    I don’t mean “too young in that he would be in a position to steer the court in a conservative direction for a generation.” Mr. Bush’s political opponents would mean it that way, but I don’t care about any of that “liberal vs. conservative” mumbo-jumbo. I mean he’s just plain too young. This isRoberts  not opinion. It is based upon an indisputably objective standard, to wit:
    At 50, he is the first person nominated to the Supreme Court in my lifetime who is younger than I am.
    Obviously, this is an intolerable situation, and those inclined toward intolerance of all things Bush should seize it with both hands (especially since I doubt they’ll find any other good excuses to oppose him).
    Now, let me help out the Republicans and “conservative groups” that are going to support this mere pup no matter what their opponents say, do or dig up:
    I’m being facetious.
    I spell that out — obvious as it may be to you, dear reader — because the ideologues of the right are as utterly lacking in a sense of irony as their counterparts on the left. And I get enough sputtering e-mail as things stand.
    I will now confuse everyone by not only getting serious, but changing the subject entirely.
    My purpose is not to pass judgment on that callow youth the president introduced Tuesday night (note to “conservatives” —being facetious again there).
    The thing is, my own shock at his youth reminds me of an earlier experience, one that has more substantial implications right here at home in South Carolina.
    In 1994, my first year on this newspaper’s editorial board, we interviewed David Beasley, who was seeking our endorsement (which he didn’t get) for governor.
    At one point, the late Bill Rone asked the candidate of the Christian Right about his reputed past Sc_senate_beasley as a Good-Time Charlie.
    Mr. Beasley looked at him with an expression of sincere, chastened, candid innocence and said, “Yessir, I’ve had good times….” I have never before or since seen anyone seeking public office look quite so much like a once-wayward cherub who was humbly grateful to be back in the heavenly fold. It was not the sort of thing that your everyday man of the world can carry off.
    So as the meeting was breaking up I had to ask: How old are you, anyway? He told me, I nodded, and said wonderingly, “You’re the first gubernatorial candidate I’ve ever interviewed who was younger than I am.”
    I didn’t attach all that much importance to it at the time. Yes, I did detect a certain “What, me worry?” callowness in the candidate, a lack of gravitas that always made it hard for me to take him as seriously as one would like to take a governor of one’s state. But my main thought was that I was getting older, and I might as well get used to this sort of thing.
    And boy, was I right.
    Every governor we’ve had since that day has been younger than I. Jim Hodges didn’t look like it, but it’s true.
    Mr. Hodges, who had been a competent and even admirable legislator, regressed somehow from the moment he began to seek the state’s highest office. He allowed himself to be led by the nose by a self-deluding, 34-year-old political consultant whose awful advice helped him become, like Mr. Hodgeslose Beasley, a one-termer.
    Mark Sanford seems a little older than his two immediate predecessors. He seems more like, say, a graduate student. But his ideas, and his ability to translate them into policy, seem stuck in that stage of development. However good some of them are (and however bad others are), they seem unable to find their way out of the seminar.
    It’s not really a matter of age. Mr. Sanford was five years older than Fritz Hollings was when he became governor, and Mr. Hollings accomplished a lot.
    My concern has more to do with certain attributes we tend to associate with age, and which have been lacking in South Carolina. Our last few governors haven’t been terribly accomplished, either at the time of their election or at the time of their departure.
    Mr. Sanford has yet to depart, but he hasn’t broken the string yet, and his resume in 2002 — six years in Congress with a singular lack of achievements — is consistent with the trend. (Mr. Hodges Sanford_budget had more to show when he ran, but you wouldn’t have known it watching him as governor.)
    Not just to pick on these three, the same can be said of almost everyone who’s sought the office during this time — Joe Riley, who failed to be nominated in 1994, being the noteworthy exception.
    And South Carolina needs more than that. It needs someone who can get things done, because we’ve got a lot that needs doing. Yet the kinds of accomplished men and women who might be able to lead us where we need to go just don’t seek public office. Perhaps it’s that their dignity won’t allow them to run that often degrading gantlet. Perhaps it’s something else.
    But whatever it is, it continues to hold our state back.