Category Archives: Today on our opinion pages

Robert Ariail video

We’re launching two new Web features tonight — one is the Saturday Opinion Extra, which should show up at the top of the regular Opinion page at 12:01 a.m.

The other is the new site devoted to my friend and colleague Robert Ariail and his stellar work. Andy Haworth of thestate.com has done a nice video for that site to help us launch it. I invite you to watch it above, and then go check out the whole Ariail site.

Now, I’ll go back to watching the clock, waiting for the Saturday thing to launch. I think it’s ready…

On Saturdays, you’ll find us on the Web

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By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
SINCE YOU’RE reading this, we can assume you found us in our new location. Actually, Page D2 is sort of an old location for the Sunday editorial page. We were here for many years before jumping to the A section a little more than a year ago.
Being back on D2 feels like home to me; I hope it will make our pages more convenient each week for you as well.
But my purpose today is not to talk about a change already made, but one coming up. And this one is going to feel a lot less familiar to all of us.
Starting six days from now, we will no longer publish opinion and commentary pages on Saturdays in The State. Instead, we’ll unveil a new Web page featuring content of the sort that we would have published in the paper, only more of it. The new page will be called “Saturday Opinion Extra.”
Why are we doing this? Two reasons, which I’ll keep as simple as possible:

We have to cut costs.
There are things we can do online we can’t do in the paper.

Now, about the cost-cutting:
You may have read that newspapers don’t make as much money as they used to. We still make money, just not as much as the stock market demands. And when you’re a publicly traded company, you have no options: Making less money is something shareholders don’t stand for.
So you do two things: You work like crazy to bring in more revenue, which is not my department. And you cut costs, which does involve the editorial staff.
When we lost one writing position three years ago, we eliminated staff-written copy from our Monday pages. Now, faced with further reductions, we’re eliminating editorials from another day, plus eliminating two pages of newsprint a week.
But just as we replaced the staff copy with a lot more letters to the editor (one of the most popular features in the paper) on Mondays, you’ll get more content on Saturdays online than we could possibly put in the paper. For instance:

We get far more syndicated and local guest columns than we can fit on our op-ed pages during the week. On our new Saturday Web page, we’ll be able to give you several op-ed pages worth of columns from the likes of David Broder, Kathleen Parker, Maureen Dowd, David Brooks, Thomas Friedman, Cal Thomas, Paul Krugman and Charles Krauthammer.
Add to that at least one column from a local writer, just as you would normally have received on Saturdays. But the particular columns we put online might be something you’d never have gotten in the paper. We often get more than one column in a month from such newsmakers as Gov. Mark Sanford (Columbia Mayor Bob Coble has submitted three this past month). But since space in the paper is at such a premium, we try to limit each writer to no more than one a month. We also turn down most columns that other newspapers have published. So we turn down some interesting, relevant columns — but finite space in the paper demands tough choices. Online space is virtually unlimited, so you’ll get additional chances to read what newsmakers, and others, are thinking.
You will see at least as many letters to the editor online as you would have received in the paper, with the added bonus that some of them will be letters held out for no reason other than that they were too long for our page, and didn’t lend themselves to trimming.
We regularly shoot video during editorial board interviews with newsmakers. I’ve been using some of it on my blog the last couple of years, but sporadically; the Saturday Opinion Extra page gives us a place to showcase some of the most interesting footage from the past week.
You’ll find links to such things as a new, improved page devoted to Robert Ariail’s recent cartoons, featuring such DVD-style bonus features as unpublished sketches, archives, and video of Robert talking about what he does. (There will also be links to recent posts on my blog, of course.)

That’s the content we’ll be starting with, and I hope you will suggest more.
This is a big and scary step for us in the editorial department. We have always published editorial and op-ed pages daily, and departing from that feels a little like stepping off something firm and secure into thin air.
But like skydiving, it’s also pretty exciting. Ever since the 1980s — since before there was a Worldwide Web — I’ve been interested in the potential of an electronic opinion forum, with immediacy and interactivity you can’t get on paper. That’s why I started the blog; this takes us another step.
Sure, we’ve let our paper content flow onto the Web for years, but we’ve hardly scratched the surface of what we can do there in the opinion realm. The editorial board needs to turn some attention to better serving the 800,000 unique visitors who come to thestate.com each month.
Please check out this new feature on Saturday, and let us know what you think of it. Even more than a published page, this new venture will always be a living work in progress, and I’m counting on our readers to help us shape it.

Until the new Saturday Opinion Extra page appears, please come to my blog to share your thoughts: thestate.com/bradsblog/. Or send us a letter at stateeditor@thestate.com.

Wright context doesn’t change message

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OK, I finally got around to watching one of those longer clips of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright — specifically, one that contains the "God Damn America" part. I’ve been told many times that I just needed to get the context to understand that what he said shouldn’t be understood in the stark way that I have understood it.

The Rev. Joe Darby, in his op-ed piece on today’s page, suggested the same point:

… America is still focused on a few ten-second sound bites from Rev. Wright’s 30- or 40-minute sermons

Anyway, I watched this six-minute, 48-second clip — and it doesn’t change a thing. "God Damn America" still means "God Damn America." There’s no part in which he says, suggests or even hints that he didn’t really mean it, or that he thought America was in danger of damnation, and he wanted to save it. No, if anything, it’s clearer that he meant what he said.

But I think some of the well-meaning folks trying to explain all this to me are actually misunderstanding me. Start with the assumption that I somehow lack information. Aside from the above quote suggesting I need the context of the remark, the Rev. Darby also says:

Dr. Wright’s critics also need to learn more about the historically black church and its clergy…

I surely don’t claim to be an expert on the black church, especially in the presence of Joe Darby, who lives it. But no one has told me anything about the black church, in the course of "explaining" Mr. Wright to me, that I did not know. Sure, maybe something is lost in translation, but so far I’ve seen no indication that that’s what is at work this time.

But what Mr. Wright said is clear. The six-minutes-plus of context that went before "God Damn America" was exactly what I would have guessed went before it. Essentially, it was a review of history, mixed with a small dollop of political partisanship (the comparison of not-so-bad presidencies with the current one). Short version: The government has upheld oppression of black people during the course of American history.

Folks, I’m an American history major, and I’ve lived in this country for most of 54 years. What part of the rather sketchy overview in that sermon do you think I didn’t know already? If I’d been sermonizing, I could have added a lot to it — including the fact that the blood offering of the Civil War, as horrific as it was, seems to have been an inevitable sacrifice to expiate the sin of slavery. And I would have said the evil didn’t end there, nor could it, there being original sin in the world, and no one of us since Jesus Christ born free of it.

But I wouldn’t have said "God Damn America." Not in a million years. For me, the point of bringing up evil is to try to overcome it — as I believe two people Mr. Darby mentions (King and Bonhoeffer) were trying to do.

Sorry, but I can’t accept that the Rev. Wright was saying "things that challenge America to rise above its sins of prejudice and greed." No, if he’d said America was in danger of damnation, or headed straight thataway, rather as Jesus said to the Pharisees in the example cited by my colleague Warren Bolton this week, that might have been seen as a challenge, perhaps even a well-intentioned warning. (Personally, although he had more right, being God, than anyone else to do so, I don’t remember Jesus ever damning anything more sentient than a fig tree.)

But Mr. Wright didn’t call on us to do anything. Instead, he called on God to damn America.

One last point — Mr. Darby seems to assume, as have other writers, that those who say things like what I just said are against Obama. Well, I’m not. But just because I like a guy, I’m not going to sugarcoat a problem. As I said, Obama gave a brilliant speech, but he did not succeed in separating himself from what the Rev. Wright had said. He couldn’t. If he had disowned him at this point, it would have been crass opportunism, and beneath him.

So this guy I like — Obama — has a problem, one he can’t get rid of. Just as another guy I like, John McCain, is way old — nothing he can do about that, either.

I would suggest that if anyone out there supports a candidate and thinks that candidate is perfect, he should look a little harder. Nobody meeting that description has come along in two millennia. Thus endeth my sermon for today.

Joe Azar, The State on same page for once

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Just saw this e-mail that Joe Azar sent out to his list:

Today The State editorial board endorsed Cameron Runyan over incumbent Daniel Rickenmann. Read it below. From all I can hear and see, Runyan should become our next city councilman. But don’t sit back and wait, forward this to everyone, call all your friends, and make sure to get everyone out to vote Tuesday, April 1. That is the only way to win, so do it!…

You should take note of this moment, because you won’t often find Joe so heartily agreeing with us. I for one intend to enjoy it while it lasts.

Here’s the editorial to which he refers.

That trooper was hardly alone

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Don’t think there was anything particularly rare about the language that trooper used in the notorious video.

Warren Bolton says he’s gotten "some pretty interesting feedback on my trooper column" in today’s paper. He shared this "gem" with me a little while ago:

Sent: Friday, March 14, 2008 2:47 PM
To: Bolton, Warren
Subject: Re: Trooper’s actions

Bolton;

The only thing that trooper did wrong was in not shooting the bastard down. At least that would have put one less nigger crimmal [sic] out of business.

Val Green

Warren gets this sort of thing all too often. So perhaps you can see why he worries that, as he said in his column today, "we’re not there yet" in the year 2008.

S.C. budget earmarks

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Here’s how to find the earmark list Cindi wrote about in her column this morning:

Here’s the link: http://www.scstatehouse.net/sess117_2007-2008/appropriations2008/gab4800.htm.
It’s the second item listed under "H. 4800, GENERAL APPROPRIATIONS BILL": "Earmarked Projects Pursuant to House Rule 5.3(F) (Excel format)."

Cindi being the obsessively thorough type, she also suggests that I give "step-by-step directions for finding it," in case the link fails. (So that’s why I’m doing this; it’s not that I think you’re stupid or something:

To FIND the list, go to www.scstatehouse.net, select "Current Legislation" from the options listed across the top of the page, then select "The Budget" on the right side of the page, then select "Fiscal Year 2008-2009 – General Appropriations Bill H. 4800 of 2008" to get to the link above.

DMV on Real ID

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Since I’m having trouble finding time to comment, I can at least pass some stuff on to y’all to discuss, such as this release from DMV:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Beth Parks

REAL ID IN SOUTH CAROLNA
Blythewood, SC – March 6, 2008 – As the deadline for states to apply for the federal Real ID extension approaches, many South Carolina citizens question how Real ID will affect them as individuals.

"While the decision to comply or not comply with Real ID is up to state officials, it’s important for the citizens of South Carolina to understand how it will affect them," said Executive Director Marcia Adams.

Compared to the way SCDMV currently issues driver licenses and identification cards, the process to issue a compliant Real ID credential will change considerably. SCDMV must take customer source documents, such as a birth certificate or social security card, and verify them for authenticity and scan them into SCDMV records. SCDMV expects these additional steps to increase the average wait time in a field office from 15 minutes to 45-60 minutes. That wait could grow to as much as two hours during peak operating times.

The cost for a Real ID compliant credential will also significantly increase. The current cost for a 10 year license is $25.00. A Real ID compliant credential, which can only be valid for eight years, may cost as much as $60.00. To implement Real ID, SCDMV must develop new processes and build verification systems that do not exist on the state and federal level. South Carolina will require $16 million in non-recurring funds and $10 million in recurring funds to implement and maintain the Real ID program.

SCDMV will not be able to issue Real ID compliant credentials over the counter as it is done today. SCDMV will be required to change to a central issuance model, which means that customers will not be able to leave a field office with compliant credentials on the same day as their visit. Instead, they will be issued a temporary non-compliant credential. The credential cannot be issued until SCDMV has electronically verified all of the source documents. The compliant credential will be issued from SCDMV headquarters and mailed to the customer within 2-3 weeks of their office visit. SCDMV will continue to serve customers that do not want a compliant credential. The credential they receive, however, must be marked as non-compliant.
#####

Beth S. Parks

Communications Director

SCDMV

Make of it what you will. Here is our editorial position on the immediate political question before us.

‘Tom Jackson’s War’

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Here’s video I shot to go with Cindi’s column today. In it, tobacco retailer Tom Jackson explains what’s wrong with manufacturers packaging cigarettes as "cigars" and marketing them toward youth.

Politics as baseball

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Readers who are well familiar with Washington Post columnist George Will know that he is also a baseball fan. Not a giddy, “don’t you love the smell of a glove well-conditioned with linseed oil?” kind of way, or a “Dad, do you want to play catch?” way. George Will is a fan of baseball in a serious, no-nonsense, highly complex, analytical sort of way.

Yes, baseball fans tend to be more obsessed with statistics than other kinds of sports fans, but most baseball fans haven’t written a book about that boys’ game titled Men at Work.

Only recently has it occurred to me the extent to which Mr. Will has taken to writing about politics as though it were baseball. Witness this passage from his column on today’s op-ed page:

In 2000 and 2004, George W. Bush carried North Dakota with 60.7 percent and 62.9 percent of the vote. A Democratic presidential candidate has not carried the state since 1964. Bush carried South Dakota with 60.3 and 59.9. It has not voted Democratic in a presidential election since 1964. Bush carried Missouri with 50.4 and 53.3. This bellwether state has voted with the winner in every election but one (1956) in the last 100 years. Bush carried Nebraska with 62.2 and 65.9. It last voted Democratic in 1964. Bush carried Colorado with 50.8 and 51.7. It last voted Democratic in 1992. Bush carried Arizona with 51 and 54.9. It last voted Democratic in 1996. Bush carried Virginia with 52.5 and 53.7. It last voted Democratic in 1964. Bush narrowly lost Wisconsin with 47.6 and 49.3.

Sure, but how did Bush do against left-handers in post-season night games?

Perhaps Mr. Will hopes through such observations to impose a stately orderliness upon our politics, causing elections to seem as calmly rational as the game we used to call the national pastime. If only it could be so.

Here’s what’s wrong with American politics

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Here’s what’s wrong with American politics. The first of our letters to the editor on today’s page summed it up pretty neatly:

…(W)hile Sen. Barack Obama is an incredible orator and inspires hope for a
post-partisan future, the reality of American politics is partisan.
Astute voters realize this and want the candidate who is best suited to
fight the Republican Party. Hillary Clinton and her team have gone
toe-to-toe with the Republicans and beaten them more often than not.

What’s wrong with American politics, of course, is attitudes such as this letter writer’s. I say this not to endorse Barack Obama or condemn Hillary Clinton. Nor do I mean that this writer is a bad person. In fact, I think it’s a friend of mine (it’s a fairly common name, but I didn’t bother to check; who wrote it is irrelevant).

The problem is the staggering fatalism set forth in that paragraph, the refusal even to allow the possibility of something better than the madness these parties inflict upon our country: "The reality of American politics is partisan." Well, yeah — as long as neither you nor anyone else wants to try for anything better.

But the essence of what’s wrong is the next sentence: "Astute voters realize this and want the candidate who is best suited to fight the (fill in the blank) Party."

The worst candidates are the Democrats who are all about fighting the Republicans, and Republicans who are all about fighting the Democrats. The very best candidates, whatever their labels, are the ones who can see how pointless most of that fighting is, and have the vision and ability to lead us past it.

We need the UnParty, now more than ever.

The Hillary cartoon that wasn’t

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

08ari0109a

Passing of the GOP Old Guard

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Check out the David Brooks column we ran in today’s paper, particularly these paragraphs:

Huckabee won because he tapped into realities that other Republicans have been slow to recognize. First, evangelicals have changed. Huckabee is the first ironic evangelical on the national stage. He’s funny, campy (see his Chuck Norris fixation) and he’s not at war with modern culture.
Second, Huckabee understands much better than Mitt Romney that we have a crisis of authority in this country. People have lost faith in their leaders’ ability to respond to problems. While Romney embodies the leadership class, Huckabee went after it. He criticized Wall Street and K Street. Most importantly, he sensed that conservatives do not believe their own movement is well led. He took on Rush Limbaugh, the Club for Growth and even President Bush. The old guard threw everything they had at him, and their diminished power is now exposed.

I believe he’s on to something. The folks who attended the Iowa GOP caucuses Thursday night certainly thought he was on to something.

If you want to win as a Republican these days, you have to approach things a lot differently from the way George W. Bush and Mark Sanford (as pure an example of a "Club for Growth" guy as you’re likely to find) have. And, unfortunately for Mitt Romney, being a "Suit" doesn’t cut it any more. (Thinking a person would be good at politics because he’s good at business is about like assuming that a good swimmer would automatically be a good tennis player — it MIGHT happen, but one does not really lead to the other.)

This New Wave going to be very interesting to watch, and it might be very good for the country.

In New Hampshire, we’ll get our next indicator as to the direction in which that wave is rolling. Will Huckabee’s crushing Iowa victory over Romney boost him to an unexpected victory — or will it push John McCain over the top?

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

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

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

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

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

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

So in Washington, spending equals revenue?

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It’s been over 20 years since my job entailed dealing regularly, via phone, with editors in the old Knight Ridder Washington bureau, so I guess I forgot what it could be like.

When I was editing the George Will column for today’s op-ed page, I ran across this paragragh:

In January, with much preening, House Democrats embraced "paygo,” the pay-as-you-go rule that any tax cut must be "paid for” by compensatory tax increases or revenue cuts. In December, Democrats abandoned it because of the alternative minimum tax.

Does that make sense to you? It sure didn’t to me. So I called The Washington Post Writers Group, and asked the question, did he mean "’paid for’ by compensatory tax increases or spending cuts?" The first person I asked referred me to another person (which is fine; I hadn’t exactly expected the first person to answer the phone to address the question anyway — he had just sounded like he wanted to try).

The second person I spoke with was one of those people who is unbothered by long stretches of "dead air" in a conversation. A couple of times, while waiting for a response from him, I had to say, "Hello?" to see if he was still there.

After I repeated the question to him, and waited through a long pause, he said he supposed that would be a fine substitution, as it was synonymous.

I could have just let that go in the interest of getting on with a very busy day and enabling folks to go home and start their holiday, but my inner Scrooge asserted himself: Obviously we were miscommunicating.

They’re hardly synonymous, I insisted. "Revenue" is money coming in; "spending" is money going out. It you were going to cut something in order to balance a tax cut, it would have to be the latter.

Another long pause.

Finally, he conceded that he saw my point.

After another long wait, I said, so that substitution’s OK?

Yes, he said.

And then, he added most strangely, "He just meant it in the Washington sense." If there had been irony in his tone, I would have laughed politely. But he sounded so serious, so "you folks in the hinterland wouldn’t understand our insider lingo," that I almost laughed anyway — and not politely.

But I let it go. I had a lot more work to do.

Lieberman endorsement strikes a blow for the rest of us

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Joe_mccain2

By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor

“In this critical election, no one should let party lines be a barrier to choosing the person we believe is best qualified to lead our nation forward. The problems that confront us are too great… for us to play partisan politics with the Presidency.
“We desperately need our next President to break through the reflexive partisanship that is poisoning our politics and stopping us from getting things done.”
— Sen. Joe Lieberman,
endorsing John McCain

JOHN McCAIN got an early Christmas present up in New Hampshire Monday. So did the UnParty.
The UnParty, I should explain, is a product of my wishful imagination, an anti-partisan alternative to the foolish, vicious Punch and Judy show that the two parties play out daily on 24/7 TV “news” channels. It has no infrastructure, no declared candidates, and exists mainly on my blog and in gratuitous mentions here that probably mystify more than inform.
John McCain, however, is far more substantial. He is an actual U.S. senator who is seeking the Republican nomination for president of the United States. You may have heard of him, in spite of what sometimes looks like a conspiracy on the part of major media and poll respondents to make him seem a marginal figure.
The Christmas present to which I refer was the endorsement of Joe Lieberman, late of the Democratic Party, who strode triumphant over the yammering partisans of his own former faction in last year’s elections and is now perhaps the only major political figure in this country who is really and truly free to endorse whomever he honestly believes is the best candidate. And out of the crowds of candidates seeking the office, he chooses to endorse his friend and colleague John McCain, and parties be damned.
This is not the only big present Sen. McCain has received early this week. On Sunday, he was endorsed by three newspapers, two of them being The Des Moines Register and The Boston Globe. (The third was the less-well-known Portsmouth Herald in New Hampshire.) Between them, they eclipsed the earlier endorsement he had received from the storied New Hampshire Union Leader.
(Santa wasn’t quite as generous to other boys and girls. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had to share the loot: Des Moines went for Sen. Clinton; Boston for Sen. Obama.)
An excerpt from the Globe’s McCain endorsement:

“Conventional wisdom among political handlers used to hold that a candidate needed to capture the political center. The last two presidential campaigns proved that wrong. The Republicans scraped out victories by pressing just enough buttons and mobilizing just enough voters. But such wins breed political polarization and deprive a president of the political capital needed to ask Americans to sacrifice in difficult times.
“The antidote to such a toxic political approach is John McCain. The iconoclastic senator from Arizona has earned his reputation for straight talk by actually leveling with voters, even at significant political expense….
“As a lawmaker and as a candidate, McCain has done more than his share to transcend partisanship and promote an honest discussion of the problems facing the United States….”

You’ll note a certain resemblance to the quote above from Sen. Lieberman — the emphasis on getting outside the respective comfort zones of the partisans, and having the courage and conviction to make the hard choices that are necessary to further the good of the country. Echoing a John F. Kennedy speech I recently cited here, Sen. Lieberman said Sen. McCain can be trusted to do the right thing “not only when it is easy, but when it is hard.”
That’s what appeals to me about the Lieberman endorsement. It’s not so much that he endorses McCain as the reasons he gives.
At this point I should note that this column is not about boosting the candidacy of John McCain. I know better. The fact is, Sen. McCain’s biggest problem in the South Carolina primary may be the fact that he is not seen as “Republican enough” by some, and this endorsement hardly helps. He does work across the aisle — on campaign finance reform, on fighting corporate welfare and global warming, on promoting rational immigration policy. He does take stands on the basis of the greater good, with little regard for personal political consequences. And there are people who don’t like those facts.
To the extent that there is electoral advantage to be derived, it’s in New Hampshire, where, as The Washington Post notes, the McCain campaign is once again “targeting independents more than it is establishment Republicans.” But even there, the benefit is debatable. It certainly doesn’t pull over any Democrats, to whom Mr. Lieberman is anathema.
What is most exciting about this endorsement is less the hope it offers the McCain campaign, and more the hope it offers for American politics that something like this can even happen.
Over here at the UnParty — where anything that confuses both partisan Democrats and partisan Republicans is welcome — the Lieberman endorsement is very encouraging news. Lord knows that these days, in the 16th year of the bloody Bush-Clinton Wars, we don’t get much of that.

Joe_mccain1

Another shot fired in ‘Green Diamond’ wars

The game is afoot!

Oh, THAT Michael Berg…

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When he emerged on this post sticking up for the Palestinians, I kept thinking, I know Michael Berg. Where do I know a Michael Berg from, but I just couldn’t picture him or put him in context.

Then he appeared on our Saturday op-ed page, and I had to slap my forehead. That’s Michael on the left end of the banner, marching against the war in New York City during the Republican National Convention in 2004.

The thing is, I don’t think I’ve seen Michael since that day. He left the country soon after, and I hear he was in Paraguay with the Peace Corps, or something like that. (Jump in and correct me if I’m wrong, Michael.)

Bradny
Anyway, I’m glad when I get things straightened out like that. I’m also glad when I get to use one of the dozens of photos I shot at the convention. That week was when I first decided I had to start a blog. There was so much to see and write about, and show people in pictures (I hadn’t started doing video yet), and my three columns and one "notebook" piece I did for the paper just weren’t enough to cram it all into. I finally started the blog the following spring.

The irony is, I haven’t been to such a perfect blogging opportunity as that since then. Just as well, I guess — everyday life seems to produce far more ideas for posts than I have time to write as it is.

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Video to go with Cindi’s health care column

Soul-searching in the secular realm of politics

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Hal1

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
A reader recently told me she enjoys my columns because she likes to follow my “soul-searching” as I try to work through an issue. I suggested she keep reading — who knows; someday I might actually find something.
But I knew what she meant, and took it kindly. That’s the kind of commentary I value, too. That’s why I called Hal Stevenson on Friday to talk about the upcoming presidential primaries.
Hal is a political activist of the Christian conservative variety. He’s a board member and former chairman of the Palmetto Family Council, which has its offices in a building he owns on Gervais Street. He’s also one of the most soberly thoughtful and fair-minded people I know, which to the national media probably constitutes an oxymoron: The thoughtful Christian conservative.
When last I saw Hal, he had brought Sen. Sam Brownback in for an editorial board interview regarding his quest for the GOP presidential nomination.
Since then, several things have happened:

Sen. Brownback dropped out.
Mitt Romney made a splash by lining up the support of Bob Jones III, he of the fundamentalist Upstate university of the same name (without the III, of course).
Rudy Giuliani made a bigger, more surprising, splash by gaining the endorsement Wednesday of televangelist and former presidential candidate Pat Robertson.
Former Baptist preacher Mike Huckabee, with somewhat less fanfare, picked up the backing Thursday of Donald E. Wildmon, founder of the American Family Association.
On the same day as the Giuliani-Robertson announcement, and overshadowed by it, Sen. Brownback threw his support to John McCain.

Of all those, the nod I would have valued the most was that of Sen. Brownback — like me, a convert to Catholicism. When he spoke of the impact of faith on his approach to leadership, it actually seemed to have something to do with Judeo-Christian beliefs: He spoke of acting justly, loving mercy and walking humbly.
By contrast, Pat Robertson’s explanation as to why he was endorsing the one Republican least in tune with religious conservatives seemed to have little to do with spiritual matters, and everything to do with secular ideology and partisan strategy: He spoke of defeating terrorism, fiscal discipline and the selection of federal judges. The first two concerns are secular; the third seemed the least likely of reasons for him to back Mr. Giuliani.
The ways in which “values voters” interact with the sin-stained realities of power politics have long mystified me, and I wondered: Does a guy like Pat Robertson, with all his baggage (wanting to whack Hugo Chavez, suggesting 9/11 happened because America had it coming), actually deliver more votes than he chases away?
So I called Hal to help me sort it out. As of lunchtime Friday, when we spoke, he was up in the air about the presidential contest himself, now that his man Brownback was out of it. But he’s sorting through it, and has had face-to-face talks with the candidates he considers most likely.
“My heart says Huckabee,” he said. “He’s much more like me, I suppose, than the other guys.” But that’s not his final answer. He said when he asked Sen. Brownback why he didn’t get behind Gov. Huckabee, he said “it’d be like endorsing himself, so he might as well stay in himself.” He was looking for someone who offered what he couldn’t, and chose McCain.
As for Hal, “I did meet with McCain,” who is “certainly a real patriot,” but he’s trying to decide whether the Arizonan’s position on stem cell research — he charts a middle course — “is going to be a deal-killer for me.” (Brownback has told him that McCain says he wouldn’t make such research a high priority as president.)
He hasn’t decided yet about Mitt Romney. He’s talked with him, and sees him as “a very capable executive… he’s proven that.” But he cites “Sam’s words” about the former Massachusetts governor: “He’s a technocrat, running as an ideologue.”
While noting that “we don’t look to Bob Jones III for a lot of stuff,” there are “some very credible Christian activists out there supporting Romney.” He mentions state lawmakers Nathan Ballentine and Kevin Bryant, and cites his respect for U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint.
He says he’s not bothered by Mr. Romney’s flip-flopping on abortion, since he “takes the right position now.” But he worries it could hurt him in the general election, when Democrats could use old video clips to great effect.
“I am going through a methodical process,” he said, “and I have been impressed with McCain, Huckabee, Romney….”
He has not, however, met with Fred Thompson, “and I probably wouldn’t waste Giuliani’s time.”
“I respect him for being straightforward and not trying to B.S. us,” he said of the former mayor, but he does not relish having to choose between two pro-choice candidates next November.
As for the host of “The 700 Club,” “I really don’t much care what Pat Robertson does.”
“Robertson lost credibility with most thinking evangelicals a long time ago.” Hal said he was turned off back during Mr. Robertson’s own run for the presidency in 1988: “It was all about acquiring political power in the Republican Party,” and that “wasn’t what many of us thought the Christian Coalition was about.”
While Hal himself is still seeking the answer, “I’ve got good evangelical friends who are working for every campaign.”
Every Republican campaign, that is. Nothing against Democrats per se, Hal says; it’s just that “A pro-life Democrat doesn’t have a chance in the Democratic primary,” and that is a deal-killer.
Hal still doesn’t know which of the candidates that leaves please him the most, but in the end, that’s not the point: “The only person ultimately I’m trying to please is the Lord.”

Hal2

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Soul-searching in the secular realm of politics