Category Archives: The Nation

Time to get real in Iraq debate

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By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
NOW THAT we’ve put a fortnight and more between us and the Petraeus testimony, can we go ahead and have a realistic, honest, come-to-Jesus kind of discussion about Iraq?
    I think we can. The “surge” has created that opportunity.
    The idea behind Gen. David Petraeus’ strategy was this: Apply enough force in the right places, and you can create a secure space in which a political settlement can be achieved.
    The promised measure of security has been achieved. Just as importantly, there is broader acceptance in this country that significant U.S. forces will be staying in Iraq for some time. The consistently implied threat that we might yank our troops out at any moment contributed greatly to insecurity in that nation — encouraging terrorists, and discouraging would-be allies from working with us against the terrorists.
    For the moment, that threat is gone. If it wasn’t obvious before, it was certainly on display at a Democratic candidates’ debate at Dartmouth last week. The three candidates most likely to win their party’s presidential nomination moved beyond the fantasy that’s been offered too often to their base — that we could have the troops out of Iraq before George W. Bush leaves the White House. They acknowledged that in fact, we can’t even promise to be out by the time the next president’s first term is up in 2013.
    That was a significant step. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards have walked a razor’s edge for some time, trying to say things that please the “pull ’em out now!” constituency, while at the same time leaving themselves room to be pragmatic and sensible later on, should they be so fortunate as to find themselves in a general election campaign.
    This can sometimes lead to dissonance. For instance, in the debate, Barack Obama repeated confusing assertions he made in an op-ed column in The State, in which he first said “all of our combat brigades should be out of Iraq by the end of next year.” But his very next words were “We will then need to retain some forces to strike at al-Qaida in Iraq.” OK, if all of the combat units are out, what will we “strike at” them with? Boy Scouts? Or will the units used to “strike” be smaller than brigade strength? If so, how effective do we think they’ll be? Isn’t this a return to the “less is more,” minimalist force approach that led to the failures of the thoroughly discredited Donald Rumsfeld? If we’re going to free up “combat brigades” from other, nonspecified tasks, why don’t we send them after al-Qaida too?
    But the magic number “2013” provides a measure of clarity. It says, We’re there. We’re going to be there. So what are we going to do now?
    The question works both ways. Once Democrats accept that we can’t bug out, they can start getting real about what maintaining a commitment means. One answer was offered last week. The Senate majority took a break from futile, please-the-base gestures long enough to join in a bipartisan resolution supporting the idea of dividing Iraq into three semi-autonomous regions — a proposal long advocated by Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Sam Brownback.
    But “What next?” applies with equal force to Republicans who backed the “surge” all along: Now that our soldiers have done their job, where’s the political settlement in Baghdad?
    Sen. Lindsey Graham surprised some last week when he told TIME magazine that he’s willing to give the Maliki government until Christmas to get its act together, and not much more than that.
    What? Is one of the biggest fans of the surge, as “never say die” as anyone, ready to throw in the towel? No. But with the U.S. military having done, and continuing to do, its job, no one can make excuses for an Iraqi government that doesn’t take advantage of the opportunity thus provided.
    “The challenges and the problem areas in Iraq are not lost on me as a big fan of the surge,” he told me over the phone Friday. “I’m trying to let people know that when you say the political is not moving at the appropriate pace, I agree with you, and I acknowledge” it.
    “I want people to acknowledge the security gains, because they’re real, and quit trying to minimalize them. That’s just not fair.” Nor would it be fair or reasonable, he suggested, for him or anybody else to make excuses for political stalemate.
    “I would be the first to say, 90 days from now, if they haven’t delivered anything… regarding the major political reconciliation benchmarks, that it would be clear to me they’ve gone from just being dysfunctional to a failure,” Sen. Graham said.
    At that point, “We need to look at a new model: Is it wise to give more money to the same people when it’s clear they don’t know what they’re doing, or are incapable of performing?”
    That does not, of course, mean pulling our troops out. It is the continued troop presence that gives us the options we have — and puts the onus on the Iraqi government.
    For his part, Sen. Graham was not among the three-fourths of the Senate that endorsed Sen. Biden’s partition. To him, giving in to the idea that Sunni and Shi’a can never live together is as objectionable as endorsing Apartheid as a way of keeping the peace in South Africa.
    Others disagree. But the wonderful thing is that we are now disagreeing about a way forward, rather than arguing about how quickly we can back out.
    With progress like that, I can actually believe that a political solution can be achieved — in Iraq and, yes, even in Washington.

Who would qualify for SCHIP?

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Noticing questions raised in response to this post, a colleague passed along info collected yesterday, after an editorial board discussion of the issue:

The claim: The proposal would allow coverage of families earning $83,000.
The facts: The bill essentially sets an income ceiling of three times the poverty rate for a family of four – $61,950. Beyond that, the federal government would not pay a state its full SCHIP match, which averages about 70 percent. New York state is seeking a waiver that would allow its residents to qualify if their income is not above four times the poverty rate – $82,600 for a family of four. The current administration or future administrations would have to approve that request. New Jersey would still be allowed to cover families with incomes three and one-half times the poverty rate – $72,275 for a family of four.

Here’s the full news story from which that was gleaned:

By KEVIN FREKING
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) – Congress’ proposal to expand a child health care program gives states the financial incentive to expand eligibility for coverage to families of four earning about $62,000 a year.
   That’s a figure that seldom emerges in the claims and counterclaims being tossed about.
   The Bush administration and many Republicans oppose the proposal as a big step toward socialized medicine. They much prefer to cite $83,000 – the ceiling that would apply to families of four only in New York state, and then only if the Health and Human Services Department approves a requested amendment to the state’s current SCHIP plan.
   Democrats, 45 Republicans in the House, many Senate GOP colleagues and other supporters of the expansion prefer to rattle off the figure $40,000. They say that about 70 percent to 80 percent of enrollees in the program would be children in families with incomes less that twice the poverty level. The poverty level is defined by the Census Bureau as $20,650 for a family of four.
   Just what would happen under the bill passed Tuesday by the House, up for a vote later this week in the Senate and then sure to get a veto from President Bush? Here are some of the claims, and what in fact the bill would actually do:
   The claim: The proposal would encourage families to substitute public insurance for private insurance.
   The facts: The Congressional Budget Office projects that about 3.8 million people would become insured as a result of the bill, and about 2 million more will move from private coverage to public coverage. CBO Director Peter Orszag said the substitution rate of one-third was "pretty much as good as you’re going to get" absent a mandate on employers to provide coverage or the insuree to buy it.
   The claim: The proposal would allow coverage of families earning $83,000.
   The facts: The bill essentially sets an income ceiling of three times the poverty rate for a family of four – $61,950. Beyond that, the federal government would not pay a state its full SCHIP match, which averages about 70 percent. New York state is seeking a waiver that would allow its residents to qualify if their income is not above four times the poverty rate – $82,600 for a family of four. The current administration or future administrations would have to approve that request. New Jersey would still be allowed to cover families with incomes three and one-half times the poverty rate – $72,275 for a family of four.
   The claim: The bill would make it easier for children of illegal immigrants to get government-sponsored health coverage.
   The facts: Currently, states are required to seek proof of U.S. citizenship before they provide Medicaid coverage, except in emergencies. The states now require applicants to show documents like birth certificates or passports in order to prove U.S. citizenship and nationality. The bill would allow applicants to submit a Social Security number instead.
   Michael J. Astrue, commissioner for the Social Security Administration, said that matching a Social Security number with an individual does not allow officials to verify whether someone is a U.S. citizen.
   The claim: The proposed 61 cent tax on a pack of cigarettes is a tax on the poor.
   The facts: According to a recent analysis by the National Center for Health Statistics, smoking rates are higher for those who live in poverty or near poverty than among wealthier individuals. Also, a more dated analysis cited by the National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative think tank, states that two-thirds of federal tobacco taxes come from those earning less than $40,000 a year.

Hoosier writes that Edwards stiffs the little people up there, too

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Here we go again. In no way did I solicit this affirmation; I just picked up my ringing phone today and the city editor of the paper in Michigan City, Indiana, told me that he had just written a column telling a tale similar to my own. And I assure you, ladies and gentlemen, and I have never met nor worked with Mr. Rick Richards before today.

Here’s the link to his column, and here’s an excerpt:

Edwards Avoids Average Folks Here
Rick Richards
City Editor, The News-Dispatch
    I’m not sure what to think of John Edwards, but I know what my grandfather would have thought: To hell with him.
    My grandfather was a died-in-the-wool Democrat. When the Great Depression hit, he left West Virginia because he couldn’t get a job in the coal mines, and headed for the small east central Indiana town of Dunkirk, where he found work at the Indiana Glass factory. He didn’t have much of a formal education, but what he knew about glass making machinery would fill textbooks….
    My grandfather believed — as I do — that politics is personal. No, not in a get even personal (as too many in politics believe today), but personal in that candidates shouldn’t be afraid to get their hands dirty by shaking a few that are covered in grease….
    My grandfather didn’t have a degree in political science but he knew a phony when he saw one and I’m sure that if he saw John Edwards, he’d vote for someone else.
    Why?
    Because John Edwards thumbed his nose at Michigan City. Sure he was here, but those of us who work for a living didn’t have a clue. Edwards only had enough time (and he showed up an hour late at that) to talk with about 150 local residents, but only if their pockets were deep enough to hold a big wad of cash or if they were politically connected. And if the rank and file couldn’t be there, then he surely could have spent a few minutes with someone from the newspaper to get his message out to the local voters here.
    Alas, there were no grease-stained – or ink-stained – wretches to mingle with. This was strictly a wine and caviar crowd – most of them physicians – who don’t have to worry about paying their kids’ college tuition, their hospital bills or their mortgage payments….

What can Edwards defenders say to this? Well, suppose they could say that here’s a journalist who felt stiffed personally, so consider the source. In fact, I’m sure they will, because they said the same about me, even though my own story was that he kow-towed to me and my fellow board members, but jilted the folks downstairs. Now it appears that if you are a newspaperman who doesn’t hold in his hands a needed endorsement, you, too will be out in the cold.

But hey, candidates can’t be all things to all people, any more than you or I can. And there’s something about this latest tale that sounds an awful lot like the one I drew your attention to yesterday regarding Barack Obama, and I don’t blame Sen. Obama for that. See 12 people, and 100 will feel neglected. See 100, and 1,200 will gripe. That’s life.

Still — Sen. Edwards has a track record that goes beyond that fact of life. Time and time again, he has blithely brushed off those who are not sufficiently important to him. He does it to an extent that he stands out in this regard among the thousands of politicians I’ve observed closely in my career. And his populist stance imbues that fact with meaning.

What’s the word? Well, I won’t say it again. But Mr. Richards’ grandfather knew one when he saw one.

Those experts are FAST, man!

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Ordinary folks just can’t react as quickly as the experts. That’s proven time and again by the "experts" who keep responding to every policy position Barack Obama sets forth.

Today is a typical example.

At 11:48 a.m., I received an e-mail announcing that "EXPERTS PRAISE BARACK OBAMA’S PLAN TO CREATE EQUAL OPPORTUNITY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL."

But it wasn’t until four minutes later, at 11:52, that the plan was actually released. That’s when I got this e-mail, anyway: "Obama Outlines Plan to Address Disparities in America’s Justice System."

These experts must have ol’ Doc Brown helping them out. He’s sort of an expert, too, I guess.

Sorry, Lindsey, but this mumbo-jumbo doesn’t cut it

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Lindsey Graham’s "explanation" of why he voted against SCHIP is completely inadequate, even insulting. He seems to have no rational argument against it, so he resorts to the most primitive gesticulations of the witch doctors of the Republican tribe, shaking the word "government" at it as though it had magical powers to chase away evil spirits.

Why in God’s name would anyone (that is, anyone who is not hypnotized by ideology beyond the ability to reason) reject health care simply because the government is involved in providing it? I grew up in the United States Navy receiving "government" health care from the time I was born until the day they tossed me out into the cruel civilian world as an adult, and guess what? Gummint medicine worked as well as any other.

Anyway, here’s the mumbo-jumbo the Senator sent out. Such nonsense as this is beneath him:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Wes Hickman or Kevin Bishop

September 27, 2007

Graham Opposes Expansion of Government-Run Health Care

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) today will vote against the conference report on the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).  The legislation is expected to pass the Senate.  The House of Representatives has already passed SCHIP and President Bush has said he will veto it when it reaches his desk.
    “I was very concerned when the SCHIP program was created in 1997 it would eventually be expanded beyond its original purpose,” said Graham.  “From the start, there were worries SCHIP could serve as the first brick in the road to national health care.  Sure enough, a decade later, Congress will expand the program and add dozens of new bricks on the pathway toward government-run, government-controlled national health care.”
    Graham noted several problems with the SCHIP legislation including:

  • The expanded SCHIP program moves our nation closer to a single-payer, government-run, government-controlled national health care system.
  • The SCHIP program, created in 1997, was originally designed to provide health insurance to low-income children.  Under the new expansion, the program will now cover adults and families earning as much as $82,600 a year. This year 13 percent of SCHIP funds will go to adults, not low-income children.
  • The program encourages people to move from private health insurance to government-funded health insurance.  According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), 2 million individuals who are currently insured will move from private insurance to government insurance.

    “There are many very serious problems with this legislation,” said Graham.  “This bill doubles the cost of the SCHIP program and is a giant step toward nationalized healthcare.  In addition, no longer are we just covering low-income children, but adults can now join the program.  Finally, we encourage families to drop private insurance and join the government program.  This is a very bad day for our health care system and the American taxpayer.”
                    ####

Graham sets Iraq deadline: 90 days

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This was just brought to my attention:

    Sen. Lindsey Graham, a pivotal Republican vote in the U.S. Senate on Iraq policy, is willing to give the government of Iraq until Christmas to get its act together.
    But not much more.
    Graham told TIME Wednesday that the Iraqi leaders have 90 days to start resolving their political differences with real legislative agreements or face a change in strategy by the U.S. "If they can’t do it in 90 days," he said, "it means the major players don’t want to." …

I’m going to see if I can get ahold of Lindsey for some elaboration…

Having an Obama mañana

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Today I seem to be having an Obama mañana.

First, I run into Max, who tells me that on Saturday the campaign is going to try to knock on 50,000 doors in South Carolina. Every county is organized, hundreds of volunteers are ready in-state, and hundreds more are expected to come from elsewhere to help. Should be quite an impressive feat if they pull it off — and if any campaign can, it’s Obama’s.

Then I read this on the front page of The Wall Street Journal. It’s getting to where I’m as likely to run into the names of local folks I know in national publications as in The State. The theme of the story is that all politics is local — and in this case, "local" means Greenwood, S.C. Such local characters as Rep. Anne Parks and Obama spokesman Kevin Griffis are characters in the tale. Anyway, the piece is a good read if you can call it up. And if you can’t here’s an excerpt:

GREENWOOD, S.C. — When Barack Obama wants to get a campaign crowd really fired up, he tells the story of a whistle-stop a few months back in this out-of-the-way town.
    He was having a down day; the weather and his mood were both foul. And he had driven to Greenwood — "an hour and a half from anywhere" — to keep a promise to a state legislator. Just a handful of well-wishers were there to greet him.
    Suddenly, the Illinois senator heard a voice sing out from the back of the room: "Fired up! Ready to go!" It came from a tiny woman in a big-brimmed church hat. She repeated the chant. Before long, everybody joined in, and Mr. Obama himself was again feeling the spirit.
    "Here’s a lesson for you," he said while telling the Greenwood story at a rally in Carroll, Iowa, this month. "If you’re fired up and ready to go, we can change the world."
    But beyond Mr. Obama’s soapbox rhetoric about Greenwood is a more complicated story, of small-town politics, snubs and jealousies — and a reminder that even presidential campaigns can be very personal and very local. Mr. Obama’s appearance in Greenwood may have left him fired up, but it also left bruised feelings among local Democrats and left his campaign with a damage-control job that continues to this day…

Finally, I overhear somebody at another table at breakfast talking about Obama, and I find myself wondering if the guy is taking over South Carolina. But it’s just someone mentioning the candidate’s appearance at a couple of churches here in the Columbia Sunday, and I had already read about that.

The Little Rock Nine, 50 years on

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Last week, I happened to mention what happened in Little Rock 50 years ago in the course of asking the successor of Orval Faubus about his thoughts on race relations today, in Arkansas and the nation.

Mike Huckabee noted that today — Sept. 25 — would be the 50th anniversary of the day that the 101st Airborne Division escorted nine black kids to class at Central High School, to get them past the mob of white racists outside.

To mark that day, I edited a short video clip of the former governor talking about the meaning of those events. He mentions two items of note: First, that his daughter Sarah — seated behind him in the photo below — was attending Central High at the time when the 40th anniversary was marked (which raises yet another point of contrast with a certain other governor); and second, that he takes great pride as a Republican in having won 48 percent of the black vote in one of his elections.

Huckabeesarah

McCain on the comeback trail

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B.J. Boling sent out a release to call attention to this piece by Dan Hoover. Here’s B.J.’s release, here’s a link to the story, and here’s an excerpt:

    John McCain was midway through his "No Surrender" bus tour last Sunday when he entered territory both familiar and friendly, that of yet another military veterans’ group.
    The tour was named for his position on Iraq, one mirroring that of the Bush White House: No withdrawal, at least not in any numbers and not now.
    It also could have been named for his second Republican presidential run.
    The Arizona senator is hanging in there, something many thought unlikely after six months of disastrously low fundraising for a major candidate by 2007 standards….
    Now the leaves are beginning to turn, there’s a chill in the morning air, donations have improved, the private jet’s back on call, and, like Mark Twain, rumors of McCain’s political death proved premature.
    His Iraq-centered performance in the recent New Hampshire Republican debate won favorable coverage.
    He’s staking his final presidential run on being the candidate most vocally supportive of an unpopular war, a guy who wanted a troop surge before the administration thought of it.
    McCain has used Gen. David Petraeus’ report on Iraq in a sort of "I told you so" context to reinvigorate his campaign, combining it with sharper criticism of the Bush administration’s initial policies. A reference to an America in dire need of leadership is the closest McCain comes to even hinting he’s running for president….

Now, talk amongst yourselves…

Mike Huckabee on the obligation to govern

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Huckabee1
By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
THERE’S A PRINCIPLE that I long thought was a given in American politics. As long as it held true, it didn’t matter so much if the “wrong” candidate won an election. No matter what sort of nonsense he had spouted on the stump, this stark truth would take him in its unforgiving grip, set him down and moderate him.
    Mike Huckabee, who is seeking the Republican nomination for president, made reference to this principle when he met with our editorial board Thursday:
    “One of the tough jobs of governing is, you actually have to do it.” That may sound so obvious that it’s foolish, like “One thing about water is, it’s wet.” But it can come as a cold shock.
    Think of the congressional class of 1994. Newt Gingrich’s bomb-throwers were full of radical notions when they gained power. But once they had it, and used it, however briefly, to shut down the government, they quickly realized that was not what they were elected to do.
    Or some of them realized it. More about that in a moment. Back to Mr. Huckabee.
    Mr. Huckabee is a conservative — the old-fashioned kind that believes in traditional values, and wants strong, effective institutions in our society to support and promote those values.
    Many newfangled “conservatives” seem just as likely to want to tear down as build up.
    If Mr. Huckabee was ever that way, being the governor of Arkansas made him less so. “As a governor, I’ve seen a different level of human life, maybe, than the folks who live in the protected bubble of Washington see,” he said. And as a governor who believed he must govern, he was appalled when he saw government fail to do its job. He points to the aftermath of Katrina: “It was one of the more, to me, disgusting moments of American history…. It made my blood boil….”
   Perhaps I should pause again now to remind you that Gov. Huckabee is a conservative: “I’m 100 percent pure and orthodox when it comes to the issues that matter to the evangelical or faith voter, if you will,” he says.
    “But as a governor, I spent most of my time improving education, rebuilding the highway system, reforming health care in Arkansas” — things that are not inconsistent with conservatism.
    “And for that I had the right — had earned the right, if you will — to pass some pro-life legislation,Huckabee2
and strong pro-marriage and pro-family legislation. But I didn’t spend 90 percent of my time pushing that….”
    OK, let’s review: As a conservative, he has a certain set of ideals. But he knows that being governor isn’t just about promoting an ideology, whatever it might be. Being governor, if the job is properly understood, is the most pragmatic form of life in our solar system — except for being mayor.
    People expect certain things of you, and you’ve got to do them. Successful governors realize that, whether you’re promoting ideals or paving the roads, “The wrong thing to do is to go and to try to stick your fist in the face of the Legislature that you know is not necessarily with you, and create a fight.” (Gov. Huckabee had to deal with a Democratic assembly.)
    So what’s the right way?
    “You positively share your message, you communicate it… . If you can’t do that, I don’t think you can lead. Just… quite frankly, I don’t think you have a shot at it.”
    I know someone who needs to hear that. Remember the class of ’94? The only lesson Mark Sanford learned from shutting down the federal government was that it was worth trying again. So last year, he vetoed the entire state budget when lawmakers failed to hold spending to the artificial limits he had decreed.
    Of course, they overrode him. And he knew they would. For him, it was about the gesture, not about governing. It’s about ungoverning. It’s about the agenda of the Club for Growth.
    Gov. Huckabee, being conservative fiscally as well as otherwise, has been known to turn down taxes, but that’s an area where pragmatism can outweigh ideals:
“… We had a Supreme Court case where we were forced to deal with both equity and adequacy in education,” said Mr. Huckabee. “There was no way to do that without additional revenue.”
    Still, he refused to sign the tax bill Democrats gave him.
    “I didn’t think we were getting enough reform for the amount of money. It wasn’t that I didn’t support additional revenue, because I did, so I’ll be honest about that. But… we weren’t pushing for enough efficiency out of the system.” What sort of efficiency?
    “I wanted a greater level of school consolidation in order to fund the efficiency, which was a very unpopular thing.”
    Our governor has said he’s for school district consolidation (as am I), but he’s never done anything effective to achieve it. That would require building a constructive relationship with the Legislature.
    Another time, Gov. Huckabee actually opposed a tax cut. Why? That governing thing again: “Well, I supported the elimination of the grocery tax, but not the timing, and the timing would have meant we literally would have closed nursing homes, had to slash Medicaid. I mean, it’s one thing to trim the fat off the bone, it’s another thing, you know, to start going into the bone itself.”
    That wouldn’t worry the Club for Growth, about which Gov. Huckabee says, “They hate me. I call ’em the Club for Greed. That’s part of why they don’t like me… If people don’t have the courage to run for office, they can just give money to them and they’ll do the dirty work for you.”
    “I think it’s a sleazy way to do politics.”
    The Club for Growth loves Mark Sanford.
    I don’t know what sort of president Mike Huckabee would make, but I wonder whether he’d do another stint as governor….

For video, go to http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/.

Huckabee3

Sunday column video preview

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This video is an amalgam of clips that contain pretty much all of the quotes from Mike Huckabee that you will find in my Sunday column, which is headlined "Mike Huckabee on the obligation to govern." You’ll also find some context for the quotes — as much as I could jam into YouTube’s 5-minute limit.

Please excuse the spots where I didn’t have video, and had to use sound from my little digital recorder. The quality isn’t as good as what I have on the video footage, and the splicing is a little rough — OK, really rough.

Bear with me; I’m self-taught. As Ferris Bueller said about the clarinet — "Never had one lesson."

Mike McCurry for the ONE Campaign

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Several years back, I went to the White House to visit South Carolinian Mike McCurry when he was Bill Clinton’s press secretary. He had a tough job at a tough time. It was at the height — or should I say, the depth — of the Monica Lewinsky madness. Here’s my column from back then.

Friday, he came to see me at my office, so now we’re even. He was in town on behalf of the ONE campaign. He was brought in by Adam Temple — formerly of the John McCain campaign — and Dave Wilson, the group’s Faith Community Director.

On the video, he gives an overview of what the ONE campaign is about.

Here are two froods who really know where their towels are

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This is wonderful. These two guys have come up with a way to unify our fractured country, and everybody can take part:

    It seemed to them that the nation was more divided than ever over the war and politics, not to mention immigration, race and abortion. So the two of them — Bruce Johnson, a former disc jockey who delivers local fruit and vegetables, and John Maielli, who has a silk-screening and painting business — came up with a wildly ambitious plan for national reconciliation.
    What the country needs, they thought, was a unifying, rally-like event that would be free from politics and in which everyone could participate. Waving a towel seemed perfect…. "A certain amount of energy is released when you wave a towel," explains Mr. Johnson. It’s democratic. It doesn’t require skill or money. Wavers feel kinship with fellow wavers.
    As the event was envisioned, millions of Americans across the country would participate in a National Wave, simultaneously twirling above their heads a red, white and blue towel called the "Official Uniting Towel of America." Organizers picked Friday, July 4, 2008, when people are more inclined to feel patriotic. It would take place at 9 p.m. Eastern time, before most local fireworks go off on the East Coast and at a decent hour in the West. To give enough time for stragglers to join in, the National Wave would last 15 minutes.

It’s simple, to the point that one could easily call it stupid. But its very simplicity, its utter lack of inherent meaning, makes it a blank slate upon which we can all write our hopes and dreams for the country, and most of all express our desire for brotherhood in spite of all our bitter differences.

I’ve got my towel, and I know where it is, and I’m more than ready to use it as a means of reuniting my country. With your help, I hope to keep track of this growing movement, and promote it as the chance arises.

Bruce Johnson and John Maielli — now there’s a couple of froods who really know where their towels are.

Huckabee: The quick-and-dirty video

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You can either wait until I’ve had time to go through more than an hour of video clips and find the highlights, or you can have it fast. For those who want it fast, here’s a quick, unedited (except for splicing two pieces together) clip from the opening moments of our interview today with the former Arkansas governor seeking the GOP nod for the presidency. (You can tell he’s a Republican, in case you didn’t know, by the fact that he thinks "Democrat" is an adjective.)

Bush vs. Congress: How low can they go?

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The contest between the President of the United States and the U.S. Congress to see which can plunge lower in the esteem of the American people is a depressing spectacle, yet morbidly fascinating:

President George W. Bush and the U.S. Congress registered record-low approval
ratings in a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday, and a new monthly index
measuring the mood of Americans dipped slightly on deepening worries about the
economy.

Only 29 percent of Americans gave Bush a positive grade for his job
performance, below his worst Zogby poll mark of 30 percent in March. A paltry 11
percent rated Congress positively, beating the previous low of 14 percent in
July.

And yet, watch: Democrats will point to Zogby’s results as proof that they should have the White House, and Republicans will cite the figures as proof that Congress should be turned back over to them. Neither will own up to being aware of the beams in their own respective eyes.

As I said, depressing.

Take the civics quiz

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Doug Ross brings to my attention this rather well-crafted test that measures how well the taker understands the foundations of our society and how it works. He adds his own facetious suggestion in passing it on:

Maybe you could use this civics test (mentioned on NRO online) as a
way to qualify posters to your blog:
http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/resources/quiz.aspx

Doug also shared his score with me, but I’ll leave it up to him as to whether he shares it with you. Here’s how I made out:

You answered 56 out of 60 correctly — 93.33 %

Average score for this quiz during September: 74.5%
Average score since September 18, 2007: 74.5%

I was reasonably happy with that, because a number of questions in the last third or so of the test dealt with economics, and I was making some guesses on those, educated and otherwise. This test will lull you. The first 10 or 20 or so are so easy as to make you think you’re going to get a perfect score, but then it gets trickier.

I’m not sure whether the questions are the same for each taker, but on the version I took, I missed questions 19, 27, 43 and 58. All of them were questions I was unsure of, so it’s not like I thought I knew something that wasn’t so.

As for Doug’s suggestion — it’s tempting. Of course, it’s also tempting to require such a test before people are allowed to vote. And as long as we’re fantasizing, I’d want to present it to people just as it was presented to me — as a real test, out of the blue, of what I just plain know after 50-plus years in this country, not something you could cram for.

But we know that such things have been abused. Still, when you reflect how very little all too many people know going into voting booths, it’s discouraging.

I’d be curious to know how y’all do, if you take the time to take the test. And please play fair — give us your first, unrehearsed score — not your "do-over."

Wonkish offerings from Romney, Obama

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And for all you substantive-policy freaks out there, here are two appropriately dense offerings, which came to me in back-to-back e-mails today.

First, I got this note from William Holley, a very nice young man with the Romney campaign:

Good morning everyone –

 Please take a moment to look at Governor Romney’s newly
released Strategy for a Stronger America – a compilation of  more than 50 policy
proposals covering everything from fighting radical jihad to achieving energy
independence to ending illegal immigration to controlling federal spending.  You
can even download your very own copy, absolutely free of
charge.


Introducing the Strategy for a Stronger America, Governor
Romney wrote: "Our future depends on our willingness to hold to the principles
that have guided and built our nation.  It depends on the character and
sacrifices of the American people.  And it depends on leadership to craft and
implement a Strategy for a Stronger America." 

— Will

Right next to that was another earnest release from Barack Obama, which I invite y’all to read and tell me what you think of it. I MIGHT be able to wade through the highlights of a strategic-vision document, but it’s more than I can bear to obsess over tax policy — although I have great respect for Obama for doing so, because there’s a world full of folks out there who care about such:

Obama
Announces Major Middle Class Tax Relief Plan
Embargoed
Remarks Provided Below

Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Barack Obama today announced a bold and innovative plan to reform America’s tax code so that it works for the middle class in a speech to the Tax Policy Center in Washington, DC. Obama’s plan would provide a substantial tax cut for nearly all working Americans, for homeowners, and for low- and middle-income seniors.   

Obama made the case that our current tax code reflects the wrong priorities by rewarding wealth instead of work, and he pledged to restore fairness to the tax code to strengthen the American economy.

Obama’s middle class tax relief plan would provide $80-85 billion in tax cuts to America’s workers, seniors and homeowners by:

  • Cutting taxes for 150 million Americans and their families,
    allowing them to get a tax cut of up to $1000.
  • Easing the burden on the middle class by providing a
    universal homeowner’s tax credit to those who do not itemize their deductions,
    immediately benefiting 10 million homeowners, the majority of whom make under
    $50,000 per year.
  • Eliminating the income tax for any American senior making
    less than $50,000 per year, eliminating income taxes for about 7 million
    American seniors.
  • Simplifying tax filings so millions of Americans can do
    their taxes in less than 5 minutes.

Obama would pay for his tax reform plan by closing corporate
loopholes, cracking down on international tax havens, closing the carried
interest loophole, and increasing the dividends and capital gains rate for the
top bracket.

The plan can be viewed in full HERE.

Unedited McCain footage

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Today, I was "on the bus," as Ken Kesey would put it, with John McCain, attending events in Aiken and Lexington, and riding with the senator on his "No Surrender Tour" bus in between.

I have a lot more material than I can go through today, but in order not to keep my readers waiting entirely, here’s some fairly representative footage from the Lexington event — formally, the "Veterans Appreciation Lunch and No Surrender Rally," at 11:45 a.m. at the American Legion Post 7, just off just off Harmon Street.

The theme for the tour, which ends tonight in Charleston, was the war in Iraq, with McCain presenting points he’s been stressing — well, forever, really, but particularly since the Petraeus testimony last week. His message was pitched as an advance of what’s likely to happen next in the Senate, with Democrats and the president resuming the monotony of putting up an amendment with a withdrawal date, having it knocked down, putting up another one, etc.

Turnout was good at both events. You can see the SRO crowd at this one; the one in Aiken was much the same.

That’s all for now.

Long Tall Fred swaggers to the rescue, but of what?

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By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
FOR MONTHS NOW, “conservative” Republicans have waited for their hounddog-faced Godot, Fred Thompson, to bring something to the presidential contest that was missing.
    So it was that quite a few of us left our cool offices and moseyed down to Doc’s Barbecue Monday with a mind to learning what that something was.
    The star of screen, lobby and courtroom swaggered onto the riser in the parking lot and launched into a hickory-smoked litany of what he had been talking about since his previous foray into electoral politics back in the ’90s. His delivery had a poetic — or perhaps “lyrical,” in a country-song-lyrics sense — quality:

… talkin’ about the val-yuh (that’s “value” to you pantywaist Easterners) of being pro-life;
talkin’ about the value of standing strong for the second amendment;
talkin’ about the rule of law;
talkin’ about the value and the rightness of lower taxes;
talkin’ about a market economy; talking about the ingenuity and the inventiveness of the American people and the value of competitiveness and how we would fare well in the international marketplace. We do more things better than anybody in the world, and it works for us….

    OK, so maybe it got a trifle less lyrical there for a moment, but he got his rhythm back right quick:

We’re talking about first principles, things this country was founded upon,
the idea that there’s some things in this changing world that don’t change.
Certain things,
certain things such as human nature,
and the wisdom of the Ages that led us to the Declaration of Independence
and led us to the Constitution of the United States,
and they are not outmoded documents to be cast aside….

    OK, Fred, all that’s great, but who said they were — documents to be cast aside, I mean? Who’s the bad guy here? Certainly not the men who’ve been running their fannies off seeking the GOP nomination while you were playing Hamlet all these months.
    Sure, Rudy Giuliani might have a bit of trouble on the abortion thing, and so might Mitt Romney — depending which Mitt Romney you chose to believe from the assortment available on “YouTube.”
    But that other stuff? Come, on, this is boilerplate, par for the course, warming-up exercises, the kind of stuff Republican babies cut their teeth on.
    So what sets you apart, aside from the fact that you are obviously way-up-yonder tall? (I would have said “Rocky-Top tall,” but Fred and I are both Memphis State grads — from back when they called it Memphis State — so I can’t hang a U.T. image on him).
    One thing, as far as I can see — and it goes back to the predicate in the first sentence of my third paragraph: swaggered.
    That ol’ boy’s got more swagger on him than John Wayne in a roomful of Maureen O’Haras. It’s in his voice, and in everything he chooses of his own by-God free will to say with it. It’s in his accent; it’s in those jowls sliding off his face like McMansions on a muddy California hillside.Fred_thompson3
    I’d say it was literally in his walk, if I could ever see how he walks, but he always has a crowd around
him, with his craggy head poking up above it.
    Those crowds respond to him: The ladies like a man who sounds like he durn-well knows what he’s talking ’bout and don’t mind saying so, and the men can tell right off that he’s one-a them — or what they like to think of themselves as, from the swagger itself right down to that hot-dang wife a-his that smiles so purty when he brags about sirin’ them babies on her.
    All of this can disguise the fact that this is a very smart man of rather broad-ranging sophistication (I mentioned he went to Memphis State, right?), but nobody holds that against him.
    And so it was that he came a-ridin’ into town on that bus a-his with Johnny Cash boomin’ out of it, ridin’ to the rescue of… of what?
    Once again, what was lacking? Who had to be saved from what?
    Last month, ol’ Fred told David Broder that he only considered getting into the race because his friend John McCain had stumbled along the way. Before that, “I expected to support John, just as I did in 2000,” he said.
    I remember him supporting McCain back then, because he came to see me at the time, and said we were wrong to have endorsed George W. Bush in the S.C. primary. And he was right.
    So I found myself puzzled last week, a week in which the biggest political news was the resurgence of John McCain. A few days after a well-reviewed debate performance in New Hampshire, the Arizonan was back in Washington to hear Gen. David Petraeus — who might as well have had a “McCain in ’08” button wedged among those rows of ribbons on his chest — tell the world that the strategy Sen. McCain had advocated for the last four years had succeeded. Suddenly the guy who was supposed to have fallen on his sword over Iraq looked “prescient and courageous on the campaign’s most vital issue,” according to The Associated Press.
    Sure, there are those Republicans who are still hot because Sen. McCain isn’t mean enough to Mexicans, whereas ol’ Fred leaves little doubt that he’d kick their Rio-moistened behinds clear back to Juarez.
    But while I grant you the man sure can swagger, I still find myself wondering: Why’s he swaggering into town now?

For video and more, go to http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/.

Six years on, adrift in a partisan sea

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By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
BACK IN the days of sailing ships, there arose a reassuring naval ritual: The captain would gather his midshipmen on the quarterdeck at the same time each day to “shoot the sun” with their sextants. The object was to establish the time — noon — and the ship’s location on the globe. It also fixed the positions of that captain and those aspiring officers in their societies and in history.
    At noon on the eve of the sixth anniversary of the attacks on America, I tried shooting The Associated Press for a fix on where we are as a nation. Searching for “9/11,” I got 23 hits within the past 24 hours. Here are a few of them:

  • Right here in Columbia, S.C., “First responders and relatives of victims of the 2001 terror attacks were to gather” for a ceremony in which they would sign a steel beam traveling the country. It would “be used in the construction of a museum at the site of the World Trade Center.”
  • Security improvements at the Pentagon have left it “less the office building it was and more a fortress. A burgeoning police force has been given state-of-the-art capabilities to protect against a chemical, biological or radiological attack. Stricter access is being imposed, with fewer vehicles able to drive or park close to the building. Structural improvements allow the building to better withstand blast and fire.”Afghanistan
  • Three photographs showed the wares of Afghan carpet sellers in Kabul who sell crudely woven woolen images of the planes crashing into the Twin Towers. The captions are wondrously vague, failing to make it clear whether the commemorations are sympathetic or celebratory: “An Afghan carpet seller chats with a friend, not seen, as a small hand-made carpet is seen on the ground featuring the attacks of September 11, 2001 on the World Trade Center….”
  • “Felicia Dunn-Jones, who died just five months” after she inhaled part of “the toxic dust cloud that enveloped lower Manhattan,” was for the first time about to be mourned officially as the 2,750th victim of the attacks. The story goes into the acrimony surrounding the treatment of those who fell ill after that day.

    There was also coverage of a commemorative march, a psychology feature on how survivors of theFreedom attacks have become more “decisive” in their daily lives, a story that speculated whether Rudy Giuliani’s mob-busting resume was as important as his 9/11 image to his political future (no, said one expert), and some baseball linescores that happened to contain the numbers “9” and “11.”
    A group of midshipmen trying to reconcile these varied readings would have trouble finding their way. So as captain of this column, I decided to point my sextant at one point, and call it noon:

    Some balance: “While 83 percent of Republicans say the U.S. campaign against terrorism is going well, only 37 percent of Democrats agree.”
    Finally, a solid, accurate reading. I know exactly where I am — drifting in the American homefront doldrums, where the state of the world is a matter of partisan interpretation, a place where “Just one-quarter say the nation is ‘much’ safer than six years ago, 15 percent express a ‘great deal’ of confidence in the government’s ability to prevent attacks, and 8 percent say the fight against terrorism is going ‘very’ well. By contrast, two-thirds worry ‘a great deal’ or ‘somewhat’ about major terrorist attacks.”
    I find I want to set all the canvas my masts and spars will bear, to sail this ship as far from this place as I can get, as quickly as it can go. And I’d like to take the rest of my country with me.
    When I contemplate the schizophrenic responses of my fellow Americans even on something so basic and simple and existential as whether they think they are “safe” or not, I think almost any point in time would be better than this noon in this place.
    For instance, I’d prefer to be in the United States of September 2001. At that time, with the shock of horrific events fresh, we were too wise to be partisan. We saw ourselves as having a shared destiny, which we did (and do). Then, the opportunities of the past six years had not yet been missed.
    We still had the chance to take our NATO allies up on a joint fight against terror. The president of the United States had a golden opportunity to enlist us all in changing our lives to meet this challenge, particularly with regard to our dependence on foreign oil. Osama bin Laden had not yet slipped away from us at Tora Bora.
    The various opportunities to secure Iraq quickly and early had not been blown. No one had stood before a “Mission Accomplished” banner. We had not heard of Abu Ghraib. The Golden Mosque was still intact.
    Most of all, Americans of both political parties were united with us independents in wanting our country to succeed on the foreign battlefields where our troops fight real battles, ones in which life and death are not metaphors, and are immune to political interpretation.
    Just above my search results I see a banner on The Associated Press Web site and I click on it:
    “Gen. David Petraeus went before a deeply divided Congress on Monday, the commander of 165,000 troops heckled and attacked by anti-war critics before he began to speak. ‘Tell the truth, general,’ shouted protesters as the four-star general made his way into the crowded hearing room.”
    My God. Check your sextants again, young gentlemen. How did we ever get this far off course?