An earlier post about Mark Sanford evolved (or devolved, if you prefer) into a thread about the Confederate flag, and a couple of points I made back there in response to some of your comments are probably worthy of their own post. So here goes…

First, Doug Ross had said:

… And most South Carolinians (especially those in the legislature) DO care about the Confederate Flag — otherwise it wouldn’t require a compromise to move it from the top of the State House to its current prominent “in-your-face” position.

I’m all for putting the question about the flag on the ballot. Are you?

Then, Kathryn Fenner added:

I think that many issues that have a lot of traction in the legislature don’t have as much among the population at large. Between special interests and the legislators’ personal quirks (Glenn McConnell and the Confederacy), lots of things loom larger at the State House than they might in a referendum….

Finally, David had this to say:

Certainly, Doug, most in the legislature care about the flag. But they’re also a bunch of morons who like wasting our time on issues such as this which advance our state none. Beyond that I cannot say for sure. All I can say is out here amongst the yahoos of Lexington County, most people that I know personally don’t care.

Sure, put it on the ballot; I believe the flag should be removed. But it’s not that big of an issue to me.

My response follows…

A couple of points: First, no, neither this nor any other legislative issue should be settled by referendum. I’m a stickler for republican government; to me government by plebiscite is an abomination. The proper way to decide something like this — something that is not a constitutional issue, but merely statutory — is to do so through our elected representatives.

Second, about those representatives: David and KB and Doug are laboring under a very common misconception — that our lawmakers are fascinated with the Confederate flag. They are not; in fact they are quite the opposite. They don’t want to hear about it or talk about it, and they don’t. They definitely are not “wasting our time on issues such as this;” in fact, they completely refuse to take the issue up. (Mind you, I’m talking the consensus here; certainly you can point to a few with a neo-Confederate obsession, but even those don’t spend legislative time on the subject, insisting that the issue was “settled” by the compromise of 2000.)

No, our problem is that lawmakers will not spend ANY time on the issue. And as long as they don’t, those of us who want the flag gone have no way of exercising our will (remember, lawmakers would have to take up the issue even for the referendum some of y’all call for).

Some of this is due to their fear of a no-win issue. For them, it really doesn’t matter how many people call for removing the flag; they fear the angry minority that will take its revenge upon them. And for a Republican, utterly dependent on white votes, that subset of the white electorate can cause really trouble. Or at least, they think it can, which amounts to the same thing in terms of effect on their behavior in office.

Another factor is the NAACP, which is following a perfect strategy for making sure the flag stays up forever. By capturing all the headlines on the subject, the NAACP has managed to frame the issue as being between South Carolina and an interest group that is set on FORCING South Carolina to do its will, with the threat of economic harm if it doesn’t say “uncle.”

Well, you don’t make white South Carolinians do anything, ever, even if it’s in their interest. (Think, how did the slaveowning minority get all those other poor sap whites to take up arms against the Union in 1860? By persuading them that the gummint was going to try to MAKE them do something, which got their backs up so much they were happy to throw their lives away.) And never mind that the boycott lacks teeth; the problem is that the NAACP means for it to be effective, and white South Carolinian resentment of that intent is so vehement that there is no way lawmakers — even some who may be slightly inclined to do so — will take up the issue, as long as the NAACP succeeds in portraying the issue the way it does.

My periodic campaigns to try to move the flag are timed to moments when I think that maybe we can get a loud enough conversation going to drown out the NAACP (for instance,  when Steve Spurrier offered the gift of a figure able to grab headlines in his own right, and even though I am utterly uninterested in football, I was happy to seize the opportunity for what it was worth, which in the end turned out not to be much), so that MAYBE lawmakers will see their way clear to doing the right thing, forgetting for the moment that the right thing happens to be the thing the NAACP wants to MAKE them do. But most of the time, it’s like butting my head against a wall. The media like conflict, and will conspire with the extremists to portray this as a battle between irreconcilables, which keeps most of us from being able to reach consensus.

No, the problem is getting the Legislature to take up the issue at ALL.

Even in 2000, when you may have had the impression that the Legislature was doing nothing but talking about the flag, the real problem was that it was keeping such debate to a minimum. In fact, the reason we’re stuck with this unacceptable “compromise” is that the House refused to spend more than a day on it. The GOP leadership decided that it would cram through the Senate “compromise” in that one day, and not allow any alternative plans to be seriously considered. A lot of attempts were made, mostly by Democrats, to offer plans that would truly have settled the issue. The very best was a proposal by former House Speaker Bob Sheheen to do away with all actual flags, and replace them with an unobtrusive bronze plaque that explained that the flag once flew here — truly putting the flag in its proper historical context, and eliminating it as a present-day issue. But his successor, Speaker David Wilkins, was determined not to be slowed down by considering anything other than what the Senate had proposed.

That was an extremely frustrating day for me. I wrote several editorials, as the debate ebbed and flowed, to advocate for the better ideas. I kept rewriting late into the night as debate wore on, but in the end didn’t run any of them because late that night the House voted, rendering everything I intended to say moot. In other words, the House leadership rammed it through before there could be any input from the public on the various good ideas that were put forth and tabled that day.

Remember, the Legislature’s sin with regard to the flag was then, and remains now, ignoring it, not spending too much time on it…

Don’t expect me to blog much today, because I’ve got something much more interesting going on…

This morning at about 5:30 a.m., my daughter-in-law gave birth to a beautiful, perfect little girl, my son’s firstborn. So we’re having a wonderful day today.

And guess which grandparent got to hold her first? (Don’t tell my wife — or fellow grandparents Ginny and Hunter Herring.) I cheated. After all the others had left to let mother and baby sleep, I snuck back just as they were about to bring the baby to her mother’s room for the first time.

There will be a lot of folks lining up to hold this baby (including the twins, who were practicing child care yesterday by putting a diaper on their stuffed toy monkey).

She’s a perfect holding size, just as she is perfect in every other way…

In the early 60s, I lived a kind of Huck Finn existence on the streets of the Third World. I lived in Guayaquil, Ecuador, for two years, four-and-a-half months, which as it happens was the longest I lived anywhere growing up. We moved down there in November 1962, shortly after my ninth birthday, and within three months I was fluent in Spanish. By the time we left, Spanish was pretty much the same to me as English. I thought in Spanish, dreamed in Spanish. The fact that I’ve lost that over the years is sort of like having a gaping hole in my essential self.

Anyway, we had no television — the only local station broadcast from about 4 in the afternoon until 10 or so at night. I think. We never saw any point in getting our TV out of the storage room the whole time we were there, so I only occasionally saw a TV turned on at someone else’s home. “Beverly Hillbillies” re-runs dubbed into Spanish have a limited appeal.

So we played, creatively. We built things. We dug canals in the backyard of the only kid I knew who had a backyard (most people had paved courtyards instead). My best friend Tony Wessler and I attended the local movie house, the Variedades, which showed Italian Hercules movies and “The Three Musketeers” in French, with Spanish subtitles. A double feature cost 40 centavos, which at the time was the equivalent of two cents American. We sat on wooden benches eating fried banana chips, and when we left the theater we picked up bamboo staves from a construction site (construction was totally dependent upon bamboo scaffolding) and sword-fought all the way home. We were really into sword-fighting.

We also trespassed, a lot. Property was delineated by high brick or stone walls, and the flat-roofed houses were close enough to the walls at the sides and in the back that you could run along the walls, hop up and swing onto the roof, run across the roof and drop down to the next wall, and so on across the block — or, simply travel the whole way running along the tops of the walls. We avoided sidewalks as too, well, pedestrian, preferring the direct walltop route. Occasionally homeowners would hear us and shout, but we’d be gone out of sight before they came out. Those roofs and walls were our highways, as the vines in the trees were for Tarzan.

One day, on a vacant lot that was diagonally across the street from my house, we encountered a circle of working-class men squatting in the dust, which drew us like a magnet. These vacant lots were sort of our kingdom, the usual battlefields for our swordplay, and it was unusual to find strangers on them. (It only occurred to me later how out-of-place they were in that “wealthy” neighborhood, which would have been middle-class by U.S. standards. Maybe they were some of the vendors who sold bananas and avocados from push carts in the neighborhood; I don’t know.) We had to get right up close and lean over the men to see what held their attention. It was a couple of gamecocks going at each other full-tilt, in a blur of feathers, dust and blood. The men gripped money and shouted and gesticulated, too riveted upon the fight to take much notice of us.

We didn’t stay long; I don’t recall how the fight came out. Maybe we picked up on the fact that we were out of place and that these men weren’t that comfortable with a couple of pampered gringo niños butting in on their sport; I don’t know. All I remember was that that was my one exposure to cockfighting.

And it really didn’t bother me.

Since then, I’ve worked with folks who think cockfighting is a truly terrible thing. I’ve been told that bloodsports involving animals are a gateway crime, that people who abuse animals that way will also inflict violence on humans.

And with dogfights, I can see that. In fact, as I recall, one of the movies Tony and I saw at the Variedades was a Jack London story about a dog who fell into the hands of dog-fighters, and I got the impression that it was a terrible thing. But those are dogs; dogs are the animals who have the closest relationships with humans. We know them to be capable of all sorts of noble traits upon which humans rely. I can see how a system of ethics about how to treat others easily includes dogs.

But I don’t feel the same about gamecocks. Maybe I’m wrong about that, and I’d appreciate y’all setting me straight. I don’t think it’s bad that cockfighting is illegal, but it doesn’t make me all that indignant to know the law is sometimes breached. I’m sort of lukewarm on the issue.

Anyway, I got to thinking about all that when I saw John Monk’s story over the weekend. What do y’all think about it?

Just so you know that the rest of the nation is still embarrassingly fascinated with South Carolina’s political dysfunction, here’s a piece in The Christian Science Monitor that lists “Five reasons Mark Sanford might last as South Carolina governor.” In a nutshell (which is an appropriate venue, if you think about it), the five reasons are:

1. The mash notes — this is the most bizarre of the five reasons. CSM speculates that “The governor’s emotional attachment to former Argentinian TV anchor Maria Chapur, while inappropriate, seems genuine and deep – a factor that may have made him a more sympathetic figure in the eyes of some South Carolinians.” Huh. OK. The piece also notes that the e-mails “are full of references to Ms. Chapur’s glowing eyes and ‘the special nature of your soul,'” which kind of conveniently ignores the part where he waxed poetical about her boobs.
2. Boeing. This one’s on the mark. Sanford really lucked out on this one. Even though all he did was resolve not to get in the way this once (conveniently dropping his usual opposition to such incentives), he benefits from the reflected glory. Also, the signing ceremony down in Charleston was a bit of a lovefest, a unifying moment between him and some of his chief critics in the Legislature, which bled off a bit of the animosity that would tend to boost impeachment. In short, Boeing was a big help to the gov.
3. Andre Bauer. ‘Nuff said, right? That’s what has kept The State from calling for the gov’s resignation. Never mind that I think that analysis is backward. Rather than helping Andre’s candidacy, I think a year of hyperscrutiny in the top job would guarantee that Andre couldn’t get elected to it.
4. Who cares? Indeed. Give anything long enough, and South Carolinians’ default apathy will kick in.
5. In SC, Sanford doesn’t look so bad. Mentions here of Thomas Ravenel, et al.

That last one, of course, is why it’s so cringe-inducing to have national media paying attention to us at all. The national narrative on SC is that we’re a bunch of Confederate flag-waving, president-insulting, Strom Thurmond-worshipping yahoos. Mark Sanford only added slightly to that, and he can get lost a bit in the mix.

Saturday I spent a couple of hours at Green’s liquor store, but not for the obvious reasons.

I was doing my Rotary duty, for the first time in several years. KBFenner told me I had no excuse not to ring this year, seeing as how I’m unemployed. She doesn’t realize how time-consuming being unemployed is, but I took her point. Anybody can find a couple of hours to ring the bell for Salvation Army.

I had a pleasant time chatting with my bell-ringing partner, Jessica Cross. Jessica works in the governor’s office, so we found all sorts of things to talk about. And she was very patient with me.

We also chatted with some of the patrons. You know, some folks (although certainly not the vast majority) have a drink before they go to the liquor store, or so I gathered. Folks were really friendly, and some stopped to chat and philosophize at length.

It was chilly in the shade — several feet away it was nice and warm in the sun, but the position was not nearly as good there for catching folks coming and going — but on the whole an enjoyable and rewarding experience. Folks were very generous.

I resolve to do this again before nearly as much time has passed…

Steve Benjamin chats with Bob Ford at the Gourmet Shop in Five Points this morning.

Had coffee again this morning with Steve Benjamin — my friend Jack Van Loan keeps inviting me to these Kaffeeklatschen, and I attend when I don’t have a conflict. (FYI, I’m having breakfast next week with Steve Morrison to learn more about his candidacy, so I need to get together with Kirkman Finlay at some point.)

Most interesting part of this morning’s discussion: Steve B. was talking about the importance of developing our riverfront, as part of overall efforts to make Columbia a place where the 8,000 or so people who graduate from college in this community and then go elsewhere each year would have a greater motivation to stay. So I asked him if he supported the TIF for riverfront redevelopment, and he said “yes.” This led naturally to asking about the proposed North Columbia TIF that keeps getting paired with it.

To that he had a long answer that, boiled down, amounted to this: The problems of North Columbia are deep societal problems and challenges that would not be solved by streetscaping. What North Columbia needs is efforts to raise education levels and promote family stability and help the folks who live in those neighborhoods have a brighter future because they as individuals are better prepared for it. He spoke of a program he saw in Harlem that basically drew a line around a troubled area and said, we’re going to address everything that holds people back in this community — that included instituting a lot of programs, including charter schools.

Basically, he said that the kind of solutions that make sense in the city’s economic core — such as along the riverfront — do not make the same kind of sense in such areas as North Main.

I was impressed with this stance, because it is not the politically convenient one. Steve is running a campaign in which he’s going after every sector of the electorate, every neighborhood. The conventional approach in Columbia has been to say that in order to invest in the core, we have to keep the neighborhoods happy as well. And investing in North Columbia has become convenient shorthand for telling neighborhoods that we’re serious about y’all as well. At some point, we have to say that devices such as TIFs, which require sacrifice of revenues by the larger community, need to be used in those pivot points where the economy of the whole area turns.

No, it’s not that I’m that excited about it, but that’s how those notices come in — with exclamation points and everything:

Karen Floyd is now following you on Twitter!

Anyway, Karen brings me to 388 followers — which means I have almost as many as Steve Benjamin. I learned this morning over coffee with Steve (more about that later) that he has almost 4,000 friends on Facebook, but is lagging back with us non-candidate types on Twitter.

Laurin, you need to get busy on that!

For my part, I still need to figure out a way to make some dough from Twitter — or Facebook, or the blog. Why think of it, if I had a dollar a week for every follower on Twitter … well, I’d have a pretty strong motivation to jack that up to about 2,000, wouldn’t I?

By the way, Karen’s latest Tweet is as follows:

South Carolinians on Medicare know that gov’t intrusion will do more harm than good http://tiny.cc/VRKpr

What kind of sense does that make? South Carolinians on Medicare fear government intrusion into their government program? Hello!?!? Is anybody home?

Cross my fingers and hope not to lie...

A month or so ago, a couple of friends brought my attention to a contest that The Washington Post was having to find America’s Next Great Pundit.

There were a lot of reasons not to enter. For one thing, I doubted they wanted an actual professional journalist. For another, the contest rules were reminiscent of a Reality TV game show, rather than the more dignified process for choosing op-ed material to which I was accustomed. Then, there was the fact that you could only submit one opinion piece, and it had to be less than 400 words. That last one was a killer. Yes, I can do Twitter, which means that in a pinch I can express myself in 140 characters (it would be strange if I couldn’t, after all those decades of headline-writing). But “pundits” write columns. And 400 words do not a column make. My own columns in The State were on the long side — around 1,000 words (I was the editor, so I made the room). A typical column in The Washington Post runs close to 750 words. In 400 words, you have no room to develop a topic, support it with argument, and throw in grace notes (the digressions that I love) that make the piece worth reading. (Interesting side note: The official rules of the Post‘s contest ran 3,883 words — almost 10 times the limit those very rules required me to stay within.)

But I entered anyway, grumbling all the way. And here’s the piece I entered:

The first casualty of unemployment is the truth.

OK, maybe not the first. First there’s the blow to one’s bank account. Then the loss of self-confidence. But truth is right up there. Especially for me. Until I was laid off in March, I was editorial page editor of South Carolina’s largest newspaper. A colleague once said to me, accusingly, “You don’t think this is the opinion page. You think it’s the truth page.” I just looked at her blankly. Of course it was the truth page.

Readers expected me to tell everything I knew, and plenty that I only thought I knew – about South Carolina’s feckless politicians (Mark Sanford, Joe Wilson – need I say more?), or whatever struck me, without reservation. And I delivered.

My reputation survives my career. Recently, a friend warned me that people feel constrained in talking to me, because their confidences might turn up on my blog. After all, bloggers tell all, right? Ask Monica Lewinsky. Ask ACORN.

“HAH!” say I.

As a blogger who answers to no one, I am not nearly as frank and open as I was as a newspaper editor who thought he had a secure job.

I haven’t disclosed whom I have worked for on consulting gigs since leaving the paper, because my clients haven’t been crazy about the exposure. Every word I write, I think: Might this put off a prospective employer? And I know it has, despite my caution.

There are things I have not written – pithy, witty, dead-on observations on the passing parade, I assure you – because I think, “Do you have to write that and run the risk of offending this person who MIGHT point you to a job? Can’t you just write about something else?”

And where am I applying for jobs? Well, I’m not going to tell YOU, am I?

People used to praise me for my courage for taking on powerful people at the paper. But I was taking no risk whatsoever. As long as I was supported by advertising, a transaction I was ethically barred from even thinking about, I had impunity.

But an unaligned blogger still trying to function as a journalist stands naked and alone, and is not nearly as free and honest as he was writing from the once-impregnable citadel of an editorial page. At least, this one isn’t. Keep that in mind, citizen, as newspapers fall around you.

That piece was 399 words. It didn’t make the cut, which didn’t surprise me. I wouldn’t have wanted to publish that little chopped-down fragment, either. It never had the chance to get rolling and get interesting.

But I offer it here because I wanted to share the point of the piece with you — the fact that a lone blogger, if he hopes to find employment anywhere, is a lot more constrained than a journalist who is paid a good salary to write his honest opinion about anything and everything without consideration of where the chips fall.

Sure, there were constraints in being the editorial page editor that I don’t feel now. For instance, I had to keep in mind that I should not embarrass my colleagues, or put them in an awkward spot. I think Cindi and Warren (and Mike and Nina, back when I had a full staff) would have felt a little uncomfortable, for instance, with my honest assessment of the intellectual capacities of the candidates for governor. They might have felt like it made the paper look like it wasn’t considering the candidates with an open mind. It wouldn’t have meant that, because I change my mind about candidates all the time (and besides, as I said in that post, intellect isn’t everything in a candidate). But because I was the editorial page editor, they would have worried about the appearance of the thing. And they might have talked me out of it, even as a blog post. And I almost certainly would not have written it in a column at this stage in the campaign.

So it cuts both ways.

But I feel far more constraint out here alone and naked, without the salary and license I had. In fact, I am acutely aware that the very fact that I blog and express opinions at all is a huge turnoff to some employers, including some for whom I’d like to work. I keep blogging anyway (my attitude is, I can stop the minute you hire me, if that’s what you want; in the meantime, it keeps my name out there), and I pretty much always shrug off my misgivings and go ahead and say what I think anyway, but I do have that hesitation that I never had before. This matters because any journalistic process involves, at its first stage, deciding what to write about. And that entails deciding not to write about the rest of the universe. And what I can’t tell you for sure — to what extent is any of us totally honest with himself about his own motives? — is to what extent that extremely complex process is or is not influenced by my concerns about putting food on the table and paying the mortgage.

About all I can do is cross my fingers and hope not to lie. And I wanted to disclose that.

That last post inspired me to follow up with a Top Five Diners list. See what you think:

1. Middlesex Diner, Middlesex Township, PA — My all-time favorite diner anywhere. And that’s my favorite diner meal pictured above (with the Harrisburg paper in the corner): Those wonderful fat sausages with what Pennsylvanians call home fries, which are basically kind of chipped/shredded fried potatoes. Man, I wish I could find those sausages to cook at home.
2. Stage Deli, NYC — Pictured below. OK, not strictly a diner, but a classic (and kind of touristy) New York deli. But I don’t order those sandwiches with the celebrity names. I just order diner-style food there: The fat sausages are almost as good as at Middlesex. Also, they give you very generous portions — they’d better, because this is far and away the most expensive joint on the list. By the way, I once had breakfast here with ex-state GOP Chairman Katon Dawson, back during the 2004 convention.
3. Shoney’s, anywhere — A very satisfying all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet. Especially those moist, diced potatoes, which are fantastic with bacon. One of those great simple combos you have to try to get how good it is. I usually have thirds. I’ll put some other things on my plate, but it’s really about the potatoes and bacon.
4. Silver Diner, Maryland or Virginia — I wrote about this back on the previous post. Yes, it’s very commercial, with all the carefully designed period decor and menus and such, but the food meets the test.
5. Fay’s Country Kitchen, Carlisle, PA — This one’s not for the food. I only ate there once, and they were out of link sausage (I had hoped, given the proximity, they’d be as good as at Middlesex), so I had some mediocre patty sausage, and it wasn’t impressive — Jimmy Dean boring. But my wife, who’s eaten there a lot, maintains that the food there is good normally. I’m including it because I had a classic diner moment there with a waitress, and based a column on it, which you can read here. That waitress embodied, I believe, the reason Hillary Clinton beat Barack Obama in Pennsylvania.

I almost included the Minit Stop convenience store in Bartlett, TN — but it’s not technically a diner; its meals are mostly takeout. And it would be sort of like nepotism, and I run a clean blog here: My brother-in-law runs the place, and he and my father-in-law are partners in the business, of which the hot food deli has become a growing part.

Also, Lizard’s Thicket is a pretty reliable place for me, but it’s not strictly a “diner” either. And it’s so generic here in the Midlands that it just didn’t seem like a cool pick; Top Five List King Barry would have mocked me. The Shoney’s pick, by contrast, is so corny it’s hip.

So what do you think? Where are your favorite hash-slinging joints?

What did you think of the president’s speech tonight? I thought he did really well. For one thing, it’s always great to hear a president go into detail with an issue of critical strategic importance. I hate those speeches in which serious world affairs are jammed in in bits and pieces among vote-winning domestic promises and heart-warming anecdotes about people strategically placed in the audience.

This was all bidness, and all very serious business. And the president rose to the occasion well. He spoke in complete sentences, complete thoughts, and he clearly showed how those thoughts were related. He built his argument as a thing of geometric beauty.

You know who he reminded me of? Tony Blair. You know that, coming from me, that is high praise indeed. But it’s been awhile since we’ve had a president who could explain so clearly and thoroughly the need for a national commitment as well as Tony Blair did, and President Obama’s speech was Blairesque.

Speaking of Tony, you know what really frosts me about the British people? Large swathes of them still believe that their man was a sort of lapdog bullied into supporting the Iraq endeavor by that crazy cowboy in Washington. That is deeply insulting — to Blair, to Britain and to the English language (and to the crazy cowboy, too). Not since Churchill had they heard a man explain so clearly and eloquently why the nation needed to be doing something. I used to wish often and loudly that Tony could have done all the talking for the Western alliance about Iraq, because he understood why we were there so much more clearly that W. did. Or at least, he could explain it so much better.

I say that with all due respect to those who disagree. The president respectfully presented his disagreement tonight. I’m just saying that Tony explained MY point of view better than anyone, and many times over the past few years I have wished he could be my president. The European Union demonstrates just how dysfunctional it is by not overwhelmingly choosing him to be their president.

But I digress. Back to my point: President Obama did a good job tonight.

For my part, I spent the latter part of the speech consulting with my crack panel of experts, who spent most of the time trying to learn to say “Obama.” I tried to get them to say “President,” but that was a bit tricky for them, so we stuck to Obama. By the end, the older twin seized a pen and seemed prepared to write her commentary, so we had to wrap up the video.

And if you don’t like video of super-cute little girls, just don’t watch.

Greg Flowers is getting me into trouble, and I’m helping him do it. Back on a previous post, Greg issued this challenge:

Brad, you obviously don’t think Bauer is a sharp guy (neither do I). This leads to an interesting question. You have had (I believe) the opportunity to interact with all ten of the announced candidates for Governor. How would you rank them in terms of raw smarts (squishy term that that is)? Ranking in tiers will be fine. This has nothing to do with policy agreement, just mental horsepower.

And now I’m rising, foolishly, to the challenge — even though it feels, in Huck Finn’s immortal words, like… well, here’s how Huck put it:

Well, I says to myself at last, I’m agoing to chance it; I’ll up and tell the truth this time, though it does seem most like setting down on a keg of powder and touching it off just to see where you’ll go to.

I really hesitate to publish this, because some of the subjects will take offense, and I don’t really intend to hurt anybody’s feelings. It’s just that if you draw a curve, some people are going to be on the lower end. They may be brighter than average (then again, they may not), but in this list, they’re on the lower end.

And I know I will catch hell from Republicans because the top end is heavy with Democrats. Console yourselves with the knowledge that with at least two out of the three in that top category, their cerebral personae will probably not be a help to them. On the campaign trail, I’d much rather have Henry McMaster’s regular-folks image than Jim Rex’s professorial demeanor. Also, note that I’m leaving Charleston Pastor Amos Elliott off the list, because I know absolutely zip about him, and have not formed an impression at all. There are a couple of others here with whom my contacts have been limited, but he’s the only one recently listed in The State who I’m not even attempting to rank.

I’m going to allow myself the little out that Greg offered and put them in tiers, and alphabetically within those tiers. Anyway, here are my tiers:

Upper Tier

• Dwight Drake — Of the three in this category, Dwight is the one who I think will benefit most from his smarts. That’s because he has street smarts, not just the academic kind.
• Jim Rex — Very professorial, as I said above. Which stands to reason, given his background. Very thoughtful, very earnest. And it remains to be seen whether he can connect with voters. Yes, he’s won a statewide race, but that time he was the anti-Karen Floyd. I don’t sense that it was because he hit a chord that resonated with regular folk.
• Vincent Sheheen — Also very thoughtful, very earnest — and perhaps too low-key to be successful. That’s one reason Dick Harpootlian pushed Dwight to get in the race. It was interesting that Vincent came out swinging the way he did on Dwight when he announced, but so far Vincent still has that image that you respect — intellectually and personally — but you don’t know whether his good qualities will help him connect with the voters who don’t yet know him.

Middle Tier

• Nikki Haley — Nikki is very bright and has a lot of wonderful qualities — courage, resourcefulness, integrity — but she doesn’t go terribly deep on issues. Her analysis tends to be fairly superficial. So that lack of a professorial quality (or the kind of craftiness of a Dwight Drake) kept her out of the top tier, although it may help her get elected, if she can shake off the Sanford taint.
• Mullins McLeod — Probably a really smart guy — he is a lawyer, after all — but it hasn’t showed so far. In fact, he hasn’t shown nearly as much original thinking as Nikki has. I haven’t been as exposed to him as much as to some of these others, but what I’ve seen has not impressed.
• Henry McMaster — Also a pretty smart guy — another lawyer — and one who is very often right on the issues, but not an ivory-tower intellectual in any sense. More of a down-to-earth, common-sense kind of guy. That Common Man persona roots him firmly in the middle tier, and will likely help him.

Lower Tier

• Gresham Barrett — This will probably rankle. After all, the man is a member of Congress. But he hasn’t shown me anything that makes me think he’s really thinking about issues at all. Maybe he’s smarter than this, but he’s not showing it.
• Andre Bauer — Andre’s such a hard worker, and he means well by his lights, so he is going to perform higher than his tier would suggest. And he will tell you that he’s no great intellectual, just a regular guy who wants to serve, and will bust his gut trying. And that has served him VERY well in past elections.
• Robert Ford — Can’t say I know Sen. Ford personally that well. Not even sure he’d know who I am. But the policy positions he takes are some of the dumbest I’ve ever run across. It’s almost like a signature trait with him. I don’t think he’s shooting for the dumbest ideas, but he’s shooting for the biggest splash he can get, and there’s often a strong correlation between those categories.
• Larry Grooms — Another guy I don’t know too well. The only time I’ve had an extended conversation with him was when he was one of the most prominent Republicans pushing for Fred Thompson to get into the ’08 contest. I wasn’t impressed with his reasoning.

OK, now that I’ve gotten a lot of people mad at me, I ask you to calm down for a moment and consider: I’m not trying to dismiss anybody here. In fact, there is a distinct possibility that a candidate from the lower tier will be the nominee of a major party (specifically, either Barrett or Bauer). It would be better for this state if we had a candidate from the upper tier running against a candidate of the middle one, but you can’t always get what you want.

Also, I’m not saying here that Democrats are smarter than Republicans. In fact, I am so loathe to give that impression that as I type this I’m hesitating to push the PUBLISH button. I really, really wanted it to work out so that the top tier was balanced. But my honest assessment of these candidates doesn’t lead me there. Let me note that if I had done this four years ago, the Republicans would have been in the top tier, and no Democrat would have ranked higher than the middle. But that was then; we have a different field with different capabilities this time.

Nor am I saying the top-tier people are necessarily stronger candidates, or would be better governors. Sometime a mid-ranked person with the right values who works hard is the best candidate. (And I find myself on a personal level really wanting to put either Nikki or Henry in the top tier, because they are fine, bright folks — but I honestly don’t think they are quite as pointy-headed as the three I have there. Not to cast aspersions on the pointy-headed, either.)

Most of all, think of this as a conversation-starter. Talk me out of my assessments, if I’m wrong.

Editor’s note: Since the routine went over fairly well at Rotary today, I went ahead and updated this post with a video version. Enjoy. (FYI, as I type this I’m still waiting for YouTube to finish processing it, so it may be a few minutes before the clip is actually available to view.)

As the impeachment process gets under way, it looks as though much will hinge upon the fact that the governor didn’t tell the lieutenant governor he was going to be incommunicado — something that on its own seems pretty unremarkable, given the relationship between these guys. If Mark Sanford had told Andre Bauer anything it would have been remarkable, much less turn his limited power over to him.

But the reasons for this are not immediately apparent to folks who haven’t followed these guys professionally. So it is that that, as part of my Health & Happiness presentation at Rotary today, I’ve decided to help my fellow Rotarians understand. I will ask them to imagine, along with me, what the conversation would have been like if the Gov had told the Gov Lite:

Why the governor didn’t tell the lieutenant governor he was leaving the state:
GOV: Ummm… Andre.
LT GOV: Andre?
GOV: Well, yes, that’s your name, right?
LT GOV: Well, yeah, but I didn’t know you knew it. You’ve never called me by my name before.
GOV: Well, don’t get used to it. I just…
LT GOV: What can I do for you?
GOV: Well, I…
LT GOV: … because I’ll be glad to do it for you, especially if it involved governatin’. I can flat do some of that, no matter what they say.
GOV: Yes, well, be that as it may…
LT GOV: Should I get my robe? I’ve got me a humdinger of a robe for official stuff. It’s purple and everything. It’s right over here in the closet…
GOV: No. No, that’s fine. I just wanted to tell you that I’m going to be out of the state for a few days…
LT GOV: Where you goin’?
GOV: That’s beside the point.
LT GOV: What? You come all the way over here to tell me you’re goin’ somewhere, and won’t tell me where it is?
GOV: It’s irrelevant.
LT GOV: Where’s that? Africa or someplace?
GOV: Look, I’m just going to go now. Do me a favor and distract my SLED detail…
LT GOV: What? You don’t want ’em to drive you? Hey, I know! I could drive you! I’m a real good driver…
GOV: No. Nonononono… Umm… Think about it – if you go, who will be in charge of the state?
LT GOV: Oh, yeah. I’ve gotta stay here and be in charge. Hey, I like the sound of that! Tell you what – if you don’t want the SLED detail, can I have em?
GOV: No.
LT GOV: Awww, why not?
GOV: It would set a bad precedent.
LT GOV: Now, whoa, hang on, no point saying I’d be a bad president; give me a chance to be a bad governor first.
GOV: Sure, sure. And good luck with that.
LT GOV: Hey, don’t worry. I’ve got your example to follow.
GOV: Yes, well, umm – sorry to bother you…

So now I hope you see why he didn’t tell him.

Almost forgot this until I was cleaning pictures off my Blackberry.

On the very day that Stanley Dubinsky thoughtfully shared this item from The Onion:

Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be

November 14, 2009 | Issue 45•46

ESCONDIDO, CA—Spurred by an administration he believes to be guilty of numerous transgressions, self-described American patriot Kyle Mortensen, 47, is a vehement defender of ideas he seems to think are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and principles that brave men have fought and died for solely in his head…

… I found myself in traffic behind the car with the bumper stickers you see above. Sorry about the quality of the photo; the light wasn’t good. Of course, I shot this when we were stopped at a traffic light. It would have been impossible otherwise, the way this guy was weaving all over the road. The sticker on the left says “Wake Up America! Read Your Constitution,” the one on the right is the standard John Birch “Get US out of the United Nations,” and the one in the middle is about the FTAA.

That Onion piece was one of those where they’re not kidding, the way I read it.

Note: Since some of y’all objected, I went ahead and pixilated the whole image beyond recognition…

As I mentioned, I rather often shoot pictures of things I don’t ever post on the blog, just in the course of a day.

I always have the Blackberry with me, which means I always have the equivalent of a double-naught spy camera with me, since you can take pictures without seeming to, if you’re sly enough.

For instance… last week, I complained on Twitter about the woman next to me in a restaurant talking loudly, to a friend who had stopped by her table, about her colonoscopies. Plural. After she had shared the saga of one colonoscopy, and told us all about the polyps they found, doing everything but give them names, she then told us about a subsequent colonoscopy, and what do you know but they found more polyps that they had missed the first time…

I kept count. She said “colonoscopy” six times. Very publicly.

About halfway through this soliloquoy, I held my Blackberry out well ahead of me, to get around the friend who was standing between us, and shot the above exposure. You can see the friend’s purse at the left of the frame. Very sneaky photo.

I went back and forth about whether to post the photo, as a cautionary tale. In the end, you see, I have compromised. I pixilated the lady’s face, and the menu naming the restaurant.

What do you think? Should I even do this much, or should I have run it undistorted, as just desserts for having told this tale while I and a restaurant full of others were trying to eat? I’ll be interested to see what y’all think…

By the way, this happened the morning after that crazy day I wrote about. I had spent the night on the twins’ couch while my wife and son-in-law were with my daughter at the hospital, and was having a late breakfast before heading to the hospital myself, so the last thing I wanted was to listen to this woman’s tale with my meal.

After the long drive yesterday, we sat down to watch “Frost/Nixon.” Tired as I was, I doubted I’d make it all the way through, but it was riveting. Michael Sheen seems to have quite a career going playing real-life figures from recent history (he’s known for his portrayals of Tony Blair in both “The Queen” and “The Deal.” I gave both those films four stars in the Netflix rating system, and now I’ve done the same for “Frost/Nixon.” Frank Langella is of course lugubriously fascinating as a Nixon more nixonian than the original.

In fact, if there’s anything that’s a letdown it’s the realization, when you watch the supplementary material on the DVD, that the original interviews weren’t as colorful or dramatic. In fact, the original Nixon was cooler, and less interesting, than Langella’s version.

You might also find James Reston Jr.’s over-the-top liberal hostility to Nixon tiresome, but it’s a pretty fair representation of the way a lot of people felt and acted at the time. And Ron Howard effectively made fun of that excessiveness with the bit when Reston meekly shakes hands with the president, right after insisting he’d do no such thing.

It’s also very interesting as an evocation of a time I’d almost forgotten. You have to remind yourself watching this just how remarkable it was for the worlds of entertainment and politics to overlap this way back before 24/7 TV “news.” It really took me back to those days, when I was a copy boy at the Commercial Appeal in Memphis the night of Nixon’s resignation, and the managing editor sent me to the composing room to have them blow up the words “Nixon Resigns” as big as it would go across the whole front page — back in a time when that sort of flash in print was also unusual.

Anyway, I enjoyed it, and recommend it.

Rather than keep complaining about the fact that our governor had been on vacation more days than he’d worked since mid-June while I, the unemployed guy, kept his nose to grindstone job-hunting, I figured I’d just take some time off, too.

So my wife and I joined my oldest daughter and her three kids down at Surfside. We drove down on Friday, and came back today. And I couldn’t post from the beach the way I did back here (the weekend before I was laid off), because the newspaper kept the laptop.

Of course, I could have borrowed my daughter’s laptop. But I chose instead to spend my time more fruitfully — such as going to the beach with the girls. Above you see a fair representation of the twins‘ enthusiasm for the ocean. They love it SO much that it’s a good thing I was there, because it took three adults and their big sister just to keep them from heading for the Gulf Stream. They charged the surf like this even when their hands weren’t held.

So yeah, I could have been blogging. But look what I would have missed.

Have you see the commercial — I think it’s for wireless services (I’d give you a link if I could remember the product) — that has a family sitting on their patio, and the teenage boy is saying (this is an approximation), “And Dad — cut it out with the Twitter updates…”?

The middle-aged Dad, completely unmindful, is gleefully muttering aloud as he types with his thumbs on his phone, “… am sitting on the patio…”

For some reason, my wife finds this ad hysterically funny. I guess each and every person has his or her own distinctive sense of humor…