Brad Warthen's Blog

Video: A brief history of cartooning at The State

Robert Ariail delivered a lecture last Thursday night, as part of the prestigious Calhoun Lecture Series at the Strom Thurmond Institute at Clemson U. It was about the history of cartooning in general, and at The State in particular.

Today, he dropped by my office to share an anecdote that he told up in Clemson, one which seems particularly apropos to share today, the day the news came out that his career at The State is coming to an end.

It's about the only other cartoonist The State ever actually employed full-time, back in the days of the Gonzales brothers, and why it took 74 years for the paper to hire one after its first experience...

Never mind maneuvers...

Just watched the end of a movie in which Lawrence Olivier was strutting about in Napoleonic-era admiral's uniform with one empty right sleeve, which could only mean he was portraying Lord Nelson. And there was Vivien Leigh talking about Lord Keith and St. Vincent and the rest, so I was hooked to the end of it. Saw a highly melodramatic rendering of Nelson's death at Trafalgar.

As you know, I'm a huge fan of the Aubrey-Maturin novels, and Lord Nelson was Jack Aubrey's hero. In the books, Jack is the one to whom Nelson said, "Never mind maneuvers, always go straight at 'em." In reality, he said that to Lord Cochrane, upon whom Aubrey is largely based.

Here's the kicker: After the movie, the guy who introduces the features on TCM said the movie was so chock-full of homilies about the importance of standing up to dictators that the director was summoned to Congress -- still gripped by isolationism -- where our lawmakers were investigating pro-war propaganda by Hollywood. He was scheduled to appear on Dec. 12, 1941, so he lucked out there. By his appearance date, isolationism was no longer quite the thing, you know.

Imagine that -- Hollywood being investigated for pro-war propaganda.

I'd better go to bed now.

A secessionist Freudian slip

My favorite part of the concurrent resolution described in my last post is this:

Whereas, the several states of the Untied States of America, through the Constitution and the amendments thereto, constituted a general government for special purposes and delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving each state to itself, the residuary right to their own self government. Now, therefore,

Yep, you read that right, and all I did was copy and paste if from the online text of H. 3509. It does indeed say "the Untied States of America."

Hey, if you can't break up the Union one way...

Nullification: Are we going to do it again?

Michael Rodgers over at "Take Down The Flag" is worried that we are, with S.C. House bill 3509, which seeks a concurrent resolution. And you know, you can easily see why he would think that, given such language as this:

Whereas, the South Carolina General Assembly declares that the people of this State have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves as a free, sovereign, and independent State, and shall exercise and enjoy every power, jurisdiction, and right pertaining thereto, which is not expressly delegated by them to the United States of America in the congress assembled; and ...

I found that "sole and exclusive right" bit interesting, with the way it seemed to brush aside the federalist notion of shared sovereignty. That language seems to go beyond the purpose stated in the summary, which is:

TO AFFIRM THE RIGHTS OF ALL STATES INCLUDING SOUTH CAROLINA BASED ON THE PROVISIONS OF THE NINTH AND TENTH AMENDMENTS TO THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION.

The point being, of course, that since we do HAVE the Ninth and 10th amendments, every word of this resolution is superfluous unless it means to negate federal authority in some way not currently set out in law.

And a certain neo-Confederate sensibility is suggested with the very first example of the sort of action on the part of the federal government that would constitute an abridgement of the Constitution under this resolution:

(1)    establishing martial law or a state of emergency within one of the states comprising the United States of America without the consent of the legislature of that state;...

As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up: The bill's sponsors are indeed suggesting that this resolution is needed to declare that we won't let Reconstruction be reinstituted.

Because, you know, that Obama is such a clear and present danger. Or something. I guess.

Of course, not everyone is shocked, appalled or amused at the notion of a new nullification movement. Check out this op-ed piece we recently ran online, about Mark Sanford and nullification.

Historic Isadore Lourie speech

Running into Joel Lourie today at Rotary reminds me of this historic speech of his Dad's that he shared with me back in January, saying, "I thought you might enjoy a speech given by my father in 1970 when I.S. Leevy Johnson and Jim Felder became two of the first three African-Americans elected to the SC House since the early 1900s. Given the upcoming inauguration in Washington, it is a great example of how far we have come."

He said I should feel free to share it, and I meant to. Now, belatedly, I do so, in a spirit of gratitude for the leadership that Joel's late father gave this community:

Remarks

By the

Honorable Isadore E. Lourie

On the Occasion of the Installation of the

Richland County Legislative Delegation

November 13, 1970

House Chamber, The State House, Columbia, South Carolina

 

For most of us … our youth was a pleasant time when bare feet carried us through happy summers and warm breakfasts carried us to schools where learning and friendship mixed to fill our minds with new ideas and our characters with strength.  The world was at our feet.  Every one of our mothers and fathers held out unlimited hope for our futures.  No barriers stood in the way of our dreams.  In every sense of the word … we were free … free to look forward to tomorrow … free to be ourselves … free to be proud … free to harbor all of the hopes of youth … free to daydream of conquering challenges. 

 

At the same time … some of our neighbors felt the frustration of limited dreams.  History had written that theirs was a smaller world where hope was rationed in small portions and daydreams were not visions of things to come … but fantasies of wishful thinking that would be shattered by a world where clouds of misunderstanding blackened the horizons of hope.  To eight generations of Black children … the time between birth and death was an age of frustration and broken dreams.

 

The days of our youth were times of different worlds when we saw things in different lights … one world illuminated by unbounded future … the other illuminated by the dismal gray of limited fortune.

 

The years since we were young have ticked away waiting for those two separate worlds to confront each other.  In some places that confrontation has been marked by spilled blood … by the clash of raw emotions that have turned neighbor against neighbor.  In some places … the shrill sounds of separatism and hate have been the chorus which accompanied that confrontation.  In some places … both worlds have been washed away by changing times only to be replaced by even more intense bitterness. 

 

Last week … thousands of Richland County citizens stood quietly in lines before polling booths pondering the course of our history.  In orderly processes … they marched one by one into gray metal machines which would register their decisions.  Alone … unwatched … unaided … they pulled the levers that bring our people together.  Silently … without a word … thousands in company of only their own thoughts … reached and pulled and then walked away to let collective judgment steer the dreams of the next generation of young daydreamers. 

 

In an old warehouse … the men sworn in today … waited for those secrets to become known.  Men who work with their hands … women who raise children … lawyers … doctors … black men … white men … children and grandparents crowded together in front of television sets which lit the campaign headquarters with anticipation.  All eyes found a common direction and calculated silently as returns flashed on the screen.  The favorable early returns began the crowd buzzing … and discussions of hope started in each corner of the red, white and blue bunted room.  Ten precincts … twenty precincts … thirty … then forty … and finally all precincts reported their judgments.  The two worlds had come together peacefully.  In Richland County, South Carolina, we had chosen the road to decision that allows every man to take part. 

 

Jim Felder and I.  S. Leevy Johnson have become Representatives in the General Assembly of all the people.  Today … they are very special because they are the first.  But they will never be special again.  And that is what it was all about … making it an everyday occurrence to be a lawmaker … making it normal to serve your fellow man no matter what the color of your skin is.  Some newsmen have predicted Jim Felder and I.  S.  Leevy Johnson will be very special Representatives.  But it is our hope that they will just be Representatives … providing answers to the problems we all face.

 

Governments are established to solve our common problems.  Lawmakers seek solutions for all the people … and none of the people can be a special case.  Perhaps now … it will be that way in South Carolina. 

(Note – the speech is for the installation of the Richland Delegation which included I.S. Leevy Johnson and Jim Felder.  Herbert Fielding, from Charleston, was the third African-American elected to the House that year.  These three men were the first African-Americans elected to the SC House of Representatives since the early 1900s)

But how about those spiffy MODERN blue laws?

Got a release today from the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, calling my attention to a NYT editorial headlined "A Dry Sunday in Connecticut," and saying that in case I wanted to write anything about Sunday sales of liquor, to consider the following:

• Archaic Blue Laws make no sense in a 21st-century economy where Sunday has become the second-busiest shopping day of the week.
• Beer, wine and spirits are already permitted for on-premise consumption at bars and restaurants seven days a week.  Allowing the sale of beer, wine and spirits at off-premise retail outlets on Sunday would simply give adult consumers more choices and added convenience.
• The state will benefit from the increased tax revenues generated by an additional day of package store sales.  Contrary to some who believe that Sunday sales will just spread six days of sales over seven, recent implementation of Sunday Sales in 12 states (Colorado’s repeal was too recent for data) shows that in 2006 Sunday sales generated $212 million in new sales for retailers.  This figure is expected to increase annually.  See economic analysis of those states here.
• No legislation forces any package store to open on Sundays. It simply gives store owners the right to decide for themselves which days to open. 
• Sunday liquor sales will not lead to increased drunk driving.  According to an analysis using government data on alcohol-related fatalities, there is no statistical difference in states that allow Sunday liquor sales compared to those that do not.

Which provokes me to say,

• First, we have no plans to do any editorials on the subject. I doubt we would reach consensus, partly because I'm such a mossback. I miss having a day of rest, so pretty much anything that is still proscribed on Sunday, I'm for keeping it. And before you secularists have a fit and fall in it about "establishment of religion," yadda-yadda, I don't much care which day of the week you pick. Make it Tuesday, if that makes you feel less threatened and oppressed. Just pick a day on which we can all kick back and not be expected to run around and get things done, just because we can. And don't give me that stuff about how I don't have to shop just because the stores are open. Yes, I do. There is so much pressure on my time that I can't possibly get everything expected of me done in six days, and if you give me a seventh on which to do them, I'll have to use it. And if you don't understand that, there's no point it our talking about it. The only way to have a day of rest is for there to be a day in which we roll up the sidewalks, so to speak, and everybody understands that you couldn't do it that day, so they don't expect you to. Now I know we're not going back to those days, but I am not inclined to add anything else to the list of stuff going on 24/7. You remind me that "Sunday has become the second-busiest shopping day of the week," and you think that's an argument for doing something else on Sunday? You're kidding, right? It just makes me tired thinking about it. Get somebody else to write your editorial; you're barking up the wrong tree with me. And all of you kids, get off of my lawn! Dagnabit.
• Is your use of the term "archaic blue laws" meant to suggest that there's another category of spiffy, modern blue laws that you don't mind so much? Or are you just being redundant?
• Correct me if I'm wrong, but your point about increased tax revenues means that people will be buying more liquor, right? I see how that's a good thing for you and the fine folks at the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, but how is that a good thing for the rest of us?
• Yeah, right -- nobody would be forced to open on Sunday. This reminds me of when I worked in Jackson, TN, and the owner of the largest department store in town fought against lifting the blue laws because he said that if you lifted them, the big chain stores would come to town and drive him out of business. Besides, he liked giving his workers Sunday off. And he was Jewish, by the way. The newspaper ignored him (even though he was its biggest advertiser, for those of you who keep track of such things) and kept advocating for lifting blue laws, that eventually happened, the big chain stores came to town, he had to open on Sundays, and he soon went out of business anyway. When it comes to competition, folks, "choice" can be a myth. If your competitors are all doing it, you have to.
• I'll take your word for it on the drunk driving. Although it seems a bit weird that you'd be selling MORE liquor (remember the tax revenues thing), but people won't be driving drunk more. Whatever.

Just look upon me as a disgruntled beer drinker -- one who was perfectly happy buying enough on Saturday to make it through the weekend, and thinks anybody who wasn't organized enough or self-aware enough to know ahead of time that he might want a beer on Sunday is pretty pathetic. Dagnabit.

Historians: Lincoln is tops; W. ranks 36th

Just for a talker, I thought I'd share the results of this C-SPAN survey on how historians rate the leadership of presidents:

C-SPAN RELEASES SECOND HISTORIANS SURVEY OF

 PRESIDENTIAL LEADERSHIP

Abraham Lincoln Retains Top Position;

Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton Advance Since 2000 Survey; George W. Bush Ranks 36^th Overall By Historians

(Washington, DC, February 15, 2009) --  Timed for Presidents Day 2009, C-SPAN today releases the results of its second Historians Survey of Presidential Leadership, in which a cross-section of 65 presidential historians ranked the 42 former occupants of the White House on ten attributes of leadership.

As in C-SPAN’s first such survey, released in 2000, Abraham Lincoln received top billing among the historians, just as the nation marks the bicentennial of his birth. George Washington placed second, while spots three through five were held by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, and Harry Truman, in that order.

Based on the results of historians surveyed, George W. Bush received an overall ranking of 36.  Among other recent Presidents, Bill Clinton who was ranked 21 in the 2000 survey, advanced six spots in 2009 to an overall ranking of 15; Ronald Reagan moved from 11 to 10; George H.W. Bush went from 20 to 18, and Jimmy Carter’s ranking declined from 22 to 25.  

As in 2000, C-SPAN was guided in this effort by a team of academic advisors: Dr. Douglas Brinkley, Professor of History at Rice University; Dr. Edna Greene Medford, Associate Professor of History, Howard University; and Richard Norton Smith, Scholar in Residence at George Mason University. The team approved the ten criteria, which were the same used in C-SPAN’s 2000 Survey, reviewed the list of invited participants, and supervised the reporting of the results.  Harvey C. Mansfield, William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Government at Harvard, also consulted on the names of invited historians with an overall goal of geographic, demographic, and ideological diversity.

“Bill Clinton and Ulysses S. Grant aren't often mentioned in the same sentence - until now.  Participants in the latest C-SPAN survey of presidential historians have boosted each man significantly higher than in the original survey conducted in 2000. All of which goes to show two things: the fluidity with which presidential reputations are judged, and the difficulty of assessing any president who has only just recently left office,” said Richard Norton Smith. 

“As much as is possible, we created a poll that was non-partisan, judicious and fair minded, and it’s fitting that for the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln that he remains at the top of these presidential rankings,” noted Dr. Douglas Brinkley.

“How we rank our presidents is, to a large extent, influenced by our own times. Today’s concerns shape our views of the past, be it in the area of foreign policy, managing the economy, or human rights.  The survey results also reinforce the idea that history is less about agreed-upon facts than about perceptions of who we are as a nation and how our leaders have either enhanced or tarnished that image we have of ourselves. Lincoln continues to rank at the top in all categories because he is perceived to embody the nation’s avowed core values: integrity, moderation, persistence in the pursuit of honorable goals, respect for human rights, compassion; those who collect near the bottom are perceived as having failed to uphold those values,” concluded Dr. Edna Medford.

Full rankings for each of the 42 presidents are available at
www.c-span.org/presidentialsurvey <http://www.c-span.org/presidentialsurvey>

Methodology

C-SPAN’s academic advisors devised a survey in which participants used a one ("not effective") to ten ("very effective") scale to rate each president on ten qualities of presidential leadership: "Public Persuasion," "Crisis Leadership," "Economic Management," "Moral Authority," "International Relations," "Administrative Skills," "Relations with Congress," "Vision/Setting An Agenda," “Pursued Equal Justice for All,” and “Performance Within the Context of His Times."

Surveys were distributed to 147 historians and other professional observers of the presidency, drawn from a database of C-SPAN's programming, augmented by suggestions from the academic advisors.  Sixty-five agreed to participate.  Participants were guaranteed that individual survey results remain confidential.  Survey responses were tabulated by averaging all responses in a given category for each president.  Each of the ten categories was given equal weighting in the total scores.  Overseeing the 2000 and 2009 tabulations were C-SPAN CFO Robert Kennedy and Dr. Robert Browning, a political scientist who serves as director of the C-SPAN archives.

Note that presidents might do well in one category, not so well in another. For instance, Bill Clinton made the top ten on "Public Persuasion," but was sixth from the bottom on "Moral Authority." Which makes sense.

I was going to construct my own Nick Hornby-style Top Five List, but I found it hard to argue with the one that the historians came up with:

1. Abraham Lincoln
2. George Washington
3. Franklin D. Roosevelt
4. Theodore Roosevelt
5. Harry Truman

I hated that my favorite Founder John Adams didn't make the Top Ten -- he came in 17th -- but it's hard to argue with. His greatest contributions to the nation came long before he was president, and however much I like him, he was not that successful a president (probably the greatest thing he did as president was surrender power peacefully to Jefferson). Sort of like the fact that I LIKED Jimmy Carter, but can't say he did that great a job, accomplishment-wise.

Sheriff Lott back in the day

This previous post got me to thinking that some of you might be interested in traveling down memory lane a bit with regard to Sheriff Leon Lott, since he's recently become nationally famous.

As y'all know, I feel a certain kinship for the sheriff (whom we endorsed in the last election). We call each other "twin" because we were both born on the same day in the same year in South Carolina. Also, he has been named "Toughest Cop" twice, and if there were such a thing as a "Toughest Editorial Geek" contest, y'all know I would have won it at least twice by now. (He's also won the Miss Vista Queen drag pageant, but there I can draw no parallels to myself. It seems we are not identical twins.)

As for the controversy in which he is currently engaged, I'm not as stirred up as a lot of folks one way or the other. I sort of go back and forth on it. I think the law should be enforced equitably -- but I also wonder how many people who were not white and famous have been prosecuted when they weren't at the very least caught holding. I most emphatically do NOT agree with the folks who see this as evidence that the War on Drugs is stupid or useless or whatever. I think it's a good thing this stuff is illegal. But I also doubt that this particular case is really worth the resources devoted to it thus far.

Anyway, wherever you stand on all of this, I thought I'd provide this reminder that Leon has never been shy about going after people who break our drug laws. He's devoted a career to it, done it with a great deal of dash, panache and personal courage, and has often been controversial.

Here is a profile Clif LeBlanc wrote for The State when Leon was on the way to unseating his ex-boss as sheriff. I pulled and scanned some photos from our pre-electronic files by way of illustration.

THE STATE
LEON LOTT: UP FROM 'MIAMI VICE'
Published on: 10/30/1996
Section: FRONT
Edition: FINAL
Page: A1
By CLIF LeBLANC, Staff Writer
Illustration: PHOTO: color & bw

Editor's note: This is the second of two articles examining the candidates for Richland County sheriff.

Leon Lott lives to catch the bad guys. He revels in the nitty-gritty and the glitz of being a cop. He may like it a little too much.

The 43-year-old Democratic challenger in Tuesday's election for Richland County sheriff believes in working hard and getting his hands dirty.

The way he went about busting pushers and users earned him a reputation and awards. But his boss, the incumbent sheriff, said it cost Lott the job he loves.

The long hours he put in as a narcotics detective for nine years also claimed his marriage and hurt his relationships with his daughters.

Nearly four years after reaching the depths of his personal and professional life, Lott feels he is a better officer who has grown enough to become the forward-looking "sheriff for the 21st century."

Dirty Harry and Sonny Crockett were personas Lott once wore with relish during high-flying days when he drove seized Porsches, sported an 18-carat Rolex, worked choice undercover cases with federal agents in Florida and postured for cameras.

Now he blames the Hollywood image on the media, though his best friend admits Lott enjoyed playing the role to his advantage. Lott still wears the $2,650 watch.

Citizens or celluloid? Lott has been chief of the tiny St. Matthews Police Department for three years. That has helped him appreciate real-life role models.

"I see myself as a combination of Frank Powell, Chief Austin as far as PR, and Sheriff Wells as far as being involved in investigations."

Powell is the former five-term sheriff of Richland County who hired Lott in 1973 and has come to epitomize, for Lott, the lawman unswayed by political influence.

Chief Charles P. Austin is known for his ability to sell the community policing philosophy that has brought him and the city of Columbia success.

Union County Sheriff Howard Wells won national recognition for his handling of the Susan Smith case.

But Lott's critics don't buy that he is anything but the hot-dog narc who fashioned himself after make-believe cops and tried to live by rules that work only on the screen.

"He actually thinks he's Don Johnson. He actually thinks this is 'Miami Vice,' " said GOP opponent Allen Sloan, refering to the freewheeling fictional narcotics officer from the TV police drama that ended in 1989.

"That still exists today," Sloan said of Lott. "All the rules apply, except to Leon."

Two law enforcement officials who worked years with Lott in Richland County share a similar concern.

"He has an ends-justify-the-means mentality," one said, requesting anonymity because he would have to collaborate with Lott if he wins the election. "That's frightening in any law enforcement officer and especially in the top person."

Lott says he is a college-educated professional who can breathe new life into a tradition-bound agency.

"I never considered myself a hot dog," Lott said, wearing a tie and chatting from an easy chair in his modest living room. "The Sonny Crockett thing ... I think I fed off what the news media created. I turned it around and tried to use it to our advantage."

Lott's best friend, Jon Fins, said the brash label comes from people who don't know him.

"To me, Leon is a guy in sweats who works out real hard to stay in shape, grabs a sandwich at McDonald's and goes right back to work," said Fins, co-owner of an Assembly Street pawn shop where Lott bought his Rolex.

Fierce or fair? Lott's detractors say his zeal often overrides good judgment.

Just before Christmas 1987, for example, his aggresiveness got the best of him, said Jim Anders, then-5th Circuit solicitor and now a strong supporter of Sloan.

Anders produced a blistering order from a federal judge over the seizure of a new, black BMW convertible during a drug bust.

Judge Clyde Hamilton ordered the car returned to its owner and blasted the U.S. Attorney's office, the FBI and then-Capt. Lott of the sheriff's office. The judge cited "many irregularities" and "questionable motivations" for taking the BMW.

"Captain Lott's testimony raised the possibility that he had sought forfeiture ... for an improper purpose, specifically to serve as his private vehicle," the judge's ruling said. It appeared, Hamilton said, that Lott wanted to drive the care to the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va.

Lott was scheduled to leave for coveted training at the prestigious academy in about the time the BMW was seized.

The car had only the remains of a marijuana joint, Anders said, adding he refused to seize the car because state law required a minimum of 10 pounds of pot before government could move to confiscate a vehicle used in the drug business.

"That's the kind of reckless behavior that I'm concerned about," Anders said. "It's less character than ability. A smart police officer doesn't get himself involved in cases like that."

Lott's explanation? "That's not pointing any finger at me. It's pointing fingers at the Richland County Sheriff's Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Attorney's office. They made the decisions to move forward. I didn't force them to do that."

But Lott initiated the seizure and pressured the young woman who owned the car to voluntarily turn it over for forfeiture.

Caught in middle? Lott's most publicized criticism as a narcotics agent occurred in 1991. A circuit court judge threatened him with contempt for changing agreements with drug suspects, for ignoring a court order to arrest a father- and-son drug-dealing team from Miami and especially for not adequately supervising drug peddlers who were out on bond so they could help police make cases.

Enrique and Fabian Valencia were busted at Owens Field in February 1990 with 11 pounds of cocaine. In exchange for reduced sentences laid out in written agreements, they pledged to help Lott lure bigger dealers into South Carolina.

Judge Carol Connor stung Lott for his actions, but didn't punish the pushers because they met their terms.

Anders said he doesn't remember the agreement and Sloan publicly backed Lott when the deal made news in March 1991.

Lott produced his records of the case, which show that Anders' chief narcotics prosecutor signed the agreement. A Feb. 19, 1991, memo from Lott to then-5th Circuit Solicitor Dick Harpootlian, who disavowed the deal after suceeding Anders, indicates that Sloan "had been advised of the situation."

Lott maintains he was caught in the middle between officials who made an agreement in writing and a new prosecutor and judge who took a different view after the fact.

"If I did violate it," Lott said of Connor's order. "It was with the approval of the sheriff."

Harpootlian was so concerned about Lott's judgment at the time that he announced he would review all his drug deals and recommended to Sloan that Lott be taken out of narcotics enforcement.

Sloan moved him to what Lott calls a do-nothing administrative position, where he stayed until he was fired in December 1992.

The demotion and dismissal was the bleakest time in Lott's life. His marriage fell apart during that time and he had to try to explain to his three daughters why he was out of the profession he loved.

It took Lott six months to land the chief's job with the seven-member St. Matthews department.

Harpootlian and Lott have made peace and the prosecutor-turned-defense-lawyer is backing Lott's campaign.

"I think Leon had a life-changing experience," Harpootlian said. "He lost his wife. He lost his job. He's somebody who realizes he's screwed up. He's matured. The guy's real talented. He gets up every morning wanting to be a cop."

Lott doesn't agree with all of that. "I don't think I made immature or bad decisions," he said.

But asked if he would OK the BMW and Valencia decisions if he were sheriff, Lott responded, "I would approve."

Lott conceded that he has changed and plans to continue his professional growth. "I guess age matures you. I feel like I'm a more rounded law enforcement officer now."

But controversy has followed Lott to St. Matthews.

Before the June primary, Lott ran afoul of the federal Hatch Act, which limits political activity by employees whose agencies get money from Washington. Federal officials said Lott should not run for office because as chief of the Calhoun County town he administered nearly $59,000 in federal grants.

The dispute was settled this month after Lott agreed to drop the title of chief and sever any ties to supervision of the grants. But Lott remains chief in every other way after the town named him police "administrator."

Lott has built his campaign on the theme of higher standards. He said he will be fairer, he has the energy to be an administrator as well as a street cop, and he has fresher ideas.

He promises a network of 24-hour, full-service substations, a lower crime rate and all without a tax increase

The making of a cop. Lott fell into a career in law enforcement. More accurately, he threw himself into the job.

It was a boring summer evening just before his senior year at Aiken High School. Lott and some friends decided to egg cars from an overpass on I-20, which was under construction.

"I think the first car we egged stopped. We had egged the chief investigator for the sheriff's department," Lott recalled. "Me, being a (baseball) player ... I had been the only one to hit the car."

The teen-agers tried to get away, but the detective pulled them over. He didn't rough them up or charge them, but he did behave professionally as he called their parents.

"It made such an impression on me ... it just grabbed a hold of me," Lott said. The job appealed to his sense of rooting for the underdog (crime victims), to his interest in untangling things that are puzzling and to his restlessness with monotony.

The work also served as an outlet for his competitiveness.

Lott is media savvy and at ease before cameras, having appeared dozens of times in local newspapers and TV as well as nationally on "America's Most Wanted." But that self-assured image clashes with the quiet, reserved teen-ager Lott said he was.

He finds it odd that he's called a hot dog now when that was the kind of athlete he disliked in high school. "I thought actions spoke louder than words," Lott said.

The words have been loud and harsh in the Sloan-Lott race.

"There's been a lot of talk that this is about revenge," Lott said. "It's not. When he fired me ... he gave me a chance to go out and show - prove to myself - that I could be more than just a narcotics officer. I got my revenge by being successful, by showing I could be a chief.

"I want to come back to Richland County, personally, so I can see my kids everyday and, professionally, because I can do a better job."

In case you're wondering, here's a key to the five photos on this post:

1. Top: The original cutline from August 1986 said, "Columbia's version of 'Miami Vice'...Narcotic investigator Lt. Leon Lott shows off his sports car, a Porsche 944"
2. Mug shot: The notation on the back of the print, dated May 24, 1984, says "Richland Sheriff's investigator Lt. Leon Lott (chief narcotics deputy)"
3. On a bust: The July 2, 1986, cutline said, "Leon Lott before entering trailer of suspected grower."
4. In coat and tie: Dated Nov. 11, 1988, the cutline says "Capt. Leon Lott displays some seized equipment."
5. Below: Photo taken by me during the sheriff's endorsement interview in May 2008.

Bad blood between Leon, Harpo?

Looking for something else, I happened to run into this old story from 1991. It's from Leon Lott's Miami Vice days as head of the narcotics squad of the sheriff's department. As many of you will remember, back then Leon had a rep as a bit of a cowboy (in addition to Sonny Crockett, Dirty Harry was invoked) who liked to kick down doors and drive hot, confiscated cars.

But what I had forgotten was that Dick Harpootlian -- who was quoted in today's story being critical of Leon on behalf of his client, busted in connection with the Michael Phelps investigation -- had such a beef with Leon back then, when Dick was the solicitor. Interesting back story. Don't miss the classic quote at the end from Leon: "I love narcotics." (OK, so maybe that's a little out of context.):

          THE STATE

NARCOTICS CHIEF SAYS
POLITICS COST HIM JOB
Published on: 03/09/1991
Section: METRO/REGION
Edition: FINAL
Page: 1B
By TWILA DECKER and JOHN ALLARD, Staff Writers
Illustration: Photo, bw

Caption: Lott to be reassigned

Richland County's vice Capt. Leon Lott, often compared to "Miami Vice" character Sonny Crockett, will be transferred out of the job he loves after criticism by 5th Circuit Solicitor Dick Harpootlian.

Harpootlian asked a circuit judge last week to void a deal made by Lott a year ago that dismissed charges against a father-and-son drug-dealing team, Fabian and Enrique Valencia, in exchange for information about drug deals in South Carolina.

Harpootlian said the deal, which hasn't resulted in any arrests in this state, never should have been made. Judge Carol Connor is still considering whether she'll void the agreement.

"I think the conduct of Capt. Lott in the Valencia case . . . gave rise to serious questions about his judgment," Harpootlian said. "He let two of the county's biggest drug dealers go free."

Surprisingly, Sheriff Allen Sloan, who had strained relations with Lott last year and threatened to move him to the burglary division, has come to Lott's defense and says the move has nothing to do with the Valencia case.

"That deal was sanctioned by (former 5th Circuit) Solicitor Jim Anders," Sloan said. "Leon thought it was a good idea, and he still thinks it was a good deal. I back the boy 100 percent."

Sloan said Lott has expressed enthusiasm about his new responsibilities as captain of administration and believes that it's time to move on after nine years of heading the narcotics division.

But a somber Lott, who said he had no choice but to accept the new job because he has three children and a wife to support, gave a different account of the move late Thursday night.

Lott said Harpootlian gave Sloan an ultimatum: Get rid of Lott or there would be "major problems" between the Sheriff's Department and the solicitor's office.

Harpootlian denies pressuring Sloan.

"It's unfortunate that Leon views everything in this sinister way," Harpootlian said. "That might be the way it works in the world of narcotics, but this is the world of professionals.

"It's the sheriff's prerogative to organize his office in a way that's going to be most conducive to a good working relationship."

Sloan said Lott will be in charge of training, the DARE program, drug testing of applicants and officers and recruiting and hiring. He also will be in charge of seeking grants.

Deputy Chief Fred Riddle, who, unlike Lott, dresses conservatively in a suit and tie each day, will have the narcotics division added to his responsibilities.

"This will assure a daily account of everything they do," Sloan said. "But I am not in the least bit discouraged or unpleased with Leon's performance."

Riddle, who will be Lott's supervisor, will continue to be in charge of investigations and administration.

Lott also was criticized by Harpootlian and several defense lawyers for failing to monitor his drug agents' deals, spending $18,000 on a Mustang chase car and requiring his officers to meet quotas.

"This constant pressure to meet quotas means quantity takes precedence over quality, which means you arrest someone in whatever way you can," said Leigh Leventis, a Columbia attorney.

"Unless you have assets to turn over or agree to work for them as a snitch, they say you're going to prison. The system has allowed all kinds of abuses," Leventis said.

But Lott denies enforcing a quota, saying the number of arrests varies from month to month. He also said in a recent interview that he keeps close watch on his 26 narcotics agents to make sure they're following the law.

"I control narcotics with an iron fist over my guys. I try to be aware of everything that goes on. They have high intensity to work and perform," Lott said. "We're out there working our butts off to do something about the drug problem."

Lott, who was voted South Carolina Law Enforcement Association officer of the year in 1989, said work has been the focus of his life.

"I love narcotics. I don't know what I would do if I was transferred," Lott said last month.

Happy birthday, Abe and Chuck

So, if you were invited to simultaneous birthday parties today, for Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, and the actual honorees would be there alive and participating in the celebration, which one would you go to?

Me, I'd pick Lincoln. They say he was a lot of fun at parties. Also, I look up to him and what he did more. Nothing against Darwin, but I suspect that if he hadn't worked out natural selection, someone else would have. But if Lincoln hadn't been president, the union would have fallen apart -- nobody else would have been as single-mindedly stubborn about holding it together. I mean, why do you think so many of my fellow South Carolinians are still ticked at him? And even though all of my ancestors that I know about fought for the opposite outcome (five great-great grandaddies that I know about), this Southern boy is glad that the U.S. of A. is still around. So it all worked out well in the end.

All of which reminds me that I need to get back to reading Obama's favorite, desert-island-must-have book, Team of Rivals. I've let myself get sidetracked with re-reading O'Brian, and reading Moby Dick for the first time, so I need to buckle down and get back to Goodwin.

As for Darwin, I thought I'd share this interesting piece that I saw in The New Republic, headlined "Charles Darwin, Conservative?"

Basically, it examines the great irony of modern politics, which is that conservatives tend to snub Darwin, even though his idea of order arising from nature without a guiding plan fits THEIR ideas about how society can produce civilization without guiding government.

Meanwhile, liberals who honor Darwin act as though they don't believe in that principle one bit, since they think you need a strong guiding hand of government to have order.

George Will made much the same point in his column that we ran Sunday, but I think the point is made more clearly in the TNR piece.

By the way, I side with the modern-day liberals on this point: I don't think you can have order without government. Take away the guiding hand, and you get Somalia -- warring militias running around firing AK-47s at everybody. But you know already that I thought that. I'm a rule-of-law guy.

As for the thing that everybody fights about over Darwin... Well, I'm a Catholic, and I hear the pope made peace with Darwin awhile back.

You know what I think about evolution, and natural selection? I think that is just exactly the way God would create the world. I don't see Him doing it like Cecil B. DeMille, six days and abracadabra, here's the world. I think He'd do it the slow, majestic, complicated way. Evolution seems just His style, to me. But what do I know?

(Now watch this: The controversial part of this post won't be the Darwin stuff; it'll be that I said nice things about Lincoln.)

Not that 'Morning in America' hubris again...

Just got this e-mail a little while ago from a reader (I guess it was a reader, anyway):

The headlines today said that McCain claims Obama "must" consult with the GOP on stimulus talks. That's not true, any more than saying that Ronald Reagan was required to allow Dems much input in his 1981 plans. On election eve 1980, even old democrats like me realized that the public had said no to government spending, said no to government meddling and no to more regulations. I believed the public was wrong, but also understood that Reagan's mandate was to proceed as he'd promised.
 
Thirty years later, Americans' have decided that we need government, government to stop us from dying from eating peanut butter, government to stop bankers from stealing from us, and government to provide jobs until the economy picks up. That's Obama's mandate, and to do anything else would be to back off from his promises. McCain is wrong. He and his party lost. Obama wants to be nice and extend an olive branch to the losers, but it is not necessary that he does so. What's necessary is he goes forward with his plans.

To which I felt compelled to answer as follows (slightly edited, as I read back over it):

Interesting you should mention 1981. I'm still ticked off that Democrats back then took just the attitude that you're calling for. Tip O'Neill and the rest said, well, Reagan won the election, so let's give him anything that he wants. This, after four years of that same Democratic Congress not giving Jimmy Carter ANYthing he wanted.

I'm still mad about it. I'm still mad about how the whole world just rolled over for Reagan. Much of the media was full of that "Morning in America" hoopla, and I felt like .... well, have you ever been the only person in the room who was not drunk or stoned, and everybody around you thought everything was just SO funny, and you just thought they were all very irritating? Not much fun, huh? Well, that was me in the Reagan era.

I don't feel that way this time. I sort of thought Reagan's win in 1980 was the end of the world -- not because I was anti-Republican, but because I had liked Jimmy Carter so much (I don't like him as much as I did then, but I really liked him then). I don't feel that way at all about Obama. Out of all the people running for president last year, McCain and Obama were my first and second choices. So while I'm sorry McCain didn't win, I'm glad Obama didn't lose. I'm highly ambivalent on that score.

But one reason I DO like Obama so much -- and liked him so much more than Hillary -- is that he IS about post-partisanship. (That's one of the main things I liked about McCain, too.) He's nothing like Reagan; he's far less the ideological warrior. And if he doesn't work with McCain (something which, to his credit, he's already demonstrated a willingness to do), then he's not the guy that a LOT of people voted for. I would expect exactly the same from McCain -- a willingness to work across the aisle -- had he been elected.

And I have little patience for Democrats who act the way the Reaganites did in the early 80s -- We won, so we'll do what we damn' well please. Unfortunately, I do hear that from some. Like "Morning in America" revisited. And I didn't like that triumphalist bull the first time, not one bit.

And if you don't care about bipartisanship, think about this: There's a good chance this stimulus will fail. There's a good chance ANY stimulus would fail. So how would you feel about it if, once the stimulus fails, the GOP recaptures Congress, and then goes around telling Obama and the world that "We won, so we don't have to listen to you?"

Far better that we have a stimulus plan that both parties buy into. It's a little late for that, but it WOULD have been far better. It's never good to have one of the two major parties politically invested in the nation failing...

(I'll add one more thought: I would not say that Obama "must" work with McCain et al. I'm just saying that to the extent that he can, he should. This is not to say that if you've tried to bring the GOP along and they've just refused and you truly believe your plan is the right one, you don't go ahead -- just as I thought it was right for us to go ahead into Iraq without France, Germany and Russia on board. But I am saying that if you can possibly swing it, bipartisan is WAY better for the country.)

Reaganism, boiled down to its essence

Being a word guy, I got a kick out of this first paragraph of a letter we ran on our Sunday page:

Government is the problem. Stop it.

Although those two sentences actually make more sense, something about them reminded me of Stephen Colbert's "I Am America (And So Can You!)"

The temptation was strong to edit the letter so that it stopped there. It would have been perfect, a statement of Reaganism boiled down to its minimalist essence. If Reagan were the coal, this would be the diamond.

But I left the letter alone. Here it is:

Government printing too much money

Government is the problem. Stop it.

It is printing unprecedented amounts of money. Continuing will lead to hyper-inflation. Remember the Weimer Republic hyper-inflation, when a wheelbarrow full of money was needed for a loaf of bread?

It's simple supply and demand. When the government effectively prints so many dollars, the value of the dollar will eventually go down, drastically.

For now, call all members of Congress and urge them to kill the “stimulus” (incredible pork-barrel, not stimulus) bill.

In the longer form, however, the message lacked purity. It gave you things to argue with; you could say, "Hmmm. I seem to recall the Weimar Republic had certain other problems that contributed to the devaluation of the currency, something more than the act itself of printing too much money." Nevertheless, I do love a good historical analogy. My favorite with regard to Weimar inflation is this: The night of the Beer Hall Putsch, until it was time to make their move, one of Hitler's aides bought three beers so the two of them and one other follower could blend in. The beers cost three billion marks. But you know, if I wanted to talk about runaway inflation, I'd probably cite something more immediate: Zimbabwe has to print new denominations every week, because prices double every day. (Then again, though, Zimbabwe has bigger problems that contribute to having to print the money, not vice versa.)

But that first paragraph was very enjoyable, esthetically speaking. It was like haiku or something...

Amen to letter debunking Reagan tax 'reform'

Just now remembered that I meant to say a big "Amen!" to the third of these letters that ran on Thursday:

Reagan tax policies began economic slide

I think that if I read one more letter praising Ronald Reagan’s tax policies I will be sick.

I was in the tax business when his 1986 tax reform act was passed. This act was revenue-neutral. The cut in the top brackets was accomplished by cutting numerous deductions that the middle class enjoyed. My own taxes increased more than $2,500.

The idea, of course, was that those in the top brackets would create jobs and products. The problem was the middle class had less money to purchase the products.

From that point on, the discrepancy in accumulated wealth between the middle and upper classes began to widen, and the government deficit began to increase.

If you want real tax reform, I have a suggestion: Allow those who take the standard deduction also to take their charitable deductions. This would result in churches and other charities being able to meet the increasing demands they are facing in this current economy.

WILLIAM R. GEDDINGS JR.
West Columbia

The first year that tax "reform" took effect was my first year at The State. I had taken a big pay cut to come here from Wichita (I SO wanted to be close to all of y'all and I really, REALLY wanted to get the heck out of Kansas). I mean a big one, like 25 percent. Add to that the fact that I was the first (or at least, the only) editor ever hired from out of state (in our daily meetings, pretty much everyone was a USC grad except for the guy who was ostracized for having gone to Clemson), and there simply did not exist a procedure for compensating such new hires for their moving expenses. My boss fiddled the books (legally, acting within he rightful prerogatives) to give me an extra $1,000 in my first paycheck to help me out with that. I went with the cheapest deal with the movers I could get -- we did all the packing, in our own boxes -- and we drove a lot of stuff ourselves crammed into our two vehicles like the Clampetts heading for California. With needing to stop for the kids, it took us four days to get here. And the move still cost me $1,500 out of my own pocket, which cleaned out our savings account.

We rented because we couldn't afford to buy, and we kept putting food on the table by my wife taking in other kids to care for them along with our four (our fifth was born here the following year).

And THAT year, thanks to Ronald Reagan's tax "reform," was the first time I EVER had to pay more than had been deducted from my paycheck. In fact, I think it still stands as the ONLY time, but I'm not positive; I'd need to check.

So needless to say, I didn't think much of what the Gipper had done for me. Maybe somebody benefited -- Gordon Gekko or somebody -- but it was pretty painful for me and mine, hitting me in probably the worst year of my adult life for such an unexpected expense.

Not that we should make tax policy based on how it affects yours truly. I'll leave such arguments as that to my libertarian friends. I'm just saying Mr. Geddings' letter struck a chord with me.

Now, about that 'zero Republican votes' thing...

The last time they did this, I had no doubts that the Republicans were wrong. When not one of them voted for Clinton's Deficit Reduction Act in 1993, it was about as pure an example as I can recall of partisan mule-headedness and populist demagoguery. Not to mention the fact that they were wrong on the issue. Argue cause and effect all you like, the passage of that legislation WAS followed by dramatic deficit reduction. And the way the GOP went to their home districts and told everybody about how those awful Democrats had raised their taxes was unconscionable. Especially when South Carolina Republicans said it -- most people in S.C. did not see their taxes increase, unless you count the 4-cent rise in gasoline tax. And what importance can you honestly attach to 4 cents a gallon when monthly fluctuations in price are usually far more than that? (Of course, you know what I think about gas taxes.)

I remember actually watching TV news -- something you know I don't often do -- during that vote. Somebody had Al Gore on live, and Al was as stiff and awkward and priggish as only he can be as he talked about how wrong the Republicans were not to support it, with the roll call going on in the background (I'm thinking it was the Senate; in any case not one Republican in Congress voted for it). But he was right.

This time, I'm not as sure. I'd LIKE for our elected representatives to get together on anything as big as spending $819 billion, rather than splitting along partisan lines. I mean, if we're going to do it, let's do it together -- doing it divided increases the chances that it the stimulus will fail. I say that because Phil Gramm had a point -- so much of the economy is psychological. If the country sees this as THE plan that everyone agrees on, the country is more likely to have its confidence boosted. If it sees every member of one of the two major parties (for now) decry it as a waste doomed to fail, we could be looking at some self-fulfilled prophecy.

That said, I don't know but what a Republican -- or UnPartisan, or anyone else -- who says this plan isn't going to do the job doesn't have a point. After all, Paul Krugman says it won't, and he's no Republican.

On the other hand, their reason why this package isn't quite the thing is all bass-ackwards. They complain that only about a third of it is tax cuts. Well, I'm worried that a third of it IS tax cuts, and that those tax cuts will have zero effect on stimulating the economy. I haven't seen figures yet on exactly what the tax cuts will mean to the average American, but as I pointed out before, in an earlier version, the amount we're talking about would have given each worker only about $9 a week -- which is just barely enough to go to a movie. By yourself. If you don't buy popcorn.

If you're going to have a stimulus package, either SPEND enough to really kick-start the economy (and this doesn't appear to be enough), or target tax cuts to where they are likely to stimulate some real activity. Unfortunately, in trying to provide something for everybody -- and then going to woo the GOP in person -- Obama may have produced a solution that doesn't do enough of anything. And then, after all that trouble, you fail to get the bipartisan support that you were trying to buy with that $300 billion in tax cuts.

As for what you will probably hear them yammer about most on TV news (and in the rest of the blogosphere) -- what partisan political effect this vote will have -- I don't have a dog in that fight. Whether the Republicans have cooked their own goose by voting against a plan that will work, or set themselves up to be blamed for it NOT working, or are poised to recapture the House because they were the only ones to see it wouldn't work, or whatever... I don't care. I'd like to see both parties suffer in the next election, just on general UnPartisan principles. Unfortunately, I might get my wish: The stimulus could fail, and both parties be blamed -- but that be the least of the nation's worries. You know what I'd be worried about right now if I were a Republican? I'd worry that my caucus just invested its hopes in economic failure -- just as Harry Reid et al. bet all their chips on our failing in Iraq. That's not a position you want to be in -- your nation having to fail for you to be right. But that's their lookout, not mine.

For my part, I hope the stimulus works. Or that something we do soon works. And as long as it does, I don't care who gets the credit -- even a political party.

Earlier DHEC chief also opposed restructuring

Back when we did our "Power Failure" series about the problems with the way government is structured in South Carolina, one of the most influential opponents of going to a Cabinet system was the late Michael Jarrett, the highly respected commissioner of DHEC.

When the Legislature passed restructuring legislation that put some of the executive branch under control of the elected chief executive, DHEC was one of the larger agencies that lawmakers pointedly left out of the Cabinet.

The following is a story we ran as part of our series, in which Mr. Jarrett presented his arguments against gubernatorial control of his agency.

I had remembered this story and searched for it in our database so I could link to it in my Sunday column, in which I mentioned Mr. Jarrett's opposition to restructuring. I had forgotten the long correction that we later ran, which was in keeping with our archiving procedures attached to the file in our database:

THE STATE
DHEC CHIEF WARNS OF POLITICKING, FRAGMENTATION
Published on: 12/15/1991
Section: IMPACT
Edition: FINAL
Page: 1C
By LEVONA PAGE, Senior Writer
Memo: POWER FAILURE: The Government That Answers to No One

Sixteenth in a series

Correction: WE WERE WRONG, PUBLISHED DEC. 17, 1991, FOLLOWS:

Mike Jarrett, commissioner of the Department of Health and Environmental Control, said Monday his agency was not pressured by the office of former Gov. Dick Riley to deny a permit for the Union Camp paper mill, as he said in a story Sunday in The State. After checking with DHEC staff about his earlier comments, Jarrett said, "I think that was overstated from what I can find out now." He said that after the paper mill permit became controversial, Riley's staff called his agency to be sure that the permitting process was done properly and without haste so that it could not be challenged. "They were just calls expressing concern," Jarrett said. "The staff doesn't remember any undue pressure." Riley said Monday he and his staff strongly supported Union Camp, publicly and privately. "What we always said to DHEC was the governor supports this unless you can come up with a reason not to," Riley said. In a reference in the same story to a contact by the governor's office concerning a permit for a gold mine at Ridgeway, Jarrett said he was referring to the office of Gov. Carroll Campbell, not the Riley administration. DHEC issued the gold mine permit four months after Campbell took office. Campbell spokesman Tucker Eskew said the governor did not take sides in that controversy, but Eskew said, "There's nothing wrong with the governor's office contacting a state agency to express views. Such input at least is coming from an accountable, statewide elected official."

    Mike Jarrett knows state government as well as anybody in it, and he has some serious doubts about the proposed Cabinet.

    His opinion is likely to carry a lot of weight. He's been around since 1964, climbing to his present job as commissioner of the Department of Health and Environmental Control.

    Also, most people who know Jarrett know he's not concerned about protecting his job. A year ago, he learned he has terminal cancer.

    From his unique perspective, Jarrett speaks freely, and he faults the proposed Cabinet system mainly on two points. First, he says it would put more politics into decision making. Second, he says the particular plan being discussed in South Carolina unnecessarily splits up some agencies and diverts their functions to other agencies.

    If the governor is given more power, as a Cabinet system proposes, the chief executive will become more vulnerable to the voters' displeasure when things go wrong. That means state government will be forced to bow to every whim of popular political opinion, Jarrett said.

    "A governor has to be interested in politics and popularity, and agencies can't be run on the basis of popular decisions," he said.

    DHEC has had some experience with political pressure from the governor's office, Jarrett said. He cited two examples, both during former Gov. Dick Riley's administration.

    The first occurred when residents became upset about Union Camp's plans to build a $485 million paper mill near Eastover.

    "We had calls from the governor's staff not to permit," Jarrett said. "But what they (Union Camp) presented to us met the minimum standards of the law, and we permitted it.

    "In retrospect, it has been a good decision, but had we been driven by the governor's office . . . that decision would not have been made the way it was."

    Another example was the dispute over an $81 million gold mine at Ridgeway, which was opposed by some environmentalists.

    "First, the governor's office called. 'What can you do to get the permit through? It's big business, and we need it.' We had a hearing process. While that was taking place, the public got opposed. Then we got a call from the same staff. 'Don't permit it.' But we had no choice. It met the criteria of the law, and we permitted it."

    DHEC was able to shrug off the directives from the governor's office because the agency is governed by an independent board. Although all seven board members are governor's appointees, the terms are staggered, and the board usually is a mix of appointees by more than one governor.

    Environmental permitting actions should be insulated from politics, Jarrett said.

    Aside from the potential for political influence, Jarrett is strongly against the reorganization plan put forth by the governor's Commission on Government Restructuring.

    Under the commission's plan, the major health delivery functions of DHEC would be given to a new Department of Health and Human Services. Those functions include preventive health services, maternal and child health, home health care and migrant services.

    With the health delivery functions stripped away, the new Department of Health and Environmental Control would exist mainly as a regulatory and licensing agency. The department would monitor environmental quality and health care facilities.

    Jarrett said the separation of health and environment is contrary to a recent study of the national Institute of Medicine and would not benefit the public. He said the commission's recommendation is driven by a desire to provide one-stop environmental permitting for industry.

    DHEC is not the only agency whose functions would be split up. Others are the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism and the Department of Highways and Public Transportation.

    Jarrett said he wouldn't use his influence to fight a Cabinet system of government if some changes were made in the restructuring commission's plan. "I will be strongly against separating health and environment," he said. "I don't think it is for the benefit of the public. It is for the benefit of industry at the expense of the public."

Something completely different

By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
Perhaps it would be a bit much to quote from the Book of Revelation: “Behold, I make all things new!” How about Monty Python? “And Now For Something Completely Different....”
    There is a tension in the air today between two ways of viewing the inauguration of the 44th president of the United States. On the one hand you have thousands upon thousands who have scraped and planned and arranged to be in Washington — or the millions upon millions who will be watching from a distance and with them in spirit — who are fairly vibrating, resonating with communal anticipation. This includes elderly black folk who are praising God because they never thought they’d see the day. It contains — just barely, given the magnitude of their excitement — young people of all colors who left school and jobs and suspended their lives for a year and more to work toward this day. And more conventionally, it includes Democrats who are as thrilled as any group of partisans have ever been that their guy is finally going to replace that other guy.
    On the other hand, there are those who think this is all a bit much, or more than a bit: Whoop-tee-do, they think. A guy won an election. He’s just this guy, you know. Meet the new boss; same as the old boss. Nothing changes: One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.
    Some of the latter, jaded, unexcited group are Republicans. Pretty much all of them are white. There’s not necessarily anything bad about them; they don’t want to rain on anybody’s parade. They just sort of want it over with. As Kathleen Parker suggests in the column on the facing page, there’s just so much earnestness and idealistic hoorah that one thinking person can possibly stand as we stride forth into this new age. That doesn’t make Ms. Parker a bad person. And I know that neither she nor the others in the “this is all a bit much” set are bad people, because, well, I’m sort of one of them.
    Or at least, I was. In the last few days, I changed my mind. The cynics are wrong, and the folks who just can’t contain themselves have it exactly right.
    I wrote the editorial above. I went into it as a chore that needed to get done and out of the way — one of those obligatory editorials you sometimes do, not because you had something you and your colleagues on the editorial board were burning to say, but because the particular moment in history demanded that you take note and say something.
    You may think that writing an editorial is about figuring out how to say what you already know you think. And often it is. But sometimes, it’s a process in which you discover what you think. That’s what happened here. The more I looked and read and reflected upon where we are as a nation and how and why we got here, the more I realized how significant this inauguration is, and how it differed from the previous 13 of my lifetime.
    No, it’s not that he’s a black guy. Yes, that’s a huge milestone for the country, and worth celebrating, but if you focus too much on that you miss just how different this moment is. As I said in the editorial, the nation chose much more than a racial first in this election: “It chose youth. It chose intellect. It chose pragmatism over the constant ideological bickering of recent years. It chose the promise of action rather than stalemate. It chose, in a word, change.”
    Yes, any new president represents change. But this change is generational, and attitudinal, and fundamental. The closest thing in my lifetime was when the generation of Dwight Eisenhower handed off to the generation of John F. Kennedy, but even that falls short. In choosing Barack Obama, the nation really took a risk and got out of its comfort zone. For Democrats, the safe and obvious choice was Hillary Clinton, or someone like Joe Biden (a point that underlines Mr. Obama’s wisdom in choosing his running mate, a move that made the risk more palatable). In the general election, even the “maverick” opponent was the safer, more comfortable, more conventional choice.
    This country decided it had had enough of the kinds of politics and government that we’ve had up to now. It chose a man who was practically a novice in politics and government — which made him untainted, but also meant he had almost no relevant experience. And yet, he possessed the eloquence and demeanor and intellect and attitude that persuaded us that he could deliver on the promised change.
    And you know what? I think he can, and will. I’ve seen proof. One example, which speaks volumes: his decision to pull South Carolina’s own Sen. Lindsey Graham — John McCain’s closest acolyte, leading advocate of our nation’s presence in Iraq — into his circle of foreign policy advisers. By sending Sen. Graham with Sen. Biden to Iraq and Afghanistan, and then appearing with both men to draw attention to the fact, explaining that he was “drafting” Sen. Graham “as one of our counselors in dealing with foreign policy,” the president-elect charted new ground. He threw out the rule book of partisan and ideological convention, and he did so in the pursuit of the very best ideas, the ones most likely to serve the nation and its interests and allies going forward.
    I’ve never seen anything like this, and neither have you. This is something completely different, and yet something that, after today, we’re going to see a lot more of. And that’s a wonderful thing for this country. It’s worth getting really excited about.

For more that’s different, go to thestate.com/bradsblog/.

Stepping forward into the past: My cool new Moleskine notebook

As you may have gathered, I'm a bit of a gadget guy. One of the reasons I blog is for the opportunities it gives me to mess around with cameras and PDAs and laptops and the various ways you can use them to produce text, sound, video, etc. This very night, in fact, I'll be trekking out to the Verizon store to get a Blackberry to replace the Treo I use for work. That Blackberry will be, as my Treo is now, a place for working with e-mail, my calendar, my contacts, as well as providing another browsing platform and a backup camera. Oh, yeah, and a phone (although I use the current one least for that).

But at the moment I am most enchanted with a piece of low-tech, retro equipment that my youngest daughter was so thoughtful as to give me for Christmas, ignoring my hint for a new insulated coffee travel mug. She gave me a Moleskine notebook -- specifically, a Moleskine Reporter Ruled Notebook. You may have seen them in bookstores. They're advertised as the notebook of Hemingway and Picasso. In years past, I had thought of buying one (I was a great admirer of Hemingway in my youth, and he had something to do with my choice of career). But I couldn't justify the expense. After all, I get all the reporter's notebooks I need for free at work, right?

But I misunderestimated, to use a bit of Bushspeak, the magic of a really nice, classic, classy notebook in one's pocket. I just started carrying it yesterday, and it's already affecting how I work -- for the better, I think. Since the notebook itself is special, it makes me think a little more carefully about what I choose to jot down. And it also makes me WANT to come up with stuff that's worthy to write in it. It's a motivator in the way a blank screen on a laptop or a PDA is not. It's like, I don't know, working on a painting or something -- the sense that what I write here stays here, is permanent, has a life, and if this notebook is dug out of an old box in an attic by one of my great-grandchildren, they will read what I am writing today.

I find myself thinking I need to get a better pen to write in it with.

The book itself is esthetically appealing -- you can see why Hemingway might have wanted to carry one around the Montparnasse or to the bullring or the front or whatever. It's a perfect size for the hand and the suitcoat pocket. It's black. The paper is of high quality. It has that cool, built-in elastic band to secure it with, giving a feeling of completeness and accomplishment when you finish a note and get ready to put it back in your pocket. Using it is just an appealing tactile, visual and interactive experience all around.

And it's making me more efficient, of all things. Y'all know how I tend to start my day with breakfast downtown, where I pore over The State and The Wall Street Journal and whatever I else I have time to look at over my coffee. Well, I get a lot of ideas while doing that, but too often, by the time I get back to the office, and have my morning meeting, and then start dealing with the e-mail that has to be read and the copy that has to be moved and talking with Robert about a cartoon and so forth and so on, next thing you know it's past lunch and my ideas of the morning are long forgotten.

This morning, I had a column idea for Sunday of the classic ephemeral sort that would be likely to evaporate long before I had time to start on it -- bits and pieces from different stories I was reading in the paper. Wanting to hang onto the thread, I thought of sending myself some notes by e-mail on the Treo. But that is cumbersome at best, typing on that little thumb keyboard, and it lends itself only to the shortest of reminders. But then I remembered the notebook. So I sent myself an e-mail that simply said:

Hope springs, even in South Carolina politics

See Moleskin notebook

Then I opened my notebook and filled two pages with an outline for the column, an outline that would be just waiting for me to flesh out at my first opportunity (which, as it happens, did not arrive until mid-afternoon). Since I all too often don't write the first word of my Sunday column until midday Friday, this put me more than a day ahead on one of my must-do tasks of the week. Consequently, I might have a chance to write an extra column to run Tuesday (a page that has to be done this week because of the MLK holiday), one that occurred to me as I was doing the final editing on the Tuesday editorial (about the Obama inaugural).

A classic, simple black notebook. What an ingenious device for enhancing personal productivity. What will they think of next?

Today's Will column, with links

The George Will column I put on today's page is one of his oblique ones -- the closest thing to a point in it is what I said in the headline, which is that in a National Endowment for Humanities project, of all places, Mr. Will seems to have found what he regards as "A government program worth the money."

But the column caused me to look up some of the artworks he describes, and I enjoyed doing that. Of course, I couldn't reproduce them on the page itself, but I can run the column here with links, to make it easier for you to look at them yourself. Enjoy:

By GEORGE F. WILL
The Washington Post
In Winslow Homer’s 1865 painting “The Veteran in a New Field,” a farmer, bathed in sunshine, his back to the viewer, his Union uniform jacket cast on the ground, harvests wheat with a single-bladed scythe. That tool was out of date, and Homer first depicted the farmer wielding a more modern implement. Homer then painted over it, replacing it with what evokes a timeless symbol of death — the grim reaper’s scythe. The painting reminds viewers how much Civil War blood was shed, as at Gettysburg, in wheat fields.
    Homer’s painting is one of 40 works of art that the National Endowment for Humanities is distributing, in 24-by-36-inch reproductions, with teaching guides, to all primary and secondary schools and libraries that ask for them. About one-third of them already have done so, according to Bruce Cole, the NEH’s chairman.
    So as Washington’s dreariest year in decades sags to an end — a year in which trillion-dollar improvisations that will debase the dollar have been bracketed by a stimulus that did not stimulate and a rescue that will prolong automakers’ drownings — at the end of this feast of folly, consider something rarer than rubies. It is a 2008 government program that costs next to nothing — $2.6 million this year; a rounding error in the smallest of the bailouts. And “Picturing America” adds to the public stock of something scarce — understanding of the nation’s past and present.
    The 40 works of art include some almost universally familiar ones — John Singleton Copley’s 1768 portrait of a silversmith named Paul Revere; Emanuel Leutze’s 1851 “Washington Crossing the Delaware”; Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ bronze relief sculpture “Robert Gould Shaw and the Fifty-fourth Regiment Memorial” on Boston Common. But “Picturing America” is not, Cole takes pains to insist, “the government’s ‘top 40.’ ” Forty times 40 other selections of art and architecture could just as effectively illustrate how visual works are revealing records of the nation’s history and culture, and how visual stimulation can spark the synthesizing of information by students.
    The colorful impressionism of Childe Hassam’s flag-filled painting “Allies Day, May 1917” captures America’s waxing nationalism a month after entry into World War I. And it makes all the more moving the waning of hope captured in Dorothea Lange’s 1936 photograph “Migrant Mother.” This haunting image of a destitute 32-year old pea picker, a mother of seven, is a springboard into John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath.
    One of the 40 images in “Picturing America” is more timely than Cole could have suspected when the project was launched in February. It is a photograph of Manhattan’s Chrysler Building.
    Built between 1926 and 1930 — between the giddy ascent of the ’20s stock market and the Crash — this art deco monument to the might of America’s automobile industry is decorated with motifs of machines and streamlining. There are winged forms of a Chrysler radiator cap; an ornamental frieze replicates a band of hubcaps. The stainless steel of the famous spire suggests the signature of the automobile industry in its salad days — chrome.
    To understand the animal spirits that drove New York’s skyscraper competition — the Chrysler Building was the world’s tallest for less than a year, until the Empire State Building was completed 202 feet higher — is to understand an era. Two eras, actually — the one that built the building, and ours, which has reasons to be reminded of the evanescence of seemingly solid supremacies.
    After seven years of service, Cole, the longest-serving chairman in the 43-year history of the NEH, is leaving to head the American Revolution Center at Valley Forge. America has thousands of museums, including the Studebaker National Museum (South Bend, Ind.), the Packard Museum (Dayton, Ohio) — yes, Virginia, there was a time when automobile companies were allowed to perish — the Hammer Museum (Haines, Alaska), the Mustard Museum (Mount Horeb, Wis.), and the Spam Museum (Austin, Minn.) featuring the sort-of-meat, not the Internet annoyance. There is, however, no museum devoted to the most important political event that ever happened, here or anywhere else — the American Revolution.
    Cole says there will be one, at Valley Forge. It will be built mostly by private money, for an infinitesimally tiny fraction of the sum of public money currently being lavished on corporations. Perhaps a subsequent iteration of “Picturing America” will feature a thought-provoking photograph of the gleaming towers that currently house, among other things, General Motors’ headquarters. Looming over Detroit’s moonscape desolation, the building is called the Renaissance Center. Really.

Write to Mr. Will at georgewill@washpost.com.

Woodward reports passing of 'Deep Throat'

This from The Washington Post:

'Deep Throat' Mark Felt Dies at 95
By Patricia Sullivan and Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 19, 2008; Page A02

W. Mark Felt Sr., the associate director of the FBI during the Watergate scandal who, better known as "Deep Throat," became the most famous anonymous source in American history, died yesterday. He was 95....

As the second-highest official in the FBI under longtime director J. Edgar Hoover and interim director L. Patrick Gray, Felt detested the Nixon administration's attempt to subvert the bureau's investigation into the complex of crimes and coverups known as the Watergate scandal that ultimately led to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon.

He secretly guided Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward as he and his colleague Carl Bernstein pursued the story of the 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the Watergate office building, and subsequent revelations of the Nixon administration's campaign of spying and sabotage against its perceived political enemies.

Another little irony. Even as newspapers are collapsing left and right -- without asking for a bailout from anybody, I might add -- we have these little reminders of why they're important to our democracy. The day The Chicago Tribune files for bankruptcy, we learn that the crooked governor saw the paper as enough of a threat that he wanted to get rid of the editorial board. The following week, we lose Deep Throat. And Woodward writes the story. Just like that last scene in the movie, as Nixon is being inaugurated again on the TV, and in the background Woodward and Bernstein are typing away on the stories that will bring him down. Whatever happens, we keep on writing.

So far, anyway.

Did you hear the fifes playing "Yankee Doodle" in the background during that speech? Just call me the Oliver Wendell Douglass of journalism.

Take another civics quiz -- please

Remember the civics quiz from several months back? You know the one I aced, relatively speaking? (Disclaimer: I'm one of those people who test well. I've always sort of identified with Woody Allen's quip in "Love and Death," when another character said "God is testing us!" and Woody said "If He's gonna test us, why doesn't He give us a written?" Some folks say testing well is not a true indication of knowledge or intelligence, but what do they know? And how are they going to prove that they know it? End of disclaimer.)

Well, the same people who drafted the last one also drafted this one, which is shorter, and easier, than the last one. Here's my score:

You answered 32 out of 33 correctly — 96.97 %

Average score for this quiz during December: 75.0%
Average score: 75.0%

You can take the quiz as often as you like, however, your score will only count once toward the monthly average.

If you have any comments or questions about the quiz, please email americancivicliteracy@isi.org.

You can consult the following table to see how citizens and elected officials scored on each question.

Which one did I miss? The very last question, as follows:

33)   If taxes equal government spending, then:
A. government debt is zero
B. printing money no longer causes inflation
C. government is not helping anybody
D. tax per person equals government spending per person
E. tax loopholes and special-interest spending are absent

Actually, all of those answers seemed a little bit OFF to me; and I just chose the one that seemed the LEAST off. I was wrong.

If you follow the link to the table above, you'll learn that the general public scored higher than elected officials did. Big shock, huh? And which question did both groups get wrong the most? The one about the "wall of separation" between church and state, of course. That's just a testament to the success of certain people in propagating ignorance on that topic.

Anyway, take the test -- and 'fess up as to how you did.

The failed hyperbole of the past eight years (column version)

By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
QUICK, WHO said this?

    “Americans have watched in horror as President Bush has trampled on the Bill of Rights and the balance of power.”

    I’ll give you some hints:

A. Oliver Stone
B. MoveOn.org
C. An overexcited intern at the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee
D. The New York Times

    The answer is “D.” Yes, I’m sorry to say that overwrought purple prose was the lead sentence last week in the lead Sunday editorial of the paper I was so recently congratulating for having the good sense to back the Columbia Free Trade Agreement. (And they made so much sense that day.)
    Editorial writers — particularly at one of the best papers in the country — are supposed to use words with care and discrimination. Some say I occasionally fail to do that. For instance, some say I was mean, nasty and ugly to Gov. Mark Sanford in my column last week. Go read the letter to the editor from the governor’s press aide that ran in Wednesday’s paper (as always, you will find links to that, and the NYT piece, and any other linkable item mentioned in this column, in the Web version on my blog — and the address for that is below). An excerpt:

    This editorial page was once respected as a voice for good government. Now, thanks to Brad’s childish screeds, fewer and fewer people are reading.

    And yet... I challenge you go find anything that I said in that column that comes anywhere near the unsupported, gross hyperbole of “watched in horror” or “trampled on the Bill of Rights.”
    So does President W. get all excited and whip off a letter to protest to the NYT? I doubt it. Nah, he just spends the week working with Barack Obama as though he were already in office, as though they were co-presidents — which, by the way, is exactly what he should be doing, in this extraordinary economic crisis. (I wonder: If this period of cooperation between the president and president-to-be does not lead to economic miracles, will someone look back on the interregnum in January and denounce “the failed policies of the past eight weeks?”)
    Democrats are thrilled that at long last, Bush will no longer be in office. Me, too. He can’t leave soon enough. But I’m even more thrilled that after January, I won’t have to listen to any more semi-deranged yammering about the guy. You know that I never liked him — he’s the guy who did in my guy (remember John McCain?) in the 2000 S.C. primary. But I have never, ever understood why some hate him so much. The Bush haters can’t simply say, “I disagree with Mr. Bush and here’s why.” They have to go way beyond reason in condemning him absolutely in terms that render him utterly illegitimate.
    Get a grip, people. It’ll be over soon.
    Oh, and for those of you who will say, “But the Times went on to support its statement” — no, it didn’t. Sorry, folks, but his playing fast and loose with federal law regarding wiretapping, to cite one example given, just doesn’t amount to “trampling on the Bill of Rights.” He should have worked from the start to change the law rather than skirting it (as our own Lindsey Graham and others urged), but he did nothing to instill “horror” in a rational person. You “watch in horror” as a gang of thugs rape and murder an old lady — you merely disagree with something so bloodless as monitoring telecommunications without proper authorization.
    Not following me? OK, here are some more things one might “watch with horror:” The My Lai massacre. The butchery in Rwanda in the 1990s. Gang-rape and mutilation of women in Darfur. The Hindenburg disaster. The Twin Towers falling on 9/11. The Japanese reducing Pearl Harbor to a smoking ruin. Men, women and children being herded into the Nazi death camps. The Bataan Death March.
    Get the idea? To apply those words, “watched with horror” to, for example, “the unnecessary invasions of privacy embedded in the Patriot Act” (you know, a law passed by Congress, which Congress can change at any time) as the Times did is to suck all of the meaning out of those words. Once you use those words to describe imprisoning terrorists (real or imagined) at Guantanamo (the main sin listed in the editorial), they no longer have force. If you watch that “with horror,” what words do you use to describe the fire-bombing of Dresden?
    People should not fling words about so carelessly. As a professional flinger of words, I know.
    Now I’ll fling a few more for you Democrats who are watching with horror as I “defend” the outgoing president (when what I’m really doing is defending the language): Folks, settle down. I get it; you don’t like the guy. You like Barack Obama. Well, so do I (he was, after all, my second choice for president). I expect that I, too, will prefer an Obama administration to the past eight years. He’s off to a good start.
    But before we say goodbye to this era, let’s resolve in the future to do what Sen. Obama does so well — speak with sanity and moderation, and mean what we say.

Read the Times piece and more at thestate.com/bradsblog/ .

GOP's in worse trouble than you thought

There is a tiresome sameness to the reaction of Republicans to this year's elections. And this piece by Katon Dawson on Politico is an excellent example of what I'm talking about, replete with the same cliches about "courage of convictions" and "walking the walk" that brought the GOP to this pass.

The irony is that after admitting what should be obvious, that the GOP is "in need of new ideas, new messengers and a new focus in order to move forward as a party," Katon falls back on this stuff:

    What really cost Republicans at the ballot box during the past two election cycles was forgetting a lesson many of us learned from our parents -- say what you mean and mean what you say.
    ... Our elected officials, candidates and party leaders dutifully repeated the principles of our party, but once in office, too many abandoned those principles. Whether it was abandoning our commitment to fiscal responsibility, turning a blind eye to serious character flaws in some of our candidates, or providing a handout to big business at the expense of the American taxpayers, we seemed to lose the courage of our convictions.

Of  course, the context of this piece is Katon's campaign to be national party chairman, as he states openly. He argues against claims that "Republicans were too conservative, that we’ve become a regional party and that we’re clinging to an old playbook." He says that speaking from the conservative wing of the party, from its regional heart of South Carolina, and gripping the old playbook tightly to his chest. For instance, he says Republicans must:

Renew our commitment to our Party’s timeless principles…by reconfirming our commitment to be the party of smaller government, lower taxes, individual freedom, strong national security, respect for the sanctity of life, traditional marriage, the importance of family and the exceptionalism of America.

THOSE are the GOP's "timeless principles?" I bet that would surprise ol' Abe Lincoln. He'd agree with the exceptionalism thing, and he'd be on board with a strong defense, but that's about it. He sure wasn't a small-gummint guy.

Republicans seek affirmation

While the Democrats are still fulminating, the Republicans are at least trying to give us something to laugh about:

Dear Brad,

As we as a Party regroup after our near miss in the presidential election, we must reflect on what our Party has done well and what we can improve moving forward. It is for that reason we have created a new Web site for you to share your thoughts on the direction of the Republican Party. Please take a moment to visit www.RepublicanForAReason.com and create an account to begin the dialogue.

The Republican Party has always been the party of reason and hope, and I strongly believe we will continue in this tradition as we work to the future....

I mean, they were playing for laughs with that bit about "what our Party has done well" stuff, right?

You know, there was a time when I thought of the Democrats as lovable losers, sort of like the Chicago Cubs. They kept losing (in S.C. anyway), but they were hapless and helpless about it, and it was sort of endearing. Nothing like the partisan nastiness you'd often hear from the Republicans back in those days, who always seemed angry about something. Then, in the late 90s or so (during the Clinton impeachment and the Jim Hodges campaign), the Democrats caught up and showed they could be just as angrily organized as the GOP. Then, after the debacle of 2000, they took anger and resentment to new depths.

Anyway, this note from the GOP is so plaintive that it makes me wonder whether the Republicans are about to be like the Dems back when they struck me as a sympathetic underdog.

We're lining up for soup

Maybe it's not the 1930s yet. I haven't seen more people than usual lining up for free soup.

But apparently, a lot more of us are buying soup, the cheaper the better:

According to a November survey of Wal Mart stores focusing on canned foods by Longbow Research analyst Alton Stump, the canned soup category is gaining momentum, and within the category, Cambell’s Soup (CPB) is gaining share against rival Progresso, made by General Mills (GIS) as consumers look for less expensive meal alternatives.

According to the survey, volumes in the soup category expanded at a rate of 10% annually in November, up from the 7% to 8% gains registered so far during most of 2008.  “The category volume boost of late resulted in part from an apparent shift in consumer demand towards takehome food items, which benefited soup in particular as a less-expensive meal alternative,”  Mr. Stump said.

That's from a relief from an outfit known as Longbow Research.

Judge Sanders should have used another historical reference

Alex Sanders is a great guy, but he is a political partisan. He's someone I like in spite of that fact.

And like most folks who try in good faith to defend partisanship, he was unconvincing in a letter you no doubt saw on page this past Sunday:

Ignoring candidate’s party seldom works
    As in every election, I heard people say they always vote for the candidate, not the party. People who think like that go to horse races and bet on the jockey, not the horse. That seldom works out for them.
    Incidentally, I wasn’t the first person to express that idea. Winston Churchill was.

ALEX SANDERS
Charleston

It so happens that Churchill provides us with one of history's most dramatic examples of the madness of putting party ahead of the candidate.

Churchill did as much as any man to save Britain from the Nazis in WWII, and the British people were grateful. But when the war was over they voted him out of office -- not because they didn't want him to be their P.M. any more, but because they chose the Labour Party to rule Parliament.

It was a terrible shame, but that's the parliamentary system -- one that, at least in the case of the executive part of government, makes the individual completely subordinate to party. Thank God we can avoid that in this country, as long as we don't surrender our ability to think and choose to parties. No matter what Alex Sanders says.

Dick Riley makes TIME's Cabinet Top 10

Well, this is pretty awesome -- Dick Riley, who as we know was no slouch of a governor, has made TIME magazine's list of Top Ten Best Cabinet Members of modern times. It's quite a list:

1. Harold L. Ickes, Secretary of the Interior, 1933-1946
2. Henry Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture, 1933-1940
3. Henry Morgenthau Jr., Secretary of the Treasury, 1934-1945
4. George Marshall, Secretary of State, 1947-1949
5. Robert F. Kennedy, Attorney General, 1961-1964
6. William Ruckelshaus, Administrator, Environmental Protection Agency, 1970-1973, 1983-1985
7. Elizabeth Dole, Secretary of Transportation, 1983-1987
8. Richard Riley, Secretary of Education, 1993-2001
9. Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor, 1993-1997
10. Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense, 2006-present

You may quibble about some of them after Marshall -- as we get closer to our own time, people seem less "great;" we see their flaws all too clearly. For instance, we who admire Gov. Riley may object to his having to follow someone rejected by the voters just last week. But being rejected by the voters should not diminish our respect for past achievement. Just ask Winston Churchill (you know, the guy who wasn't the Labour guy). Besides, one can excel as a Cabinet member but be less respected in other fields of endeavor. For instance, Henry Wallace made TIME's list of worst vice presidents.

And to earlier generations, someone we think of as a giant of history might have been looked upon as, "just this guy, you know." For instance, when he was growing up in Kensington, Md., my Dad used to hitchhike to junior high school on Connecticut Ave. One day, Harold Ickes stopped to pick him up. Dad rode up front with the chauffeur (OK, so he wasn't totally an ordinary guy). Another time, FDR rode by, and waved. (Though I obviously was not there, I have a vivid "memory" of that in my head -- FDR in a convertible, the big, encouraging grin, the cigarette holder at a jaunty angle...)

How Detroit got to where it is now

Earlier today I wrote an editorial for tomorrow's paper that warns against being too eager to give Detroit the means to keep doing what it's been doing, as some in Congress seem to want to do.

My reading prior to writing that led to my post about cheap gas, and in responding to a comment on that, I was reminded of something Tom Friedman wrote the other day:

O.K., now that I have all that off my chest, what do we do? I am as terrified as anyone of the domino effect on industry and workers if G.M. were to collapse. But if we are going to use taxpayer money to rescue Detroit, then it should be done along the lines proposed in The Wall Street Journal on Monday by Paul Ingrassia, a former Detroit bureau chief for that paper.

“In return for any direct government aid,” he wrote, “the board and the management [of G.M.] should go. Shareholders should lose their paltry remaining equity. And a government-appointed receiver — someone hard-nosed and nonpolitical — should have broad power to revamp G.M. with a viable business plan and return it to a private operation as soon as possible. That will mean tearing up existing contracts with unions, dealers and suppliers, closing some operations and selling others and downsizing the company ... Giving G.M. a blank check — which the company and the United Auto Workers union badly want, and which Washington will be tempted to grant — would be an enormous mistake.”

That, in turn, reminded me of something else Paul Ingrassia wrote recently, and that's what this post is about. Basically, I wanted to recommend his primer, "How Detroit Drove Into a Ditch," which is a nice reminder of everything the Detroit Three (formerly the "Big Three") and the UAW did to mess up the auto industry in this country.

On second thought, I DO have something to say about Atwater...

After I had a good night's sleep, I thought of something I wanted to say about the Lee Atwater documentary I saw last night.

Last night I posted something sort of neutral and didn't offer an opinion about Atwater, probably because it just seems so long ago, and the man's dead, and since I don't have anything good to say about him, why say it? Unlike Kathleen Parker, I do not share the philosophy of Alice Roosevelt Longworth (someone my grandma, who grew up in Washington during that period, used to talk about a lot; one gathers Alice was sort of the Paris Hilton of her day, in the sense of being a constant subject of media attention), summarized as "If you haven’t got anything good to say about anyone, come and sit by me."

That sort of attitude appalls me. Folks who think I'm just mean as hell to the likes of Mark Sanford, or Jim Hodges before him, just don't understand how hard I have to be pushed to be that critical. Like Billy Jack, I try; I really try. But when I get pushed too far...

Anyway, a column in the WSJ this morning -- by that paper's House Liberal, Thomas Frank -- said something (in a different context) that made me think of the Atwater movie:

In our own time, a cheap cynicism has been so fully assimilated by the governing class that the disenchantment is already there, incorporated into the orthodoxy itself. What distinguished the late conservative era, after all, was its caustic attitude toward the state and its loud expressions of disgust with the media....

And indeed, that was Atwater's contribution to American politics -- cynicism of the cheapest, tawdriest, most transparent sort. The sort that brings out the Pollyanna idealist in me, that makes me want to say, "Have a little faith in people." Or in God, better yet. Or in something good and fine and worthwhile. Atwater embodied, without apology -- in fact, he boasted about it -- the dragging of our public life, our great legacy from our Founders (do you hear the fife in the background yet?), down to the level of professional wrestling.

He made politics -- already often an ugly pursuit -- uglier, as ugly as he could make it and get away with it, and reveled in doing so.

Oh, and before you Democrats get on a high horse and shake your heads at Atwater as "the Other," check the beams in your own eyes. It was fitting that one of the people in the movie who defended Atwater was Mary Matalin. And it's no coincidence that she is married to James Carville. Nor is it a coincidence that Carville -- check the picture -- looks like Gollum. All those years of cynicism ("It's the economy, stupid") have done that to him as surely as carrying the "precious" did it to Smeagol.

It's that "Oh, grow up! This is the way the game is played, so get over it" attitude that makes politics so appalling today. (I like what this writer said about Carville-Matalin: "For the love of God, please stop enabling them.") Both parties have thoroughly embraced the Atwater ethic -- or perhaps I should say, nonethic.

Good news, though: Obama just may be the cure for what ails us, since so many voted for him as an antidote to all that -- especially those young folks who flocked to his banner. Time to ask what we can do for our country, rather than merely sneering at it, as Atwater did.

(Oh, and before Randy says, "Why don't you condemn McCain for his horrible, negative campaign," I should say that you know I'm not going to do that. McCain disappointed me by not running the kind of campaign he could and should have run, emphasizing his own sterling record as an anti-partisan figure. But he didn't disappoint me enough not to endorse him, so get over it. Everything is relative. I could, as you know, condemn Obama for tying McCain to Bush, which was deeply and profoundly offensive to me given its patent falsehood, and all that McCain had suffered at the hands of Bush. That was a cynical and offensive ploy to win an election, and it worked. But I prefer not to dwell on that, and instead to dwell upon the facets of Obama's character that inspire us to hope for something better. Those facets are real -- just as the virtues of McCain were real -- and we owe it to the country to embrace them, to reinforce them, to do all we can to promote the kind of politics that lifted Obama above the hyperpartisanship of Carville and the Clintons.)

Anyway, that's what I thought of this morning to say about Atwater.

'Boogie Man:' Atwater on ETV

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.

But what would Jubal Harshaw say?

Apparently, Obama's gotten himself into hot water with some in the Blogosphere this afternoon by saying, regarding former presidents, "I have spoken to all of them that are living," but, " I didn’t want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about, you know, doing any seances."

Reports Katharine Seelye with the NYT:

Update | 3:23 p.m. Mr. Obama is finding out just how much words matter when you’re the president-elect — while he was extra cautious about everything he said about the economy, careful of not influencing the financial markets, he may have been a little flip in his reference to Nancy Reagan’s seances. The blogosphere is already discussing whether he was being disrespectful to the former First Lady.

Sheesh. Personally, I thought it was funny. And when's the last time the president (or president-elect) said anything funny?

This brings us to one of my favorite instances of life imitating art. Some 30 years after Stranger In A Strange Land was written, we learned that the scenario it created -- in which the most powerful man on Earth was guided by his wife, who was in turn guided by her astrologist -- had actually happened during the Reagan administration.

And poor Robert Heinlein didn't get to see it. But he knew, up there among the Old Ones.

All of which makes me wonder: What would Jubal Harshaw have to say about this? I sort of think he'd like Obama, although he wouldn't admit it. He'd probably say something like, "I hope he's just a scoundrel . . . because a saint can stir up ten times as much mischief as a scoundrel."

What did Tuesday's election say about race?

Now that Obama has won the election, we see a number of narratives emerging as to what it means in terms of race in America:

• Some folks are just stunned that a "black man" could get elected president. They had always hoped, but hadn't dared to expect it, what with white people being so wicked and all, but all is right with the world. Our long national nightmare is over.
• Others are equally shocked and pleasantly surprised, but caution us not to think that we've put racism behind us, so don't let your guard down, folks.
• Then there are those who say, Of course we elected a black man president; we could have done it sooner given such a well-qualified choice. No one should be a bit surprised, and this proves that racism is something we don't have to wring our hands about any more, so can we talk about something else now?
• Finally, there's me and a couple of other people who say, "What do you mean, 'black man'?" This is a guy whose white American mother married a foreign student -- someone who came to this country to avail himself of its great store of educational opportunity, NOT someone brought here from the OTHER side of the African continent as a slave. Yeah, he decided to self-identify as a black man, but does that make him one? So does this prove anything? Maybe it does since so many people, black and white, seem to have accepted his self-identification, and he was elected because of/in spite of that. But given his anomalous background (and since I share some points of commonality with him in terms of my own peripatetic childhood -- things that make me think that just maybe there are things about him I understand that your average black or white voter does not -- I feel some entitlement to speak on this point), does it REALLY mean what people say it means? This is a very, very talented young politician who, if anything, personally transcends race -- so maybe THAT means something. But I don't know.

Those are the strains I've identified so far. Y'all see any others?

McCain's Bob Dole problem

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.

Let's repeal the 12th Amendment

Admittedly, I haven't fully thought through the implications on this, but as we struggled with our presidential endorsement decision, I did have this thought occur to me several times: If we hadn't gone to messing with the Constitution, we could elect BOTH McCain and Obama.

True, that wouldn't please those of you who buy into the whole "my guy is pure good and the other guy is pure evil" thing. But for those of us who like both candidates, it would make things a little easier.

Of course, if current polls hold true, that would make Obama the president and McCain the veep, whereas I'd prefer it the other way around. But that's better than getting one and the other being left out entirely. Thanks to the 12th Amendment, we get either McCain/Palin or Obama/Biden, and I just don't find either of those combos entirely satisfactory...

McCain certainly winning the hubris contest

Going through my e-mail earlier today, I ran across this one from the Obama campaign:

Election Night Media Website Now Open

CHICAGO - The Obama-Biden campaign today opened a website to collect media credential and coverage resource requests for our Election Night event in Chicago.  Credential and media resource requests will be accepted ... through midnight on Saturday, October 25, 2008.  Late requests will not be accepted.  Space is limited.

The website provides two options for news outlets to request credentials to cover the Election Night event in Chicago...

And you know what struck me about that? It's modesty. The standard such release touts a "Victory Celebration," and this one didn't. Yeah, it's to the media and not to a list of supporters (or, some would say, overt supporters), but I still found myself thinking: How cool can Obama get? He's not going to take anything for granted, and certainly not get excited prematurely -- if ever.

I had almost forgotten that release when I got this one from McCain, headlined "Two weeks to Victory." Never mind that that's almost maniacally optimistic. Consider that Obama is widely seen as the heir to JFK, whose administration, at least in retrospect, made "hubris" a household word. But ironically enough, The One is the one playing it modest.

Faith of our Fathers

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
One day in late summer 1970, I was playing tennis on the courts next to the Officer’s Club at Pearl Harbor. I was 16. My opponent, a long-haired boy whose name I now forget, was younger. He was a visitor from the mainland, the little brother of the wife of a junior officer on my Dad’s ship.
    Suddenly, a gnarly bantam rooster of a man rushed onto our court through one of the gates, followed by an entourage of followers who could only be senior naval officers, despite the fact that all were in white shorts, conspicuously devoid of insignia.
    Without pausing in his stride, the first man commanded, “You boys get out of here! I’ve got this court.” Taken aback, we nevertheless immediately moved to obey. I knew active-duty officers had precedence over dependents on Navy courts, and although this man looked old for active duty — at 59, he seemed ancient — we could not doubt his authority. As we moved to collect our gear, he noticed my father — at that time the executive officer of the USS Kawishiwi — sitting on the bench where he had been watching us play. The man went immediately to Dad and spoke to him briefly, then came quickly over to us boys. I was unprepared for what came next — an apology.
    Introducing himself, he explained that he was extremely busy, that he reserved the court for this time and that it was the only recreation he had, so he had been in a hurry to get to it, which explained but did not excuse his brusqueness, and he hoped we would understand.
    No problem, admiral, I said. Don’t mind us. We’re moving. Enjoy your game.
    The man was John S. McCain Jr. Had he been in uniform, he would have worn four stars — the same rank his father had attained in World War II. He was CINCPAC — the Commander In Chief Pacific Command — a title that to a Navy brat had the same ring as the words “the king” would have had to someone in Medieval Europe. Except that no king of old ever had authority over as much military power. He commanded all U.S. forces in and around the Pacific and Indian Oceans, from the U.S. west coast to the Persian Gulf. The American forces fighting the war in Vietnam were only a portion of his responsibility.
    Among the hundreds of thousands of men under his command was a lieutenant commander being held as a prisoner of war in Hanoi. The naval aviator was nearing his third anniversary in captivity, most of that time in solitary confinement in a tiny, stifling cell, his monotony relieved only by brutal interrogations. His body, and at one point even his spirit, broken, he would be there for another two-and-a-half years.
    I didn’t know any of that at the time. Only years after Sen. John McCain had risen to national prominence did I connect him to the admiral I’d met that day. But even among the many who knew about the connection, few ever heard CINCPAC speak of it. Only those closest to him knew about the ritual with which he would mark each Christmas: Every year, he would go to Vietnam and visit troops stationed closest to the DMZ. At some point he would go off by himself to the edge of the base and stare silently northward, in the direction of his son.
    Last week, you read (I hope) a column headlined “Barack Like Me,” in which I explained my sense of identification with elements of Barack Obama’s personal journey of self-definition. If you missed it, I urge you to go to my blog (the address is at the end of this piece) and read it. This column is a companion to it. I wrote the earlier piece after reading Sen. Obama’s autobiography about his youth.
    This past week, I read Faith of My Fathers: A Family Memoir, by John McCain and Mark Salter. It’s the very different story of a young man who was far less confused about who he was or where he came from. And as much as I felt I understood “Barry” Obama, my commonality with Navy brat McCain is much more direct, and certainly simpler.
    A few months ago, I wrote another column headlined, “Give me that old-time conservatism,” in which I wrote of the values I had learned growing up in a Navy family, “the old-fashioned ones: Traditional moral values. Respect for others. Good stewardship. Plain speaking. And finally, the concept that no passing fancy, no merely political idea, is worth as much as Duty, Honor and Country.” It was written shortly after Sen. McCain won the S.C. primary, at a time when “conservatives” in his party were doing all they could to stop him.
    His autobiography is a 349-page exploration of those values.
    His grandfather was a hard-driving, smoking, drinking, gambling old salt who cried when he read casualty reports. He had less regard for his own welfare, once telling his wife he would not spend a penny on doctors, preferring to lavish all his money “on riotous living.” He commanded the fast carriers of Task Force 38 through one epic battle after another across the Pacific, stood in the front row at the Japanese surrender on the USS Missouri, then flew home that day. He dropped dead during the party his wife threw to welcome him home.
    His father was a cigar-chomping submarine commander in the same war, who over the next 25 years worked ceaselessly to live up to his father’s example. As CINCPAC, he unsuccessfully pressed his civilian superiors to let him pursue victory in Vietnam. The B-52 attacks on Hanoi (wildly cheered by his son and fellow prisoners as the bombs fell around them) and mining of Haiphong harbor helped focus the North Vietnamese on an eventual peace agreement in Paris. But Admiral McCain didn’t even get to see the war to that unsatisfactory conclusion before being relieved as CINCPAC. He retired, and lived another nine years, but was never a well man after that. His son believes that he, “like his father before him, sacrificed his life” to the strains of wartime command.
    On the fringes of this presidential campaign, one reads silly e-mails and blogs accusing Barack Obama of being less than American because of the African, Muslim part of his ancestry. Some Democrats weakly respond that John McCain isn’t an American, either, having been born in the Canal Zone in Panama. I have to smile at that, because in my life’s experience, the Zone looms as the very essence of America. During the two-and-a-half years I lived in South America in the 1960s, Panama was the place we occasionally visited to get our booster shot of home, the Land of the Big PX, a place to revel in the miracles of television and drinking water straight from the tap without fear.
    Ironically, Panama means far less to John McCain, since his family left there when he was three months old. It was the start of a routine that I know very well:

As soon as I had begun to settle into a school, my father would be reassigned, and I would find myself again a stranger in new surroundings forced to establish myself quickly in another social order.

    If it sounds like I’m complaining, I’m not. It fostered in McCain and me and thousands like us an independence that’s hard to explain to those who never experienced it. I suspect it contributed greatly to the characteristics that his campaign inadequately, and monotonously, tries to describe with the word “maverick.”
    But there was a constant in our lives. Growing up, I most often heard the United States Navy referred to as “the Service.” It both described what my father did and why he did it. It was the same for the McCains.
    Barack Obama struggled for identity in his formative years largely because of the absence of his father. John McCain and I both experienced the absence of fathers: “We see much less of our fathers than do other children. Our fathers are often at sea, in peace and war.” But unlike Mr. Obama, we understood exactly who our fathers were and why they were gone:

    You are taught to consider their absence not as a deprivation, but as an honor. By your father’s calling, you are born into an exclusive, noble tradition. Its standards require your father to dutifully serve a cause greater than his self-interest, and everyone around you... drafts you to the cause as well. Your father’s life is marked by brave and uncomplaining sacrifice. You are asked only to bear the inconveniences caused by his absence with a little of the same stoic acceptance.

    But as much as our childhoods were alike, John McCain the man is very different. It’s one thing to know “the Service” as a dependent. It’s far different to serve. As I type that, it sounds terribly trite. Yes, we all know John McCain is a war hero, yadda-yadda, right? But I don’t care how much of a cliche it’s become, it’s true. And it sets him apart.
    I can’t write a “McCain Like Me” column because from an early age, he was different. He always knew he would follow his father and grandfather to the Naval Academy. I knew nothing of the kind, and not just because my father graduated from Presbyterian College. There was a brief time in my late 20s when I considered giving up journalism for the Navy; I even took a written test for prospective officer candidates, and did well on it. But my father pointed out to me what I had always known: My chronic asthma would keep me out. So I dropped the idea.
    John McCain, by contrast, rebelled against inevitability, raising hell and breaking rules all the way through his four years at Annapolis, repeatedly stepping to the brink of expulsion, and graduating fifth from the bottom of his class. Even reading about the hazing he experienced as a plebe, when upperclassmen did everything they could think of to break him and cause him to “bilge out” — nothing, compared to what he would suffer as a POW — I thought, Did I ever experience such treatment? Was I ever tested to that extent? And the answer was “no.” Nor, despite all his doubts about himself, his own period of rebellion or his sense of alienation, did Barack Obama have such a formative experience. If so, he doesn’t tell about it.
    The gulf between John McCain and me would exist if he had never been captured. His heroism during those five unimaginable years — a time when he finally learned the full importance of being part of something larger than himself — only turns the gulf into an ocean.
    I say that not to criticize Sen. Obama, or myself. But it’s a fact. We never knew anything like it. Men like John McCain and my friend Jack Van Loan — his fellow prisoner at the Hanoi Hilton — will forever be imbued with an aura that not even The One can claim. Some dismiss the McCain slogan “Country First” as worn-out rhetoric. But I know that for him, perhaps more than for any candidate I’ve ever known, it simply describes who he is and how he’s lived his life.
    That almost certainly is not enough to help him win the election. As I watch him on the verge of failure, that saddens me. He’s had three decades to come to terms with the fact that the war in which he gave so much caused so many of his fellow Americans to lose their faith in their country, and he’s dealt with it admirably.
    Now this. As I watch him drift further from his goal, I can say “Barack Like Me,” but McCain — he’s on a different plane, and always has been. And increasingly, he seems to be there alone.

Go to thestate.com/bradsblog/

 

Comparing McCain now with the campaign against him in 2000

Speaking of stuff that was on today's op-ed page, did you read the other piece, the one by the two profs -- no, wait, just one of them was a prof (at Furman); the other might more accurately be termed a "writer" -- about how that awful John McCain ought to "know better" than to criticize Barack Obama over his associations because of the way he, McCain, was treated in the 2000 GOP primary here? An excerpt:

Here we go again. Politicians falling in the polls are resorting to character slurs and political smears. To the people of South Carolina it’s deja vu — all over again.

Last week John McCain’s campaign launched a web advertisement about Barack Obama’s ties to a “domestic terrorist.” Sarah Palin claimed that Obama sees America “as being so imperfect ... that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country” and repeatedly commented on Obama’s “association” with “terrorists.”

It is a chilling indictment. But false.

Such sad irony. In the 2000 primaries, after John McCain defeated a heavily favored George Bush by 19 percentage points in New Hampshire, the Texas governor’s campaign was in trouble. If Bush lost the S.C. primary, where his opponent was already popular, he had little chance of stopping McCain. Something had to be done. Anything.

What did you think of the piece? Personally, I thought the premise was silly and way off-base. So why did I run it? Well, we run all sorts of views on the op-ed page, and I think a lot of them are silly and off-base. That's all part of the public conversation. Specifically, I chose to leave this one on the page for two reasons:

1. There are a lot of people criticizing McCain these days along precisely these lines, and this was practically a textbook case of it. I especially like the tut-tutting tone attesting to how very disappointed the authors were in McCain ("Such sad irony.") -- that is a trait common to these sorts of assertions. So this was a good example of that, and written from an SC angle. I thought it such a good example that I even overlooked the painfully trite bit about "deja vu all over again." (If only poor Yogi had a nickel for every time, huh?)
2. It was good to run it as a counterpoint to the Charles Krauthammer piece we ran on Friday, which stuck up for McCain over the Ayers stuff, etc., and criticized him only for having been too fussy to bring this stuff up long before.

Why did I think it silly and off-base? Oh come ON, people! Raising the subject of Bill Ayers -- even in clumsy, demagogic language such as "palling around with terrorists" -- is in NO WAY like making up a lie about John McCain's adopted daughter that is specifically and particularly and reprehensibly designed to appeal to the worst racist instincts in the S.C. electorate. Say whatever else you want to say about it, but that's an extreme stretch. It is ONLY logical if you mean that saying something that reflects poorly upon an opponent's character is the same as any other instance of doing so. Which is silly.

The authors' perception of moral equivalence seems to lie in the fact that they believe this, too is "false." But I missed the part where they, or anyone else, has demonstrated that. To the contrary, Obama has had dealings with Bill Ayers, and while the exact nature or extent of said relationship remains fuzzy, what little we know indicates that it was more friendly than, say, inimical. So what you're left with is quibbling over the quantitative meaning of "palling around," and the generally incendiary, hamhanded style of the assertion by that silver-tongued wordsmith Sarah Palin, or the coarseness of crowds who eat that stuff up.

Or do you think that Bill Ayers is NOT an unrepentant terrorist? If so, I need to see the evidence. Because what I've seen argues to the contrary.

Tell you what. I'm going to stop being shy and tell you what I really think -- I disagree both with Messrs. Manuto and O'Rourke AND with Krauthammer. I just told you why I disagree with the first two gentlemen. The part I disagree with Krauthammer over is the idea that McCain should have been hammering on this stuff all along. Personally, I wish he weren't bringing it up NOW. It's not going to accomplish anything positive -- it just speaks to the great divide in our politics left over from Vietnam. That was a battle we didn't think we were going to fight in this campaign.

And here's where there is a kernel of a point in the O'Rourke-Manuto piece; they just spoiled it by grotesquely exaggerating it. And it's this: this is not consistent with the style that has make McCain so popular with those of us who love to watch both sides in the culture wars get mad at him. There's nothing WRONG with mentioning Ayers; it's not a foul. But it's not the style of play we go to McCain for.

There are better ways to say what the McCain campaign has been getting at with the Ayers stuff. For instance, it was stated fairly well in a piece in The Wall Street Journal last week (although the overall thrust of the piece, headlined "News Flash: The Media Back Obama" is in itself another tired cliche):

...Mr. Obama... is the leading exponent of the idea that our lost nation requires rehabilitation in the eyes of the world -- and it is the most telling difference between him and Mr. McCain. When asked, in one of the earliest debates of the primary, his first priority should he become president, his answer was clear. He would go abroad immediately to make amends, and assure allies and others in the world America had alienated, that we were prepared to do all necessary to gain back their respect.

It is impossible to imagine those words coming from Mr. McCain. Mr. Obama has uttered them repeatedly one way or another and no wonder. They are in his bones, this impossible-to-conceal belief that we've lost face among the nations of the world -- presumably our moral superiors. He is here to reform the fallen America and make us worthy again of respect. It is not in him, this thoughtful, civilized academic, to grasp the identification with country that Mr. McCain has in his bones -- his knowledge that we are far from perfect, but not ready, never ready, to take up the vision of us advanced by our enemies. That identification, the understanding of its importance and of the dangers in its absence -- is the magnet that has above all else drawn voters to Mr. McCain....

The thing is, it's impossible to imagine a campaign event for John McCain hosted by Bill Ayers. McCain has done a great deal over the years to reach out to people who were opposed to the war in Vietnam, and even to his former captors -- he has acted heroically to normalize relations with their country. But there's no way he would have been associated with a guy who's proud of HIS association with the bombings of the NYC police HQ, the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon.

Barack Obama HAS been associated with that guy, however fuzzy (and subject to debate) that connection may be. And that speaks to a difference in worldview. But I doubt we'll ever have an intelligent discussion of that difference.

Wall Street's worst week ever

Well, the stock market had its worst-ever week. But you knew that this morning, didn't you? This just confirms it.

Those hammerheads need to calm down. Somebody take them out for a good time this weekend or something, OK? Improve their outlook on life. Buy them a lot of beers, or whatever they drink. Get them... I mean, introduce them to some companionship of the opposite sex or something. Or turn a hose on them.

Somebody besides me do it, I mean. Those people drive me crazy; I don't want to get anywhere near them.

Why Ayers should be persona non grata

Phillip, whom I respect as a constructive and thoughtful contributor to this blog, raises the issue of academic freedom in connection with Bill Ayers and USC:

Like it or not, for many years now Ayers has been recognized as an authority in the field of public education, and his academic standing as professor at the University of Chicago attests to that. That's the reality as it exists today. If USC is to be a place where academic freedom exists, where students are able to be exposed to a wide variety of competing ideas, the School of Education would be remiss in not at least including Ayers' writings as part of their curriculum. You can see from the website I cited that the conflicting issues raised by Ayers' presence or the study of his work were indeed freely "ayred." (sorry, couldn't resist that one.)

Anyway, as someone who has a strong record of supporting public education in this state, it would seem that you would want our USC students to have the widest knowledge possible in that field, as they grapple with the challenges they will face in that terrain.

It's not up to USC to make political/law enforcement judgments above and beyond what our courts and domestic institutions have arrived at. The University's only role is to judge the academic worth of what a scholar has to offer. There are no outstanding criminal charges against Ayers; beyond that, if he is good enough to be a tenured professor at U of C, you can (to borrow another 60's phrase) bet your sweet bippy that he's good enough to give a visiting lecture or two at USC. In those situations, if a student wants to walk out, or picket, that is also absolutely appropriate and their right to do so.

Here's the thing about that: William Ayers has placed himself beyond such bourgeois considerations. Academic piety is insufficient to excuse the man who, in an interview published in The New York Times on Sept. 11, 2001 (yes, that date is correct), said "'I don't regret setting bombs. 'I feel we didn't do enough.'' In the same interview, he said he did not recall having said in 1970, explaining the Weatherman philosophy, "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at." But he acknowledged, "it's been quoted so many times I'm beginning to think I did.'' He further explained that ''It was a joke about the distribution of wealth.''

In my book, that makes him persona non grata. The private sector can do what it will, but NO taxpayer-supported institution should employ him for any reason, even temporarily, even in an arms-length relationship. It should be the duty of a public institution to divest itself of any such involvement, however tenuous.

Palling around with terrorists in S.C.

A lot of y'all think I'm way harsh on our gov. Well, the guy deserves to have someone stick up for him on this one. Barack Obama's campaign has done him a rather grave, although ridiculous, injustice.

As Sanford says, the attempt to tie him to Obama's old friend Bill Ayers (that's him above with Bernardine Dohrn in 1980, and below in 1981) is "bizarre." From the story in the Greenville News:

Obama's campaign responded in recent days, noting in a fact-check release to reporters this week that Ayers "is currently a distinguished scholar at the University of South Carolina where Republican Gov. Mark Sanford, who supported Sen. McCain's campaign as far back as the 2000 primaries, serves as an ex-officio member of the board of trustees. By Gov. Palin's standards, that means Gov. Sanford shares Ayers' views."

In an interview with Fox News, Bill Burton, Obama's press secretary, said Sanford "employs" Ayers.

"He's the governor of the state and he's in charge of the board, so that means he employs Bill Ayers," Burton said, adding that, "We don't think that Mark Sanford or John McCain share the views or condone what Bill Ayers did in the 1960s, which Barack Obama said were despicable and horrible."

Gosh, where do we start?

• First, if supporting John McCain is a crime, then Mark Sanford is as innocent as a lamb. Did he, years ago (as, once upon a time, Obama associated with Ayers)? Yes. But he basically gave the McCain campaign the big, fat finger this year. Sanford was the only leading Republican in the state (and in his case, one uses the term "Republican" loosely, which is one thing I've always liked about the guy, but even that can wear thin) NOT to take a stand as to who should win the primary in S.C. As one McCain supporter complained to me, Sanford never so much as invited McCain to drop by for a cup off coffee during the primary campaign; his disdain was breathtaking. His post-primary "endorsement" came through a spokesman, in answer to a question.
• Next, and this is the most telling point, one must have a staggering ignorance of South Carolina to hold the governor of the state responsible for ANYTHING that happens at a public college or university. Should he have such say? Absolutely. Sanford thinks so, and we've thought so for a lot longer. But the higher ed institutions continue to be autonomous fiefdoms answering to boards of trustees appointed by the Legislature -- one of the powers that lawmakers guard most jealously. USC and its fellows are famously, notoriously independent of executive control, which is one reason why we lag so far behind such states as NORTH Carolina, which has a board of regents. You say the gov is an ex-officio member of the trustee board? Yeah, with the emphasis on the EX, in the original Latin meaning. He's also an honorary member of my Rotary Club, but I can't remember seeing him at any meetings.

So I've defended Sanford, who in this case was most unjustly accused. But what the silly Obama allegation DOES do, however, is raise this very good question: What on Earth is USC doing paying stipends to an unrepentant terrorist?

'Boogie Man:' Atwater film coming to Cola

You probably already read in the paper that "Boogie Man," the documentary about Lee Atwater, is coming to the Nickelodeon. A fresh reminder came in via e-mail from Judy Turnipseed:

This movie which starts this week at the Nickelodeon about the famous Lee Atwater features Tom Turnipseed with a lot of other South Carolinians.  Tom will be on a panel about the movie on Friday night. 

 

Here is a review of it in the New York Times

 

http://tinyurl.com/4aqd8c

 

Here is a link to a trailer of the movie and how to buy tickets at the Nick if you want to see the movie.

http://www.boogiemanfilm.com/ 

 

Tom, of course, was the object of one of the most outrageously mean things Atwater ever said. Here, from a 1991 story by our own Lee Bandy, is a short version of that bit of history:

Tom Turnipseed, a liberal Democrat who ran for Congress in South Carolina, once accused Atwater of engineering a survey of white voters in which they were pointedly informed of Turnipseed's membership in the NAACP. Atwater denied the charge, but also said that he did not want to deal with allegations made by someone who had once been "hooked up to jumper cables," referring to shock treatments Turnipseed had received years before as a suicidal teenager.

He said that in 1980, when Turnipseed was running against Floyd Spence.

Earning that first piece of plastic

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
Credit used to make sense to me, and now it doesn’t. Here’s the way it once worked, according to my sepia-toned memories:
    When I got out of college in 1975, I went to work for The Jackson Sun in West Tennessee as a copy editor for the lordly sum of $130 a week. That’s $6,760 a year. After a three-week trial period I got a $15-a-week raise, which was quite a thrill at the time. I was married, my wife was in graduate school, and our first child would arrive about a year later.
    My first week, a woman who also worked on the copy desk, taking me under her wing, told me her husband worked at one of the banks, and to contact him if I needed help in that line. As it turned out, I did soon need a loan to pay for a used Vega (yes, I know, a bad call there).
    After the baby came, we decided we needed a credit card to help us through the weeks when my pay (by then $160!) didn’t meet the necessities. So I went to see Paul at the bank, but he said I couldn’t get one until I had established more of a credit record. The car loan helped, and so did the fact that we paid the hospital for the baby in installments. But that wasn’t enough to get a BankAmericard.
    Paul suggested I go to Sears, because they’d give a credit card to anybody. So I did (after which we rewarded Sears’ faith in the proletariat by buying most of the children’s clothes, and all tools and appliances, from there for years to come). Once I produced my Sears card at the bank, I got my “real” credit card.
    My wife, who handles the accounts and pays the bills at our house, now curses the day that piece of plastic came into our house — she has told me more than once in the past week, and apparently will keep telling me until it sinks in, that at our current rate of payment, we will not live long enough to pay off our credit card debt, according to all the actuarial tables or something like that (in one ear, out the other).
    But back then the card was helpful, and actually earning the privilege of having one seemed a sort of milestone. I was now someone deemed worthy of credit.
    In the intervening years a lot has changed. For instance, the Sears card morphed into a Mastercard that I no longer use (under threat of bodily harm) because the usurious rate is high even for a credit card, but that I carry in my wallet for sentimental reasons: It still says “member since 1976.”
    That’s a distinction that wore off long, long ago, though. Today, on the rare occasions when I get to the mail before my wife does, there is always at least one offer of a new credit card, and usually more than one. My children have been getting those come-ons at our house since they entered their teens. Even with all of them moved out, they still come. And my wife still throws them away.
    But that’s credit cards. Let’s talk mortgages.
    My understanding of mortgages does not extend beyond the explanation offered by George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which Robert Ariail lampoons in his cartoon today. Here’s the original dialogue:

    No, but you’re... you’re, you’re, you’re thinkin’ of this place all wrong, as if I had the money back in a safe. Th-th-the money’s not here... why, your money’s in Joe’s house, that’s right next to yours, and in the Kennedy house, and Mrs. Maitland’s house, and, and a hundred others.... Why, you’re lending them the money to build, and then they’re gonna pay it back to you as best they can, now what’re you gonna do, foreclose on them?

    That I understand. And while my mortgage might not be with ol’ George down the street, I did take it out with a very nice person in an office that I could go to and ask questions later if I needed to. But before long my mortgage and yours got bundled up with a thousand others and turned into a financial product that greedheads would buy and sell back and forth across the country as though the biggest contract I’ll ever enter into were merely another drop in a barrel of oil.
    Meanwhile, mortgages were being extended as casually and promiscuously as those credit card solicitations, without regard to the buyers’ ability to pay back, which eventually, as near as I can make out, led to this bizarre situation in which the president of the United States went on the TV last week to tell us that if we don’t come up with $700 billion in one quick hurry, we’ll all soon be living in Pottersville instead of Bedford Falls.
    Apparently, this happened in part because as a nation we decided that everybody ought to have a mortgage, whether they could afford one or not. That sounds really nice and egalitarian and everything. It also sounds just like the arguments I hear from the payday lending industry — that they have to exist because everybody needs to be able to take out loans, and you don’t want to be all paternalistic and tell them they can’t afford it.
    But I’m of the paternalistic school, I guess, if that’s what you want to call it. For years, I was on the local Habitat for Humanity board, and we didn’t sell those houses to just anybody. We made sure that while the families were low-income enough to need our service, they had enough income to make their payments. We provided counseling. We required that they pile up sweat equity by working to build other people’s houses before their own foundation was laid.
    Those hurdles existed to keep the unwary from getting into debt over their heads, just as Paul’s bank once required certain demonstrations before I could have that card.
    And now, apparently the whole nation is being sucked into a vortex of bad decisions chasing each other ’round and ’round.
    And to me, that just doesn’t make sense. But that’s because I don’t understand credit. Not anymore, anyway.

Go to thestate.com/bradsblog/.

What we need

You'll note that in my Sunday column, I said I found it somewhat reassuring that both John McCain and Barack Obama seemed humbled by the scope of the looming national crisis on Wall Street. It was sort of the point of the column (hence my headline, "Beware excessive certainty about Wall Street crisis").

But I also said, at the end:

    At some point we’re going to need some FDR-like self-assurance mixed with pragmatic solutions. And in this election that is suddenly about the economy, it’s unclear which candidate will pass that part of the audition.

That remains unclear. I mean, the only person on either ticket who has a cocky grin anywhere approaching that one is maybe Joe Biden.

And we need that kind of optimistic confidence in a leader at this time.

Half a trillion? Whoa! That's more than I make in a YEAR

OK, I realize that's an old joke, but I just basically wanted to give y'all a post on which to react to the Bush administration's proposal for dealing with the crisis on Wall Street:

WASHINGTON -- Struggling to stave off financial catastrophe, the Bush administration on Friday laid out a radical bailout plan with a jaw-dropping price tag -- a takeover of a half-trillion dollars or more in worthless mortgages and other bad debt held by tottering institutions.

Relieved investors sent stocks soaring on Wall Street and around the globe. The Dow-Jones industrials average rose 368 points after surging 410 points the day before on rumors the federal action was afoot.

A grim-faced President Bush acknowledged risks to taxpayers in what would be the most sweeping government intervention to rescue failing financial institutions since the Great Depression. But he declared, "The risk of not acting would be far higher."

Here are several versions of the story:

• The AP version on thestate.com., the most gee-whiz version I've seen (unusual for the AP)
• The one from The Wall Street Journal
• The New York Times version.

I'm still scrambling here to get the weekend editorial and op-ed pages out, but in the meantime, what do y'all think? The market seems to like it, but those folks are easily excited...

From our political family album

Searching the AP Archives (a dangerous thing to let me do, given that I'm the World's Most Easily Distracted Man) for a suitable picture of Fritz Hollings for the Sunday op-ed page (which in the end I didn't use; Robert volunteered a caricature instead), I ran across the one above, which has the following caption:

State Sen. Edgar Brown, D-Barnwell, left, Sen. Ernest F. Hollings, D-S.C., center, and Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., leave the Darlington Presbyterian Church, Sept. 20, 1972, after paying their final repects to the late state Sen. James P. Mozingo. (AP Photo/Lou Krasky)

Note the hats -- evidently, Strom and Sen. Brown had still not received the JFK memo.

Riffing on that as I am wont to do, just out of curiosity to see what an Edgar Brown search would turn up, I found the one below. I like it as a sort of alternative moment from the convention for which Abbie Hoffman and Richard Daley pere are better remembered. The caption:

South Carolina Gov. Robert McNair, right, listens as he and Sen. Edgar Brown, left, and Gov. John West hold a private conference on the fire escape of their Chicago Hotel on Monday, Aug.26,1968 in Chicago. The three men are part of the South Carolina delegation to the Democratic National Convention which gets underway Monday. (AP Photo)

No, this post doesn't have any point; I'm just sharing...

So everything's OK on Wall St. now? No?

So this morning, for the fourth day in a row, The Wall Street Journal spreads the collapse of major financial institutions across six columns -- which, to a guy who used to be a front-page editor, is more alarming than any numbers you might throw at me.

And as if that weren't enough, a one-column headline below and on the right-hand-side of the page, said "Worst Loss Since '30s, With No End Yet in Sight." What a way to start the day, huh?

But now I go to the WSJ site and see a grinning trader (one Theodore Weisberg, above), and the headline "Stocks Soar; Banks Lead the Way."

OK, that's nice. I don't know why this is happening, and I don't think it reverses all the bad news, but it's nice. I'll resist trying to analyze it. I see it had something to do with an action by the Fed and other central banks, which tempts me react like a history major and say something some thing like, "Nothing like a strong central bank -- take that, you Jeffersonians!" But I won't. I'm aware of how little I actually understand....

The passing of Yuri Nosenko

Boy, we really have been preoccupied in this country with this presidential election, haven't we? Me included.

Somehow, I had missed the fact that Yuri Nosenko had died, way back on Aug. 23, until I finally saw the obit in LAST week's Economist.

Two things to say about Comrade Nosenko's passing:

1. Did you ever see the 1986 made-for-TV movie about him (I think it was on HBO), starring Tommy Lee Jones? Excellent.
2. I often think of Mr. Nosenko when I hear from the antiwar people who talk about mistaken WMD intel as having been "lies," rather than a case of the administration simply believing the wrong intel.

The Nosenko case is a classic example of the fact that in intelligence, you often have to choose WHICH intel you are going to believe. After we locked up Mr. Nosenko for years, interrogating him under horrific conditions that one might choose to call "torture" without stretching the meaning of the word, believing him to be a KGB plant meant to discredit another defector (and to absolve the Kremlin of the JFK assassination), we finally rehabilitated him, said he was OK, gave him a check and a new identity.

But to this day, one can probably get a fierce debate going among folks with high security clearances as to which set of assumptions about Mr. Nosenko was the one based on lies.

In fact, the only reason we say he is dead is because the authorities TELL US he's dead. We don't even know what name he was living under "somewhere in the Southern United States." As the NYT reported:

Claire George, a former C.I.A. deputy director of operations, told The Washington Post, which first reported Mr. Nosenko’s death on Wednesday, that Mr. Nosenko’s treatment “was a terrible mistake.” But, he added, “you can’t be in the spy business without making mistakes.”

How are we feeling about the Electoral College?

Back on my post about recent polls, I agreed with Phillip that what matters is NOT these national popular-vote numbers we're seeing, but how the candidates are stacking up in the battleground states. Then, I asked:

Taking that to another level -- while Phillip and I agree that the state-by-state is what matters, can we agree that the state-by-state is what SHOULD matter?

That one was a tough question to get folks to agree on in November 2000, but right now, when we don't know how this one is going to come out, how are we feeling about that old Electoral College?

So how about it. Without knowing yet how the popular vote comes out -- and it could go either way at this point -- how do YOU feel about the Electoral College? Good? Bad? Indifferent?

Personally, I think it's a fine thing. It forces a candidate to have appeal across the country, rather than just in a few population centers. At least, it's fine in the abstract.

What's Bill Moyers talking about?

Last week and this week I've been watching PBS because it's been covering more of the conventions than the networks (did I mention I didn't go to the conventions this year?).

So I've heard, over and over, this promo from Bill Moyers in which, speaking of the 2008 election (I think), he says, "The stakes have never been higher."

Really? How about 1932? Or 1800, when we didn't know whether a peaceful transition of power from one party to the other was possible in this revolutionary republic until we actually DID it, and after an election that still stands as being as vituperative as any?

How, pray tell, about 1860? Pretty doggoned high stakes there, I'd venture to say.

Yep, this is an extremely interesting election offering starkly different choices for the nation's future. It is more exciting than any in my adult life (and not, I think, just because I like both McCain and Obama, which is a first for me). But the stakes have been higher.

Not up to KGB standards

Waiting for Palin -- Huckabee's talking now -- I got to thinking about the other side of the world. Have you read about the Russians' lame attempt to pin the Georgian conflict on this guy Michael Lee White, who they claim is some sort of CIA master spy?

They base this on a passport White lost in 2005, and had replaced. They claim they found it at an outpost used by Georgian special forces.

From what I've read, if this guy's a spy, he's SO good, and so successful at NOT looking like a spy, that it seems unlikely he'd leave his passport lying around.

Look, if Putin wants to pin it on this guy, at the very least he could live up to the KGB tradition and make it look GOOD. They would have CAUGHT the guy, and turned him up at a press conference.

Why back in the day, the Rooskies could shoot down an ACTUAL U2 pilot, complete with a frickin' poison needle hidden in a frickin' silver dollar, and catch Ike lying about it.

Those were the days. Whatever happened to standards?

Today's mystery photo

WARTHEN: "Sir, I'll have you know that in South Carolina, we dress for dinner!"

QUAYLE: "All I want is a potatoe."