Category Archives: Working

Election results certified (finally)

Cindi has a column for tomorrow about early voting, in which she more or less expresses support for the idea, and mentions me as the elitist, paternalistic mossback who doesn’t like the idea.

You just can’t get good help these days.

Anyway, I’ll write more about that tomorrow, after she’s had her say. Suffice it to say that my reasons for opposing it (aside from the fact that I am just at heart a traditionalist, which doesn’t change anyone’s mind about me being a mossback) are related to why I oppose the way people like Mark Sanford look at public schools. That will bear explaining, and I will explain it — later. Basically, I look at this as a communitarian, while Cindi is looking at it as a small-d democrat. Or at least, as somewhat more of a small-d democrat than what I am.

But speaking of outmoded ways of doing things, a few minutes ago I got the regular notice that the state election commission has certified the election results:

SEC CERTIFIES 2008 GENERAL ELECTION RESULTS

COLUMBIA, S.C. – (November 12, 2008) – The State Election Commission met at 11:00 a.m. on Wednesday, November 12, 2008, as the State Board of Canvassers to certify the results of the November 4, 2008 General Election. Official results can be found at www.SCVotes.org. No recounts were necessary in any federal, state, or multi-county contests.
The certification, protest, and appeal schedule is attached.
###

Every election year, I am struck by how LONG that takes.

Mind you, I’m not being critical. Far as I know, the folks at the election commission have really been busting their humps getting the results certified. And I DO want them to get it right, even if it takes more time.

But it still always strikes me as very horse-and-buggy to take so long — especially with electronic voting. Part of it is that in my business, it’s about getting it right away (AND getting it right, of course). Even long before we used computers for this stuff, we moved Heaven and Earth to get complete election results to the reader the very next morning, moving back deadlines, holding the presses to the limit then holding them some more, to get the job done. And if there were results we could NOT get you in that news cycle (often due to the fact that the poll workers didn’t have our same sense of urgency), you got them 24 hours later.

So it still strikes me as … anachronistic to get the certification a week later. Not that I’m complaining; it’s just something I always think about.

Change I can believe in: Cable TV reform

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Looking for some art to go with a David Broder piece in tomorrow’s paper, I ran across this pic of Obama with his economic advisers, which had the following cutline:

President-elect Obama, center, meets with his economic advisory team in Chicago, Friday, Nov. 7, 2008. Facing camera, from left are, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Vice President-elect Joe Biden, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and Time Warner Chairman Richard Parsons. Back to camera, from left are, White House Chief of Staff-designate Rahm Emanual and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

… which prompted me to think, Time-Warner Chairman? How about asking him, while he’s at the table, when he’s going to start letting us pay for the cable channels we want, a la carte, instead of having to buy expensive "packages?" Now that’s some change I could believe in, and you wouldn’t even have to pass a new law. You wouldn’t even have to be president yet. Just jawbone him, the way JFK did the steel companies.

Yeah, I know it’s not as important as Detroit collapsing or any of that stuff, but as long as he’s sitting there, why not ask?

‘Boogie Man:’ Atwater on ETV

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Did any of y’all see "Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story" on "Frontline" tonight?

That was the first time I’d seen it, and you know what struck me? It was the first documentary I can remember seeing in which I personally knew practically everybody who came on the screen — Lee Bandy, Tom Turnipseed, Tucker Eskew, on and on. Even leading characters I don’t know well were people I had at least met or interviewed, such as both George Bushes.

You know what that says to me? It says I’m really getting old. Forgive me for citing Stranger in a Strange Land twice in one week, but we old Boomers do that. Do you grok that? Anyway, Jubal Harshaw observed that "…one advantage of a long life was that eventually a man knew almost everybody of importance…" That meant one thing when I first read it when I was 17, something else altogether now.

I’m no Harshaw, and if the man from Mars was hanging out at my house I don’t think I’d get as far as he did calling on the powers that be. But I’ve at least met these people. I’ve sat and talked with John McCain a number of times over the years; same with Joe Biden, multiple times. I’ve only interviewed Obama that once, not counting that abortive phone thing where he tried, but my phone kept dropping the call — hey, don’t look at me; he hasn’t been around as long — but that once was impressive. Never met Sarah Palin at all — does that mean I’m out of the loop, or she is?

Maybe y’all have more relevant things to say about the film. I already told my one, short Lee Atwater story. Anyway, I’d better go to bed. We cranky old people need our rest.

Waiting for the liberals to calm down

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As you know, I’ve been picking our syndicated columns since we lost Mike Fitts. This means judging a fairly stiff competition each day, since most days that we have an oped page, I only have room for one syndicated column (and one local, which Cindi deals with). On Sunday there’s room for two; on Saturday and Monday, zero. Then there’s Saturday’s online, where I can run several "also-rans" from during the week.

Each day, I just try to pick the best column, without keeping count as to how many "liberals" or "conservatives" I’ve run. "Best column" to me means the most thought-provoking and least predictable. I’m utterly uninterested in a column that simply channels the rantings of left or right that you can find on the Blogosphere. That shouldn’t be hard, right? These people are professionals, the tops in their field, so they should be perfectly capable of original thought, right?

Not always. Too often, especially during an election year, columnists succumb to the urge to play to a side. I think of it as writing so as to get pats on the back from the people you meet at Washington cocktail parties — reinforcing the prejudices of one’s friends, rather than provoking them to think. (Admittedly, I’m having to guess at something from the outside. I don’t have a ready-made set of folks who agree with ME, since I’m uncomfortable with both established flavors.)

Anyway, the point is, about a month into my doing this, one of my colleagues noted that I was picking mostly "conservatives." Was I? I looked back, and yes, I was. I didn’t try to change anything, but kept on picking the best column each day, regardless of its point of view — giving no more thought to it than I give during the process to whether the candidate we’re endorsing is a Democrat or a Republican. And I noticed (without having it pointed out to me again) that I was still picking mostly "conservatives."

But that’s because the conservatives were more interesting this year. Why? Because they were struggling. They were uncomfortable. They knew they were likely to lose this election, so they struggled. They were unusually critical of "their" standard bearer, and particularly his veep choice. Some just went ahead and endorsed Obama. They bickered with each other, and in their struggle, in their striving, they had an occasional original thought here and there. You had Kathleen Parker saying Sarah Palin should drop out. You had George Will sneering for all he was worth at McCain for having embraced campaign finance reform, only to be done in by an avalanche of money. You had David Brooks struggling for sociological metaphors to explain what was happening. You had Charles Krauthammer getting irritated at the lot of them, and in reaction writing an endorsement of McCain that was sharper than it otherwise would have been because he wrote it in reaction to the defections of conservatives, as an argument against their apostasy.

Meanwhile, on the left, you had what you always had — recitations of "the failed policies of the past eight years," the assertion that McCain equals Bush, yadda-yadda. Same old-same old. Lots of vitriol of the repetitive variety. When people find a formula is working for them, they stick with it. Failure, however, is simply more interesting. It provokes thought, and builds character. So the left just wasn’t nearly as interesting.

There were exceptions. Tom Friedman was good as always, but as critically important as his "Green Revolution" columns are to an Energy Party guy, they often seemed off-topic at a time when everybody wanted to read about and talk about the election. Friedman’s best that WAS election-oriented? His lecture to Sarah Palin (and the Mark Sanford’s of the world) explaining that paying one’s taxes IS patriotic. Amen, Brother Thomas.

And I thought David Broder’s two columns on "what we have learned about" McCain and Obama to be two of the most thoughtful, helpful summaries of the candidates I saw anywhere. They’re better than David Brooks’ attempts at similar columns on McCain and Obama — and certainly more concise than my own offbeat efforts. (I particularly recommend the McCain piece, which was as clear-eyed as anything I saw during the long campaign.) But that’s because Broder, who is center-left at most, is a reporter first and foremost. His writing, while sometimes dull, is refreshingly free of cant. He makes observations that are fair, and therefore sometimes ground-breaking. Those two columns were a nice coda on a long and distinguished career.

But Bob Herbert, Paul Krugman? Fuhgeddaboutit. Occasionally, Krugman was able to write something helpful about the financial crisis, and when he did, I ran it. But he should stick to what he knows, and too often does not.

Anyway, with the election over, I thought maybe the liberals would settle down. Their guy just got elected; they increased their majorities in the Congress. The man they hate more than any other human in the history of the world will soon be out of office. So maybe, once they’d gotten over celebrating, they’d start saying, "OK, so know we’ve got to govern, and we have differences even among ourselves, so let’s start thinking."

But it hasn’t happened yet. I’m still seeing the same old patterns. Gail Collins, who is usually not one of my favorites, nevertheless had a somewhat provocative piece over the weekend looking at poor winners and losers. I might use it tomorrow. But Bob Herbert? He went out of his way to illustrate what Ms. Collins called " the dark side of the postelection mood." He had a column for the same day that you’d think would be constructive, or at least upbeat. It was headlined, "Take a bow, America." So I read on, hoping to be uplifted for once.

Then I got to his second sentence, in which he was explaining the significance of the election results:

Voters said no to incompetence and divisiveness and elbowed their way
past the blight of racism that has been such a barrier to progress for
so long….

Those, of course, would be the only reasons anyone might have voted for John McCain — if they were in love with incompetence, or just stone racist.

Explain something to me, folks: How can someone who habitually writes that way about people with whom he disagrees, even in a moment of celebration, accuse other people of "divisiveness," and do so without any visible trace of irony? Some of it is the unfortunate New York mindset that one often sees in the Times — most perfectly expressed in the writing of Frank Rich — that folks out there in flyover land are just beneath contempt. That is expressed in Herbert’s very next sentence: "Barack Obama won the state of North Carolina, for crying out loud." In other words, even THOSE redneck idiots knew better.

Perhaps even Herbert will settle down eventually, and turn to the actual issues facing the country — and facing the just-elected administration-to-be. Just as the right has gotten interesting in recent months as it has struggled to define itself in adversity, perhaps the left can settle down and address such difficult issues as the tension between the far left and the pragmatists like Rahm Emanuel, who infuriated True Believers by recruiting Democrats who could win back in 2006?

We’ll see. In any case, I plan to continue doing my best to choose the most thought-provoking column each day, whether that produces a string of liberals, a run of conservatives, or a perfectly blended mix.

Here’s how ‘our’ candidates did

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By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
THE TIME for reckoning has arrived. No, not the election; we just did that. I speak of my traditional post-mortem, in which I look back on the candidates this newspaper endorsed, and how they did.
First, the obligatory disclaimers:

Endorsements are about who should win, in the judgment of The State‘s editorial board, not who will win. Predictions are another thing altogether. You want predictions, go to my blog. On this page, we do endorsements.
Political party is an unimportant consideration to us. We do our best to eliminate it from our considerations entirely. In fact, nonpartisanship is a quality we actively look for in candidates, and those who possess it are more likely to win our nod than those who don’t, other things being equal.

There was a time when I contented myself with the disclaimers, and airily brushed aside any thoughts that ran against them. But even those of us who have grown accustomed to referring to ourselves by the editorial "we" are human – when you prick us, do we not whine? And a human can take only so many years of people saying "Your candidates always lose," and "The State‘s endorsement is the kiss of death," or that we are part of the "liberal media" cabal or "that right-wing Republican rag"– especially when said human can offer objective data to the contrary, on all points.
So, several elections back, I spent some time in our musty archives calculating just how many candidates we had endorsed had won and how many lost, and what the partisan breakdown had been — going back to 1994, the year I joined the editorial board. (No one else who was on the board then is on it now, so elections before that year did not concern me.) I just wanted to know.
I was gratified by what I found, which was the same as what I had suspected: First, most of "our" candidates had won – which bodes well for policies we advocate, and also helpfully indicates that we are not "out of touch" with our community (to cite yet another tiresome accusation). Secondly, we had pretty much split down the middle between Democrats and Republicans – although we had endorsed slightly more Democrats, which will no doubt shock those Democrats who only remember our presidential endorsements, which have uniformly been Republican.
The trend continues.
Each year since I put those numbers together, I have added the latest election’s numbers to them. I’m always careful to do this after we’ve made all our endorsement decisions, to avoid being influenced by the wish to keep our numbers good. While sometimes we form a rough impression – one of my colleagues observed several weeks back that it felt like we were headed for a "losing season," and at one point I remember thinking we were flying in the face of the Obama Effect with each Republican we chose – we’re careful not to keep a count. Not doing so is a tricky mental exercise, rather like a pitcher telling himself, "Don’t think about the fact that you’ve got a no-hitter going," but election seasons are so busy for us that it’s easier than you might think to avoid stopping to calculate.
Anyway, I went through our endorsements (all of which you can read at thestate.com/endorsements) to do the partisan count the week before the election, and indeed we were defying the Obama Effect: We had endorsed eight Republicans and five Democrats. (And Elise Partin, running in the nonpartisan race for Cayce mayor.) That brought our eight-election running total (every two years, starting in 1994) to 60 Democrats and 54 Republicans, or 53 percent to 47 percent. Back in 2006 we had backed 12 Democrats and only five Republicans. (Since we don’t consider party when choosing a candidate, it’s sort of random — one election year we might be lopsided for Democrats; the next year for Republicans. So it’s nice to see this running total, if you value nonpartisanship the way I do.)
And as always, once I added them up after Tuesday’s results, we had a "winning season"– although, to be brutally honest, "our" candidates didn’t dominate quite as much as usual.
This time, nine of our candidates won their elections, and five lost. That’s a winning percentage of 69. That brings our running record since 1994 to 85-31, or a .733 batting average — which is down from .753 as of four years ago, but still satisfactory in my book.
That’s the strictest way to look at it, and the way I’m going to keep it on my running spreadsheet. If I wanted to be generous to us, I’d say that John McCain did win in South Carolina, and surely you can’t hold us responsible for what the rest of the country did? But I won’t let myself do that. And if we included ballot questions, on which the voters agreed with us four-to-two… but that would be inconsistent with the way I counted past years.
Looked at another way, the voters agreed with us on four of the Democrats we endorsed, and four of the Republicans, and disagreed with us on one Democrat and four Republicans. That’s counting McCain as a loss, of course. And they agreed with us in the one nonpartisan race (if only there were more!) for Cayce mayor.
So I’ve told you what I know about our stats — except for one thing. You might still wonder, what if he had been making predictions? Well, I did, on my blog, on Tuesday before the polls closed. You can go look. I got 13 predictions right, and one wrong, and on that one I had been tentative, hoping more than believing Mike Montgomery would keep his seat on Richland County Council.
So that’s how we did. How’d you do?

Come tell me about it at thestate.com/bradsblog/.

The proper emotion, the seemly sentiment

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Yesterday morning, looking for art to go with today’s lead editorial, I picked the photo above. Along the way I had briefly considered the ones back on this post, but this one worked best worked best for my purposes in terms of expression and composition — it worked perfectly in terms of the size and shape I needed.

I hesitated to use if for only one reason: He looked so extremely YOUNG — far, far too young to be president. As young as his campaign workers that I wrote about back in this column in the summer of ’07. It brought to mind something I said to my wife recently about JFK: He was several years younger than Obama when elected, but I remember him as looking older and more mature. Is that because I was a child at the time, or did he just look more grown-up manly. Was it something about that generation — they had been to war, and that does something to a man’s face. They were the Daddy generation (in fact, somewhat older than MY dad, who was too young for WWII). My wife pointed out something I should have realized: The prednisone that Kennedy took for his back problems caused his face to fill out; before that, HE looked like a skinny, gawdy kid. True enough, I suppose.

So I hesitated to use a photo with our congratulatory editorial that in my own mind raised one of the reasons I preferred McCain, on a gut level: Obama is to me something far more dramatic than the first "black" president (a distinction regarding which I have my own rather pedantic doubts). He is the first president younger than me. Quite a bit younger. So it is that, not wanting to express doubts about the new president through my choice of a photo, I paused. But nothing else I saw was nearly as suitable, so I went with it.

Imagine my dismay last night when, flipping channels on the boob tube, I saw a news program use the very same photo quite prominently. Then imagine my further concern this morning to see that our newsroom had decided to, in the hyperbolic expression that many readers use, "splash" that photo across six columns on the front page this morning. This coincidence give grist to those who believe there is collusion between news and editorial, when the truth is that I see these things when you, the reader, do.

These "coincidences" cause me to reflect on what Tom Wolfe once said about the news media, which was to call us the Victorian Gentleman, constantly striving to evince the proper emotion, the exact right tone for the moment — which causes us to make the very same decisions simultaneously, without the slightest effort at collusion or even awareness of what each other are doing. This picture is an illustration of that phenomenon. It said "winner" better than any other photo, so everyone picked it.

By the way, my second choice of the day was the one below that I used on the op-ed page, with the David Broder column. Obama’s expression isn’t nearly as good — he almost looks apprehensive — but he has that "eyes on the distant horizon" look, and the air Biden has of presenting him to the world (Behold, your new president!) was just too good, too apt, to pass up.

So on the whole, this Victorian Gent is satisfied.

Obamabiden

My laptop was stolen last night

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Folks, this is awful timing, but you won’t be seeing as many blog posts from me as you normally would, on account of this:

Someone smashed the window out on my truck last night and stole the newpaper’s laptop, the one that is my primary work platform. I do all blogging, all e-mail, most working of photos and cartoons that I handle, plus all of the video and other stuff I do for the blog. All administrative files, such as evaluations and budget info, were on the laptop, plus all of the photos I had taken of candidates for this fall’s elections.

My truck was one of 10 broken into on my street.

That the computer was in my truck was just the worst possible luck. It’s probably been years since I’ve left it there overnight, and I only did it this time because on Monday I came to work without it, which put me way behind on the week, and with the confusion of election night and all, I wanted to make sure I remembered it this morning. Add to that the fact that I normally don’t take it home during the week, but only did so last night because it was election night and I was going to be working from home. I still can’t believe this.

Now I’ve got to run out and deal with the guy who came to replace the window in my truck; he’s here now.

Back to you later.

Now watch this: Lee will blame this on Obama.

Post comments on returns HERE

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Y‘all, I just got home and I’m going to go into the kitchen to get some of the dinner that Mamanem fixed, and then start paying attention to returns. But I thought I’d go ahead and put up this post in case y’all can’t wait.

On my way home from the office, right after the polls closed, I saw on TV over at my daughter’s house (where I had stopped to check on the twins) that one of the networks was reporting exit poll data that indicated the black turnout in Virginia was 22 percent. It was 21 percent in 2004, they said.

Data such as those cause me to say to myself, I’ll wait for some real numbers…

My predictions

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Here are my predictions as to what I think will happen on the contested races that we dealt with in our endorsements. As always, endorsements are about who should win, not who will win. To fill that vacuum — and to help you see the difference — here are my prognostications (in which I place far less faith, because they are not nearly as carefully considered):

Obama will win the presidential election — the real one (electoral college, with at least 300 electors) as well as the popular vote. He’ll win it decisively enough that we’ll know by midnight. BUT McCain will win in South Carolina, probably 55-45. We endorsed McCain.
Lindsey Graham will easily win re-election. No prediction on the numbers; I have no idea. In fact, I’m only doing numbers on the presidential, because I really have no idea on any others. We endorsed Graham.
Joe Wilson will win against Rob Miller, but it will be close. We endorsed Wilson.
Jim Clyburn will have a blowout victory over his GOP opponent. We endorsed Clyburn.
John Spratt will win with a margin somewhere between Wilson’s and Clyburn’s. We endorsed Spratt.
Nikki Setzler will survive the challenge from Margaret Gamble, and thanks to the Obama Effect, it will be the first time it helped him to be a Democrat in 20 years. We endorsed Setzler.
Anton Gunn will beat David Herndon, but it will be fairly close. We endorsed Gunn.
Joe McEachern will cruise to victory over Michael Koska. We endorsed Koska.
Chip Huggins will roll right over Jim Nelson, who will NOT benefit appreciably from the Obama Effect. We endorsed Nelson.
Nikki Haley will win big, again in spite of Obama. We endorsed Ms. Haley.
Harry Harmon will again be Lexington County coroner. We endorsed Harmon, although we again made the point that this should NOT be an elective office.
Elise Partin will — I hope I hope — win the Cayce mayor’s office (this is the one I have the LEAST feel for, since we’ve never endorsed for this office before). We endorsed Ms. Partin.
Gwen Kennedy, despite being best known for a Hawaiian junket the last time she was on Richland County council, will ride the Obama Effect to victory over Celestine White Parker. We endorsed Ms. Parker.
Mike Montgomery should prevail (note my hesitation) over challenger Jim Manning, who seems to be running as much as anything because he felt like there should be a Democrat in the race with Obama running. We endorsed Montgomery.

Oh, and Ted Pitts will roll to victory over his last-second UnParty challenger. We didn’t endorse in this one, but if we had, we would have endorsed Ted.

Our 2008 endorsements favor GOP; overall record still tilts to Dems

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This is an all-things-to-all-people post.

Those of you who think we’re just another bunch of wild-eyed liberals who only back Democrats, just read this paragraph! I’ve done the count on this year’s endorsements (which you can go read here), and here’s the final count: We endorsed 8 Republicans (John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Joe Wilson, Nikki Haley, Michael Koska, Mike Montgomery, Celestine White Parker and Harry Harmon), 5 Democrats (John Spratt, Jim Clyburn, Nikki Setzler, Anton Gunn and Jim Nelson). And one independent (Elise Partin, in a nonpartisan election for Cayce mayor).

Now, those of you who think we’re that right-wing rag that only endorses Republicans, just read this paragraph! As you may recall, I started keeping score a couple of election cycles ago, and our running total in general elections, from 1994 through 2008, is 60 Democrats, and 54 Republicans, so we’ve endorsed Democrats 53 percent of the time.

As I’ve explained about a gazillion times, party is not a consideration for us. The only reason I know the numbers above is that I got tired of people constantly accusing us of being one or the other, so I went back through all of the general elections since I had joined the editorial board in 1994 (and everyone else currently on the board joined later than that).

Since then, I have kept the count up-to-date. But I only total up the numbers for the current year after we’ve decided all our endorsements. That makes for some pretty lopsided years in which someone might think we were pushing mainly for one party or the other. For instance, in 2006 we endorsed 12 Democrats and only five Republicans.

Here’s the year-by-year breakdown (and here it is on a spreadsheet):

Year    Democrats Republicans Independents
1994       10                4             1
1996          2                5
1998          8                11
2000          7                10
2002          9                4
2004          7                7
2006          12                5
2008          5                8          1
TOTALS    60             54          2

Looking back at this, I wonder about the low number of independents, and then I remember that most of our opportunities to endorse nonaligned (or at least NOMINALLY unaligned) candidates have come in Columbia city elections, and these are not counted. I’m just looking at the November elections here. I think that one independent in 1994 was Bubba Cromer.

Have fun trying to find patterns, if you’re so inclined. I notice that, except for 1998, we have a tendency to go for Democrats in years when we elected statewide officials to S.C. government, and Republicans in presidential election years — except for 2004, which was a tie. I’m no statistician, but I sort of doubt that someone who IS a statistician would think a trend that involves only 8 elections and has two exceptions is much of a trend.

You could also compare the time BEFORE I became the editor (when the makeup of the board was quite different) to AFTER (I became editor in 1997), but you don’t get a dramatic difference. In the two elections before I was promoted we went for 12 Democrats and 9 Republicans, since then it’s been 48 Democrats and 45 Republicans — indicating that I have kept it closer to even than previous leadership did! Which of course is also statistically meaningless.

If we were trying to create a trend, it would be to aim for a 50-50 breakdown, so neither party could claim we were biased against them. But we’re not trying, so the results are imperfect.

You know what’s most startling to me? That in all those years, we’ve endorsed only 116 fall candidates. Seems like a lot more. But then, the primaries are always busier than the general.

Our congressional endorsements today

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Yesterday, I wrote the editorial that I dread each election year — the one dealing with Congress. (Actually, some years we do separates on the individual districts, but this year I decided to do it all in one piece — like ripping off a Band-Aid suddenly.) I put it off until it became the VERY LAST endorsement we did. I’m the one who had to write it, and I took advantage of being the editor to keep postponing it.

Now, before anyone gets all huffy about my dismissive attitude — I think Joe Wilson is a really nice guy who tries hard, and I know that Jim Clyburn is deeply and passionately committed to his constituents. But they are both, to me, emblematic of what is wrong with Congress and with our system for apportioning districts.

They are both deeply committed to the agendas of their respective political parties, and you know how I feel about that. Joe is just breathlessly eager to implement GOP initiatives, and Mr. Clyburn (I don’t feel I know him well enough to call him "Jim"), as the Majority Whip, is the very embodiment of Nancy Pelosi’s House. And I don’t like any of that one bit.

So why don’t I do what Doug always says I should do, and endorse the challengers? Because I have too great a sense of responsibility. (As you know, I’ll make a futile gesture with my own personal vote, but I wouldn’t feel right indulging myself that way on behalf of the newspaper.) For all their partisan flaws, Messrs. Wilson and Clyburn are obviously more knowledgeable and better qualified than the people running against them. I have the greatest respect, admiration and appreciation for young Rob Miller’s service as a United States Marine. (As some of you know, the very first thing I wanted to be as a kid — and one thing I could never be, for medical reasons — is a Marine. So the Corps has a particular mystique for me.) But I can’t see where serving as a captain in the Corps has equipped Mr. Miller for the very different duties of a congressman. I’d like to see some other things on his resume — such as service in some lower elective offices. I have a great reluctance to send people off to Washington before we’ve had a chance to see how they serve in office a little closer to home, where we can keep more of an eye on them.

And from what little I’ve seen of the lady running against Mr. Clyburn, I am deeply unimpressed. Watch the debate on ETV if you doubt me.

Now John Spratt is a somewhat different story. I’ve never been conflicted about endorsing him, because he seems to have so much competence, and his partisanship has been far more muted than either of the aforementioned gentlemen.

Those three are the only districts we endorse in, because those are the areas where we deliver the paper.

Anyway, here’s the endorsement(s).

Helen Alvaré on Obama and abortion

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Tomorrow, I plan to write a column for Sunday about how the remarks of the candidates on judicial selection in the third debate solidified my preference for John McCain, on several levels.

It won’t be about the abortion issue. Obviously, Obama and I disagree about abortion. But so do most Democrats, and I’ve supported plenty of Democrats in my day. What I plan to get into is the less emotional aspects of that debate, those that deal with bipartisanship, pragmatism, the Constitution and the proper roles of the respective branches of government. For instance, as I’ve mentioned here, I was rather shocked to hear a Harvard-trained attorney equate the inferred (and I believe, nonexistent) "right to privacy" to the all-important First Amendment, deliberately stating that the first is just as sacrosanct a principle to him as the latter.

Here’s my text from which I’ll be working. It’s this passage from the transcript of the third presidential debate:

SCHIEFFER: All right. Let’s stop there and go to another question. And this one goes to Senator McCain. Senator McCain, you believe Roe v. Wade should be overturned. Senator Obama, you believe it shouldn’t.

Could either of you ever nominate someone to the Supreme Court who disagrees with you on this issue? Senator McCain?

MCCAIN: I would never and have never in all the years I’ve been there imposed a litmus test on any nominee to the court. That’s not appropriate to do.

SCHIEFFER: But you don’t want Roe v. Wade to be overturned?

MCCAIN: I thought it was a bad decision. I think there were a lot of decisions that were bad. I think that decisions should rest in the hands of the states. I’m a federalist. And I believe strongly that we should have nominees to the United States Supreme Court based on their qualifications rather than any litmus test. Now, let me say that there was a time a few years ago when the United States Senate was about to blow up. Republicans wanted to have just a majority vote to confirm a judge and the Democrats were blocking in an unprecedented fashion.

We got together seven Republicans, seven Democrats. You were offered a chance to join. You chose not to because you were afraid of the appointment of, quote, "conservative judges."

I voted for Justice Breyer and Justice Ginsburg. Not because I agreed with their ideology, but because I thought they were qualified and that elections have consequences when presidents are nominated. This is a very important issue we’re talking about.

Senator Obama voted against Justice Breyer [sic — he meant Alito] and Justice Roberts on the grounds that they didn’t meet his ideological standards. That’s not the way we should judge these nominees. Elections have consequences. They should be judged on their qualifications. And so that’s what I will do.

I will find the best people in the world — in the United States of America who have a history of strict adherence to the Constitution. And not legislating from the bench.

SCHIEFFER: But even if it was someone — even someone who had a history of being for abortion rights, you would consider them?

MCCAIN: I would consider anyone in their qualifications. I do not believe that someone who has supported Roe v. Wade that would be part of those qualifications. But I certainly would not impose any litmus test.

SCHIEFFER: All right.

OBAMA: Well, I think it’s true that we shouldn’t apply a strict litmus test and the most important thing in any judge is their capacity to provide fairness and justice to the American people.

And it is true that this is going to be, I think, one of the most consequential decisions of the next president. It is very likely that one of us will be making at least one and probably more than one appointments and Roe versus Wade probably hangs in the balance.

Now I would not provide a litmus test. But I am somebody who believes that Roe versus Wade was rightly decided. I think that abortion is a very difficult issue and it is a moral issue and one that I think good people on both sides can disagree on.

But what ultimately I believe is that women in consultation with their families, their doctors, their religious advisers, are in the best position to make this decision. And I think that the Constitution has a right to privacy in it that shouldn’t be subject to state referendum, any more than our First Amendment rights are subject to state referendum, any more than many of the other rights that we have should be subject to popular vote.

OBAMA: So this is going to be an important issue. I will look for those judges who have an outstanding judicial record, who have the intellect, and who hopefully have a sense of what real-world folks are going through.

I won’t get into the right or wrong about abortion per se in my column except to acknowledge that yes, I’m pro-life, so there’s a fundamental disagreement there, and I think Roe has been enormously destructive to the politics of our nation. Then I’ll move on to the more abstract stuff, where I believe I will make points that someone should be able to relate to regardless of their position on abortion itself.

Other Catholics have taken on the ethical issue head-on, however, and are actively appalled at the idea of a "President Obama." A few minutes ago, I got an op-ed submission from Helen Alvaré, as follows:

(Helen Alvaré was the planning and information director for the pro-life efforts of the nations’ Catholic bishops for 10 years. She is now an Associate Professor at the George Mason University School of Law. The opinions expressed herein are purely personal, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of either of these institutions)

My name has been closely associated with Catholic Church pro-life efforts for almost two decades. For that reason, and because I believe ardently that religion cannot be reduced to politics, I have studiously avoided public commentary about particular candidates over the course of 18 years of pro-life work. It still offends me at three or four levels when a minivan sporting a political bumper sticker arrives at carpool at my kids’ Catholic school, or parks for Sunday Mass. I will not have one.

But Barack Obama has pushed me over the edge of anonymity. Whatever else is true about the dangers of appearing to claim (wrongly) that God has a horse in this race, it is more dangerous to pretend that I’m less than horrified at the prospect of an Obama presidency.

For here is a man who has publicly thrown his considerable influence behind the idea that it is acceptable to let newborn infants die if their mothers wanted an abortion and the child was mistakenly delivered alive. Here is a man who can countenance doctors partially-delivering living unborn children, and then stabbing, suctioning and crushing their heads – all in the name of preserving “abortion rights.” His public record is unambiguous in this regard, despite attempts by the some to torture the meanings of Senator Obama’s voting record. The facts are simple. While an Illinois state senator, Senator Obama led the opposition to a law that would have protected children who were accidentally born alive after an abortion-attempt. He also worked with the nation’s leading chain of abortion clinics, Planned Parenthood, to strategize the defeat of bills that would have given parents information about their minor girls’ abortions. As a U.S. Senator, he denounced an overwhelmingly popular law to ban the killing of partially-born infants. And as a presidential candidate, he told Planned Parenthood’s Action Fund on July 17, 2007 that the “first thing I’d do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act.” For emphasis, he repeated: “That’s the first thing I’d do.” This is overwhelming on its face. Among all the first statements about the meaning of his historic presidency a President Obama could choose, it would be this: an expanded abortion license.

What can be made of such a man? It is no good to say he is simply acting to champion women’s rights when most American women would outlaw or more stringently regulate abortion (New York Times, April 19, 2007 Megan Thee, Public Opinion on Abortion). Or when even Obama concedes the possibility that abortion is killing, which of course makes it a forbidden “means” to any end – woman’s rights or any other. He cynically leaves it to others at a higher “pay grade” to determine the exact moment when life begins, but we all know the instrumental purposes of this utterance: appear to maintain common ground with both sides of the ever-churning abortion debate.

Some readers will say of my position: “She is a single-issue voter, and those people don’t care what becomes of the rest of us.” To the exact contrary, I am suggesting that when Obama supports allowing a parent to kill a child, at perhaps the most defenseless moment of his or her life, and when he refuses to see this killing as an intrinsic wrong, but calls it rather a cherished right, we should understand that none of us is safe. For where does his “reasoning” leave other defenseless persons? What does it imply about all of the decisions a “President Obama” will make?

Some will say that the good Obama will do for some people simply outweighs the harm he will do to others. Even this calculus is absurd; Obama’s judicial appointments will ensure that legalized abortion continues to be forced upon every state, as it has been since 1973 when the U.S. Supreme Court in one fell swoop overturned laws against most abortions in every state in the Union. We’re talking millions more abortions during our lifetimes and the lifetimes of our children. Obama has even declared himself opposed to continued funding for “crisis centers” offering pregnant women a way to support the children they wish to keep.

But even were the above calculus somehow measurable and correct, it is never acceptable to endorse killing as a means to any end. By endorsing it, then, candidate Obama has demonstrated that he doesn’t have a conscience that functions in a way Americans should even recognize. Rather, his is a “conscience” which surely comprehends what it must be like to die violently, or by means of starvation and dehydrations; yet he votes to allow these to continue. Elevating such a man to the most important legal and social bully pulpit in the nation is unthinkable. Worse, it is a national tragedy.

For these reasons, and for the first time in my life, I have to speak out. An Obama presidency would be a moral nightmare.

.
Professor Helen Alvaré is an Associate Professor of Law at the George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Virginia.

I certainly understand where Ms. Alvaré is coming from on this, even though I’m going to be tackling this from another angle.

Personally, I haven’t been as shocked by Obama’s positions on this as she is. I say, you want to be shocked? Look at Joe Biden. He’s a Catholic; he should know better. And yet, as I’ve said plenty of times before, I like Joe. And I’m not horrified by the idea of an Obama presidency, he is after all my strong second choice. But pieces such as this make me wonder about myself: Maybe I’ve allowed myself to accept too much about the "political realities" of being a Democrat in America. There is an alternative — pro-life Democrats such as Bob Casey in Pennsylvania DO get elected nowadays, even with NARAL fighting tooth and nail to stop them. Obama and Biden have a moral alternative. So what excuses their position, from my own Catholic point of view?

But that’s not what my column’s going to be about.

South of the Border

14 Replies

Some of y’all really hated it that I mentioned the Colombian Free Trade Agreement in the McCain endorsement — which to me illustrates the no-win situation I saw myself in with all those loyal and devoted Obamaphiles out there. Nice people, many of them, but hard to please if you don’t agree with them.

If I had just cited the usual reasons — being right on Iraq, taking a stand on doing the right thing on immigration, being a war hero, etc. — I would have been castigated for lack of original thought. So I decided to include something you might not have thought of — and something that actually helped confirm my preference for McCain — as a way of broadening the discussion. Perhaps predictably, I got the obvious response from those determined to find fault: Obviously you don’t have any good reasons, since you drag this out of left field.

No win situation.

Doug mentions back on this post that The Economist has endorsed Obama. Well, a couple of days ago I was reading something in The Economist that reminded me of why the Colombian FTA is important to me, but also why y’all might have trouble understanding that.

Blame it on my upbringing — or part of it, anyway. I spent two years, four-and-a-half months — easily the longest I lived in one place growing up — living in Guayaquil, Ecuador. From late 1962 through spring 1965. Like Obama in Indonesia, I saw a lot during that time that most nine-to-11 year olds growing up in the States don’t see. For instance, I was not only there during a military coup, but I was in the house at the time during when the plot was being hatched, at least in part. Our landlord was a captain in the Ecuadorean Navy, and my parents had left me at the landlord’s house while they went out one day. While I was there, a man came to visit the captain; they went into a room and closed the door. The next day, the president had been put on a plane to Panama, the man who had come to visit was a member of the new military junta, and our landlord had a big post in the new government. Minister of Agriculture, I think.

My guitar teacher, who had a little shop down by the waterfront where he made his own guitars by hand, was an agent for U.S. Naval Intelligence, I would later learn. And the missionary who preached at the nondenominational English-language services we attended on Sunday was working for the CIA. But not everyone was running things or plotting to run things. I remember the men who squatted in a circle in the dust of the vacant lot near our duplex as they bet on the cockfight in the center of their circle. I remember the smell of REAL poverty, the Third World kind, that arose from the poorest barrios of the city. It was different, very different, from living in this country.

I also remember people who were there working for JFK’s Alliance for Progress program. And ever since I came back in 1965, I’ve been acutely conscious of the fact that most of my fellow Americans just don’t give a damn one way or the other about these countries in their own backyards. JFK was the last.

This cultural indifference is definitely reflected in the mass media. So it is that I have to turn to such publications as The Economist to find out what’s going on in the realm of the Monroe Doctrine. It’s weird. Anyway, I got to thinking about that when I read this piece in The Economist the other day. It was about the irony that folks in Latin America seem to prefer Obama, even though it’s McCain who cares about the region enough to learn about it:

OF THE two candidates in the American presidential election, it is John McCain who knows something about Latin America. Not only was he born in Panama, he also visited Colombia and Mexico in July. He thinks the United States should ratify a free-trade agreement with Colombia and, at least until it became politically toxic, wanted to reform immigration policy. Ask him who the United States’ most important friends around the word are and he pretty quickly mentions Brazil.

And yet if they had a vote, Latin Americans, like Europeans, would cast it for Barack Obama—though without much enthusiasm. Preliminary data from the latest Latinobarómetro poll, taken in 18 countries over the past month and published exclusively by The Economist, show that 29% of respondents think an Obama victory would be better for their country, against only 8% favouring Mr McCain. Perhaps surprisingly, 30% say that it makes no difference who wins, while 31% claim ignorance. Enthusiasm for Mr Obama is particularly high in the Dominican Republic (52%), Costa Rica, Uruguay and Brazil (41%). In Brazil, six candidates in this month’s municipal elections changed their names to include “Barack Obama” in them.

In the third presidential debate, I noticed two things (well, I noticed a lot of things, but two things related to this post): That McCain had cared enough to understand what it meant to support a trade agreement with a key ally in the region — an agreement that could only be good for this country in terms of trade and jobs, and which affirmed a country that had undertaken huge sacrifices to ally itself with U.S. interests. That was the first thing. The second was that Obama seemed not even to have scratched the surface of the issue. His answer was such Big Labor boilerplate, it seemed plain that he had not looked into the issue or thought about it beyond his party’s talking points.

To me, that spoke to things that were true about the two candidates in a broader sense — experience, and the ability to differentiate between our friends in the world and those who wish us, and their own people, ill. I had been deeply impressed by the recent piece Nicholas Kristof — a guy who almost certainly will vote for Obama — had done on this issue, and the degree that Obama’s answer utterly failed to look at the issue as knowledgeably and thoughtfully as Kristof had. And as McCain had.

I sat and talked to Ted Sorensen about Obama as the heir to Camelot, and was deeply impressed. But I’ve gathered since then that aura aside, Obama seems actually less likely to take the kind of interest in Latin America that Kennedy did. McCain is more likely to do so. Ironic, huh?

So to me it was more than, here’s a little esoteric fact I know and you don’t. To me, it mattered. But to me, South America has always mattered.

2nd Congressional District debate last night

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Excuse me forgetting, but these things I do — I failed to let y’all know in advance that I’d be on the panel of the 2nd Congressional District debate on ETV last night. I know y’all would have stopped what you were doing to watch and all, what with the World Series being delayed another day….

In case you’d still like to see it, here’s the video below. And here’s the ETV page with links to all of the congressional debates. I only did the 2nd District one because it was the only one in the Midlands that looked like any sort of a competition. And whether it is or not is hard to say. I think ex-Capt. Rob Miller, USMC, is well positioned to take advantage of the Obama Effect. But you just can’t count out a Republican incumbent in the 2nd District.

As Blease Graham said to my Rotary the other day, if you want to beat Joe Wilson (or, back in the day, the late Floyd Spence) in that district, you’d better come into Lexington County with a 26,000-vote lead. That’s a tall hill to climb, even for the Marines.

Anyway, here’s the video. And thanks to Chris Berry of The State‘s photo staff for the photo above, in which you get to see just how geeky I look in my Jimmy Olsen sweater vest and bowtie. He apologizes for the quality of the photo, by the way — says if he knew I’d have been asking for an overall shot such as this, he’d have made sure to get a better one. I told him not to worry; this is way better than what y’all are used to on this blog, and that anything better would just spoil all of you.

Kind reader offers me a way to spend some of that ‘free-time’ that I’m just eaten up with

33 Replies

Now that most people have gone home for the day, I can find a few secs to skim through some of my e-mail from the last day or so, and I run across this:

To: Warthen, Brad – External Email
Subject: Why is it that the press does not press on for info on the items below?

Missing Obama information…

1. Occidental College records — Not released
2. Columbia College records — Not released
3. Columbia Thesis paper — ‘not available’
4. Harvard College records — Not released
5. Selective Service Registration — Not released
6. Medical records — Not released
7. Illinois State Senate schedule — ‘not available’
8. Law practice client list — Not released
9. Certified Copy of original Birth certificate — Not released
10. Embossed, signed paper Certification of Live Birth — Not released
11. Harvard Law Review articles published — None
12. University of Chicago scholarly articles — None
13. Your Record of baptism– Not released or ‘not available’
14. Your Illinois State Senate records–‘not available’

Oh hey listen! I know you are busy! Is this too much for you now? I mean tell you what. I will come back tomorrow. Give you some time to get these things together, you know? I mean, I know you are busy, so I will just let myself out. I will be back tomorrow.

To which I can only respond: Yeah, get back to me in about five minutes. I know I’ve got that stuff sitting around here somewhere….

McCain’s Bob Dole problem

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No, I’m not saying Bob Dole personally is causing a problem for John McCain. I’m saying his problem is that in this election, he’s playing the Bob Dole part — and Barack Obama is Bill Clinton (but don’t tell him that — the way he and Bill have been getting along, he’s likely to take it as an insult).

You remember Bob Dole — the other disabled war hero who couldn’t win the White House, the one who always referred to himself in the Third Person, by his full name ("Bob Dole doesn’t do that! Why would you say Bob Dole does that? Leave Bob Dole alone…") .

Dole ran a lousy campaign, lousy primarily in that it utterly failed to present convincingly why he should have been president. McCain is doing the same thing now.

The big difference between the two, for me, is that I started out liking McCain a whole lot more than I liked the guy that the NYT once called the Dark Prince of Gridlock. Bob Dole was a much more wholehearted partisan warrior than McCain. He was no maverick, not by a long shot. You don’t get to lead your party in the Senate by rebelling against it.

So with me, he started off in a hole. And in the end, I still think McCain should be president — while I no longer thought that of Bob Dole by the end of the 1996 campaign. I had thought it for awhile, though, comparing him and Bill Clinton. I had liked Clinton in 92, but he had disappointed me in a lot of ways by 96. The bottom line was that I just didn’t trust the guy anymore, based on a number of things. (I have no dramatic personal story about that, but I know someone who does: Hodding Carter III told me of going to see Bill Clinton with a delegation concerned about Bosnia. I forget what the delegation wanted — that the U.S. get involved, that the U.S. stay out, whatever — but whatever it wanted, Clinton promised bald-faced he would do. They left feeling confident. About a week later, Clinton did the exact opposite, and it came out that he had known that was what he was going to do when he met with the delegation. Carter felt personally betrayed by that. It seemed consistent with the impression I had formed by then.)

Early in the campaign, I wrote some columns — and editorials, too, I think — that pretty clearly expressed a preference for Dole over Clinton. But when the time approached to do our actual endorsement, I went to then-editor Tom McLean and told him I could not in good conscience write it, because I had become convinced that Dole couldn’t govern his way out of a wet paper bag. I knew by then that I couldn’t convince the board not to endorse Dole, but I declined the honor of writing it. (Of course, you didn’t hear all of this at the time because it was long before I became editor and adopted the policies of extreme transparency that you see today. The board was Old School in those days; you didn’t see the man behind the curtain.)

I never got to that point with McCain, but in the last weeks I thought about it. Those of you who insist that this endorsement was fully decided long ago don’t understand how much I thought about it. But in the end, for me, John McCain may not be good at communicating via a political campaign that he would be the better president, but I still believe he’d be the better president — based on Iraq, based on the Gang of 14 and judicial selection, on free trade, on immigration, etc., all that stuff I’ve already told you.

Now here’s a postscript to the story that will cause you to do a double-take: Despite what I’d said to Tom, I voted for Dole in 96. Why? For the exact same reason I voted for McGovern in 72. You probably don’t know many people who can say that, but I can. (Never doubt my deep devotion to UnParty unorthodoxy.) And I don’t regret either vote.

Essentially, both were protest votes. I thought McGovern would have been a disaster as president. But I wanted to register a protest against Nixon, mainly because of Watergate (even based on what little was known by then). If McGovern had had a chance to win, I’d have held my nose and voted for Nixon, because on the whole I thought the gummint would be in more capable hands that way. And I’d have regretted it forever. But McGovern’s hapless candidacy gave me the opportunity to make the gesture.

Same deal in 96. If I’d thought Dole had a prayer, I’d have held my nose and voted for Clinton — much as I distrusted him by that point, I thought him more competent. (Note that Nixon and Clinton had an advantage with me that Obama lacks — they had shown their competence in office, as president.) But Dole had no prayer, so I voted for him as a protest. And it felt exactly like voting for McGovern.

By the way, torn as I was, I made both of those decisions in the voting booth. So I can, indeed, identify with Cindi’s indecision.

Cindi’s ‘undecided’ column

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Cindi was off on Friday when I wrote my Sunday column, but asked me to fax it to her. She promptly told me that my original draft had described her role in the endorsement discussion inaccurately. I had correctly put her statement that she might sorta kinda be leaning to Obama AFTER she asked me whether a tie would prevent us from endorsing, but I had failed to get in the cause-and-effect relationship, which was that she wouldn’t even have said that much if I had said her vote would deadlock us. So we negotiated new language. But apparently I still didn’t fully communicate the depth of her neutrality, since some folks in their comments counted her as a pro-Obama vote. She insists, in this column and in private conversation, that she is still torn and undecided.

I know from long experience with you partisans out there that you can’t possibly imagine that a thinking person could be undecided. And what’s particularly amazing in this case is that Cindi is seldom without a strongly held opinion. But be nice to her, folks. I understand her completely. I have decided whom to vote for in presidential elections more than once in the voting booth itself. So be patient with Cindi; she’s in an uncomfortable place. Also, I’ve probably already teased her about it more than a supervisor should.

Anyway, add this to the overall endorsement package, along with the endorsement itself, my column, Warren’s column, and all the stuff that’s been said here on the blog.

Undecided, and awaiting an epiphany
By CINDI ROSS SCOPPE
Associate Editor
I BOUGHT myself two weeks by copping out when our editorial board decided whom to endorse for president. For all the good it’s done so far.
One week to go, and I remain an undecided voter.
I’ve never been in this position before. Never stayed on the sidelines in an important endorsement decision before.
Oh, I’ve been undecided about what I would do in the voting booth. But that indecision wasn’t over which candidate to support; it was over whether I could hold my nose hard enough to cast my ballot for the candidate I agreed we should endorse, or whether to leave that race blank. What’s different this time is that I want to vote for both the candidates.
Neither is clearly superior in my mind. Both John McCain and Barack Obama bring an approach to politics that is sorely lacking in Washington and, increasingly, throughout our nation. They see it not as a game to win — and certainly not as an opportunity to demolish “the other side” — but rather as a way to debate issues and reach conclusions that are best for our country. Both have shown they’re willing to look beyond party labels and rigid ideologies; Sen. McCain has a much clearer track record on this score, but at the same time, he has strayed further during this campaign than has Sen. Obama. If for no other reason than their approach to politics, I believe that either man would greatly improve our nation.
I much prefer Sen. McCain’s approach to foreign policy; not a week has passed since 9/11 when I have not bemoaned how much better off our country, and our world, would be had he been elected in 2000. But over the past year, we have watched Sen. Obama grow more responsible on the topic; he has demonstrated that he will surround himself with smart advisers, and Colin Powell’s decision to endorse him certainly has reduced my worries. I believe that either candidate would greatly improve our standing in the world, which would improve our world.
I prefer Sen. Obama’s approach to domestic policy. He’s further to the left than I find comfortable, but I believe our nation has swung far too far right — dismantling regulatory systems, adopting policies that have produced the greatest wealth disparity in modern history between workers and executives; and say what you will about Sen. Obama’s health insurance plan, Sen. McCain’s would dismantle the very notion of “insurance.” (David Brooks’ fine column on the facing page does a much better job explaining where I’m coming from — on all but insurance — than I can.)
What worries me is that a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress would swing the pendulum too far left — just as the Republican president and Congress swung it too far right. I do believe Sen. McCain would be far more willing to work with a Democratic Congress to make pragmatic changes than the current president ever has been, but I also believe that if the Democrats went too far, the voters would put Republicans back in charge of the House, the Senate or both in two years.
I’m not sure that a more activist government isn’t what our nation needs right now. Both candidates have come to realize that we can no longer take such a laissez-faire approach to the financial markets. But we also need a president who believes in regulation even when the bottom isn’t falling out. One who believes the Consumer Product Safety Commission needs to actually look out for the safety of consumer products, rather than seeking to further dismantle the agency even when defective Chinese products are flooding our markets. One who believes the Agriculture Department should actually try to protect consumers from mad cow disease, rather than protecting the cattle industry from those who would protect us. I think Sen. Obama sees this; Sen. McCain, on the other hand, has a track record of pushing for deregulation, although he is much more a pragmatist than a devoted member of the Church of the Free Market.
What I am not considering in making my decision is the venom being spewed by the so-called supporters of each candidate. Every new e-mail with the doctored photos and clumsily concocted “facts” about Sen. Obama’s alleged Muslim heritage pushes me a little toward voting for him — if only to disassociate myself from the racists who peddle such lies. But there are equal and opposing forces pushing me back toward Sen. McCain — most notably those self-satisfied souls who proclaim that the only reason anyone could possibly not vote for Sen. Obama is racism; what utter nonsense.
These aren’t supporters. They are opponents of the other candidate, the other party, of anyone who doesn’t share their opinions.
When Sarah Palin speaks glibly of Mr. Obama “palling around” with “domestic terrorists,” I am turned off; she’s counting on people assuming that he really is “palling around,” and doing it with Islamic terrorists. Sen. Obama and his campaign haven’t been nearly as misleading — you don’t have to be when you’re leading in the polls — although this “third term of George Bush” nonsense is wearing.
What would help me decide? An epiphany, I suppose.
But I’m not holding my breath. The last one of those I had was the sudden realization that there aren’t a lot of epiphanies to go around, that what we have to do is make a decision and act on it — act on it as though we had an epiphany.
Fortunately, there’s no wrong decision this time around.

Ms. Scoppe can be reached at [email protected] or at (803) 771-8571.

Photos I did NOT use with ‘Palin and sexual attraction’ column

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Being a responsible editor and all, I resisted the temptation to choose any of these pictures when I was looking for art to go with Kathleen Parker’s column on the theory that McCain picked Palin because… well, because guys can’t think straight in the presence of a good-looking woman.

An excerpt from the column in question:

As my husband observed early on,
McCain the mortal couldn’t mind having an attractive woman all but singing arias to his greatness. Cameras frequently capture McCain beaming like a gold-starred schoolboy while Palin tells crowds that he is “exactly the kind of man I want as commander in chief.” This, notes Draper, “seemed to confer not only valor but virility on a 72-year-old politician who only weeks ago barely registered with the party faithful.”

It is entirely possible that no one could have beaten the political force known as Barack Obama — under any circumstances. And though it isn’t over yet, it seems clear that McCain made a tragic, if familiar, error under that sycamore tree. Will he join the pantheon of men who, intoxicated by a woman’s power, made the wrong call?

Had Antony not fallen for Cleopatra, Octavian might not have captured the Roman Empire. Had Bill resisted Monica, Al Gore may have become president and Hillary might be today’s Democratic nominee.

Palinsex3 But they didn’t — resist those women, that is. Guys seldom do. Certain things make us stupid, and
Kathleen maintains this was one of those things.

Hey, but at least I resisted using these pictures, right? That shows that there’s still such a thing as decorum in a family newspaper.

Of course, I did save them, to share with y’all. Don’t tell the ladies, though, guys…

Palinsex4

More feedback on McCain endorsement

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Just in case you didn’t get enough with the comments on this post or this one or this one or this one, here are a few that I’ve received via e-mail. I didn’t keep the attributions because some of these people probably wouldn’t mind and some would, but I don’t have time now to sort them out:

Hi,

Your recent Sunday column concerning John McCain neglects to mention that John McCain has lied about his military record on several occasions. I was eleven years old and watched the U.S.S. Forrestal as it arrived at Subic Bay in the Philippines — minus John McCain. The writer of this article has performed a valuable public service, while you and the rest of the McCain worshippers continue to go AWOL.

_________________________________________

His pick of Sarah Palin–that kind of blows the doors off the "experience"
argument.

You also failed to mention that he graduated 4th from the bottom of his
class at Annapolis, which makes him dumber than George Bush, who you also
endorsed, twice.

Do you suppose he’s also dumber than Mark Sanford, who you also endorsed?

Why don’t you just say, "At The State, we endorse dumbasses, and McCain’s
pick of Palin as well as his graduating 4th from the bottom of his class at
Annapolis leaves him as the only candidate that we can endorse."

You did good back in the poker machine days, and I still like reading your
stuff some times–some great sentences you can come up with at times–in
fact, i’d even say kind of incredible, and i even quote the stuff from time
to time, giving you the attribution, of course. The problem is you have
quite a few loose screws that find expression in the endorsement of
candidates who have trashed this state and this country. yes, you have a
track record.

Fortunately, I’m not going to be able to rub it in your face a few years
from now when you’re writing about what an idiot McCain is, that you
endorsed him (like I have done with Bush and Sanford) because McCain is not
going to win. Hopefully, you’ll never endorse another winner. For the good
of this country, let’s hope not.

_________________________________________

Brad

You are a barrel of laughs. It is truly funny how you are trying to convince yourself and others that you are open minded and not a closed minded, dyed in the wool, Republican. The Republicans could literally run this country into the ground and you would still endorse a Republican. (Oh, I guess that has already happened.)

The rationale for your endorsement was pitiful. It wouldn’t get a B from a friendly 10th grade Social Studies teacher. I can imagine the red pencil comment "To endorse McCain because he supported the Surge is not a very deep analysis of the Iraq situation."

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Mr Warthen,
I’m sitting here typing, deleting & retyping all the reasons why I find it incredulous that you’ve endorsed McCain for president.
I finally realized that I need not struggle to put it into words – Warren Bolton has already done that, very succinctly.
I will just say that I am extremely disappointed in your decision. And the reasons given to support it do not resonate with me.
Your, in my opinion, fool hearty endorsement is one that will remain in the back of my mind & forever color my perceptions of future positions presented by The State.

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Mr. Warthen,

I am an Obama supporter and I was disappointed that The State endorsed Sen. McCain. We are all entitled to our opinions, however, and I attempt to be open to views that are different from mine. I must say, though, that your written justification for the endorsement of Sen. McCain in this morning’s edition was as weak as water.
Thank goodness for Mr. Bolton’s very thoughtful editorial this morning, it was proof to me that there continue to be people on your staff that reason and think independently. That piece and my husband’s insistence on reading every comic strip everyday is the only reason that I did not cancel my subscription to your paper on the spot.

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After reading your editorial and the editorial page this morning, I called your paper and terminated my subscription, even though I have been a subscriber since I moved to South Carolina in 1977. Through the years, I have agreed and disagreed with your editorials, but I have never considered the disagreements as serious as I do today. I cannot disagree more with your conclusion that John McCain is better qualified. I can’t believe that you truly see John McCain as "exhibiting fierce integrity, principled independence and awe-inspiring courage as he has put his country first."

I have seen nothing but a self-centered, spoiled man who is very angry and who has over and over put himself first. For you to say that choosing Palin is not a factor for making a decision astounds me since it is such a clear example of McCain’s lack of judgement. I thank Kathleen Parker for giving me the first reasonable explanation of why McCain made such a choice.

I know that one subscriber will not break your newspaper, I just wish I could get everyone in the state who is supporting Senator Obama to also cancel their subscriptions and then maybe you would wake up!

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To quote John McEnroe “are you serious!!!” I guess I really shouldn’t be that surprised.

Even though, like John McCain’s support of 90% of George Bush’s policies, I generally agree with The State’s editorial positions and the issues so eloquently addressed by Cindi and Warren and Brad (heck I even got the paper’s endorsement when I ran for Columbia City Council in 2000); I must say I was very disappointed at the endorsement of John McCain.

I realize we all see the world and life through our own “lenses,” but, come on, you folks have blindfolds, or at best blinders, on for this one. I do compliment you on putting the best possible spin on your choice by limiting your reasons and the issues discussed. Especially interesting was your total avoidance of other issues like temperament, and judgment in the choice of Sarah Palin. Guess you don’t see any concerns/negatives in a McCain administration. I could go on. You and most informed citizens/voters know the litany on both sides.

I can’t cancel my subscription over something like this. I am grateful to even get The State delivered out at Lake Wateree. I did have to express my disappointment. You coulda/shoulda picked the best candidate, and likely winner, as have over 200 other publications, four times the number who agree with you/The State.

I’ll still respect you after the election.

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To: StateEditor, Columbia
Subject: to Mr. Warthen

Dear Mr. Warthen:

I am disappointed in your endorsement of Sen. McCain. Not surprised, as you observed. Rather, I am dismayed at the rationale you used in choosing an endorsement for our next president. In a state thirsty for demonstrable fruits of education, we need leaders (including newspaper editors) who apply sound reasoning in decisions. Most of your reasons were poorly grounded – most notably, that the economic crisis and vice presidential selections are irrelevant to your endorsement. Many of us could not disagree more.

A sound economy is one essential key to our collective future. Each political party has a long record of economic policy – these candidates represent those parties ( I remind you that Sen. McCain may have resisted some foolish decisions by his party but he is not an Independent), so the positions on the economic condition are not a wash. Can you give us a deeper foundation for this opinion?

And as Gen. Powell recently observed, THE job of the vice president is to stand ready to be president. Our American tradition is to have two candidates running rather than a solo presidential candidate so the people can choose who the v.p. will be. Using your logic, we should just elect a president and let that person choose a successor after the election. Essentially you have endorsed Gov. Palin to be our executive, commander-in-chief, and strategist in leading us out of this economic crisis. You owe us an explanation for why you support putting our future in her hands.

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To: StateEditor, Columbia
Subject: The State’s Endorsement

I was so disappointed when I read the headline that you are endorsing McCain/Palin in the Presidential race. I thought after your endorsement published in January of Obama, you were on the right track to unification for the state of South Carolina. My husband and I have been very involved with this election process and have done much research and study in making our decision for our Presidential Vote. I would think that with the resources afforded to a large newspaper, you would have come tot the same conclusion that we did. Obama is our choice, no question. We have struggled with job loss, student loans for our children in college and our sons service in the military. McCain will only continue the policies that have made living and working for middle class American families so difficult these past few years.
Your opinion in January about Obama was spot on:

"Sen. Obama’s campaign is an argument for a more unifying style of leadership," the endorsement continued. "In a time of great partisanship, he is careful to talk about winning over independents and even Republicans. He is harsh on the failures of the current administration – and most of that critique well-deserved. But he doesn’t use his considerable rhetorical gifts to demonize Republicans. He’s not neglecting his core values; he defends his progressive vision with vigorous integrity. But for him, American unity – transcending party – is a core value in itself.": The State, January22, 2008

We are so disappointed in your change of heart, and in our service with home delivery over the past year, that we will be canceling our subscription.

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To: StateEditor, Columbia
Subject: (no subject)

Good morning to you Mr. Warthen-

Not knowing how to work this "blog" thing, I have to e-mail you my thoughts after reading the McCain endorsement which was no surprise at all. What else could you people do in a state like
South Carolina? Your paper, which from what I hear , is losing subscribers due to over-emphasis on sports, particularly football, diminishing Book Review section, less arts, less and less in-depth coverage of national and international news (no wonder people don’t know about the Colombian Free Trade Agreement) loss of the Saturday Editorial Page and having to go to the internet to finish many stories. Can you imagine the loss of subscribers you would suffer if you endorsed Obama? Yes, you did once but not for the finish.

You state in your personal remarks that people know your mind so well. I disagree. You always seem to be self-searching, trying to put across that you are neither this or that, so how can anyone know you when you don’t yet seem to know yourself?

As for knowing McCain, the remarks in the endorsement and yours show that you only know the surface of the man and haven’t really studied him in depth. His recent acceptance of some of the most vile ads against Obama and his shameless pilfering of Obama’s campaign slogan of Change and many of Obama’s ideas show this as a man who stops at nothing to get what he wants. During rallies when folks said ugly things about Obama, he made a half-hearted attempt to stop it but later defended his audiences (note that when he tried to stop it, he was booed or given very sparce applause). He and Palin unleashed some very, very frightening elements during their campaign and this is not the kind of man who should be a leader of all the people. He has always been a panderer and will always be. He also has a nasty streak that is also frightening. Even your favorite columnist, Charles Krathammer, a former psychiatrist or something of the sort, while bashing Obama last week, stated that McCain launched a volcanic missive to Obama when he did not go along with some proposal of McCain’s. Krathammer should have spent a little more time analyzing McCain.

His military career and his time as a POW was not the glorious, self-giving time that has become an urban legend of sorts. There are many places one can go to find out who this little man really is – and I just don’t mean little in stature. He is a bellicose, uneven tempered man with a lot that he is still trying to prove and we are in danger of being his proving grounds.

Further, I would like to see a little more balance on the Editorial Page with your syndicated columnists. It is discouraging to open the paper and see either Krathammer, Will, Parker. Once in a while we get Freidman and when it snows in July, Dowd. Broder is even a change. Surely there could be a better mix and your letters more balanced.

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Morning,
I just called and canceled my annual subscription(paid in advance) to The State Newspaper after 17 years and 8 months. You ask Why? Let me start by paraphrasing W.C. Fields When the world ends I want to be in SC. He was asked WHY? Because they are Fifty (50) years behind.
I do not take issue with The State/Brad’s endorsing Sen John McCain. This was expected. What I take issue is with the reasons and lack thereof.
1 "Surge" The war did not start with a "surge" The war started before the surge and Sen Barack Obama stated before the war and before the surge started that we SHOULD NOT GO TO WAR. The "surge works" not in isolation. We are paying many $$$$$$$$$, Have you heard about the "Awakening" No one on itself would be success. Please tell me now who had the better judgment and foresight from the start? Sen McCain or Sen Obama?

2. You have lost sight of what the rest of America is mainly concerned about THE ECONOMY THE ECONOMY THE ECONOMY. "Iran to North Korea"? Who cares RIGHT NOW? What most people care about is feeding their families, I guess we do not have to, My household income is over $250,000.00 per year.

3. "Columbia Free Trade Agreement"? Take a poll of your readers and I bet my re-subscription that no more than 10% knows what you are talking about. Is this the new way of not saying "BLACK"? You yourself had to ask your own guestion "WHY so many words about the CFTA. Trying to justified putting the square peg in the round hole.

4. "Judicial appointment"? If you believe what both men said about litmus test, I have a bridge to nowhere I can sell you for the price of your subscription.

5 "immigration reform" how many times did he flip flop on this issue. What about voting against a MLK holiday? You have the audacity to mentioned Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid BUT totally ignore Sen McCain’s first decision Gov. Sarah Palin Oh so now you are worried about the majority in Congress? What happen to the last six years?

6. Is Country first involve KEATING FIVE, wrecking three planes, jumped out of one that was destroyed, shot down at 3,000 feet when he should have been flying at 4,000 – 10,000 feet?

7. "Why didn’t ( I prefer "did not") mention Sarah Palin"? You are still trying those pegs. How could you consider one without the other ? All thing been equal Sen McCain should die before Sen Obama. Are you telling me that is the former is elected president and dies 4 months in his term Gov. Palin is suited to run the country and the world for the next 3 years and 8 months? What are you drinking? I do not want even a tea spoon of that, and if you are sneaking some in your paper I do not want to touch same again.

8. "We could go on and on, and we will" I will not. If I want to read you paper I can go to Refdesk like I do every day. Where I read at least 3-5 national, and 3-5 international newspaper seven day per week.

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To: StateEditor, Columbia
Subject: McCain endorsement

I gave all my information upfront because I mean this when I say the editorial board has two straight-up wimps, Brad Warthen and Cindi Scoppe. How can you not know who to endorse at this point in time? I realize Ms Scoppe has the right to make her decision anytime she feels like but as educated and bright as Ms Scoppe is, it just seems like she’s afraid to endorse Obama in South Carolina and I say the same thing about Warthen. Please, the reason people assumed the editorial board would endorse McCain is because they knew you would come up with some wimpy reason to endorse the republican candidate. I do believe that the publisher and owner of the state is not a wimp and I feel like Warren Bolton is not a wimp and the reason I feel that way about those two is that they’re consistent, especially Bolton but endorsing John McCain in South Carolina is not progressive and saying you’re not sure as an educated person when the election is less than 10 days away is not courageous and it’s patronizing to your readers because both candidates have had websites up and running with information on their plans. My issue is not that the State endorses a republican candidate but that they put their circulation ahead of any real effort to change the country or be progressive and after reading Warthen’s commentary over the past year I don’t think he’s very progressive when it comes to race at all. You see when it’s time to do something courageous don’t complain all year long then do the opposite or say I don’t know.

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I am so very glad that McCain has been endorsed. I supported him in 2000. I feel his loyalty and dedication to the welfare of the United States is far above his opponent. McCain actually cares about this great country and what he can do to protect it. Obama is more concerned over his "Kingship" of the country.

He is the most arrogant and elitist person who has ever ran for president. He refuses to answer the "tough" questions and has ran a most negative and dishonest political race. He is guilty of what he accuses his opponent of. I feel so much better knowing that The State Paper and you have endorsed the best candidate we have. Bless You.

So there you have it.

I haven’t had time to respond to more than one or two of these folks, and need to turn to putting out tomorrow’s page now. But at least I could give their views a wider airing by posting them here.

More about the McCain endorsement

116 Replies

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
MANY WHO KNOW my views — and between my columns and my blog, readers probably know my mind better than they do any other editor’s of their acquaintance — assumed all along that we would endorse John McCain.
I’ve made it clear many times that I thought we should have done so in 2000 (in the GOP primary). And my belief in his suitability remains undiminished, despite much that has happened in this general election campaign. (I found both Sen. McCain and Barack Obama more appealing running against the angry elements in their respective parties, rather than as their standard-bearers.) My judgments tend to be cumulative, based on years of observation more than the spin cycle topic of the day.
But to assume this endorsement was inevitable is to presume to know more than I did.
First, I am not the editorial board; I merely preside over it. Associate Editors Warren Bolton (whose strong, eloquent dissenting opinion is on the facing page) and Cindi Ross Scoppe both have their say, as does my boss, President and Publisher Henry Haitz. To absurdly condense a two-hour discussion: Henry and I favored McCain, Warren preferred Obama, and Cindi wasn’t sure — and she is seldom unsure about anything. She asked me whether a tie meant no endorsement, or whether Henry’s and my votes outweighed hers and Warren’s. I acknowledged that if it came to that, yes — our votes counted more. (In 2000, the board was evenly split between Bush and McCain, with our then-publisher on one side and me on the other, so I lost.) Only when she thought the matter was thus settled did she say she thought she was leaning ever so slightly toward Sen. Obama. She remains torn. (She plans her own column on the subject for next week.)
So this was not a foregone conclusion. But lest you think we’re terribly divided, remember that we unanimously and enthusiastically endorsed both McCain and Obama in their respective primaries in January. We just split over which we like more.
Even if I had had to decide all alone, I would have struggled with not endorsing Barack Obama. I meant every word that we said in praising him in January. Also, ever since I became editorial page editor in 1997, I have looked forward to the day that we could break the paper’s long pattern of endorsing Republicans for president, if only because in some people’s minds, that makes us a “Republican newspaper,” and I find it deeply distasteful to be identified with either party. Yes, I can point to the fact that in my tenure, we have endorsed slightly more Democrats than Republicans — and we spend far more time on those state and local races than we do on the presidential. But people attach huge importance to the presidential endorsement — many don’t pay attention to anything else. So I’ve hoped for years that the national Democratic Party would give us a nominee we could support.
Barack Obama is that Democrat. We would happily endorse him over Mitt Romney, or Rudy Giuliani, or Mike Huckabee — and certainly over the current occupant of the White House.
But he was up against the one Republican who happens to be the national political figure I respect and admire most, and have wanted to see in the White House for at least a decade. So his timing couldn’t have been worse.
I don’t regret endorsing John McCain one bit; I’m proud to see this day. But I hate missing the chance to endorse Obama.
Beyond that, let me briefly address several questions that came up on my blog after we posted our endorsement online Friday (I answer them more fully on the blog itself):
Why does the endorsement not talk about the current economic crisis? Because it doesn’t figure in our preference for Sen. McCain. Both senators backed the $700 billion rescue plan, which I think they were right to do. Beyond that, I remain unconvinced that either of them has a better idea what to do next than the other. I wish I did, but I don’t. So I consider their positions on this critical issue something of a wash, and therefore out of place in the endorsement.
Why so many words about the Colombian Free Trade Agreement? Because it has broader implications that do illustrate a clear, dramatic difference between the candidates, and one that points unequivocally to McCain. Besides, it is an issue you may not have heard as much about (meaning it took a certain number of words merely to explain), and if an endorsement accomplishes nothing else, we hope it helps you think of things you might not have thought about otherwise.
Why didn’t you mention Sarah Palin? Because the endorsement was about why we did choose McCain, not about why we “shouldn’t have.” I don’t think Sarah Palin is ready to be president. She has about as much experience in government as Barack Obama, but let’s face it — he’s smarter. If I were choosing the president solely on the basis of his choice of a running mate, I’d pick Obama, because I like Joe Biden. But I’ve never picked a presidential preference on that basis before, and see insufficient reason to start now. Bottom line: For me, the reasons to favor Sen. McCain outweigh my misgivings about Gov. Palin.
We could go on and on, and we will. Please come to my blog and continue the conversation.

Go to thestate.com/bradsblog/.

bradwarthen.com

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