Back when Boyd Summers wrote us an op-ed criticizing the Bar exam mess that benefited the daughter of his ex-opponent, another blog speculated this meant he’d be going after Jim Harrison again.
Not so. Turns out that Boyd has other stuff on his political plate now. As he wrote via e-mail this week:
Hope you are doing well. I wanted to mention to you that I was elected to succeed Steve [Benjamin] as Richland County Democratic Party Chair at the County Convention in March.
If I can ever help you with anything, please let me know. I will miss candidate interviews this year, but perhaps when it slows down I could meet with you guys to discuss County Party activities.
I wrote back to make sure I was understanding him right, and he said back:
That’s correct, I have not filed to run for the SC House or any other office this year.
I will be working to get other folks elected who have the same vision that I share to move my home state forward in a progressive manner.
Their is certainly a lot of work to be done.
I hope we will have the opportunity to get together soon.
Boyd
Jim Harrison, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, was to have general election opposition this year — Democrat Tige Watts, who I’m told (see below) has dropped out. If that’s right, then Mr. Harrison will have a free ride now. Of course, thanks to partisan gerrymandering, there’s nothing unusual about incumbents having no opposition in the fall. But at least there are a few primary choices — in districts other than this one.
A little blog trivia for you: Messrs. Summers and Harrison were the first legislative candidates I ever posted video on…
We’re launching two new Web features tonight — one is the Saturday Opinion Extra, which should show up at the top of the regular Opinion page at 12:01 a.m.
The other is the new site devoted to my friend and colleague Robert Ariail and his stellar work. Andy Haworth of thestate.com has done a nice video for that site to help us launch it. I invite you to watch it above, and then go check out the whole Ariail site.
Now, I’ll go back to watching the clock, waiting for the Saturday thing to launch. I think it’s ready…
A reader yesterday asked what I thought about the smear job, reportedly engineered by Rod Shealy, that hit Tom Davis this week at the outset of his attempt to unseat Sen. Catherine Ceips.
When I read about it, I just nodded. Tom, the subject of my column this past Sunday, indicated last week that he expected something of the kind, and that it would probably be worse than even he expected:
I hadn’t even thought about that, to be honest with you… I hadn’t even thought about what it’s gonna be like having a guy who wakes up in the morning who just wants to strip the bark off me. I mean, and that’s what Rod Shealy’s gonna wanna do… I’ve never been through a campaign. I’ve been told just to expect, whatever it is about you that you don’t want people to know, expect it to be known.
Tom thought it would be about something true about him — such as the fact that he was a Democrat when he was young — instead of this illegal-alien nonsense. But that’s Tom’s great liability in this race: He’s a Mr. Smith type. He’s a very open, candid, straightforward, sincere kind of guy (I would have added "thrifty, brave, clean and reverent," but you get the idea), so he figured whatever he was hit with would be something real.
So he was right: He hadn’t really thought through what it would be like with Rod Shealy after him. That’s because Tom Davis is incapable of thinking like Rod Shealy.
It’s a helluva thing, isn’t it, when honest people have to fear running for public office because of sleazy stuff that will be done to them that has nothing to do with their suitability for office?
Oh, but wait! Rod Shealy is reformed! It’s got to be true… PBS said so…
Anyway, in the video above, you’ll see and hear Tom talking about this subject.
Kids have Christmas, and Lindsey Graham had his recent road trip with John McCain and Joe Lieberman to Iraq, the Mideast and Europe. To a foreign policy wonk, what could be better? I’d like to have been along myself.
Basically, he got to be at the elbow of the guy who, as he put it, has a 50-50 chance of being president
next time he talks to these foreign leaders, only under circumstances without all the formal bull you have to deal with traveling with an actual president.
Anyway, as this clip begins, he is giving his enthusiastic assessment (which now that I look back at the video, sort of stands in contrast to the merely polite description he gave of Gov. Sanford) of Nicolas Sarkozy of France, and goes on from there. This was near the very start of our meeting.
Warren Bolton sent me this earlier today, and I was going to try to watch the links myself before post it, but it’s going to be so many hours — and probably tomorrow — before I can get to that, I’ll let y’all go ahead and get a head start:
Brad, thought I’d forward to you what someone shared with me. They are video clips of Wright. The first is a longer version of the "God Damn America" sermon. It won’t change your mind, but it puts more context around his comments.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=RvMbeVQj6Lw
http://youtube.com/watch?v=QOdlnzkeoyQ
http://youtube.com/watch?v=8pedwsGGGp0
http://youtube.com/watch?v=8pedwsGGGp0
http://youtube.com/watch?v=9HjSoMZ7y7A
http://youtube.com/watch?v=-w5I1MR1NBg
http://youtube.com/watch?v=4ThIdzzb0zc
http://youtube.com/watch?v=6yOR_srOUI0
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ckz6H3IbYzc
Warren, as you’ll recall, had a column on the subject this week — with a different take from mine.
Here are the two TV commercials bought by the two best-known candidates for Columbia City Council District 3. That’s Brian Boyer’s, which went on the air Wednesday, above. Belinda Gergel’s, which started Friday, is below. (I would link you to the versions on thestate.com, but it’s the weekend and I’m at home and I need somebody to show me how to embed those. They’re linked from Adam Beam’s story today.)
Also, so you can see where the candidates are getting the money to spend on these ads, plus phone banks, yard signs, etc., I provide these resources:
Read more about these lists in my Sunday column. Admittedly, though, readers of the blog won’t find a whole lot that’s new there — beyond the names you can get yourself from the above lists.
As previously noted, City Council candidate Brian Boyer was in the news today for his precedent-setting $50,000 media buy. He tried to place the expenditure in perspective by saying, "TV is a great way to reinforce the door-to-door campaigning I’ve done."
I can back him up on the door-to-door thing. On Saturday, March 1, I was at my daughter’s home visiting grandchildren. My wife and I were at the front of the house with the babies, and my daughter and her husband (the only ones present who could vote in this thing) were at the back, when somebody knocked at the front door. "Come in," we said. The knock came again. "Come in!" But the knocker allowed as how he’d better not: "It’s a stranger," he said.
But it wasn’t. When my wife opened the door I recognized Mr. Boyer and he recognized me back where I was sitting on the couch, so I got up and we all stood on the porch (he had a buddy with him) for awhile talking about the election.
Anyway, that Wednesday he came in for his actual interview. We talked about his growing up in the district, and his schooling at Hand, Dreher and West Point. Once he got his commission, he went to Ranger School, did his airborne training, then tried out for the Ranger Regiment itself. He made it, and was sent to Savannah to join the 1st Ranger Battalion. He was just beginning to settle into the routine of being a peacetime Army officer (albeit in a crack regiment) in the summer of 2001. You know what happened then — he went to war as a rifle company commander. The battalion "lost a good many men" in Afghanistan during service on the Pakistan border, part of that in the Hindu Kush. The unit got back stateside in January 2003, figuring they’d done their bit. Two months later, the battalion joined the invasion of Iraq. He says he only served there for a couple of months. He was awarded the Bronze Star.
His career as a civilian is less dramatic. He went back to school to get an MBA, worked for awhile in Charlotte, then came home and started a homebuilding company (he is vice president of Hallmark Homes International, Inc., where he "supervises all aspects of land acquisition, design, marketing, and sales"). He bought "the ugliest house in Shandon," which had been split up into three apartments, and started fixing it up as a single-family residence. A year after he moved in, he heard Anne Sinclair would not be running for re-election to the 3rd District.
His community involvement has included service on the board of the Columbia Chamber. He takes pride in his service on the city’s Affordable Housing Task Force, and notes that he built 10 townhomes in the Historic Arsenal Hill neighborhood which appraised at $161K apiece and were sold at cost for $99K. He says he’s in the process of getting certified as a "green builder."
He would want to stress three issues on council:
Crime and Public Safety. He said adequate funding of this had not been a top priority of the city and should. He cited his military experience as being helpful in this area. He wants to get better technology in patrol cars so officers can file their reports from the field and stay out on the street more, something he called a "force multiplier." He’s distressed at the city’s and county’s inability to coordinate on youth gangs, and would want to be a bridge-builder on that.
Financial accountability. He criticized the lack of openness as well as competence, citing not only the failure to close books on time, but the secrecy about the former financial director’s severance.
General leadership. He said politicians "talk about I want to do this, I want to do that," but he has demonstrated the ability to follow through — both in the military, and with affordable housing.
He talked at some length about the failure to have an evaluation system in place for the city manager until recently. In the Army, he noted, you don’t go more than six months without a fitness report.
He would change the form of city government to a strong-mayor form, or the hybrid that’s been suggested.
When I asked him about the "factions" thing (see the elaboration on the Belinda Gergel entry), he said he couldn’t help the fact that his sister is married to Don Tomlin. "I’m about as independent as they come." As for the folks who are supposedly behind him, "none of them were there in the mountains of Afghanistan" or the "deserts of Iraq."
"I sort of feel that I’ve proved myself, and proved my decision-making ability, long before I knew those guys." At the same time, he’s proud to have their support.
WASHINGTON – Congressman Joe Wilson (SC-02) announced today that he will not seek earmark requests in any Fiscal Year 2009 appropriations bills.
“The American people are fed up with a Washington that fails to respect the taxpayer’s wallet,” said Wilson. “There remains no single set of standards to which all members of Congress abide by when requesting funding for local projects. This has led to a process that is broken and wasteful. Therefore, I see no choice but to enact an immediate one-year moratorium on all earmark requests from my office. I am proud to stand with many of my colleagues in supporting this call for a moratorium and ultimately the establishment of a truly transparent and accountable system that provides a set standard for everyone in Congress to follow, where all earmarks are publicly disclosed to the American people.”
NOTE: Last year, Congressman Wilson publically disclosed all earmark requests made in Fiscal Year 2008 to his constituents. This year, he has cosponsored H.Con.Res. 263, which would create a Joint Select Committee on Earmark Reform, provide a report to Congress on the practices of earmarks, and calls for a moratorium on earmarks until the report is presented to Congress.
###
You may recall (then again, you may not, since it was only watched 161 times) that in 2006, I posted this video of Joe explaining why it’s hard to be "pure" on earmarks, what with the system being the way it is.
Seriously, we all understand that one man’s pork is another’s worthwhile project. But this is no way to set priorities for federal spending.
The other day I said something about memories of someone doing impressions of William F. Buckley, and that I thought it was David Frye. As is usually the case with such unimportant matters, I was right (note that I make no such claims to total recall on matters of any significance).
This was back in the 60s, and when I think back to my first awareness of Mr. Buckley and who he was, I see rubber-faced Frye impersonating him before the real man comes clearly into memory’s focus. I suspect that, young as I was, I may have seen the mimic before I ever did the genuine article — or at least, more often.
Either that, or it’s like Dana Carvey and George H.W. I used to entertain friends with Bush impersonations in the early ’90s (I must have done it too much, because I was once asked to do it while speaking to the Sumter Rotary), but they were really Carvey impersonations. The mimic exaggerates in ways that enable the less talented to get a tentative grip on the impression.
Anyway, since I ran across the video, I thought I’d share it. But you know what I’d really like to find? A skit Frye did on the Smothers Brothers’ show in 1968 — a spoof of the 68 elections done on the outlines of "The Sword in the Stone." Frye did all the characters, as I recall. I’d love to see that again. I’d be indebted to anyone who helped turn it up.
Several things strike me as interesting about the incident yesterday in which John McCain ended up apologizing for and condemning a supporter who spoke before him at a campaign rally — some loudmouthed right-wing radio guy who kept using Barack Obama’s middle name and excoriating him and Democrats in general:
Second, this is going to keep happening. As "conservatives" (a word that jerks like this one don’t deserve) get over their snit and climb on board with the McCain campaign between now and November, they’re going to bring this kind of garbage with them. Ditto with the more angry, partisan Democrats who will start supporting Obama once it is clear that Hillary Clinton (such Democrats’ preferred candidate) is truly out of it.
Both McCain and Obama owe much of their appeal to a desire on the part of voters to put this kind of thing behind us as a country. As they try to consolidate their bases, bringing in the fulminators, independents will be watching both of them closely to see how they handle it. It will be quite a highwire act — two highwire acts, actually.
This one was handled fairly well, on both sides. McCain said what he said, and Obama’s spokesman said, "We appreciate Senator McCain’s remarks. It is a sign that if there is a McCain-Obama general election, it can be intensely competitive but the candidates will attempt to keep it respectful and focused on issues."
One of the main reasons why Mark Sanford keeps getting a lot of veep buzz out of Washington — something that would never arise from those with experience dealing with him in South Carolina — is that he connects well with inside-the-Beltway journalists.
Look at this video at The Washington Post‘s Web site. The governor comes across very well in small doses — he certainly did in interviews with us back in 2002. And if you don’t go deeper, you end up persuaded.
Note particularly how smoothly he handles the question about why most Republicans in the State House can’t stand him. He ties them up in a neat little dismissive box in a way that sounds like the very soul of reason. Of course, you have to accept the premise that most people in the Legislature are worthless — otherwise his words not only don’t make sense, but are highly offensive, the sign of a personality that has serious problems with meaningful social interaction.
Washington journalists come away with such encounters thinking, "What a smooth, reasonable guy." That’s because they don’t go deeper.
Anyway, what I said two ‘grafs back also explains why he wins elections. It’s very easy for a voter to accept the idea that the Legislature as a whole is worthless. That’s because most voters don’t interact with anyone in the Legislature — the overwhelming majority have no dealings with (and too frequently can’t name) their own lawmaker. So what the governor says sounds reasonable. But if voters had the same chance to be exposed to lawmakers, they’d see how much more complicated reality is than the way the governor categorizes it.
As you know, I’ve challenged the facile use of the word "conservative." My point is, you can’t just say "I’m conservative" or "he’s not conservative" and have it mean anything. You have to explain, conservative how — in what way? Because alone, the word has had the meaning leached out of it.
Similarly, the word "liberal." This is an excellent video clip of Barack Obama fielding questions about having been judged the Senate’s "most liberal" member. He does a pretty fair job of deconstructing the term, and then goes on to the more important point: "This is the old politics. This is the stuff that we’re trying to get rid of."
Here’s video I shot to go with Cindi’s column today. In it, tobacco retailer Tom Jackson explains what’s wrong with manufacturers packaging cigarettes as "cigars" and marketing them toward youth.
Readers may have noticed that I take an interest in which of my videos seem to be most popular — more of an interest than readers themselves take, judging by the few comments on my Top Five Videos posts. Fine. But maybe you’ll find this interesting.
It just occurred to me to compare videos posted at roughly the same time featuring competing presidential candidates. The results are interesting — OK, they’re interesting to me. But I’m going to share them anyway. If you’d like to look at the raw data to draw your own conclusions, my videos are listed chronologically, with the most recent first, at this link. For the most popular, with the most-watched first, click here. But here’s what I’ve noticed glancing over them just now:
The cleanest comparison you’re likely to find of this sort among the Democrats who were still in the race at the time of our primary is in these three videos I posted the same day (MLK Day). They feature Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama speaking at King Day at the Dome. All are of poor quality, but of roughly equally poor quality. The Obama one is probably worst, because I was the farthest away when he was speaking. But what interested me was that the Obama video was watched 390 times, the Clinton video 150 times, and the Edwards clip 16 times. That’s a bigger margin than the actual vote. I wonder how the demographics break down? No way to tell.
Before you start feeling bad for Hillary, though, remember that my "Hillary’s Heckler" video is still my most- watched ever, at 17,019 views. You have to wonder, though — are people watching it because they like Hillary, or because they like to see her heckled? Difficult to tell. I will say that if you try reading the comments, it won’t make you feel better about the electorate.
The only presidential candidates to make it into my all-time Top Ten are Hillary, Stephen Colbert, Jeri Thompson (you might object that she wasn’t technically a candidate, but that would be ungallant of you, and besides, neither was Colbert), and Joe Biden. Ol’ Joe got there in spite of the wretched quality — it was from my phone. Oh, I forgot — John Taylor Bowles. You may have forgotten Mr. Bowles. He’s the Nazi party candidate. Make what you will of the fact that all three of the clips I put up from the Nazi rally at the State House a few months back are in my Top Five, which means having more than 10,000 views each.
Fred Thompson (that’s Jeri’s husband) may be out of it technically, but here’s an interesting fact. I attended a Thompson event and a Huckabee event on the same night, shooting video at both. I posted them at the same time. The Thompson video was of markedly poorer quality, because of the angle and distance (I was right up against the platform at the Huckabee deal). As I reported at the time, and as you can see on the videos, the energy level was much higher at the Huckabee event — a phenomenon borne out in the voting on primary day. But that has nothing to do with page views — the Thompson video has 1,396 views, giving it Top Twenty status. The Huckabee clip was only watched 172 times. Go figure.
A colleague brought this excellent music video set to the words of a Barack Obama speech. I don’t know where this speech was made, but it has a lot in common with his victory speech right here in S.C.
Great words. Now, as to the esthetics… artistically, this one beats the "Obama Girl" all hollow. Sure, that one had much to recommend it, by traditional MTV standards. But unless I’m mistaken, this new one has Scarlet Johansson, who’s way more Babelicious than that other chick (OK, at least SOMEWHAT more so). And I’d like to see the Obama girl try to beat Kareem Abdul-Jabbar under the boards!
So I did just barely manage to stay up long enough to head over to the Obama rally, and I got one of my daughters — the USC student — to go with me. But the fire marshall wouldn’t let us in. The Koger Center was overflowing.
Did you go? How was it?
Above, you see the winding queue in which we stood when there was some hope of getting in. This was just past 10:45, the original starting time for the rally.
I spent a few minutes chatting with a Swedish journalist who was also trying to get in (she had missed the cutoff time for the media area; I tend to avoid media areas like the plague when I can). Then a young kid who works for Obama (the sort who looks like he could just as easily have been working for Bobby Kennedy in ’68 — sport coat, open-necked oxford button-down shirt, campaign button on the lapel, collegiate Beatle haircut) came and told us they were trying to work out something with the fire marshal, as the place was packed.
A few minutes later, the queue started to collapse, and we all drifted toward the door. Rumors rippled through the crowd — "it’s bad news; the line’s giving up" or "all right! they’re letting us in!" — and we paused at the doors while another kid told us (in a voice too soft for more than a few to hear, and a visage and accent that suggested the subcontinent) that it wasn’t their fault; it was the fire marshal.
Eventually, we all realized there was no point. But there was one woman, in a long white coat, who didn’t care, and moved through us leading the chant, "Fired up! Ready to go!" I turned to my daughter, and said "ready to go?," only realizing what I’d said after I’d said it. Ah, the power of suggestion…
My daughter and I began the cold walk back, two-and-a-half blocks, to my truck, parked along the median in the middle of Assembly. Ahead of us for the first block walked the woman in the white coat with a friend. She was completely undaunted, chanting all by herself for the world to hear: "Fired Up! Ready to go?" Below, you can hear her, and the kid making the announcement before joining her cry, on this poor-quality (on account of the light) video:
Anyone who has been to as many banquets and sat through as many ceremonial speeches as I have over the years has seen a dignitary or two fail to maintain a proper level of consciousness at the head table.
But for most of my career, that made for no more than a moment’s amusement to some in the audience, nudging each other to take note of the valiant, but losing, battle of someone trying to keep his/her dignity.
Now, in the YouTube era, with a higher and higher percentage of the public having video cameras in their very phones, there is no personal dignity. No one is allowed to be quietly human any more, and it’s a shame.
All of that was brought to mind by this video of poor ol’ Bill Clinton, doing his best to be everywhere his wife can’t be, struggling to stay awake (and failing) during an MLK Day event. I may not want his wife to win, but I don’t consider it a major failing on his part that he just couldn’t make it through one… more… speech.
Andy Haworth did another nice job of putting together a short video of me talking about our endorsement of Barack Obama, which will appear in Wednesday’s paper. This was done very much on the run — minutes before the endorsement would appear online — but Andy managed to edit it to make my rambling seem halfway coherent, for which I thank him.
If the image above doesn’t start playing automatically, click here.
The clip was shot in our board room, with me sitting in the chair in which Sen. Obama sat yesterday before heading to the Statehouse for King Day at the Dome.
Later today, I’ll post my column about our discussion of this endorsement. I’ll be talking about it in other venues as well — for instance, I’m supposed to do a live phone interview with C-SPAN at 7:10 a.m. Wednesday.
