Henry McMaster just went off the deep end in an apparently desperate bid to stand out in the GOP crowd for governor.

For years, I’ve been talking about what a good attorney general Henry has been, particularly considering that he was our fourth choice for the job. (We endorsed someone else in the primary, then someone else again in the runoff, then the Democrat in the general.) We had worried that he would continue to be the pandering party chairman we had seen in his years in that post.

But as it turned out, he was a refreshing departure after the headline-grabbing shenanigans of Charlie Condon. He was a sober, serious, conscientious AG who resisted the temptation to grandstand for the most part, and did some really good things such as his domestic-violence  initiative.

And now this:

A leading Republican candidate for governor said Monday he would not support raising South Carolina’s cigarette tax – the nation’s lowest – under any conditions.

Attorney General Henry McMaster, spurred by a weekend of back-and-forth discussion on the issue with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jim Rex, said Monday he would not support raising the tax, spokesman Rob Godfrey said.

Rex has proposed raising the tax by $1.24 a pack to the national average, using the more than $200 million raised to pay for health care and to avoid requiring teachers to take a week of unpaid leave.

So basically, Henry is trying to out-wingnut the others in his party, to establish himself as SO anti-tax that he won’t, under any circumstances, raise the one tax that three-quarters of the state’s voters say should have been raised to the national average years ago.

That is sufficiently extreme to remove Henry from the ranks of people who deserve to be governor. As you know, some time ago I completely lost patience with people who didn’t want to raise the tax to the national average. To oppose raising it at all is just… indefensible.

Folks, this isn’t about Jim Rex’s plan. I have my own doubts about what Rex proposes to do with the money. But he is certainly, unequivocally right about wanting to raise the tax. As I’ve said for years, this is the one tax that needs to be raised regardless of what you do with the money — even if you burn it. That’s because it is an established fact that wherever you raise the cost of a pack of cigarettes, fewer kids take up the habit and become lifelong addicts.

This is simple; it’s obvious, and to oppose raising the tax at all is absolutely inconscionable.

Had to do a double-take just now. I thought for a second I had called up Will Folks’ blog by mistake.

Right there on the main page of thestate.com, I saw a toothsome (to use Kathryn’s word), topless siren giving me the old “come-hither.”

I’m not quite sure what to make of it. At least she’s not taking up Page 3 in the actual paper.

What do y’all think of it?

And what do you think of a blog that’s getting ready to sell ads posting something like this? Insupportable, as Mr. Darcy would say…

Bonus question: Isn’t it passing strange that increasingly, in the pictures in the “swimsuit” issue, the models don’t exactly wear the swimsuits?

Several months ago I went by to check out a “tea party” on the State House steps, and I ran into Boyd Summers in the crowd. He said he was there because he had looked out of his office window and said to himself “I wonder what all those white people are doing down there.” And this was what they were doing — milling about with “Don’t Tread On Me” flags and harrumphing. (You know, whenever I saw those in history books, I’d wonder: Who’d choose to identify his political movement as a snake? Our Founders were smart guys, but they could have used a good branding consultant…)

On that same theme… as the rally was breaking up, I was chatting with a friend who is a videographer for a competing medium, and he asked me in all innocence (he’s still kind of new to politics), How did all these people hear about this event? Rather than say Duh, they’ve been promoting it to death via the blogosphere and social media, I let my inner wiseacre out for a romp and said, “They blow a special whistle that only cranky white people can hear.” It just seemed to fit was I was seeing around me.

So there’s a sort of theme here. There’s something about these tea parties that’s lacking, shall we say, soul, or an “urban” component. I’m not saying I was hearing Mantovani in the background, but you get my drift.

Today, I read John O’Connor’s piece in The State that posed the question, Whither the tea party movement?, and read it because I hoped it would answer a question I have, which is, What do the tea partiers think they’re about? What’s the point for them? I get it that they’re against stuff, which reminds me of my favorite Groucho Marx song, but what else are they about? What causes them to interrupt their lives to turn out and demonstrate?

I’m not sure I got an answer from the story, although I did sort of zero in on this passage:

The movement sprang up in 2009 as a response to President Barack Obama…

Exactly. The rest of the sentence ran, “… and his policies,” but I think you’ve pretty much summed it up if you stop at “President Barack Obama.” It rose up essentially as a response to the fact that this guy Barack Obama was president. He hadn’t really done anything yet, but, to go back to the Groucho song, whatever it was he was going to be selling, they were against it. That was the one clear message I picked up on.

Which brings me to the bumper sticker my Dad told me he saw recently in our fair community. It was on a pickup truck driven by middle-aged or older male caucasian, and it said:

“Don’t blame me; I voted for the white guy.”

Sorry to be passing this on second-hand. You know that if I’d seen it myself I’d be posting a picture. (And if you know of where I can find one to photograph, I’d appreciate a heads-up.) But when my Dad says he saw it, I believe him. (Besides, you can find them via Google.)

And just hearing about the existence of such a sticker made a lot of things click for me. For years, I have cited, as a seminal moment in the development of today’s hyperpartisanship, those bumper stickers I saw after the 1992 election but before Bill Clinton had even taken the oath of office, saying, “Don’t blame me; I voted for Bush.”

Well, we’ve all gotten used to the partisans not giving a guy a chance if he’s on the other team. But there has been a little something extra in the air since that fella with the furrin-sounding name got elected. And if I run into the guy who has that bumper sticker on his truck, I might go up to him and thank him for his frankness, and for helping me clarify something that has been unclear…

We’re keeping our youngest granddaughter (who will be two months old tomorrow!) while her parents attend a Super Bowl party. We got my parents to come over and see her, and since they want to see the game, it’s on our TV… and I see that the contest is between the Colts and the New Orleans team.

Which catches my interest, despite my profound apathy (at best) regarding football. In my entire life, I have seen, in person, exactly one professional football game. It was in 1965. It was an exhibition game between the Colts and the Cardinals. It was held in the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. (The purpose was to prove that New Orleans could turn out a crowd for a game; the city was trying to get the team that eventually would be the Saints.)

So, if only for sentimental reasons, I’m interested. But so far I’m disappointed. I don’t see Johnny Unitas anywhere. And they keep talking about Indianapolis, which confuses me…

That's me with Bill Day in Memphis this past Sunday, Jan. 31.

The same week last March that Robert Ariail and I were packing up our stuff to depart The State, another editorial cartoonist was doing the same back at the very first paper I ever worked for — the Commercial Appeal in Memphis.

Robert and I heard about Bill Day being laid off at the time, and it was a fresh reminder that we, and the other 38 people losing their jobs at The State, were far from alone.

Anyway, fast-forward to this past week. I was in Memphis for my father-in-law’s funeral. We were at the funeral home for the visitation and rosary the night before, and I was introduced to the father of one of my Memphis nephews’ classmates — and it was Bill Day. We had a really good talk comparing experiences. We were meeting for the first time (he and Robert had met at a convention years ago, back when newspapers paid for cartoonists to go to conventions), but it was like talking to an old friend, because we had so much in common. Beyond our immediate experience, he knew people I knew when I worked as a copy boy at his former paper back when I was in school in the 70s.

That makes three cartoonists I now feel a close connection to — all top professionals — who have been laid off, casualties of the slow death of the newspaper industry. First there was my oldest friend in the business, Richard Crowson. Richard had illustrated the first column I did for the editorial page of the Memphis State lab paper when we were in school. Then we worked together for a decade in Jackson, Tenn., before I persuaded Richard to follow me out to Wichita in the mid-80s. Then, in 2008, that same paper canned him.

Then Robert — and now Bill Day. I feel honored to know all three.

Well, this is interesting… I see Kevin Fisher’s running for the Columbia City Council seat that Kirkman Finlay III is vacating to run for mayor. Maybe everybody knew that already, but I hadn’t really been paying attention to the council races, so it’s news to me.

Hearing about it today is coincidental for me, since after seeing Joe Azar last night I was looking for a link about him (for my previous post), and ran across the column I wrote about him in 2006. It seems that at the time, Joe was going around saying that I had enlisted Kevin Fisher to also run for mayor so as to split up the anti-Coble vote and ensure Mayor Bob’s re-election. This was particularly interesting since at the same time Mayor Bob was sure we were going to endorse Kevin over him. Well, we endorsed Mayor Bob.

Apparently, it really threw people for a loop that I had written a column encouraging Kevin to run… and then didn’t endorse him. No one should have been surprised (especially if they subscribed to Joe’s conspiracy theory). People try to read too much into things. The explanation is always easy, because I’m up front about my motives. I wanted Kevin to run because, while I liked Bob, I didn’t think it was good for him to coast to another easy win over Joe without having to answer any hard questions about his tenure as mayor. I thought Kevin could make it a real race, and we’d have a good, open airing of the issues. Which is what happened.

Anyway, now he’s running for city council. Here’s the release he just put out:

Kevin Fisher

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Friday, February 5, 2010
Fisher Files for City Council, Pledges to be
“The Fourth Vote for Fiscal Responsibility”
Advertising executive Kevin Fisher filed today for the District 4 seat on Columbia City Council, pledging to be “the fourth vote for fiscal responsibility.”
Fisher carried District 4 over Mayor Bob Coble in the 2006 mayoral race. “The voters of District 4 honored me with their support in 2006 and I will work hard to earn their support again,” Fisher said. “The overriding issue is fiscal responsibility.”
Fisher said the approval of new TIF (Tax Increment Financing) districts this week showed City Council “continues to be out of touch with the city’s financial situation and immediate needs.”
Said Fisher, “While both TIFs may have merit, the idea that now is the time to embark on them shows a disconnect from fiscal reality. We have pressing public safety needs, pressing water and sewer needs and pressing public transit needs, all on top of trying to rebuild the city’s finances after a decade of Council’s glaring failure to exercise fiscal oversight. Siphoning money away from basic services at this time lacks both credibility and common sense.”
Fisher continued, “The fact that both Richland County Council and the Richland District 1
School Board refused to participate in the TIFs, along with opposition from all the mayoral
candidates, The State newspaper editorial board and many citizens demonstrates how isolated and
irresponsible City Council is on this matter.”
Fisher continued, “The good news is the TIF districts received the bare minimum of four
votes on Council. We can undo this and begin to implement fiscally responsible city government
with a single vote. I will be that fourth vote for fiscal responsibility.”
Fisher is president of Fisher Communications, a Columbia advertising and public relations
firm which recently marked its 20th anniversary. In addition to running for mayor in 2006, he has
been a regular commentator on city issues as the author of the City Watch column in Free Times.

Speaking of his column in the Free Times — he wrote one about me when I left the paper, and I enjoyed it.

Aaron Johnson, Sparkle Clark, Steve Benjamin, Steve Morrison, Joseph Azar and Gary Myers.

I did real good last night.
You shoulda seen me.

— “Rocky,” by Sylvester Stallone

That’s what I was thinking to myself after last night’s mayoral candidate debate at Eastminster Presbyterian Church. I had been kind of nervous about it because keeping things moving with seven candidates on the stage is like herding cats, but it went all right, which was a great relief. My one regret is that I didn’t get to more audience questions. Other than that, it went well, which increases my confidence for the gubernatorial debate I’m going to moderate next week…

And the candidates “did real good,” too, which of course is a far more relevant point. Afterwards, one member of the audience said it would be good just to substitute all seven of them for the current city council. I thought that went a bit far, especially since a very fine councilwoman, Belinda Gergel, was there also in the audience, but it reflected the general feedback that I got.

Unfortunately, I can’t really provide you with a lot of substance as to what the candidates said, because I was far too busy moderating — making sure we kept to schedule, deciding which question to ask next, making sure I called upon the candidates in the order I had, on the spur of the moment, agreed to (letting a different one go first each time), and so forth.

But I can offer a generality or two. In general, I thought the three leading candidates — Steve Benjamin, Steve Morrison and Kirkman Finlay III (who joined us in progress, having been delayed by the city council meeting running late, which is why you don’t see him in the picture I shot with my phone near the start above) — all did fine, with none of them really standing out. No, I take that back: I thought Steve Morrison, having launched his campaign rather late, was sufficiently forceful and on-point to prove he is indeed a contender. I was more familiar with what Messrs. Benjamin and Finlay have to say, so they made no new impression.

Among the lesser-known candidates, former career soldier Gary Myers made the strongest impression, touting his experience as a nation-builder all over the Western Hemisphere (in Haiti, Ecuador and setting up the prison at Guantanamo) and saying he came home because his brother the cop told him he was tired of burying so many young black men, and arresting the rest.

So here’s my very, very rough ranking of how they all did, with the caveat that these are holistic impressions, not based on particulars:

• Steve Morrison — He had to show he had the stuff, and he did.
• Steve Benjamin — Seemed on the defensive a couple of times, but came across as a guy who’s going to fight to steer Columbia in the right directions.
• Kirkman Finlay — Had to play catch-up, but used his incumbency well and stayed in the game.
• Gary Myers — As mentioned, he distinguished himself from the pack of also-rans.
• Joe Azar — Exhibited the confidence and smoothness of a candidate with far more experience as a candidate than anyone else on the stage.
• Aaron Johnson — Showed a good deal of populist passion, but did not inspire confidence that he was quite ready for citywide office.
• Sparkle Clark — Got the best laugh of the evening when, during a discussion of crime and public safety, spoke of a shooting she witnessed in which she told the intended victim, “If they’re shooting at you, get away from me” (or so I remember it, not having taken notes), but in general came across as a type of candidate I’ve seen quite often over the years — chock full of good intentions, but seemingly not really a leader.

If you were there (and a gratifyingly large group of people did show up) and had a different impression, please share it. And if you were actually taking notes, your observations will immediately garner more credibility than mine…

That chill you feel on this wet morning is caused by hell freezing over beneath our feet. (OK, that’s all the cliches for now, I promise…)

You know, I had been thinking that Mark Sanford was utterly unaffected by events of the last few months — that he had learned nothing, least of all that he owed it to the state he nominally governs to act in its best interests, rather than in the hubristic service of his own idiosyncratic beliefs. And then this:

SC’s Sanford seeks stimulus funds for schools

The Associated Press
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Gov. Mark Sanford wants $300 million in federal stimulus money for South Carolina, less than a year after fighting against accepting more than $700 million.

The State newspaper reported that Sanford flew to Washington on Thursday to ask for South Carolina’s share of the $4 billion “Race to the Top” education money. Forty states already have applied for the money, which is awarded based on plans to improve education and for innovation.

Sanford lost a fight in the South Carolina Supreme Court last year in his bid to refuse to take stimulus funds for public schools, colleges and law enforcement.

Gubernatorial spokesman Ben Fox says Sanford has no interest in debating the issue again.

South Carolina U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn praised Sanford’s efforts on behalf of public schools.

Now mind you, part of the reason he was there was to promote a type of school “choice,” but I’m happy to report it was a good kind of school choice — charter schools. Beyond that, though, the governor was seeking funds for purposes he has until now shown little interest in promoting, such as:

• New dropout prevention programs
• Outfitting more Montessori classrooms
• Giving incentives to teachers who agree to teach in the state’s most challenged schools
• Building housing for teachers who agree to live and teach in rural areas where housing is hard to find
• Creating high-tech labs for students to learn about advanced manufacturing and green engineering

Yay, Gov. Sanford! This looks like an actual positive development, and I’m not going to damn it with faint, grudging, crotchety partisan praise the way Rep. Jim Clyburn did. (And I quote: “I am pleased to see that the governor is finally taking an interest in South Carolina’s public schools. After going to court last year to prevent stimulus funds from coming to South Carolina, his meeting with (Education) Secretary (Arne) Duncan appears to be the governor’s admission that the stimulus was not only necessary but effective. I hope this is an indication he is willing to move forward together.”)

But I can’t help noting this interesting sidelight… Under Joel Sawyer’s replacement Ben Fox, a pattern is emerging: The governor takes an apparently self-serving trip to Washington — to preen, to be seen, to hobnob or what have you — and that gets reported widely, then after the political damage is done, Mr. Fox gives a reason for the trip that at least seems consistent with the governor doing his job. Remember last month when we all reported that the governor had gone to Washington on the morning after the State of the State with no more relevant apparent motive than his desire to bask in the victorious glow of Scott Brown? And then Mr. Fox reported that he was really there on an ecodevo mission?

Well, in this case everyone had reported that the governor had taken the state plane to Washington with no purpose beyond attending the National Prayer Breakfast. Then, later in the day, Mr. Fox offers this explanation.

So I wonder which it is? Are they making up these righteous-sounding justifications after the governor gets egg on his face (which I sincerely doubt), or do they really still not get the fact that the governor’s doings are news, and if he’s doing something legitimate, you need to tell people before they report on the basis of insufficient information? In other words, are we being intentionally misled or is the governor’s staff incompetent? Or is he still not telling his staff where he’s going? Or is there a perfectly logical and laudatory explanation for all this that Ben Fox will tell us about later?

I had thought the Starbucks on Gervais was a happening place, but I dropped by the one in Five Points a little while ago to get me a cup to get me ready for the mayoral forum tonight, and ran into:

• Lobbyist Larry Marchant was getting into his vehicle and driving off as I got there; we didn’t speak.
• Former city councilwoman Anne Sinclair was at a table in the shop. I asked her if she was coming to the forum tonight, and she said no way (she’s had enough of city politics, I think).
• Dick Harpootlian, who was with some other high-roller types. I asked him how Dwight’s campaign was doing. Fine, according to Dick.
• Scott Winburn, who is apparently going up against Seth Rose for Kit Smith’s seat on Richland County Council. This creates a conflict for me if I choose my preferred candidates by granfalloon: Seth’s in my Rotary (as is Anne), and Scott’s from my hometown of Bennettsville — although I had not met him until Anne introduced him just now.

It was Scott who reminded me that I had started the day meaning to write about the passing of my friend Doug Jennings‘ father. (Scott said he expected to see my Uncle Woody at the funeral in Bennettsville.) I am remiss in not having done so already.

Dr. "Dougie" Jennings

This has been quite a week for losing fathers. First my wife’s, now Doug’s. While I certainly wasn’t nearly as close to Dr. Jennings as to Mr. Phelan, I did know him slightly, many years ago — long before I knew Doug, in fact.

He was my doctor, back during the year that I lived in Bennettsville while my Dad was in Vietnam, 1967-68. Among other things, he treated me for the flu, which was about as sick as I can ever remember being. I’m grateful for his care, and his long years of service to the community.

My thoughts and prayers are with Doug and the whole Jennings family in this time of their loss.

Had breakfast with Sen. Joel Lourie this morning, and he spoke of his frustration that the S.C. Senate has completely wasted the first month of the legislative session, wasting all of its time so far on two ridiculous issues: the new Nullification Act and the Voter ID bill.

Both, of course, were about nothing but partisan political posturing, having no bearing on the actual problems of our state. Meanwhile, the Senate can’t find time, for instance, to increase the cigarette tax the way 70 percent of the voting public wants them to do. Or figure out how to fund the essential functions of government in these hard times. Or address any of the major unfinished business of our state that I cited in my last column at The State. Or even to do something so simple and open-and-shut as censuring the governor for his shameful behavior, something that took the House all of 20 minutes.

Joel and I commiserated because we have both reached a point at which we no longer have any patience for the idiotic things that hold us back in this state, from the attitudes exemplified in Andre Bauer’s recent remarks to … well, in a way, most of the things holding us back are related to those attitudes.

And as an UnPartisan, I may be even more disgusted than Joel with the Senate’s foolishness this past month. To Joel as a Democrat, the Voter ID thing was at least worth fighting against. For my part, I think the Republicans’ assertion that this legislation is needed and the Democrats’ assertion that it will lead to dire consequences are both misplaced. Here’s a column I wrote on the subject awhile back. The best thing, of course, would be if our lawmakers didn’t waste a single second on this issue that ultimately is about the fact that Republicans don’t want certain people who are likely to vote Democratic to vote, and Democrats want them to for the equal and opposite reason.

But Joel and I are perfectly attuned in that we have lost patience with the fact that our state’s political engines simply will not take any positive action, but are all about erecting barriers.

I wrote about my diminishing patience in a column last year, in which I used the cigarette tax as an example. (A subtext to that column was the fact that I felt like I wouldn’t be at the paper much longer — I thought I would be leaving of my own volition rather than being laid off, but I just didn’t see myself doing it much longer — and so I had a sense of time running out for some of these common-sense policy changes to become reality.) At the time, you’ll recall, Jim Rex called me to say HE was fed up, too. That call was sort of a precursor to his deciding to run for governor.

And as it happens, Mr. Rex has just put forward a new proposal on the cigarette tax, which deserves consideration (and probably won’t get it, if patterns hold true).

Of course, Joel thinks Vincent Sheheen is more likely to be able to deliver the kinds of change South Carolina needs, although he likes and respects Mr. Rex. But one thing the three of us agree on is that we’re not as patient as we once were…

Just thought I would provide y’all with a place to comment upon Admiral Mike Mullen’s testimony yesterday in favor of eliminating the policy generally (although, I keep hearing, inaccurately) described as “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” To quote the most pertinent part of the admiral’s remarks:

No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens

Personally, I don’t have much to say about it, beyond not being able to resist a play upon the famous Churchill quote about naval tradition, since this message came from an admiral. Beyond that, and moving on to more pertinent observations, “Don’t ask, don’t tell” has always sounded pretty good to me, although I certainly don’t pretend to being an expert on it. It matched my own personal policy about such matters, which is that I won’t ask, and I don’t want you to tell, and I won’t bother you with my proclivities, either. (And when I DO slip and display them, y’all should call me down for it.)

Interesting thing about that policy. Everyone acts like it was some horrible thing instituted to persecute people, when actually it marked the end of the witch hunts that preceded it. (In that regard, it reminds me of all the folks who are so indignant over “minimally adequate,” when Chief Justice Finney thought it was a great improvement on what preceded it. Irony abounds.) Remember the prolonged efforts by the Navy to weed lesbians out of the Marine Corps at Parris Island back in the 80s? It was pretty ridiculous, and a huge waste of resources.

Anyway, I’ve always attached a great deal of importance to the opinions of the military brass on this subject. And before yesterday, they generally presented a fairly solid phalanx against changing the policy. But now that Adm. Mullen has tacked in a different direction, I think his position deserves just as respectful a hearing (my joke about the Churchill quote notwithstanding).

While the admiral is providing powerful testimony to the contrary, I am sensible of the traditional arguments about what open sexual tensions can do to unit cohesion. There’s a good piece about that in the WSJ today (which you may want to read as the complement to the admiral’s testimony), complete with an interesting discussion about the difference between philia, the kind of love that is nonexclusive and multidirectional and which promotes unit cohesion (a love among — band of brothers stuff — rather than a love between), and eros, which is specific and exclusive and militates against esprit de corps. One flaw in the piece is that it doesn’t mention what the inclusion of women on U.S. Navy ships and in other situations has done to morale. (I’ve always thought that was a very bad idea, and I’d be very interested to see a really frank and objective study of how that has played out.) But the same argument holds in that case.

One more point: Whether allowing gay personnel to be open about their sexuality is a good or bad idea, it is certainly completely invalid to compare it to the racial integration of the military. As I often say about bogus comparisons of gender and race issues, boys and girls are different; black people and white people are not. The issues involved here are just as different. The aforementioned piece quotes Colin Powell putting it better than I can:

Skin color is a benign nonbehavioral characteristic. Sexual orientation is perhaps the most profound of human behavioral characteristics. Comparison of the two is a convenient but invalid argument.

The only arguments that seem relevant to me are those that bear on whether the current policy or its amendment or revocation would be best in terms of the military’s effectiveness. And I’d like to see a good discussion of that.

Now, y’all go ahead and discuss, and I’ll move on to other matters…

I missed the televised GOP gubernatorial “debate” last night, but I was much gratified to read about one of the questions that was asked of the candidates. It’s one that, going forward, should be asked of all Republican candidates in our state, namely: Are you a Lindsey Graham Republican, or a Jim DeMint Republican? I think every voter in South Carolina deserves to know the answer to that question.

So it was that I was somewhat disappointed that the story I read in The State didn’t tell me, in detail, how each candidate answered that question. And I was deeply disappointed that Henry McMaster dodged the question entirely, cloaking himself in ersatz Ronald Reagan partisan piety. That’s a black mark, to my mind, against a Republican I would expect to give an answer that would please me: Specifically, that he’s a Graham man. I say that because, back in mid-2007, when everybody else was saying it was over for John McCain, Henry and Lindsey and Bobby Harrell were about the only ones in the state still willing to stand up for him. I admired that steadfastness, that willingness to stand against more destructive elements in their party.

So I was sorry that he was unwilling to stand up for the kind of sensible conservatism that McCain and Graham represent, and against the “Waterloo” seeking fringe values of the hyperpartisan, ideologically extreme elements that they stand against.

Meanwhile, I’m grateful to Nikki Haley for standing up and saying right out that she’s a DeMintor. Nikki is making me feel less and less bad about opposing her candidacy. She’s still got that admirable frankness that I’ve always liked in her, but almost every time she employs it these days, it makes me more and more certain that I do NOT want her to get anywhere near the governor’s office. Note that she is the ONLY one of the candidates on the stage whose views are so extreme that she would have voted to censure Lindsey Graham for the sin of being a rational, pragmatic United States Senator working for the good of the country, instead of the wingnut that the less presentable elements of the party want him to be.

Was anyone besides me distracted from following the president’s speech last night by the sound of his hands dropping repeatedly to the lectern as he spoke? I suppose he does this all the time, and I just never noticed it until last night, when someone put a much-too-sensitive microphone in front of him.

Whether you heard it depended on which station you watched. I flipped around, so I know that on most stations it wasn’t audible, but on two or three it was. It was loudest on PBS (although not so much so on the Web version). I guess the engineers on some stations washed it out.

Anyway, what I learned is that he marks time in his speech, dropping his hands down with a distinctive “plop” at each pause. It’s a sort of kinetic form of punctuation that occurs wherever a full or partial stop occurs. It went like this:

Here’s what I ask Congress, though: (PLOP)

Don’t walk away from reform. Not now. Not when we are so close.(PLOP)

Let us find a way to come together and finish the job for the American people.(PLOP)

(Applause.) Let’s get it done.(PLOP)

Let’s get it done.(PLOP)

(Applause.)

Now, even as health care reform would reduce our deficit,(PLOP)

it’s not enough to dig us out of a massive fiscal hole in which we find ourselves.(PLOP)

It’s a challenge that makes all others that much harder to solve,(PLOP)

and one that’s been subject to a lot of political posturing.(PLOP)

So let me start the discussion of government spending by setting the record straight.(PLOP)

At the beginning of the last decade,(PLOP)

the year 2000,(PLOP)

America had a budget surplus of over $200 billion.(PLOP)

(Applause.) By the time I took office,(PLOP)

we had a one-year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade.(PLOP)

Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars,(PLOP)

two tax cuts,(PLOP)

and an expensive prescription drug program.(PLOP)

On top of that, the effects of the recession put a $3 trillion hole in our budget.(PLOP)

All this was before I walked in the door.(PLOP)…

All of us have our speaking quirks. I use the lectern myself, but mostly as a sort of anchor to hold onto as I resist my peripatetic urge to move away from the microphone as I talk.

But now that I’ve noticed this about Obama, even it I don’t hear it in the future, I think I’m going to be conscious of it, and distracted. It sort of breaks the spell, which may or may not be a good thing, depending on your point of view.

I’m a guy who likes encountering messages that defy stereotyping. For instance, I was happy this morning to see a car with side-by-side bumper stickers for Republican Leighton Lord and Democrat Jim Rex. Now there, thought I, is a voter who thinks. I may or may not agree with his conclusions, but at least he’s not buying his attitudes off the shelf. Very cool. Very UnParty.

But then, later in the day, I wasn’t sure what to think about the truck I was following that featured, among other things:

• Several black-and-white line drawings of fish — some living fish in action poses, some fish skeletons.
• A Confederate flag.
• A South Carolina state flag.
• A POW/MIA sticker.
• The slogan, “I’d rather be kayaking!”
• The following fragment of “Imagine”: “You May Say I’m A Dreamer/But I’m Not The Only One.”

What did it all mean, Mr. Natural?

I really enjoyed the piece I read in The State this morning by the Hilton Head Island Packet‘s Jeff Vrabel, which dared to trash the excessively beloved “Avatar.” To wit:

Anyway, the point is “Avatar” is dumb. It is, as my wife succinctly put it, a corny combination of “Return of the Jedi” and “Ferngully.” It is eight hours long, all characters are played by an iMac (including Sigourney Weaver) and every frame is filled with the suffocating sense of bruising self-importance you would expect from maybe Sarah Palin. Yes, it looks great, and so does Blake Lively, and both she and “Avatar” become distinctly less attractive when their talking-sounds begin.

Moreover, it is the kind of movie in which I, a viewer fully behind the film’s ecology-centered pseudo-doctrines, found myself in the end rooting actively for the military-industrial complex to exterminate the stretchy blue people and their USB-cord hair. Now that’s not their fault, mind you; they seem like nice hippies. It’s just that the way Cameron makes them talk, using extended proclamations of patronizing importance, made me wish for something terrible to happen to them, hopefully by vampires…

I haven’t even seen this movie (and probably won’t until it’s on DVD, or at least showing at the dollar movie house), but I was already tired of hearing people gush about it. And Mr. Vrabel also affirmed my suspicion — based on things I’d heard here and there — that the flick was to a great extent a big-budget wallow in politically tiresome sentimentality, a sort of high-tech “Dances With Wolves.” You know, bad military industrial complex picking on a race of people who are far finer, and much bluer, than we are, yadda-yadda…

Funny thing is, now that I’ve heard it debunked, I’ll probably relax my defenses and actually enjoy the movie when I see it. After all, some people I love love it. But the multimedia worshipfest was getting on my nerves, so Mr. Vrabel’s piece was a nice change of pace … Just watch, I’ll go see it, and get converted, and be talking about what an awful non-blue meanie he is for writing that…

As I job-hunt, I’m particularly envious of those who have really sweet jobs. Like Darcy Willson-Rymer, the managing director of Starbucks in the UK & Ireland. Y’all remember Darcy — he’s the one who was so stuffy and refused to dance with Miss Elizabeth Bennett, saying she was “not handsome enough to tempt me,” and … no, wait. Wrong Darcy. No, this Darcy was the one I got excited about when he started following me on Twitter. Unfortunately, it did not lead to a gig getting paid to blog for promotional purposes in Starbucks stores in London and Dublin, which was a cruel disappointment to me. I felt sure they’d have to go for that one… (And yes, I actually DID, in real life, make that pitch to Mr. Willson-Rymer, as facetious as the rest of this post may be. He let me down politely, using that tone you use for calming down overexcited lunatics…)

Anyway, having been thus jilted, it’s particularly painful to an Anglophile like me to read all about Darcy’s exciting life. He’s always topping it the knob. For instance, today he had a “productive meeting” with the mayor of London. Not the Lord Mayor of the City, mind you, but still a rather important cove who runs the rest of that megalopolis, and does all sorts of things that he’s always showing away about, such as providing 20,000 affordable homes with the wave of his scepter, or whatever the mayor of London waves.

Sigh… And you know what else? I bet Darcy gets all the free Starbucks he wants. That, and Pemberly, too. It’s just not fair. It’s enough to make me want to vote Labour next time…

KP brought this bit from “The Daily Show” to my attention. It was introduced with the explanation that it’s hard coming up with enough material for a comedy show every day, so…

“That’s why we here are especially grateful for those frequent contributors — those who give more than their fair share — like the state of South Carolina…”

He went on to remind his viewers that SC is the place where the elected representatives shout “You lie!,” where the governor goes to Argentina to meet his mistress on the taxpayer’s dime, and where (in a South Carolina story that we paid little attention to, but which is one of Jon Stewart’s favorites — a man is charged with having sex with a horse… twice… with the same horse).

This time the source of hilarity was our lieutenant governor — pause for laughter — who compared poor children to stray animals. Mr. Stewart then played Andre’s “explanation” of his remarks, to which he could only say:

You know, it’s interesting… especially in South Carolina, you keep giving them a chance, and they keep (bleep)ing that same horse.

Barbara Kenly of Little River guards her horse, Sugar, after allegedly catching a man having sex with the mare...

Not second place in the race for governor. No, what I mean is that he no longer has THE most perfect South Carolina name of anyone running for office this year.

That distinction belongs to another Democrat, Ashley Cooper, who is running for lieutenant governor. His Web site says, “Ashley is proud of his South Carolina roots.” Well, duh. With a name like that, he’d better be.

Whenever I get a chance to meet this guy, my first question of course will be, It that your real name? (Second question would obviously be, Are you the present Earl of Shaftesbury?) You’ll recall that the co-author of Cheaper By the Dozen once wrote a newspaper column in the Charleston paper under the pseudonym “Ashley Cooper,” choosing it because nothing could sound more South Carolinian.

I didn’t know there were any real ones walking around…

File photo from June 2006 interview. (Brad Warthen)

There are two schools of thought about what would happen if Mark Sanford were to resign. The first, held by my former co-workers at The State and a number of politicians who feared the consequences were the governor to be impeached, hold that being installed as interim governor would give Andre Bauer a leg up in becoming governor for the next five years.

The Optimist School, to which I am a leading adherent, holds that a year of being governor would have subjected Mr. Bauer to a level of scrutiny that would ensure that he were not elected to anything in the future. As lt. gov. he is almost invisible, and has to do something spectacular, such as rush at a police officer during a traffic stop or crash an airplane, to be noticed. As governor, particularly after the events of recent months (which seems to have awakened the press in SC into thinking, Hey, we’d better actually COVER the governor!), he would be subjected to so much light that his political hopes would evaporate.

Today, we have some fresh evidence supporting my position. Now that he’s a candidate for governor, he is being watched a LITTLE more closely than usual — not as closely as if he were governor, but closely enough that the press picked up on this:

GREENVILLE – Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer has compared giving people government assistance to “feeding stray animals.”

Bauer, who is running for the Republican nomination for governor, made his remarks during a town hall meeting in Fountain Inn that included state lawmakers and about 115 residents.

“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better,” Bauer said.

In South Carolina, 58 percent of students participate in the free and reduced-price lunch program.

Bauer’s remarks came during a speech in which he said government should take away assistance if those receiving help didn’t pass drug tests or attend parent-teacher conferences or PTA meetings if their children were receiving free and reduced-price lunches.

Bauer later Friday told The Greenville News he wasn’t saying people on government assistance “were animals or anything else.”…

Gov. Sanford’s press guy says that the governor wasn’t just hanging with his buds and hoping to meet Scott Brown when he went to Washington the day after the State of the State. Ben Fox says the governor and folks from the Commerce Department went up there to meet with an economic development prospect.

Since this ecodevo trip wasn’t to Buenos Aires, I’m inclined to give the gov the benefit of the doubt. In fact, I’ll even give him snaps for letting us think he was goofing off rather than brag on himself. Here’s hoping the trip was successful. You go get ’em, governor…

I hope he breaks all previous records for ecodevo in his last year. And if he does, I’ll applaud as loudly as anyone.