Since I didn’t do endorsements in this election (taking the advice of Mike Fitts and others), something felt sort of incomplete to me, in that I didn’t do a roundup of recommendations the way I usually do — and the way my friends at The State did today, reprising the paper’s endorsements.

The closest thing I did to it was the special guest column on “Party Politics” that I did for The Shop Tart. Here’s an excerpt of what I wrote for her about the candidates in seriously contested elections:

First, the main mayoral candidates:

Steve Benjamin – You love his youthful energy, his mastery of issues, his dedication to service. Reminds you of Obama, both in style and substance (and not just because he’d be the first black mayor, be sure to add). You know him well, remember – Steve’s involved in so many things, he’s such a networker, that you want to make sure everyone knows you run into him about twice a day at different events. If you want to express doubt about him, that’s the sore point: The guy is so nakedly ambitious! He should resign from a few boards and get some experience working for a living to know how others live.

Steve Morrison – You know him, too. He’s the perfect complement to the other Steve. They bring a lot of the same progressive values to the table, only Morrison has calm maturity where Benjamin has youthful drive. He’s chock full of sincerity to boot. Things to know: He’s the guy representing the poor school districts in the Corridor of Shame, pro bono, and you bless him for that. He’s a senior partner in Nelson Mullins. He used to be a top exec at PMSC (warning! The initials don’t mean what they seem to mean!) He’s been chairman of the board of the Columbia Urban League (but he’s NOT black, so don’t slip up there). Also, the paper endorsed him. If you have a doubt about him, it’s why he got into it so late.

Kirkman Finlay III – Son of the late mayor who dreamed up the Vista, and an independently wealthy member of the family that once owned The State newspaper. He replaced Hamilton Osborne (“Councilman No”) in the 4th district several years ago. Since Day One, he’s been the resident scold on the subject of the budget. It gives him considerable satisfaction that the paper his family once owned called him “Chicken Little” – until it turned out the city’s sky WAS falling. You give him credit for steering us back in the right direction, but you’re concerned that (unlike his Dad) he doesn’t seem to articulate any sort of inspiring vision for the future. Whenever anyone else talks about possibilities, he’s the guy who says we can’t afford it. And if you express doubt about that, he reminds you that he was once called “Chicken Little,” but now, etc.

As for the other mayoral candidates, you don’t have to exhibit much knowledge. You are free to wonder, “Is ‘Sparkle’ her real name?” You can just say, “Oh, that Joe!” at mentions of Azar. (Interesting tidbit: Joe originally had threatened to run for Tameika Devine’s at-large seat, which he might have won, but instead her only opposition is Aaron’s buddy Grant, so she’ll coast and Joe will be an also-ran again.) Say again that Aaron Johnson has at least introduced a spirit of fun (see above), and say you never can remember the name of the guy with the hair.

4th District:

Here’s a quick guide suggested to me by one of the candidates, Mary Baskin Waters (who may be at your party, if it’s in Heathwood; she’s the head of the neighborhood association).

Tony Mizzell – He’s the one who used to chair Richland County Council, so if your big concern is city-county relations, he’s your man. The paper endorsed him.

Walter Powell Jr. – Was endorsed by the police and fire associations.

Kevin Fisher – Brings a breadth of knowledge of issues that he demonstrated in his run for mayor four years ago.

Leona Plaugh – As former city manager, really knows where all the bodies are buried and how everything works – and doesn’t work.

Ms. Waters herself – Very strong in the neighborhood associations, which are highly influential. Also a stalwart on historic preservation.

Yes, a lot of it was tongue-in-cheek, but all of that part was for real, in terms of the observations I shared.

If you’d like to go a little deeper, here are links to some key posts about the candidates, from my very first interview with Steve Benjamin in the Joycean setting of an Irish pub through my brief assessments of the candidates at the first mayoral forum I moderated, and beyond. Review them it you’d like before you vote. But hurry.

Here are links to key posts about:

• Steve Benjamin: Multiple Kaffeeklatschen, here and here and here and here, among others. (Since I wrote about him first and went to so many of these — at my friend Jack Van Loan’s invitation — I didn’t do a formal interview at the end, which may have been an oversight.)
• Kirkman Finlay III: The semi-formal interview.
• Steve Morrison: The semi-formal interview.
• Kevin Fisher: The interview.
• Tony Mizzell: The interview.
• Leona Plaugh: My interview with her.
• Mary Baskin Waters: Again, the interview post.

And if you want more about Aaron Johnson and Grant Robertson, be sure to check out “Drinking in the Morning with Aaron and Grant.” Enough said.

In response to my earlier post about Arne Duncan, I got this Tweet from Tim Cameron:

TimCameron We’ve worked with Arne Duncan a good bit @AmSol on charter schools. Actually, some stuff I can agree with http://bit.ly/c612im

Y’all remember Tim. That’s him at right, at a Fred Thompson event in 2007. He did The Shot awhile back. He’s also responsible for a lot of GOP legislative Web sites, including the ever-edgy, ground-breaking Web presence of Nathan Ballentine.

In any event, that’s what we like to see around here: Folks from opposite sides of the aisle, working to find common ground and get good stuff done…

For Doug Ross, and other critics of Public Education As We Know It, here’s your big chance: Ask a question of Arne Duncan for him to answer on his live Webcast at 11:

Tune in for a Live Webcast on Education Reform

On Tuesday, April 6th at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time, the Honorable Arne Duncan will join Organizing for America supporters for a special, first-of-its-kind, live webcast about student loan reform and the administration’s efforts to prepare our children to compete in the global economy. Arne Duncan is currently the administration’s Secretary of Education, and was previously the CEO of the Chicago Public Schools and the head of the non-profit education foundation Ariel Education Initiative in Chicago.
You can submit a question for Arne Duncan using the form on the right — and then tune in to watch him discuss the President’s work and answer questions from OFA supporters.

Sorry, about the short notice; this guy BarackObama whom I follow on Twitter just told me about it 6 minutes ago.

Me, I don’t have any questions to ask him. I’m with Kelly Payne on this point — I could do without the U.S. Department of Education. But if I did ask a question, it would probably be, “Do you really think you’re doing a better job than Inez would have done?” Oh, well — all’s well that ends that way: I like having her watching out for our safety as consumers.

At about 9:15, I posted this on Twitter:

When is this freaking basketball game going to start? I’m WAITINGGG…

I was sitting there at the bar at Yesterday’s trying to make my pint last, and not succeeding. Shortly thereafter, Mayor Bob Coble responded thusly via Facebook:

I agree…

Something else Mayor Bob and I agree about!

Minutes after that, I headed home. I’m watching/listening to this exciting game as I type.

But I’ve got to tell you, I am FED UP with big sporting events being scheduled for the convenience of the Left Coast. I mean, it’s just so arbitrary — why should it be at THEIR convenience, and not ours? It’s not like, by doing this, it’s makes it watchable for everybody. It doesn’t help Burl out in Hawaii…

Who cares if people in California miss the start of the game? Isn’t it a bigger concern that everybody in Washington and New York and everywhere else East of the Mississippi where most of the country lives is unable to function at work tomorrow? You want Obama, a huge hoops fan, not to have a good night’s rest? The guy’s got his finger on the button! Not a good idea!

I’ve just had it with this, and I don’t know why everybody else puts up with it.

This is maddening. I kept hoping for something a little more definitive than this:

Columbia officials cannot have its District 2 City Council election Tuesday unless it gets approval from the Justice Department, according to a ruling from a three-judge panel.

Judges Clyde Hamilton, Cameron Currie and Joseph Anderson ruled unanimously that the city needed approval from the Justice Department to hold the special election to replace former Councilman E.W. Cromartie.

As of 4:30 p.m. today, the Justice Department had not made a decision.

Kathryn has complained that I haven’t posted about this, but I’d been waiting all day for it to be CERTAIN, which it isn’t, according to what Adam has posted.

He was a little more certain on his blog:

A federal three-judge panel has postponed tomorrow’s District 2 City Council election.

Click here to read the judges’ opinion.

Here’s the decision in a nutshell: The city is required to have approval from the Justice Department to hold the special election to replace former District 2 Councilman E.W. Cromartie. As of 5:11 p.m., the city does not have that approval. Therefore, they cannot have the election.

IF, however, the justice department approves the election between now and 7 a.m. tomorrow, the city can have the election.

So there’s not going to be a vote in district 2 tomorrow. Or maybe there is. Let’s just say, this being almost 10:30 at night, that there won’t be…

I’ve never in my life seen such a case of voters being jerked around this way. Not that I think there should have been a vote to replace Cromartie this soon. It’s this last-minute nonsense that gets me.

What do YOU think?

Don’t know if you’ve seen this, but it’s really good. Stan Dubinsky brought it to my attention via e-mail today…

Here are the top stories at this time:

1. U.S. Consulate in Pakistan Is Attacked by Militants — Six people were killed outside the consulate and at least 20 were wounded at the consulate in Peshawar.
2. China Rescues Dozens From Mine — Amazingly, 115 miners trapped in a flooded mine for a week survived.
3. Sanford Pays Ethics Fine — The biggest in state history, in point of fact.
4. Home Sales Boost Stocks — As the WSJ reports, “The Dow Jones Industrial Average moved closer to 11000 as recent reports on jobs, housing and the services sector boosted enthusiasm about the economic recovery.”
5. Strong Quake Aftershocks Hit California, Mexico — The quake that rocked Southern Cal and Baja ranked 7.2 on the scale.
6. Return of Tiger Woods — Boy, am I reluctant to put this on my front. But three factors cause me to do so: 1) everybody but me went ape over this, so I’m bowing to the fact that there’s high interest; 2) It’s a big-enough deal to make the BBC Web front; and 3) It’s happening in our backyard.

As you will quickly gather from watching the above video, Mary Baskin Waters is all about neighborhoods. Her concept of the proper way for the city of Columbia to proceed is something she calls “leading from the core,” or “leading from the base.” It’s a grass-roots, bottom-up approach — small-d democracy writ large.

This sets her somewhat apart from the other candidates for the 4th District city council seat being vacated by Kirkman Finley III — the ones I’ve interviewed, anyway. Leona Plaugh, as a former city manager, sees things from City Hall outward (although she’s running a pavement-pounding, door-to-door campaign). Tony Mizzell, as former chairman of Richland County Council, looks at city-county relations on a large scale. Kevin Fisher‘s frame of reference is that of a former candidate for mayor who remains a big-picture guy. (I still haven’t talked to Walter Powell Jr., which I regret. If I can, I’m going to at least call him on the phone today sometime.)

But Ms. Waters is the president of the Historic Heathwood Neighborhood Association. Don’t assume by that that she is limited by that perspective. On the contrary, she is sufficiently involved with other areas of the community that she is the president-elect of the Columbia Council of Neighborhoods. In other words, she approaches City Hall from neighborhoods, plural, rather than a single one. In fact, her interests and habits extend beyond the neighborhoods of Columbia proper. At her suggestion, our interview was over coffee at Cafe Strudel on State Street in West Columbia. You know that mural of a steamboat painted on a bridge abutment along the West Columbia/Cayce riverwalk? She did the research for that.

Some additional details from her bio:

Dr. Mary Baskin Waters is Founder and CEO of Albion Research Associates, LLC, a grantwriting and grants development firm. She is a certified Grants Reviewer and Consultant through the National Grants Reviewers Association. As a small business owner, Mary understands the determination and spirit required to keep an organization sustainable.

In addition to being a small business owner, Mary is currently affiliate faculty in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program and the Master of Public Administration Program in the Department of Political Science at the University of South Carolina. Dr. Water is the former Director of the South Carolina Commission on Women and served as a Commissioner until 2007.

Now, back to the neighborhoods, from whom her attention never strays far… Such a frame of reference might suggest that she concerns herself with hyperlocal minutia — this particular pothole, that traffic light that takes too long, a clump of bushes that obstruct drivers’ view at an intersection, a particularly gauche billboard ruining a view.

Actually, she’s quite the reverse. In fact, she speaks in such abstract terms that it’s an effort to get her onto specific issues. I actually had to ask several times what her goals and priorities would be before getting to specifics. Ask what her goals are and she starts talking about processes and “collaborations” as a goal in and of themselves. She talks about the interaction of systems — neighborhoods, city, county, state, national and international. Press her as to what she would want these collaborations to accomplish, she speaks of wanting to see “greater programs put in place.”

But eventually, we got to some of the standard issues, and her philosophical approach remained true. For instance, on the subject of homelessness she spoke philosophically of the need to treat the homeless as our neighbors. As for the Midlands Housing Alliance center that tends to be the focus of current debate, she says she would not have chosen the former Salvation Army site because of the impact on neighborhoods. (This is one of the problems I have always had with the neighborhood association point of view, by the way — if you wait for a plan that will please all neighborhoods, you’ll never place a center, and the city as a whole is never served.) She applauds the efforts of the Alliance, nevertheless — after all, it’s the very embodiment of a collaborative effort, a collaboration that came into being as a result of the utter failure of the citywide government to act effectively.

She has a tendency to speak in terms of things she applauds, from plans for the new Nickelodeon theater downtown to the riverwalk to celebrating the city’s “beautiful history” in all of its neighborhoods — which can be refreshing after a diet of hearing what’s wrong from other candidates.

Finally, a disclosure: As you can see at the right, Ms. Waters is one of my advertisers. That’s not why I agreed to interview her, even though I hadn’t planned to (I had intended to focus only on the three I thought had the best chance — Plaugh, Mizzell and Fisher). But she asked for the interview, and I was happy to oblige. Next thing I knew, she wanted to buy an ad. In any event, I enjoyed our conversation on a beautiful Good Friday.

Hey, y’all, check out the guest piece I did for the Shop Tart. The Tart asked me to write a “party politics” piece for her readers, meaning a primer that would help them avoid embarrassment at parties when the subject of politics came up.

It sounded like a fun idea, so I jumped at the chance. Here’s a sample from what I produced:

So you’re at this party, and you’re only there because your BFF insisted. You love her to death, but the room is filled with her husband’s intolerable friends who think they rule the world. And while you think the things they think are important are insipid beyond words, the last thing you want to do is appear to know less about that stuff than they do. It would embarrass your friend, and it wouldn’t make you feel too great, either. Besides, you’re quite sure you’ll smack their silly faces if they show you that smug, condescending look just one more time…

With the Columbia city election coming up Tuesday – you overheard someone mention it just this week – you just know everybody at the party’s going to be insufferable about it. They’ll be predicting outcomes, and talking about what the outcomes will really mean, which of course won’t be what all the ordinary people think they mean, and swapping intimate details that only they know about each of the candidates and droning on about the pertinent issues in the most obnoxious manner …

And there you’ll be, getting your wine glass refreshed just once more and looking about desperately for someone who wants to talk about the implications of the last episodes of “Lost,” or sports or weather or pretty much any damned thing other than this city election – I mean, who follows city politics? Really? With the state of the world as it is, who has the time? And how to do it even if you want to? The paper’s not thick enough to wrap fish anymore, and local TV’s idea of covering politics is to ask some uninformed twit on the street what HE thinks, so they’re less than useless.

But then you see one of the hubby’s partners moving your way, with a “Do you believe that Joe Azar?” smirk on his face, and you’re trapped.

No, you’re not. Take a breath. Here’s your handy-dandy primer, which will give you the general picture plus all the little smart-sounding asides you’ll need to survive “party politics”…

So you’ve got the idea. Go check out the rest of it, which provides a tongue-in-cheek guide to all you need to know about the city election Tuesday — background, issues and candidates.

But as Kathryn Fenner noted, visit the rest room first. It’s 2,119 words long — about twice the length of one of my columns at The State.

But as the wags on the copy desk out in Wichita used to say (always ironically),  it reads like 800…

“Change is good,” says Kevin Fisher, and he says it consistently. It was the theme of his run for mayor four years ago, and he says it with greater enthusiasm now that Columbia is on the verge of historic turnover on city council. With the incumbent mayor leaving after 20 years, the forced retirement of E.W. Cromartie, and Kirkman Finley III quitting his seat to run for mayor, change is ensured in three of the seven slots. And with Belinda Gergel only having represented the 3rd District for two years, that’s a majority that will be new or almost new.

“I think that is a wonderful thing,” says Mr. Fisher. He’s really pumped about it. And he very much wants to be part of it.

Kevin and I met Friday morning at the Gervais St. Starbucks, the one in Hal Stevenson‘s building. It’s a great place to meet people, intentionally and un-. There’s another plug I’m not getting paid for — take note, Starbucks: there are now paid ads on this blog!

But that’s not what this post is about. It’s about Kevin’s candidacy for the 4th District Columbia city council seat being vacated by Mr. Finley. Others seeking the seat include Tony Mizzell, Leona Plaugh, Mary Baskin Waters and Walter Powell Jr.

Kevin Fisher has a lot to say about the mistakes he sees Columbia as having made during the Bob Coble years. From failed real estate deals such as the CCI property (“Only the city of Columbia could buy riverfront property for $10 million, hold it for 10 years and sell it for $6 million.”) to allowing SCANA to get out of its obligation to run the local bus system (“a disaster,” he calls it — “We got a pittance back, and the pittance is now gone.”), he comes down hard on them.

He points proudly to the Five C’s that he ran on four years ago (see the photo below), not only noting that they remain relevant, but that they were in some ways prophetic, some of them more pertinent now than then:

1. Service Consolidation — The need for “one police force” is greater than ever.
   
2. Ending Cronyism — From the abandoned plan to build a city-owned hotel to E.W. Cromartie, he sees this as a bane of the city.
3. Financial Control — This is the problem that collapsed around the city’s ears the last couple of years, with the administration unable to close the books, and some bills being paid multiple times.
4. Planning Coordination — He maintains that the city has blundered from one long-term project commitment to another, without any guiding plan.
5. Marketing Communications — This is his professional field, and he sees Columbia as badly in need of his services. Four years ago, he was talking about the failed $50,000 city slogan that most of us have mercifully forgotten — “The Big Friendly.” (He’s far more pleased with the “Famously Hot” marketing strategy that — ahem — the agency with which I am affiliated, ADCO, devised for the Midlands Authority for Conventions, Sports & Tourism.)

Buy he’s not just about harping on the past. For instance, he has a really good, creative idea for paying for the bus system going forward. He says just asking voters to approve another penny sales tax isn’t likely to fly in this economy, and would be wrongheaded — it would bring the cumulative sales tax in Columbia up to 10 cents on the dollar. That’s as high as Memphis, and Tennessee is that high because it doesn’t have an income tax (and still doesn’t, in spite of Don Sundquist falling on his sword over the issue).

But here’s Kevin’s solution: He’d put a penny on the ballot, but voters who said “yes” would at the same time be voting to eliminate the two-cent hospitality tax. The nifty thing about this is that an overall penny sales tax would bring in “six or seven times” as much revenue as the hospitality tax does, without having the same chilling effect on people eating out and staying in our hotels. The bus system would need less than half that amount, which leads to the clever part: The remaining revenue would not only help with needed road projects, but would fully fund the arts groups that would be the ones likely to howl at having their hospitality money taken from them.  And they would be funded by a firmer, repeating source.

A slight digression — I found myself on the defensive a good bit during this interview. Kevin spent a certain amount of time letting me know that he’s disappointed in me, and not just because I failed to agree with him that Tony Mizzell’s ethics fine was a big deal. After all, I’m the guy who wrote a column in 2006 urging him to run against Mayor Bob Coble, then ended up endorsing Mayor Bob again — which even surprised Bob. (How did that happen? Simple, if you’re me. I thought Bob needed some serious opposition so that various important issues would get a full airing, and I knew Kevin would do that. But after watching that campaign I decided Bob would still be a better mayor.) Kevin is never forgetting that, and who would? He brings it up, then tells me it’s water off a duck’s back, then mentioned it again. Still, he wrote a column about me that I thoroughly enjoyed as I read it over beer at Goatfeathers the night Robert and I left The State for the last time.

Kevin, by the way, writes excellent columns. His “City Watch” column in the Free Times just won First Place for Column Opinion Writing at the 2010 South Carolina Press Association Awards, an honor that’s well-deserved. He’s taken the city to task in his columns for lack of transparency, and that is another of his top issues. He would insist that city council not go into executive session except when necessary — such as to consult with its attorney.

The skills that make him a good columnist also make him a highly articulate critic, whether the offending party is Bob Coble or me. It also means he can express himself graciously. Take, for instance, what he wrote in his column about “Famously Hot:” “Hats off to my industry colleagues at ADCO for coming up with it, to the Greater Columbia Convention and Visitors Bureau for adopting it and to City Council for not killing it when more than five people objected, their usual standard for folding on any given issue.”

And as critical as he is of Mayor Bob, when I asked him to come up with what he thought was Mr. Coble’s greatest accomplishment, he didn’t hesitate: It was his positive, “Mayor Bob” persona, the “pleasant face” he put on the governor’s office. “In many ways, it was uniting.” But he saw that strength as also the mayor’s greatest weakness, in that he has valued collegiality over productive confrontation, failing to say “no” when warranted.

His sharp skills as a critic suggest he is the closest match for the kind of councilman that incumbent Kirkman Finlay has been. Mr. Finlay has played the role — very constructively, at times — of the council’s budget scold, warning of the troubles that eventually came, and helping lead the way back to responsibility. But Kevin would branch out a bit. While agreeing with the Finlay approach so far as to say, “Finance is the root of everything,” his interests and understanding range far more widely.

Kevin Fisher reminds me of his platform when he ran for mayor four years ago, which he says was in some ways prophetic.

In reference to my post earlier today, Dianne Chinnes shared the above Mike Peters cartoon (and if his syndicate gripes about my using it, give me a break — I got laid off!).

Dianne, who used to run Junior Achievement, knows about newspapers. Her late husband, Bob Pierce, was an associate editor at The State back in the day, and he wrote the definitive history of the newspaper, Palmettos and Oaks.

Tiffanie Scott Kelly sent me a message last night that is funny, but all too true:

Overheard in the Newsroom #3790: During a conversation about demise of pay phones: Editor: “Where would Superman change nowadays?” Reporter: “Change? Where would he work?”

Indeed, while the soulless corporation that owns The Daily Planet hasn’t disclosed the fact, my sources indicate that Clark Kent was indeed one of those recently laid off at that venerable Metropolis institution.

He was joined by Lois Lane, editor Perry White, and about 40 others in this particular round of cuts.

The paper kept Jimmy Olsen because, his being a cub reporter, they didn’t have to pay him much. Jimmy is now writing most of the metro-area news copy, shooting all photos for his stories, blogging, filing constant Twitter updates, producing all the pages in the Metro section on QuarkXpress, proofing them himself (which explains all the errors Metropolitans are seeing), and doing it all for the same low pay. Oh, and he has to take two unpaid weeks furlough.

Jimmy is starting to realize that Clark, Lois and Perry were the lucky ones. His life is more complicated than ever, aside from all the extra work. A couple of times when he’s activated his signal watch lately Superman didn’t show up, and once when he did he was all testy and peevish about being bothered. At one point, Jimmy could have sworn he heard the Man of Steel mutter, “You‘ve got a job — help your own damn’ self.”

Perry took early retirement. Lois has a blog that is starting to make money from subscriptions — she spends a lot of time sitting in front of her live Webcam in various states of undress (hey, it’s a living!). Clark has had the toughest time. He apparently has a “job” that he remains secretive about. It used to be his “second job” when he was at the paper. It keeps him busy, but it doesn’t pay. He needs a paying gig, and doesn’t care much about the benefits (although he has puzzled several prospective employers by asking cryptically about “kryptonite insurance”). Trouble is, there aren’t many jobs out there.

And he’s picky. He requires special working conditions, for reasons he won’t disclose. It was great being a reporter, because unexplained absences went unremarked — no editor truly knows where a reporter is, as long as he gets his copy in. (He could be Tweeting from a bar, and probably is.)

So it’s tough. And all I can say is Clark, welcome to the club.

(Hey, isn’t that great art I found to go with this? It’s from this cover, which appears to be roughly from the years when I read comics. THIS, to me, is what Clark Kent looks like. Or like this.)

Sorry about not posting a front page yesterday, but I just couldn’t find time. The next few days will be crazy as I try to post everything I need to before the election. But here, on this Good Friday, is one front for you:

1. S.C. inks $12.7M deal with Pfizer — This is over illegal drug promotions that “that plied doctors with free golf, massages, and resort junkets.”
2. Obama Takes Job-Creation Message to Charlotte — The president came almost to South Carolina to tell workers “We’ve broken this slide.” And maybe he’s got a point, given, this next piece of news…
3. Job Market Brightens as U.S. Payrolls Surge in March — The lede of the NYT story says, “The clouds have parted.”
4. Pope’s preacher compares abuse row to anti-Semitism — This is an interesting coincidence. This afternoon, at Good Friday services, I was rejoicing that, after two millennia, we’ve finally gotten over praying for the conversion of the Jews. Today, we said, “Let us pray for the Jewish people, the first to hear the word of God, that they may continue to grow in the love of his name and in faithfulness to his covenant.”
5. Columbia police chief disputes Benjamin’s claim — Chief Tandy Carter calls into doubt an anecdote the mayoral candidate has been using to illustrate public safety problems.
6. Bus service drives District 4 debate — I wouldn’t normally put a single-district contest on the front, but this has gotten so little exposure, and deserves more (which I’ve been trying to rectify with my interviews with Leona Plaugh and Tony Mizzell, and my yet-to-be-reported interviews — watch for them tomorrow — with Kevin Fisher and Mary Baskin Waters).

A little over a week ago, I started worrying about Bud. Y’all know Bud, if you know anybody in this community. The guy who gives me such grief over the Iraq war. The guy who calls me a lover of big government. The guy who was once GrandMaster Bud.

He’s also known as William Bloom (he acknowledged this in response to a recent post about anonymity). But not by many people. To his family, friends, and especially to his friends here on the blog, he’s Bud.

Anyway, Bud disappeared over a month ago. His last comment was on Feb. 25, on this post. Then we lost Greg Flowers (who had not commented since December), and I started to worry about Bud. So, one month to the day after he last posted, I wrote to him:

I’ve been worried about you because we haven’t heard from you in WEEKS.
Are you OK?

He wrote back, almost right away:

I’m fine but I keep getting these scary messages when I try to post on the blog that says the blog is dangerous to my computer somehow.  In any event it blocks me from posting.  Thanks for thinking about me.

William (Bud) Bloom

Relieved, I set that aside for the moment, because it was when I was starting to try to sell ads on the blog, and dealing with the last days of the city election.

But then, today, there I was at the Gervais Starbucks interviewing Kevin Fisher (more on that later — probably tomorrow at the rate I’m going) when in walks Bud. He saw Kevin first, and walked over, and just before he saw me I realized who he was.

He even — like Doug Ross before him — produced a picture ID, so that there’d be no doubt.

This was great! I love it when I meet one of my regulars, from Paul DeMarco to Laurin Manning to Emile DeFelice to Doug Ross to Tim Kelly (I first met him a year ago). It’s always an occasion. But this meeting was the most overdue. I’ve been blogging for five years, and it seems like Bud’s been there all along. How weird is it that we never met before in person.

Anyway y’all — meet Bud.

Now, we’ve got to fix his problem so he can return to the blog. I asked him to send a detailed message explaining just what sort of scary message he gets when he tries to comment. Then I’ll post it here and see if any of y’all know what to do. Then if that doesn’t work, I’ll solicit help elsewhere.

We’ve got to get Bud back.

Now for my actual post based on my official interview with Tony Mizzell, who’s running against Leona Plaugh, Kevin Fisher, Mary Baskin Waters and Walter Powell Jr. for the 4th District city council seat being vacated by Kirkman Finlay III.

We talked about a lot of things, such as the fact that he really likes being able to run in a nonpartisan race for a change (he served on Richland County Council as a Democrat), his wish to try skydiving, the fact that his wife cried when he said he was going to run again (so would mine — either that, or slap me upside the head) and his regret that a picture I took of him once still pops up when you Google him.

Oh, we also got into the fact that we are sort of competitors, with him being a veep at Chernoff Newman and me working over at ADCO, which made his buying an ad from me even more interesting. By the way, he put some tracking code on the ad, and says he’s “real pleased” with the traffic he’s gotten from it — you other potential customers, take note.

But the core of our conversation at the Capital City Club (and if you ask why Tony got breakfast at the club when others didn’t, it’s because Leona wanted to meet out at Woodhill, and Kevin wanted to meet tomorrow kind of late for breakfast, and Mary Baskin Waters has yet another place she wants to meet — Tony left it up to me)….

Where was I? Oh, yes, the core of our conversation was his four-part platform. In the video above, you can see and hear him talking about the fourth point, which he considers (rightly, I think) the strongest argument for his candidacy. Here are all four:

1. Rectifying the city’s fiscal train wreck. He said the people of his district don’t ask for a lot from city government — just common sense and financial responsibility (which is why it elected Hamilton Osborne, then Mr. Finlay). He notes that he left county council (which he served as chairman toward the end, 2005-06) in good shape financially — even though it had been in rocky condition when he got there. “I’ve managed complex budgets,” he said, and he’s confident he can manage this one out of the hole it’s been in. He could “hit the ground running,” rather than spend a year or two figuring out the spreadsheets.
2. Public safety. Getting the funding back up to adequate levels. Morale is low, the police department is underfunded, he believes. “We have got to start the budgeting process with law enforcement, fire, public safety,” he said. “Pet projects” that council members have been funding have to wait until times are better.
3. Economic development. “I am a supporter of the creative class, entrepreneurism, the knowledge economy. Working with USC — that’s our biggest untapped resource and asset that this city has, and I think we’ve made great strides, but this is not a four or five year investment, this is a 15 or 20-year investment… we need to really focus on our strengths.” He noted that he was “very influential” in getting the city and county to work together to provide $38 million for parking garages for Innovista. That was a hard sell at the time on the Richco council because of disagreement with the city over TIF accountability. (Speaking of TIFs, he’s very opposed to the city going into these two latest ones alone, without the county and school districts.)
4. “Lastly, and most importantly,” he described his “key selling point:” He’s the only one who brings the experience and relationships to the table to bridge city and county interactions. “In a crowded field, one candidate stands out” on this point, he argues. You can hear him speak about this at some length on the video above.

That last point led to a discussion of consolidation — not just consolidation of various services (zoning and planning, he says, is a no-brainer), but total city and county government consolidation, which he (like Leona Plaugh) supports.

Here are some other things we talked about:

• The details of his ethics fine that opponent Kevin Fisher keeps bringing up. You can read the details of that on this earlier post.
• The challenge he sees of getting people out to vote in this race. He’s pulling out all the stops, though. Before his ads appeared on my blog, they were appearing (on the IP addresses in the appropriate areas) on the New York Times site and YouTube, and he’s planning on making heavy use of Facebook in the last days. We also talked, as media types, about how too many people didn’t use social media right.
• How much harder it is right now to raise money than it was when he last ran for office four years ago. “People who would normally give $500-$1,000” are only doing something like $250 — so you have to spend more time soliciting.
• While Leona Plaugh is getting her message out almost entirely door-to-door, Tony is working the phones. He did some door-to-door early, but then realized he could be more effective, reach more people, by phone.
• Unlike the mayoral race — which is grabbing all the attention — there haven’t been the multiple forums for readers to become familiar with the council candidates and their positions. He said there was one forum in North Columbia that he saw maybe two constituents at. This is particularly a disadvantage for him, he believes, as he thinks he does well in such venues, thanks to his local government experience. “I love forums,” he said.
• He said he heard that Mr. Finlay was thrilled to hear that he, Mr. Mizzell, was getting into the race, because of the mathematics. It nearly ensured a runoff in the 4th district, which would help turnout in that district for the runoff, which Kirkman sees as to his advantage, those being his people.
• The numbers in the district are more favorable to a (former) Democrat than you might suppose. His study of past elections suggests about a 45 percent Democratic constituency. He said John McCain and Barack Obama went 50-50 in the district in 2008.

There was more, but don’t you think that’s enough. I’m at the ADCO office — I came back here after Holy Thursday Mass — hours after everyone left.

Sorry I didn’t get to doing a Virtual Front Page today, but I’m bushed. Tomorrow morning, I’ll be interviewing Kevin Fisher at 9 and Mary Baskin Waters at 11:30. Then there’s Good Friday services at 3, so it might be Saturday before I get those posts up. But I’ll do it as soon as I can.

Yesterday, I did an unlikely thing: I lectured a class at USC on ethics.

Those who know me most intimately will roll their eyes at this point, because I am known as somewhat iconoclastic on the subject. When confronted with the simplistic ways in which we usually talk about ethics in our society — one that generally has nothing to do with actual right and wrong — I have been known to mutter “ethics, schmethics!” among friends who know and understand me. And I tried to be frank with the kids as to what I really thought, so they’re probably pretty confused by now.

What I tried to communicate was that I think the way modern society (and the media in particular) approach the subject of “ethics” makes a mockery of true moral discernment. We approach something requiring fine, sensitive distinctions with a club rather than a more delicate instrument.

We concoct “ethics rules” and then obsess about whether people in public life have properly crossed the t’s and dotted the i’s, and neglect whether they’re doing the right thing. And media share the blame for that. The “objectivity” model means that news reporters aren’t allowed to say a person did something wrong or dishonest, or pushed an unwise policy course, or otherwise make a value judgment. But they can sure as hell report whether someone filed his campaign finance disclosure on time — a purely bureaucratic act that measures no moral quality other than how organized the candidate is. So it is that we get “high drama” over whether Mark Sanford followed the rules properly, when the real question, the real moral issue, is what he tried to do to our state by fighting with every ounce of his being to keep us from getting stimulus funds — among other things.

I figure there’s a hierarchy to crime and moral wrongdoing. At the top you have murder, rape and child abuse. Then various gradations of assault. Then armed robbery, and lesser property crimes. Then white collar theft. Then “technical” crimes, and at the low end of that you have most of the acts that we lump into the category of “ethical” violations in politics and the media. Still a bad thing, but let’s have a sense of perspective.

Speaking off the cuff, and noting that the kids were getting glassy-eyed, I decided to get more specific. I spoke to them about how easy it was to be “ethical” in the conventional, facile sense as a journalist working in the MSM. When you’re in a newsroom of 140 people (like The State 10 years ago) and it’s part of a newspaper building of 500, with about as many people in advertising as in news, and they’re on a separate floor, it’s simple. No one in advertising would dare try to influence what news does (such as ask journalists to go easy on an advertiser), and no one in news would even take time to think about what advertising was. Everyone is pure, and hermetically sealed. (I shared with them the story of a friend who once worked in a city room in Little Rock where the city editor kept a gun in his desk. The gun, he explained, was there in case anyone from advertising dared to enter the newsroom. News people used to be like that.)

But that business model has collapsed. And we live in a world in which there is as much demand as ever for news, but the conventional model to pay for newsgathering is gone with the wind. From somewhere is going to come the new business model that will make newsgathering and commentary pay. And there are thousands of us wandering around on the frontier of that new world, trying to find our own respective paths through the Northwest Passage of our day.

To bring it down to Earth, I told the kids a story, a very current story.

Last week, I started selling ads on my blog. I have three now, soon to be four. This is very gratifying, but very weird, because I am not only my own writer, editor, photographer, press operator and circulation manager, but I’m the one and only ad salesman. I try to make it as clear as possible that my judgments and what I write will NOT be influenced by who takes out an ad — and to be open with my readers about the business side, and let them be the judges. But for an old MSM man, it’s weird.

Anyway, right after I started selling ads, Kevin Fisher — a candidate for city council in the 4th district — started complaining that he couldn’t get the media interested in a story about opponent Tony Mizzell having paid a $1,000 fine to the state Ethics Commission just before entering this race. Kevin’s implication, of course, was the Tony ONLY paid it because he was going to run for council.

I made a mental note to ask Tony about it, knowing I would be meeting with him Tuesday morning (THIS Tuesday morning). In the meantime, I sent him an invoice for the ad he had taken out on the blog — he was my very first customer. I suppose I could have handed him the bill when I saw him, but I wanted to keep those transactions — the bill, and my interview with him — as separate as possible. So I sent it to him Monday night.

Then, at breakfast the next morning, late in the interview, I asked him about Kevin’s accusation. It was a long, long story, stretching over two or three years (and of course that’s Kevin’s central accusation, that Tony should have paid the fine long ago). Here’s the short version: After he lost his re-election bid to county council (you may recall he was chairman of Richland County Council) four years ago, there was some money left in his account. He was therefore, according to the ethics rules of our society, required to keep filing quarterly reports, and he paid someone to do so. At some point, something was not properly accounted for. He learned that the Ethics Commission had a problem with that, and he talked to a woman with the commission, and thought he had it straight, although there was still some unfinished business. He failed to follow up, and so did the woman, and a short time later he heard from someone ELSE at the commission who said he owed $28,000 in fines.

That was a year or two ago. He went ballistic, and hired James Smith to represent him. The legal proceedings dragged out, and at the start of 2010 (I think he said January), a compromise was worked out. James notified Tony that he was to pay $1,000. A few days after that notification, Tony paid it. A few days after that, he entered the race for city council.

That’s what Kevin thinks is what Joe Biden would call a BFD. You be the judge.

Anyway, at the end of the interview Tuesday morning, an uncomfortable thing happened: Tony took out his checkbook, and wrote me a check for the amount he owed me for the ad. Seriously, imagine how weird that felt to an old newsman. I was thrilled to get the money (I scanned it, and will probably frame the image, the way small businessmen used to do with their first dollar); he DID owe it to me. But still…

Add to that the fact that Kevin was expecting me to make a huge deal of this thing that just sounded like a confused muddle to me, and what’s a journalistic pioneer to do?

I told all that to the kids at the J-school, and asked them. They looked at me blankly.

Last night, I asked Kevin (for a second time) for an interview. We set one for Friday morning, but he took occasion to e-mail me back (the ellipses are places where he reports conversations with other individuals that I haven’t confirmed):

Sure Brad, always good to see you — even when I’m disappointed in you, as I am now. How can you not post on Tony Mizzell being fined $1000 by the Ethics Commission, failing to pay it for over two years, then paying only when he filed to run for city council, blaming it on others etc. (look back at the emails for the details and documents). Does the public not have a right to know any candidate’s history of ethics law violations and fines?

Of course, your former colleagues have thus far taken the same approach, with only WACH-TV having reported the story to date…..

What happened to journalism…? …

Very disappointing, very discouraging. But we soldier on. I’ve got something at 8 Friday morning but could meet you at 9. Somewhere in the Vista? Kevin

I told him I’d discuss it with him when I saw him, although I might post something in the meantime. Of course, I knew he wouldn’t be satisfied with what I’d post. But look at what a nice guy I am, handing him the ad-check anecdote for him to use to question my character…

Kevin’s a little happier today because the letter that he was complaining The State hadn’t run on the subject ran today. Me, I’m just continuing to wander out here in the ethical wilderness…

Just as you’ve gotta love Joe Biden (whether you’re Democrat, Republican or UnParty, the guy’s a treat), you’ve gotta love the irony of this:

(CNN) — President Obama’s political organization agrees with Vice President Joe Biden: “Health Reform is a BFD.”

While using a four-letter word could land an elementary school kid in detention, Organizing for America is embracing it with the hope of raising some cash.

OFA, the president’s political arm housed at the Democratic National Committee, is using Biden’s now infamous phrase on a T-shirt to commemorate the signing of health care reform into law.

Donors who give at least $25 will receive “a limited edition ‘Health Reform is a BFD’ T-shirt in a super-soft, fine jersey (men’s) or baby rib (women’s) cotton fabric,” according to a new fundraising page posted Wednesday on OFA’s Web site….

First there was the other Joe, Wilson, whose moment of complete lack of control has garnered him millions. Now this.

What a frickin’ world we live in.

Driving home tonight, about 6:30 with the sun still bright and strong, I found myself waiting at a very long traffic light downtown. Across the intersection, a thin cloud was slowly, slowly drifting up over a brick churchyard wall — hardly moving, but spilling as I watched over the section of street I would pass through when the light changed. Mist from a sprinkler? Smoke from a grill? No. Dust. I thought about rolling up my windows — we who are allergic to dust try to avoid breathing it — but decided not to bother: My truck windows crank up the old-fashioned way, and it didn’t seem worth the trouble.

Drifting — so slowly, it was dreamlike. I felt hypnotized. Time seemed suspended. As I said, it was a very long red light. I’d been hurrying all day — a business breakfast, an optometrist appointment (and my eyes were still chemically clouded from that, gazing westward toward the setting sun); a rather rushed lecture I delivered over at USC. And looking at something this slow was disorienting. As slowly as the cloud was drifting, as gradually as it was dissipating as it began to touch the other side of the street, passing from my right to my left, I saw the air would probably be clear by the time I passed through it. Not that it mattered, it was so thin, so diaphanous by this time I was beginning to doubt I’d seen it.

I glanced back at the brick wall. A churchyard. What was on the other side?

It was then that it occurred to me to wonder: Was that, literally, the dust to which we all return?

Tonight I read today’s Bible readings. The Lenten study guide I’ve been following recommends reading them in the mornings, but somehow I never get to it then. It’s always at night.

The Gospel, of course, was about Judas Iscariot selling out Jesus to the Sanhedrin. This is Spy Wednesday. I didn’t know that until a couple of days ago, and as tends to happen with such new things that we learn, I’ve seen other references to the fact since then. I inferred, correctly, that it was a reference to Judas. Which is odd. Seems it should be Traitor Wednesday. Or Turncoat, or Informer. But then, Judas was truly a spy in the classic sense. The popular image of a spy is that of James Bond — but he wasn’t a spy; he was a romanticized, action-packed depiction of an intelligence officer — the kind of person who recruits spies and acts as their case officer. A typical spy is a person who is an insider in the target institution or army or rival intelligence organization who comes forward on his own and offers information — either for money or for ideological reasons.

That’s what Judas did. Here’s an excerpt from today’s Gospel reading:

One of the Twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot,
went to the chief priests and said,
“What are you willing to give me
if I hand him over to you?”
They paid him thirty pieces of silver,
and from that time on he looked for an opportunity to hand him over.

So he fits the profile. The name for the day works.

And as is so often the case with spies, who tend to be conflicted, mixed-up characters, we don’t know what his motive was. The evangelist who wrote the book of John chose to blacken his name as much as possible (unlike the other three, John wrote like a man with scores to settle), giving him the most despicable, contemptible, venal motive, even claiming that he was a crook all along, foreshadowing his betrayal thusly:

Mary took a liter of costly perfumed oil
made from genuine aromatic nard
and anointed the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair;
the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil.
Then Judas the Iscariot, one of his disciples,
and the one who would betray him, said,
“Why was this oil not sold for three hundred days’ wages
and given to the poor?”
He said this not because he cared about the poor
but because he was a thief and held the money bag
and used to steal the contributions.
So Jesus said, “Leave her alone.
Let her keep this for the day of my burial.
You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

Other explanations are more sympathetic, making Judas a man with his own motives that he himself may have even thought noble — until his moment of despair when he turned to suicide. There’s a scene missing, the one in which the full moral force of his act hits him — one I picture being somewhat like the moment when Raskolnikov unexpectedly finds his mother and sister in his room and suddenly realizes, fully and completely, what he has done, and faints dead away. We know why Raskolnikov did what it did; Dostoevsky explains it with admirable (or maddening, if you’re not a fan) thoroughness.

But we are left to speculate about Judas. The apocryphal Gospel of Judas makes the Iscariot into a mystical co-conspirator of Jesus in his own death, the one disciple to whom the true mysteries are revealed. Seems a bit far-fetched to me, but then I’m not of the Gnostic persuasion.

I’ve always found the popular depiction in “Jesus Christ Superstar” more compelling, if you’ll forgive me for turning to secular (and agnostic) popular culture. That Judas — in addition to being a singer who could really rock — was a disillusioned modern liberal, a secular humanist who really dug the give-to-the-poor aspect of the Teacher, but got turned off by the suggestions of the divine:

If you strip away
The myth
From the man
You will see
Where we all
Soon will be

Jesus!
You’ve started to believe
The things they say of you
You really do believe
This talk of God is true

And all the good you’ve done
Will soon be swept away
You’ve begun to matter more
Than the things you say…

This Judas is sincerely turned off by Mary’s “waste” of the ointment (wrong Mary, though — Webber and Rice took liberties) — he really believed the money should have gone to the poor.

In this story, Judas seems to think that if he could get his Master arrested, it would take him out of circulation long enough for things to cool down — or something. The lyrics aren’t that clear, but they seem to imply something like that. But when he sees what the authorities have done to his victim, he is horrified:

My God, I saw him
He looked three-quarters dead
And he was so bad
I had to turn my head
You beat him so hard
That he was bent and lame
And I know who everybody’s
Going to blame
I don’t believe he knows
I acted for our good
I’d save him all the suffering
If I could…

His is a secular figure, turned off by mysticism, but a moralist of the humanist modern type. And while the waste of money that could have been spent on the poor offends him, he is made sick to his soul at the thought that he was responsible for such violence — deadly violence against one he loved, and had betrayed for his own good. Hence despair, and suicide.

Webber and Rice may have been onto something with that. It’s a compelling backstory to the Greatest Story Ever Told, at any rate.

It strikes me these are perhaps frivolous thoughts about the profoundest truths. But these are the things I’m thinking, late on a long and tiring Spy Wednesday. I think I’ll go to bed…

Man, this day has flown by! Here are your headlines:

1. Obama Takes an Energy Party Stance on Drilling — You know what? The Energy Party, which was dismissive of both major party nominees in 2008, should take another look at this Obama guy, now that he’s embracing its drilling plank. He’s ticked off both environmentalists and Republicans, which indicates that he’s probably gotten it just about right…
2. Chechen Militant: Moscow Subway Blasts Were Revenge — Claiming “responsibility” (what a bizarre phrase!), offering lame excuses for inexcusable violence.
3. Lexington 1 mulls job cuts, more — One of the state’s top districts is about to lay off scores of teachers.
4. New law to funnel millions to S.C. colleges — This is old now, but not much has happened locally since the a.m. cycle.
5. Jaime Escalante’s Legacy: Teaching Hope — The teacher who inspired the movie “Stand and Deliver” is dead at 79.
6. CEO Pay Edges Downward — The WSJ reports that “chief executives’ compensation edged lower in 2009, the first time in 20 years that pay declined for two consecutive years.”

It’s getting to where it’s impossible to overestimate the role that Lindsey Graham plays in Washington.

Nowadays, an UnPartisan like me becomes nostalgic for the days when I would say I could count the people in D.C. willing to work across party lines on one hand. Today, a finger or two will do — and not the finger that Nelson Rockefeller used; that one is reserved for the partisans to brandish at one another.

At this point Doug and some others are skipping down to the comments section to holler at me that Lindsey Graham is NOT bipartisan, that he’s as partisan as they come, and will cite quotation after quotation in which he speaks like a Republican as “proof” that he’s incorrigible. Take a second, guys, and listen: Lindsey Graham is a Republican. Always has been a Republican. He will talk like a Republican and walks like a Republican, because that’s what he is.

And that’s the remarkable thing, you see: He’s a Republican who will work with Democrats (and with my man Joe Lieberman, the only overt UnPartisan in the Senate, the chairman of my caucus). And with my longtime hero John McCain lowering himself to reach out to the Tea Party movement with a pandering campaign for re-election (when the dignified, admirable thing for a man of his age and stature would be to go down swinging as the unorthodox figure he has always been), Lindsey is the only Republican left willing to do so.

Never mind his party-line (and wrong) position on health care. Never mind any of that. The remarkable thing about the man is the issues on which he steps out and seeks common ground.

Folks, what he is doing on immigration and on energy/climate change legislation is courageous, ground-breaking, and unique. And he pays a huge political price for it, with members of his own party back home trying to excommunicate him at every opportunity. Think about it, people: How extraordinary is it for a Republican from South Carolina, of all places, to be the last Republican brave enough to work across the aisle on anything? It’s profoundly exceptional; it’s amazing. And he deserves all the credit in the world for it.

But he doesn’t get credit, at least not enough, and for that I blame the fact that the overwhelming majority of people in our society have become incapable of thinking outside the partisan frame of reference. We’re like the people of Oceania in 1984: The vocabulary for describing and discussing a man like Lindsey Graham has been banished from our lives. Everywhere we turn — television, newspapers, the blogosphere, political speeches, the output of interest groups — all political ideas are couched in terms of, if you’re not this, then you’re that. And if you’re that, you’re all the way that.

Maybe I lack the vocabulary, too, because I fail too often to get across to people what is special and unique, and hugely valuable, about our senior senator. This is frustrating to me, because the concepts necessary to understand the role Lindsey Graham plays in national politics are the very ideas central to this blog. I probably have no greater purpose in continuing to beat my head against this wall than to resist, to subvert, to overcome, the unrelenting partisanship that you find everywhere else in this medium.

Fortunately, though, some folks do notice what I notice, such as Gerald F. Seib of The Wall Street Journal, who wrote this in yesterday’s paper:

As Allied armies marched toward Germany in the closing days of World War II, Adolf Hitler ordered the bridges crossing the Rhine River blown up to slow the advance. And so they were, until just one was left standing at Remagen.

In Washington today, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham resembles that span at Remagen: He sometimes looks like the last bridge left standing to connect the two parties in an increasingly polarized capital.

That’s either a courageous or a foolhardy position in the wake of the vicious health-care battle.

Yet the South Carolina senator stands firm. In recent days he has emerged as the lawmaker trying hardest to find a bipartisan solution to two of the toughest problems on the docket: a policy for terrorism detainees and an energy bill to reduce both dependence on foreign oil and greenhouse-gas emissions.

At a time when lawmakers are more likely to be attacked than lionized for trying to work across party lines, Mr. Graham is quietly, though sometimes grudgingly, respected within his caucus, and admired inside the White House for his bravery.

He is hardly acting out of blind love for President Barack Obama’s administration. In an interview, he calls the president “a very polarizing guy,” and in a weekend appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” he excoriated the Democrats’ recently passed health bill in terms that would have made the Republican National Committee proud.

Instead, he says, “I have taken the approach that, no matter how upset I am about health care, when it comes to national security, you have to work together.” And he regards both terrorism detentions and energy as national-security matters….

OK, that’s probably as much as I can quote without getting into “fair use” trouble. I’m not sure what I think of his historical analogy (so, who is he saying the Nazis are?), but the image of Graham as a last bridge is apropos.