Category Archives: Working

Watch for the rest of the endorsement package Sunday

Finally, I’m wrapping up my day. It’s been a long one, but I’m reasonably pleased.

Today, Warren and I completed the rest of the endorsement package — my explanatory column, and his column dissenting from the McCain endorsement. I’m reasonably pleased with what I was able to do and still keep my column to a normal length, instead of my double-length pieces last week and the week before.

But I’m even more pleased with Warren’s column, which gives readers a fuller picture of the range of opinions on the board. I’ll post it on the blog Sunday along with my own.

Together, the four elements — the endorsement editorial itself, my column about the process, Warren’s dissent, and the discussions we’ve already had here on the blog and will continue to have — present a fuller and more thought-provoking package than you will find in the endorsement of any newspaper in the country. I’m quite proud of it.

As I’ve said so many times before, the point of an endorsement is to help the reader think more deeply about his decision. Whether you agree with us in the end or not, my hope is always that your vote will be better thought-out, more fully contemplated and informed, because of having read the endorsement. In that regard, I believe this package, considered as a whole, accomplishes the goal far better than usual.

When you’re done looking at all of this (and I hope you will), you’ll have a much better idea of where we’re coming from, and be better equipped to decide what you think in light of it, than, say, the confusing package put out by the Philly paper the other day, for instance. Not to cast aspersions (perish the thought).

Today’s ‘other’ endorsement — Elise Partin

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The McCain endorsement, being released early today, was sort of predestined to make a splash to the exclusion of readers noting anything else. So I call your attention to the endorsement that actually ran in today’s paper — that of Elise Partin for mayor of Cayce.

Certainly I want to make sure readers who live in Cayce see it. But beyond that, I see that race as being of at least passing interest to others in the Midlands — which is why we decided to interview and endorse in that race to begin with. The decision of the current and immediately past city administrations to pursue Lebensraum even to the point of going into a neighboring county — combined with such ongoing cross-jurisdictional issues as riverfront development, the regional transit system and such — made this election worth thinking about. In fact, the very first among several people who urged us to look into this race actually lives in Columbia (although others were actual Cayce voters).

Giuglianopaul_035_3
Ms. Partin is an unusually engaging candidate who presents a sharp contrast to status quo incumbent
(Robert Malpass, shown below), and offers a better course for the future than the third candidate (businessman Paul Giugliano, right). It’s an interesting race.

Anyway, I just wanted to make sure this endorsement didn’t get ignored entirely.

Malpassrobert_053

Commenting on the endorsement

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Before I turn my attention completely to writing for Sunday’s paper, I’ll respond briefly to some of the comments offered this morning with regard to our McCain endorsement. I’ll start with something Phillip said (actually, his was the last comment when I started this response; several others have come in since then, but I’ll have to read them later):

P.S. Since Editor and Publisher’s latest count has not included the State, the State now becomes the 50th newspaper in the US to endorse McCain. 127 have endorsed Obama. In 2004 the count was virtually even between Kerry and Bush, and now nearly 30 papers that endorsed Bush in 2004 have endorsed Obama, whereas only a handful that endorsed Kerry 2004 have endorsed McCain. Again, more evidence that Obama’s appeal is broader across party and ideological lines and holds the greater promise of bipartisan leadership and unity.

Posted by: Phillip | Oct 24, 2008 9:10:17 AM

I should have added "the State’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge that reality notwithstanding" to that last sentence.

Posted by: Phillip | Oct 24, 2008 9:12:46 AM

Phillip, I don’t understand why you would say that last part. Scroll to the lower part of this original post. The "reality" you say we "stubbornly refuse to acknowledge" is something I have cited over and over. It’s THE biggest reason why we strongly preferred Obama over Hillary Clinton. It’s what we mean in the endorsement you read today when we say, "Barack Obama is an inspiring and even transformational figure." What did you think that referred to?

And yes, I’m perfectly aware that most newspapers are endorsing Obama. In the rough draft of the editorial (before I cut it down to fit the space awaiting it on the Sunday page), I wrote "Like the many newspapers that have endorsed him, we, too, find him to be an inspiring…" But that was one of the more superfluous lines among the many that had to go in cutting out four inches from the piece. What other newspapers are doing is neither here nor there.

I do find it amusing that someone commenting on the previous post thinks it would have been more "courageous" to endorse Obama. Hardly. Going along with the crowd, particularly when they’re lining up behind someone you like very much, and who you fully believe is going to WIN, is the path of least resistance. Just think of all the very nice people, people whom I would love to please, who would be singing our praises now, while a few trolls under the bridge mutter inaudibly about how they knew we were "socialists" all along, and what do you expect from the "liberal media." We’d be praised for being "bold," for making an "historic break with the past," etc. Never mind that there would be nothing bold about it; it would just feel that way to a lot of people.

Add to this the fact that I gave up something very tangible and palpable, to me. Ever since I became editorial page editor in 1997, I have longed for the day that I could break the 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 called such names. Yes, I have been able to comfort myself by pointing to the substantial, documented falsehood of the label — most notably the fact that if you consider all of our endorsements (and we spend vastly more of our time on state and local races than we do on the presidential), more than half of them are for Democrats. But people attach an inordinate amount of importance to the presidential endorsement — so many people don’t pay attention to anything else — and there we have been trapped. We like SOUTH CAROLINA Democrats, not the national kind. People like John Kerry and even Al Gore, in running for national office, define themselves in ways that put them far to the left of the consensus of our editorial board, which is generally reflective of the political center in our state. (Ironically, in Gore’s case, he had earlier been a far more centrist politician, to the point that I enthusiastically supported an endorsement of him when he ran for the Senate in Tennessee.)

But Obama presented the chance I had awaited for so long. Here was a Democrat we could happily endorse, something we unquestionable would have done had he been up against Mitt Romney, or Rudy Giuliani, or Mike Huckabee — and certainly if he’d been facing the current president (something he likes to pretend he’s doing as we speak).

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.

Now, as to those of you who find it unthinkable that we didn’t write about the current economic situation, or that we DID spend a long paragraph on the Colombian Free Trade agreement, let me see if I can help you understand: First, I don’t give either candidate a leg up on the economic crisis. I haven’t been impressed that either of them has a better idea than I do of what to do going forward. Both of them backed the $700 billion rescue plan, and while I think they were right to do so, I just haven’t seen much to jump up and down about either way on this. Frankly, I worry that neither of them is up to the challenge, but that worry is poorly defined in my own mind. While economic policy was discussed in our board debate of this endorsement, it did not occur in a way that caused us to coalesce around a position. In other words, I could have spent precious words on the economy, but it would have been a digression from the points that actually contributed to our endorsement, and everyone would have found it unhelpful. Yes, I understand that people who favor Obama are somewhat more eager to discuss the economy than those of us who end up where I do on the question. Democrats love talking about the economy. And they will. But we endorsed McCain neither because of nor in spite of the candidates’ positions on the economy.

On the contrary, the Colombian Free Trade Agreement — which required a certain number of words even to explain to the reader, since it’s gained so little attention — had the virtue of being a sort of microcosmic way of explaining the sort of differences between the candidates that DID contribute to our endorsement. We were able to tell readers something they didn’t know, to examine the contrast between the candidates in terms of a subject that hasn’t been done to death. And for me, the moment when that came up in the third debate was a critical moment, a sort of epiphany, one in which my preference for McCain over Obama was clarified. As an explanation of an important difference between the candidate, one that bears upon their governing philosophies with regard to the global economy and their relative devotion to party orthodoxies, the portion of the editorial dealing with Colombian trade was far more explanatory than spending a comparable number of words rehashing the economic crisis, only to say in the end that on that issue, for us, it’s a wash.

If you haven’t figured this out about me and my leadership of the editorial board, let me state it overtly now: I see little point in telling you things you already know. To the extent that I am able, I wish to ADD to the conversation, not parrot what others are saying. Hence this countercultural blog, in which I fight against the tide of the Blogosphere as a place where polar opposites shout at each other. Similarly, my exploration of Colombian trade as opposed to platitudes on the economy sought to explore uncovered ground, to give people something additional to think about.

As for whether I should have cut something out of the editorial to make room for a digression about Sarah Palin (the omission of which Phillip found to be "astonishing" and "shoddy journalism") — well, I can perfectly understand why someone who thinks we should have endorsed Obama would want to bring that up. But since Sarah Palin did NOT contribute to the decision to endorse McCain, it’s hard for me to see why I would bring that up, explore the problems that she brings to the ticket, and then explain why we would endorse McCain anyway for those of you who don’t get it (and even after doing that at the expense of not giving you the reasons why we did endorse McCain, those of you who disagree would remain unsatisfied). Besides, it would have been a departure to say we’re endorsing someone because of, or in spite of, the vice presidential pick. I can’t think of when we’ve done that before (if you can, please point it out). Sarah Palin looms very large in the minds of two sets of people — the conservative Republican base that loves her, and the people who despise her and see her as sufficient reason NOT to vote for McCain. We are in neither category.

And by "we," I mean the official position that we ended up with as a board. As I write this, Warren Bolton is working (at my behest) on his column for Sunday expressing his dissenting opinion. He may explore the economy or go into the failings of Sarah Palin at length. I don’t know. But a column saying we SHOULD have endorsed Obama seems to me like a better part of the overall package in which to explore those avenues. The endorsement of McCain explores one part of the overall subject. Warren’s column explores another. My column — which I need to go write — will explore yet another.

In the end, the overall goal is to provoke thought — hopefully, thoughts you might not otherwise have had — among our readers regarding the presidential election. That’s what we strive for.

Look for our endorsement at 7 a.m. Friday

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Our presidential endorsement will be posted at thestate.com/opinion at 7 a.m. Friday. It should also, if we did our coding right, show up on our Endorsements page. If for any reason it fails to show on one, try the other.

The endorsement won’t actually be published in the paper until Sunday, but folks seemed to enjoy seeing our McCain and Obama endorsements back in January early, so we decided to do this.

What WON’T be posted Friday (you’ll have to wait until Sunday) is an extra column or two both explaining our decision, and expressing a dissenting opinion — mainly because they’re not written yet. I decided we should do the dissent thing before we made our decision because I knew it would be tough — and it was — and because I really sort of hate that we can’t endorse both of them again. Yeah, I know a lot of y’all think that’s weird, but I haven’t really changed my mind since January — I still like both of these guys.

I’ll try to explain. Truth be told, I’m a little less enchanted with both of them after watching them as their respective parties’ official nominees. I liked them better when the Republican "base" still hated McCain, and the most angry Democratic partisans were backing Hillary. As standard-bearers they are both somewhat less appealing. But the day-to-day spin cycle stuff that people attach SO much importance to — this campaign ad, that malaprop, this or that candidates’ dig at the other one — doesn’t add up to a whole lot for me.

I had formed my opinions of these guys way back, and by the time Labor Day had rolled around, my impressions were only subject to change around the edges, barring something more significant than anything that actually happened. Think of it this way: My pre-general election campaign impressions were the size of planets, and the day-to-day spin-cycle stuff was just like so many beachballs bouncing around on the planets’ surfaces. Or to use the Rorschach theory I mentioned in the comments on this post, I had already decided what I thought the inkblots looked like; obsessing about the crenellations around the edges were unlikely to change that much.

In light of that, consider what we said about the candidates in January. First, an excerpt from the McCain primary endorsement:

Experience, certainly. Integrity, even more so. But John McCain’s
most conspicuous virtue
is courage. He is a brave and tough man who
unlike some candidates has no need to bluster, but is able to speak
with humility and generosity to those with whom he disagrees. A McCain
presidency would do much to restore confidence in American leadership,
at home and abroad.

There is of course the extraordinary physical
and moral courage that he displayed as a prisoner of war in Vietnam,
where he withstood nightmarish torture for years rather than let his
country or his comrades down. But he also possesses the kind of
political fortitude that keeps him from giving up on any worthwhile
quest. He evinces a wisdom born in pain, a confidence earned in many
battles. When others despair, John McCain knows he has seen worse, and
keeps striding forward.

Then, a snippet from the Obama primary endorsement:

Sen. Obama’s campaign is an argument for a more unifying style of leadership. 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.

Can such unity be restored, in this poisonous political culture? Not unless that is a nominee’s goal from the outset. It will be a difficult challenge for any candidate; but we wait in the hope that someone really will try. There is no other hope for rescuing our republic from the mire.

Can you see how the hardest thing about this for me would be NOT endorsing one of these guys?

Philadelphia’s weird endorsement(s)

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When we sat down Monday to begin our discussion about whom to endorse for president, someone remarked that The Philadelphia Inquirer (which in Knight Ridder days was a sister paper of The State, but no more) had done an unusual thing — run an endorsement of Obama, and a dissenting opinion favoring McCain.

At that point, not knowing yet where we would end up but sensing that we’d be divided (I was right, by the way), I said that was quite a coincidence, because I had been about to suggest that wherever we ended up, we should run a same-day column from a board member favoring the candidate who did not receive our endorsement.

As of this moment, we plan to do that.

But what we’ll be doing will be wildly different from what Philly did, I realized when I actually went and read those pieces online. They didn’t have an editorial endorsement of one candidate and then a column from an individual dissenter. (For those of you who don’t understand the difference, an editorial is the institutional opinion of a newspaper, an opinion arrived at by the editorial board; it is therefore unsigned. A column is the opinion of the individual who signs it. Big difference, as far as we’re concerned.)

Instead, they had TWO SEPARATE editorials. At least, that’s the way it looks online. I’d be interested to see a copy of that day’s paper to see how it was presented.

First, they endorsed Obama, and did a pretty good job of it. It was better reasoned, I thought, than the much-ballyhooed Tribune endorsement (I came away from the Trib one thinking, Folks, if you’re gonna make history, do a better job of explaining the thinking that went behind it. You left me with the impression that you were "making history" just to say you did so.)

THEN, they had a separate editorial endorsing McCain, and the only explanation offered was this editors’ intro: "The Editorial Board’s endorsement of Barack Obama was not unanimous. Dissenters said:…" That was it. What followed was not only a differing opinion, but one seemingly based on alternative interpretations of reality. Like the first one, it was well reasoned, and even MORE strongly worded than the Obama endorsement. But the disconnect between them is weird. The first editorial complains of McCain’s "persistent deceptions in this campaign." The other one says flatly of McCain, "His word is good," and goes on:

Ask people to describe McCain and the first response often is, "He’s honest." What you see is what you get. There are no mysterious associations to dance around. No 20-year attendance of a church whose pastor preached anti-American sermons. No serving on an education reform panel with a domestic terrorist. No financial support from a convicted felon. No ties to a group currently under investigation for possible voter-registration fraud.

Those two thoughts — faith in McCain’s essential integrity and disappointment over the way he’s conducted his campaign — CAN be reconciled; they CAN be held by the same person or the same board. But reconciling them requires a coherent effort to do so, not starkly opposite statements.

Folks, I understand that choosing to endorse one or the other is not easy. It hasn’t been easy for us, and we did consider alternatives. But we have chosen, and will present the result this weekend, along with plenty of both supporting AND dissenting info. But what we say will be straightforward (I hope; we haven’t started writing yet). Philly was just confusing.

When I heard that someone had explained what happened at Philly in a blog post, I went eagerly to read it. But I was disappointed. It was just something from a former reporter at the paper — someone who would have known little of the editorial board’s workings even when he worked at the paper — offering little more than his uninformed guess about what happened. Basically, the paper has left a information vacuum that invites such speculation.

MY uninformed impression is that this is an editorial board in disarray, probably from too many leadership changes in recent years. The paper has had four editorial page editors that I can recall in the time I’ve been in this job, and I wasn’t trying to keep up with them — it could be more. (And that’s sad. At the last meeting of Knight Ridder editorial page editors in January 2005, the two people I remember being most impressed by were the two Philly editors, Chris Satullo of the Inquirer and Frank Burgos of the Daily News. Both are out now; Chris has stayed with the paper as a columnist, but Frank left.)

But then, I’m just guessing, too. The one thing I do know is that it was weird.

Watch for the McCain opus Sunday

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And this time, I’ll try to remember to make sure it posts on the blog before Monday.

This piece will have several things in common with the "Barack Like Me" column:

It will be just as long (sorry, but it took a good bit of trimming even to get them down to that length).
It will be based on a number of things that cause me to feel a personal connection to the candidate and as a result enable me to say some things I hope you will find at least somewhat original.
It will be written right after reading an autobiography about the candidate, although much of it will be based in experiences I had long ago.

Beyond that, I’m afraid I don’t think this column is quite as good as the first one. With McCain, the "like me" thing breaks down at a certain point, which is ironic because of the greater superficial similarities in our backgrounds. But while we’re both Navy brats, that’s all I was — a dependent. I never served, much less serving heroically, and that creates a crimp in the whole identification thing.

But I think it still rises above my usual columns in what it offers. I was just very satisfied with the way I was able to tie a lot of disparate observations within a single defensible theme in the Obama piece; and that didn’t work quite as well with this one. Maybe it’s just that I’m really tired (after reading late into the night the last two weeks) and struggled with the writing this time. Or maybe it’s just as I will say in the column: the thesis broke down.

By the way, I’ve gotten a lot of kind comments about the "Barack" piece — and some not so kind. But they all had something in common — all (or most, now that I think back) seemed to assume I was choosing sides in the election, and meant to laud Obama accordingly. That misses the point. So I sent variations on this message to several people who wrote to me about it in the past week:

Thank you so much; you’re very kind.

On Sunday, please watch for my companion piece about McCain.

A caveat: Neither of these columns should be seen as an endorsement, or even an attempt to assess the suitability of either man for the presidency. If you go back and read more closely, you’ll see they don’t even get into that.

What I was trying to do is just raise some thoughts that you might not have seen elsewhere about the formative experiences of both men.

I just say all that because some seemed to take my Obama piece as pro-Obama (some were happy about that; some angry), but that’s not what it was meant to be. The potential exists for some readers to assume the same about the upcoming McCain piece.

We WILL be endorsing, but haven’t yet made the decision whether it will be McCain or Obama. We’ll be deciding that next week.

What you need to remember as you read is that I like BOTH of these guys a lot; our endorsements of them in January were quite enthusiastic. The general election endorsement will be made all the tougher because of that. I know some of you think you know how we’re going to endorse, and you have a 50-50 chance of being right. But you’re wrong if you think the decision is already made. And as the days have gone by, the decision has loomed tougher and tougher. I’m dreading the discussion next week, and still trying to decide how to lead it. I will really be missing Mike Fitts, because as I described in this column and this one, he did a masterful job of helping walk us through these decisions.

Report: SLED chased ACORN from SC

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Among my 588 unread e-mails I went through today were two or three demanding that I go find out, and report back to the writers, whether ACORN had been doing nefarious things here in South Carolina. I made a mental note to — right after reading the 588 messages, going back and reading the 100 or so that came in while I was reading those, selecting op-ed copy for tomorrow, moving the copy for Friday’s page, finishing reading McCain’s autobiography, reading proofs, writing my Sunday column that I plan to be a companion piece to my tome of last Sunday, and emptying the messages on my phone that have overloaded my e-mail — run right out and interrogate each of the 4 million people in South Carolina to find out whether ACORN was active here.

But then I thought: Why not ask folks on the blog if THEY’VE heard about any ACORN doings in S.C.? If they had, I could pass the tip on to our newsroom, which might, just might have what I will never have — time to look into it.

But before I got caught up enough to do even that, I saw that ever-dependable Cindi had noticed that another paper had already checked, and here’s what they found:

Controversial activist group has made no waves in S.C.
ACORN pulled out 2 years ago after SLED started probe

By Robert Behre (Contact)
The Post and Courier
Thursday, October 16, 2008
A national activist organization making headlines for its controversial voter registration drives once had a presence in South Carolina but pulled up stakes after the State Law Enforcement Division opened an investigation into its registration efforts in the Columbia area two years ago.
That investigation is ongoing, a SLED official said, declining further comment.
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, known commonly as ACORN, operated from an office on Hampton Street in downtown Columbia, but that office has closed….

Anybody hear anything to the contrary? If not, I’m going back to reading that book. I got my proofs turned in a few minutes ago. I’ll probably do what I’ve done all week (and last week, on the Obama book) — stay at my desk past dark, forcing myself to read X number of pages, then going home for dinner, then reading until midnight, or until I can’t keep my eyes open any more. I seldom go to this much trouble for one column, but I thought it paid off in a fairly decent, if offbeat, column Sunday. So I’m doing it again.

Broder just won’t go out on a limb

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One of the reasons I had to quit the whole news gig back in the early ’90s and turn to editorializing is that I got sick and tired of all the dodges, all the going out of your way NOT to say what you think. I’d rather just be straight-up with people, and opinion writing and editing lets you do that.

Still, I continue to have enormous respect for David Broder, even though (or perhaps because) he never fully made the transition. He’s still a newsman to the core.

Take his column that I put on today’s op-ed page. It’s premise is that those pesky Pennsylvanians who went for Hillary just a few months ago are "part of a mass movement to Obama." You see, being at heart a reporter, David Broder does this thing where goes out and talks to regular folks and finds out what they’re thinking. (And being an old-fashioned guy, he thinks of them as "voters" rather than "stakeholders".)

He backs up his premise reasonably well, to the extent that such a haphazard anecdotal approach is helpful. But apparently he doesn’t trust his own observations. Here’s how the piece started:

UPPER DUBLIN, Pa. — Last April, on the eve of the Pennsylvania primary, voters in this Philadelphia suburb were finding plenty of fault with both Barack Obama and John McCain. Many were preparing to — and soon did — vote for Hillary Clinton, helping her to a decisive victory in Pennsylvania.

This week, those voters are part of a mass movement to Obama, driven by much greater familiarity with the Illinois senator’s views, and a pronounced distaste for McCain and running mate Sarah Palin.

The striking shift in Montgomery County, often a bellwether, makes McCain’s task of recapturing Pennsylvania from the Democrats look almost like Mission Impossible…

Say what? "Look almost like…"?!?!? Mr. Broder, either it LOOKS like it or it doesn’t. We fully understand that if you go ahead and say it LOOKS like it to you, that’s your opinion. And you’re entitled to it; you’re the Dean of American political writers. I think you can go ahead and say what you think. If not now, when? You’re retiring at the end of the year. Take the plunge.

If it only "almost" looks like it, why bother us with it? What factor prevents it from looking entirely like it…

Anyway, stuff like this probably doesn’t bother anyone but an editor. I’ll go away now.

This could be a ‘bad’ year for our endorsees

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Turning away from the presidential endorsement to the endorsements that we here on the board actually spend more of our staff time on — the state legislative and county races — this may not be a good year for our endorsees.

Now mind you, "not… a good year" is a relative thing. Typically, close to 75 percent of the people we endorse in general elections in South Carolina win. A "bad" year for our endorsees is 50 percent. There is a chance that this year, it may be even lower than that.

I should pause at this point to say, as I always do, that our endorsements aren’t about naming the person we think WILL win, but the person we think SHOULD win. You might say, "Duh!," but the fact is that a lot of people don’t seem to understand that. How else does one explain the people who say, when one of our endorsees loses, that we got it "wrong?"

But that doesn’t keep me from thinking about whether someone is going to win or not. I’m usually conscious of a candidate’s chances as we’re making the decision, and we tend to know when we’re backing a Don Quixote and when we’re not.

But the other day Cindi said something I hadn’t thought of — that we may be backing more losers than winners this time. That was based on the endorsements we had decided on up until that point (we’ve decided some more since then). If so, so be it. That won’t change our decisions. But I thought I’d share the thought with y’all.

Consider the ones we’ve done so far:

Jim Nelson — LIKELY TO LOSE — Conventional wisdom heavily favors the incumbent, Chip Huggins, in House District 85. This is the Irmo area, and Rep. Huggins is the Republican. Of course, the Irmese are quirky and can surprise you. Also, a Democrat could benefit from the Obama Effect, which is expected to pull up down-ballot Democrats even though Obama will lose the state himself. But not a Democrat who, like Mr. Nelson, is given to going up to strangers and telling them he thinks his taxes are too low. Not in this district.
Michael Koska — LIKELY TO LOSE — There is no incumbent in this race, which should make it more of a toss-up. But Mr. Koska’s opponent in House District 77 is the closest thing you’ll find to an incumbent — Richland County Council Chairman Joe McEachern. Mr. McEachern is a strong candidate whom we’ve endorsed multiple times, including in the primary for this seat. Add to that the fact that Mr. Koska is a little-known white Republican in a district long held by a black Democrat (John Scott), and the usual math of elections in South Carolina runs against him. Mr. Koska has the ability to win over voters who sit down and listen to him at length as we did, but few voters ever do that. No, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that Mr. Koska will pull this off, but he would need greater-than-usual help from his national ticket to do so, and that’s just not happening this year.
Nikki Haley — ALMOST CERTAIN TO WIN. I could have told you before our interviews that Rep. Haley would hold on to her District 87 House seat. After talking to her and opponent Ed Gomez, it was a dead certainty. Yes, the McCain-Palin ticket may be imploding, but not so much as to deny re-election to this highly engaging Republican incumbent, not in Lexington County.
Anton Gunn — DON’T KNOW, although I suspect GUNN HAS THE EDGE — What makes this one uncertain for the better-known and stronger candidate — Mr. Gunn — is that this has been a Republican district. In fact, Democrat Gunn lost to the incumbent, Bill Cotty, two years ago. But Mr. Cotty isn’t running, and the district has been evolving. Most of all in Mr. Gunn’s favor is the fact that if anybody is going to benefit from the Obama Effect, it would be him. He was Obama’s state political director. So I think he has the edge, but it’s just impossible to know without polling info, which I haven’t seen. All we know for sure is that we prefer Mr. Gunn to his opponent, David Herndon.

As always, you can look at all our endorsements from this year (going all the way back to the presidential primaries in January), plus columns related to endorsements, on this Web page.

About the upcoming presidential endorsement…

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One of my regulars said on a previous post, and not for the first time:

But I’m sure the endorsement is ready to go…

Since I responded at length to that assertion, I’m turning it into a separate post, for the edification (or something) of all…

No, the endorsement is not "ready to go." I wish. That is, I wish it was done and behind me. In fact, I haven’t even set the meeting to discuss it. We have scrupulously avoided discussing it, but that will be at an end soon. Sometime in the next week to 10 days, we will sit down and do that. (On Monday, we had a brief discussion about HAVING the discussion, but even that was inconclusive.)

It promises to be a difficult decision, and however we end up, we’ll be somewhat divided by it — as we were in both 2000 and 2004, both in the primaries and the general. Endorsements by their very nature — you’re choosing one or the other, and there’s no room for compromise on that point, although there’s lots of room for compromise on the explanation — strain the consensus that we try to achieve on all issues. The presidential endorsement tends to do so more than usual. It’s why some newspapers don’t do presidential endorsements. Or rather, it’s related to why some newspapers say they don’t do presidential endorsements. Personally, I think they’re copping out and trying to rationalize it.

I had my break from that in January. It was wonderful. We were completely unanimous in our support for both McCain and Obama. But I knew then, as I know now, that IF we got our way and they won their respective nominations, our decision in the fall would be far more difficult. It will be.

I appreciate that y’all think you know me and my mind. The purpose of the blog is to help you do so, so it’s nice in a way that you feel comfortable extrapolating my decisions from what I’ve written in the past. But you ignore something very important: I’m the only person on the editorial board who blogs. And even the person you know through the blog has a very serious responsibility to lead a group of people you DON’T know as well through a very delicate decision-making process.

Hopefully, those of you who actually READ THE PAPER know Warren and Cindi better than you would know the board members at most newspapers. That’s the result of a deliberate policy that I instituted when I became editorial page editor in 1997 — we started writing fewer editorials (the unsigned pieces that speak for the full board) to give people time to write signed columns, so that you could get to know the people who participate in setting editorial policy. My blog is a continuation of that, taking the transparency thing to the nth power.

I don’t know how much management experience you have — "you" referring to those of you who believe our endorsement is set and everyone knows what it will be — but even if you’re the greatest manager in the world, it’s highly unlikely you’ve ever been in the situation that I deal with every day: Bringing a group of people with a variety of opinions and life experiences — very opinionated people — together in a consensus around controversial issues. Sometimes legislative leaders cry the blues to me about how hard it is to bring their members together around a piece of legislation over the course of a session, and I have little sympathy. I have to bring people together around definite positions, on deadline, every day. (Add to that the fact that it involves managing up as well as down, since the publisher is always a member of the board. The publisher stays out of most of our decisions, but he or she always participates to some degree in the presidential ones.) It’s not easy. And the presidential endorsement carries with it such baggage that it’s one of the toughest. And it’s a decision that is never gone. If y’all out there remember it (and you do), rest assured that we remember these internal struggles very vividly. And we’re very conscious of the tension going into the next such discussion.

Lord help me, but I do hate crowds

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Don’t go anywhere NEAR the part of town where the State Fair is, unless you’re going to the State Fair. And if you are going to the State Fair, don’t. Pick another day and another time. Save yourself and others the aggravation.

What would you do instead with the time? Oh, I don’t know…. Let’s see, it’s the middle of the day on Monday; maybe you could GO TO WORK!!!!

No, I’m not in a good mood. I made the mistake of going to my Rotary meeting, which as always was at Seawell’s, which as you know is directly across from the main northern entrance to the Fair. That’s always difficult at this time of year, but this time was BY FAR the worst I’ve ever experienced.

I tried to be philosophical about it. I tried to make the most of the situation, get with the holiday mood for a bit before going back to the office, which I could tell was going to take awhile. I decided to walk over and get myself a bag of cotton candy to take to work with me.

So I crossed Rosewood and went up to the ticket booth, and the guy said sure, go around there and get in line and get yourself a "lunch token" for $5, and if you get it back to HIS booth by 2 o’clock, you get your money back.

It was 1:54. I couldn’t even have purchased the token, much less have gotten my cotton candy, by then. And I had only $8 in my wallet. If I had given up the fiver, I couldn’t have bought the cotton candy. (That didn’t even strike me until later, so I’m glad I didn’t try to beat the clock.) What, I’d like to know, is magical about 2 p.m.? If I hadn’t had to go to Rotary, I wouldn’t have even thought about trying to get lunch before 2 o’clock. On the days I eat at my desk (the overwhelming majority of the time, that’s what I do), I never think about it before then.

So I was already feeling pretty alienated, before I walked back to my truck, and before I fought my way out of the parking lot, and had to go a mile or two in the direction away from my office before I could turn and fight my way back past the fair again.

You know when I got back to my office? 2:21 p.m. I could have walked it a couple of times in that amount of time, and would have if I’d had any idea how long it would take. Almost half an hour of sitting still idling, with gas at its current price, with my windows open, breathing the exhaust of thousands of other vehicles.

Even if my purpose had been to go to the fair, and I’d had plenty of cash in my pocket, it would not have been worth it. As it is, I’m in a foul mood.

And the only constructive thing I can derive from the experience is to warn you that, if you’re about to try to go to the Fair, please think twice.

The column’s up now. Sorry

The opus is done; you’ll see it Sunday

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Well, I just finished writing what I consider to be my most provocative column of this long presidential election. At least, it’s the most provocative to me. You have to consider that I didn’t expect the John Edwards column to cause such a fuss. So maybe this one will be a dud; I don’t know.

But I do know it’s longer than any other column that I can ever remember publishing in the paper — twice as long as usual. It will jump from the Sunday editorial page to the op-ed page. But then, I’ve thought about it a lot longer than I do most columns — months, in fact. That’s something it does have in common with the Edwards piece, although this one is much more complicated. Even at this length, it requires the reader to understand more than I have space to say. And maybe, because of that, it will be unintelligible. But a lot of my columns attempt to say more than I can denote in a limited space. This one just has more than usual to say.

Anyway, I look forward to your reactions to it. I think.

Breathless over Sarah, but not the way Kathleen Parker meant it

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You may recall that in my commentary on Kathleen Parker’s "Palin-should-drop-out" column, I wrote:

Kathleen is able to cite her initial defense of Sarah, then her
breathless tension watching her and hoping she wouldn’t screw up. And
that’s something I can’t possibly identify with — worrying about
someone’s performance because I’m a member of the same demographic.
Maybe I’m too self-centered. But I have had to accept that black folks
do that with Obama, and women do that with Hillary Clinton and/or Sarah
Palin, depending on their proclivities. When I see a white guy out
there succeeding or failing, he’s on his own as far as I’m concerned. I
might agree with him or I might not, but it won’t have anything to do
with which restroom he uses or what boxes he checks off on a census
form.

Well, I found myself breathless at times during the debate — whenever Mrs. Palin was speaking — and was really glad when the whole thing was over. But it wasn’t because I wanted to see a woman succeed. And it wasn’t because I wanted to see McCain’s running mate succeed (his choice of Mrs. Palin is one of the few things about McCain I disapprove of). And it wasn’t because she’s a babe. (even though she was cute, when she wasn’t grating.)

No, it was that phenomenon that comes over me when I’m watching a movie or a TV show, and something’s about to happen that will be enormously embarrassing to the character on the screen, and even if you don’t like the character (although it’s worse if they’re likable), you cringe, because you don’t want to see it. You get embarrassed for the human race; you empathize no matter how much you try not to, and it’s painful.

And the awful part is that you see it coming. Often at such moments, I leave the room. Life is painful enough without having your nose rubbed in contrived discomfort.

As I was typing the above, I was struggling to come up with an example, but one just hit me: I’ve never watched the American version of "The Office," but I’m a big fan of the BBC original. I say that in spite of the fact that the entire second season was just excruciating; David Brent got worse and worse. But in that case, I had to keep watching.

I had to keep watching the debate, too, on account of it being my job. But in the end, it went fine for all concerned. But I was tired, from all the breath-holding.

Vice_presidential_deb_wart3

By contrast, Barrett LIKES this bill — the one with all the fixin’s

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Earlier this week, we had on our op-ed page, all ready to go, a piece from gubernatorial wannabe Gresham Barrett about how keen he is on nuclear power. That was all well and good, but it was neither here nor there (I can keep the pretentious figures of speech coming all day) when it came to the issue of the moment, which was as that piece was being put on the page, Mr. Barrett was stepping out as the only member of the S.C. delegation to vote against the bailout, I mean rescue, bill.

Seemed sort of, well, off-topic to me. So I pulled the piece (you’ll see it online Saturday) and got Cindi to ask his office for a column explaining his vote. They expressed interest, and the next day we held space on the page past our deadline, but it didn’t show. Which was a shame because it would have run the same day as this editorial, which would have given you a sort of point-counterpoint on the subject.

It never did show. But today I get this via e-mail:

Barrett Releases Statement on Upcoming Vote concerning Economic Recovery Plan

Washington, DC – Congressman Gresham Barrett (SC, 3) released the following statement regarding the vote on the updated economic recovery package expected on the House floor tomorrow:

“Today we are faced with what Warren Buffet called an ‘economic Pearl Harbor’ that includes the ugly reality of an across the board credit freeze. The ability for companies to meet payroll and fund activities is threatened, and let’s be clear I’m not talking about Wall Street businesses, but 3rd district employers. Whether it is a small business that may have to close its doors, or major corporations employing thousands of my constituents, jobs are at risk. If Congress does not act the effects will be serious for American small business, families and consumers.

“Monday’s bill relied purely on government activity failing to consider fundamental free market principles that I believe must be part of any solution. I was aware of the gravity of the situation then as I am now, but was optimistic that working with relevant parties and my constituents through the legislative process we could produce a better bill. This legislation contains proven free market principles like tax relief and regulatory changes that will move our economy forward helping to mitigate the pain on Main Street. While this bill continues to contain a number of provisions that I oppose, I believe we are at the end of the legislative process and action is required.”
###

OK, so he understands it’s an "economic Pearl Harbor," but he didn’t feel like shooting back at the Mitsubishis on Monday. Now that the plan’s been beefed up with lots of fixin’s, so it’s not $700 billion, but $810 billion — more than I make in a year, for those keeping score at home — he likes it. Of course, he covers himself on that, with his airy "While this bill continues to contain a number of provisions that I
oppose, I believe we are at the end of the legislative process and
action is required."

So glad we’ve got your permission now, Gresham. Can we get on with the saving-the-country thing? Thanks.

Our first endorsement ran today

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A couple of weeks ago, I came up with the idea of doing something different with endorsements this cycle. Back during the campaigns for the June primaries, I became frustrated that we had so many candidates, and so little time and space, that we didn’t serve readers as well as we should have. After hours and hours and hours of interviews, research and discussion, in some cases our explanations of endorsements were absurdly abbreviated, in extreme cases amounting to less than a sentence. And as I’ve always said, to me the endorsement is ABOUT the explanation, so I was very dissatisfied. All of that work, and so little of it shared with readers.

So I said to my colleagues at the time, we either needed to do better in the future, or quit endorsing altogether. Our staff is too small to spend that much time on something that produces such thin gruel for readers.

Of course, being obsessive, we resolved to keep doing it, but do it better. Fortunately for that purpose, we had far fewer contested races to deal with in the fall. This fact is UNfortunate for democracy — the fact that primary contests are far more numerous than general election ones is a testament to the power of incumbency and partisanship in redistricting. But at least it offered us a chance to be somewhat more thorough in our presentation, to make it more reflective of our preparation.

A couple of weeks ago, I thought of a way to do even better: Do our endorsements earlier. In the past, we’ve held them as long as we can, given the number we have to do — the theory being that that’s when voters are paying the most attention. Also, it meant we had as much information as possible, preventing post-endorsement "surprises" about the candidates.

But I proposed to Warren and Cindi that we start doing them as soon as we can. It keeps them from being jammed up, thereby allowing us more space. It also frees us up as commentators. Increasingly, I have found it hard to write the summaries of interviews without going ahead and saying "this is the guy for us" or "no way on this one." You’ll note that I haven’t written anything from the interviews with the candidates in today’s endorsement of Anton Gunn, because the choice was so clear, and I hate to scoop my colleagues. Now, I’m free to go back and write those blog entries from the interviews — which I will, perhaps today — as well as to write columns. I suspect that Cindi and Warren will find additional things they want to say about their candidates once the ice is broken with an endorsement. Maybe not, but we’ll see.

In any event, I’ve been pleased with the first two endorsements (one running today, the other tomorrow), even if that’s all that is written. They flow better, they’re less cramped and hurried in their style. They’re more thoughtful. And that’s supposed to be the point — provoking thought.

Anyway, here’s the endorsement of Anton Gunn. More commentary on that contest will be forthcoming.

I marvel at the uncanny insight of our readers

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Bailout

… or one of them, anyway. Just now, I was kidding Robert Ariail about this letter in today’s paper:

Ariail’s work deserves a Pulitzer Prize
In case it comes up, I nominate Robert Ariail for a Pulitzer Prize. His pen is multidirectional: It cuts up and down as well as sideways. A case in point is his masterpiece Tuesday regarding the bailout fiasco in Washington.

Brad Warthen also deserves some sort of special credit for whatever role he plays in victim selection.

BOB A. McILWAIN
Columbia

Here’s what’s funny about that if you’re me: Robert’s been having a bad week, by his reckoning. Robert’s problem is that his "bad weeks" are largely in his head. He’s unhappy with his ideas, so he thinks he’s not doing well. Artists. On Monday, it was going so badly that even after our page was long done and in the proofing stage — past mid-afternoon — he hadn’t even started on a cartoon, although he had several sketches he was unhappy with.

He was on the verge of saying he just wouldn’t have a cartoon for the next day (something that almost never happens) when I started in on him, telling him he was dogging it, he could do it, it was all in his head, and a bunch of other halftime exhortations. I told him this particular idea that he had sketched was just what was needed, as it touched on the debate AND the news of Monday. So he finished it.

And this reader not only thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, but sensed somehow that I had something to do with it. I’m loving it.

Biggest one-day Dow drop in history (nice going there, Washington)

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Robert was finishing up a late-breaking cartoon for tomorrow (combining the Friday night debates with the collapses in Washington and New York today), and he mentioned he’d heard that the Dow had its biggest one-day drop in history today.

I said nah — it was bad, but not that bad. He was right; I was wrong. Turns out that was the GOOD news. Other indexes did worse than the Dow.

Here’s the WSJ version. The NYT version sugarcoated it a little, saying it was the biggest drop "in two decades" (I haven’t checked their math). And here’s the AP version:

By TIM PARADIS – AP Business Writer
NEW YORK — Wall Street’s worst fears came to pass Monday, when the government’s financial rescue plan failed in Congress and stocks plunged precipitously – hurtling the Dow Jones industrials down nearly 7 percent. The almost 780-point decline was the largest one-day point drop ever for the index.

The percentage declines for the Standard & Poor’s 500 and Nasdaq composite indexes were even larger. And credit markets, whose turmoil helped feed the stock market’s angst, froze up further amid the growing belief that the country is headed into a spreading credit and economic crisis.

Stunned traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, their faces tense and mouths agape, watched on TV screens as the House voted down in midafternoon the administration’s $700 billion plan to buy up distressed mortgage securities. Activity on the floor became frenetic as the "sell" orders blew in.

The Dow told the story of the market’s despair. The blue chip index, dropped by hundreds of points in a matter of moments, and by the end of the day had passed by far its previous record for a one-day drop, 684.81, set in the first trading day after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

The selling was so intense that just 162 stocks rose on the NYSE – and 3,073 dropped.

It takes an incredible amount of fear to set off such an intense reaction on Wall Street, and the worry now is that with the rescue plan’s fate uncertain, no one knows how the financial sector hobbled by hundreds of billions of dollars in bad mortgage bets will recover….

Nice going there, Washington. Nice leadership. Got any more tricks up your sleeves? You hammerheads…

Wall_street_wart2

So now there WILL be a debate…

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No sooner had I hit the button on this last post, but this came in:

AP-APNewsAlert/12
BC-APNewsAlert

WASHINGTON (AP) _ Republican John McCain will attend debate.

Well, that simplifies the rest of this day. It makes it a little longer, and it screws up Saturday, but at least I’m not about to waste time writing a placeholder column, so that’s something…

Getting cheesed off at McCain

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OK, I’m already past the point at which I’m normally supposed to have a column for Sunday. Trouble is, so much of what’s happened this week points to the debate tonight as a sort of nexus, a climax of the week’s news, what with the presidential election and the Wall Street bailout conflating.

So I had decided that the thing to do was to watch the debate tonight, and write a column tomorrow for Sunday — which means bringing in another editorial board member to read behind me (I can sub it out on the page myself, but I don’t put anything into the paper without an editor), but it seems the best plan, especially since none of the syndicated stuff moving today will reflect what happens in the debate.

IF there is a debate. And that’s the rub. Not knowing, I’ve got to construct an entire other column from whole cloth, just to hold the space — and to fill it if there is no debate. And I’m not happy with any of my ideas, but I’ve got to go ahead and write SOMETHING at hyperspeed.

So nice going there, John.

bradwarthen.com

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