Category Archives: Contact report

Guess I’ll be watching this convention on TV, too

I'm hoping the Democratic Convention will be more engaging than this was.

I was at the movies with my younger son Sunday afternoon watching “The Bourne Legacy” (which I’m sorry to say I found far less engaging than “The Bourne Identity”), and the character played by Rachel Weisz had just been introduced when my phone started buzzing.

It was E.J. Dionne. I stepped out into the corridor to see what was up. He was just driving down from Washington, taking the scenic route through the Shenandoah Valley, one of the most beautiful drives in America (I drove that way many times when my youngest daughter was studying at Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet). But E.J.’s not the kind of guy who finds pleasant vistas enough occupation for his hyperactive mind, so he wanted to chat.

The first thing he asked was whether I would be crossing the border this week, and I had to think a second before realizing he meant heading up to Charlotte.

Nope. I’m not. Or at least, I don’t think so. Ever since the DNC venue was announced a year or so ago, I had had it in my mind that since it was just up the road, I might bop up for part of it. But since that didn’t require any preparation, I made none. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I emailed Amanda Alpert Loveday with the SC party to see about credentials. That’s the way I had arranged it the couple of times I went to conventions before — just contact the state party, since it’s the state delegation I’d be following. But she said, “Press credentials were required to be requested by April and they are done by the Convention staff.” April? Like I’m going to prepare for an impromptu drive up to Charlotte in April?

I could still go. After all, when I’ve covered conventions in the past, I may have entered the actual hall where the convention was going on a couple of times total. But then, having those credentials did help get me into other places as well. Add to that the fact that the events worth being there for tend to happen early in the morning or very late at night — delegation breakfasts, and after-session social gatherings — and it just seems really inconvenient to try to cover any of it from home.

So I’m going to stick to Columbia, and watch the speeches on the Tube, just as I did the one in Tampa.

What do I expect to see? Well, I’ll tell you what I hope to see.

I hope to see a party that’s reaching out to independents and undecideds — a party that emphasizes things that pull Americans together — rather than a party that’s firing up its base with its ginned-up “War on Women” and other Kulturkampf flashpoints. You say there are no undecideds? Well, E.J. and I were talking about that, and he referred me to this analysis by ABC showing a large number of “persuadable voters:”

One in four registered voters may be persuadable in the 2012 presidential election – rich pickings if either Barack Obama or newly minted GOP nominee Mitt Romney can win their support. But doing so may be a challenge, requiring both subtle and substantive political persuasion.

That’s because persuadable voters, as identified in this analysis for ABC News, are less apt to be ideologically committed ones, and more likely to take middle-ground rather than strongly held positions on issues such as Obama’s job performance, Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan and their own partisan views.

Good to hear that I’m not alone. OK, we’re out here — so persuade us.

Dick Harpootlian says Jim Clyburn’s role in speaking tonight is to “excite the troops.” That’s exactly the sort of garbage I don’t want to hear. Guys, you don’t have “troops.” You’re not in a war. You are in a marketplace of ideas, and you’d better have some that are compelling to people outside that convention hall.

Anyway, that’s what I’m looking for. How about y’all?

WIS takes media convergence to a new level

wistv.com – Columbia, South Carolina |

It’s interesting — to me, anyway, as a longtime editor — to watch what’s happening as general-circulation newspapers do less of what they once did.

I recently had breakfast with Donita Todd, general manager of WIS, and her news director Rashida Jones (no, not that Rashida Jones, this Rashida Jones). They told me about some new things they were doing at the station, particularly their stepped-up investigative efforts.

But even if they hadn’t told me they were putting new effort into that direction, I would have noticed.

For instance, this morning, my attention was drawn (via Twitter, of course) to this story on the WIS website, by the station’s Jody Barr. An excerpt:

LEXINGTON COUNTY, SC (WIS) – A secret audio recording of Lexington town councilman Danny Frazier gives a detailed look inside an underground video poker operation working inside Lexington County. Frazier brags about his ability to operate illegal video poker sweepstakes businesses within Lexington County. A WIS investigation uncovers Frazier’s political connections and whether those connections are allowing him to continue doing business.

We obtained the recording from a source who secretly recorded a conversation with Frazier. The source posed as a businessman, interested in getting into the illegal video poker operation inside Lexington County. The source went undercover after fearing Lexington County law enforcement was purposefully ignoring and protecting Frazier’s operations. The recording links Frazier to at least two separate sweepstakes businesses, both near West Columbia.

The people who made the recordings tell WIS they have turned them over to state and federal authorities…

The recording indeed is fascinating. Of course, it raises a lot of questions in my mind that might not occur to some readers — questions the reporter would have had to answer for the story to get into any newspaper I ever edited.

We would have had a long, long conversation about this self-appointed Batman who went “undercover,” starting with the word itself. Can average citizens technically go “undercover?” Doesn’t the term refer to a law enforcement officer hiding the fact that that’s what he is? What does it mean when a layman does it? What are the implications? What sort of deception was involved, and to what extent does it expose the individual, or the media outlet that uses the product, to allegations of illegality? Who takes that upon himself, however lofty his motives? And speaking of that, what were his motives, and what does that tell us? (Ultimately, the test is whether the information is good, not the motives of the source. But knowing the motive could lead to relevant questions that I can’t even imagine at this point.)

And why are we concealing his identity? There may be a good reason, but I’d like to hear it.

I’d also like to know whether the recording, obtained as it was, could possibly have any value to the “state and federal authorities” to whom it was given. I don’t know enough to answer that question. Fortunately, it’s secondary to this story, but I do wonder.

There’s a Wild West sort of feel to this sort of investigative reporting, on its face. It reminds me of the way reporters so often are portrayed in fiction, starting with Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen in the old “Superman” TV series. They were always taking it upon themselves to try to personally catch the bad guys, rather than simply report the story. Fortunately for them, Superman was always nearby to save them when the bad guys tied them up in an abandoned warehouse.

Of course, that’s only the way it looks to me from the outside. It could be that the folks at WIS who decided to go with this have very good answers to all of the questions I raise — I just can’t tell, as the reader.

There is one thing in the story that makes me feel better about reporting the contents of the recording — and I suspect is what made WIS management feel OK about the story — it’s that Danny Frazier, incredibly, “admitted to the recording.” Although I’m not clear on to what extent he did so, since he doesn’t admit to having said what the recording seems to show him saying. But let’s say he does confirm the legitimacy of the recording itself. This, of course, raises a bunch of other questions, such as: OK, if he knows the recording is legit, then doesn’t he know who was with him when he said those things? Does he not recognize the voice? In which case, tell me again why we’re not identifying the “undercover” guy…

Of course, to the casual reader, what we have here is a fascinating glimpse into the video poker bidness in 2012, and plenty of reasons to ask questions of Jake Knotts and Jimmy Metts. And that’s where Mr. Barr sticks to the book, asking those questions of each player and dutifully recording the answers. He got some great quotes:

The sheriff said he was too busy meeting and greeting voters to pay attention to who gave to his campaign, although the contributions were maximum contributions. “Very rarely do I look at the checks,” Metts said, “I do have access to who contributed to the campaign through the computer, but really and truly, I don’t go back and look at that.”

“If you held a shotgun to my head right now and told me you were going to pull the trigger unless I told you everybody who contributed to my campaign, you’d just have to kill me,” Metts said.

Several times during the interview, Metts denied any participation in or knowledge of any of the illegal video poker businesses in his county. “I know people say, in something like that breeds corruption, but I can tell you in no uncertain terms I am not a part of any Lexington County ring, I am not part of any illegal gambling. I don’t own. I don’t receive. I’m not involved. I’m not protecting anybody. As a matter of fact, [it’s] quite the opposite. I’ll put their [expletive] in jail.”…

Knotts admits Danny Frazier is a close friend whom he’s known for years, but denies any knowledge of protection for Frazier to continue to operate the illegal sweepstakes machines. “Do you have any involvement in what these tapes show that Danny Frazier may be involved in?” Barr asked. “None whatsoever,” Knotts replied.

“I’ve got contributions when I first ran, every time I’ve ever run and I don’t back away from it,” Knotts said of accepting campaign contributions from the video poker industry.

“If there’s any more money out there that any of those people want to send me, send it to me,” said Knotts. “I could take money from the devil and make it do God’s will.”

Bottom line, this new assertiveness by WIS, and by such others as the Free Times‘ Corey Hutchins, is bound to uncover a lot of fascinating stuff in our community going forward, however they go about it.

WIS is aggressively moving into the territory once held firmly by newspapers. For some time, of course, the text stories on TV websites have been more than mere come-ons for the video. And the networks, with their greater resources, have gone deeply into the realm of publishing the written word. But this sort of extended investigative report — 1,866 words, close to twice the length of one of my columns at The State — seems to go well beyond anything local television has attempted to do in the past.

It’s easy to fix Social Security. Here’s how…

I’ve got all these blog posts I’ve been meaning to write for weeks, and I need to catch up. Here’s one…

Way, way back on July 17, I attended an event over at the local AARP headquarters. It was a policy discussion of Social Security. The format was that we watched a couple of experts debate what to do about SS on a video feed, and then discussed it amongst ourselves. It’s been so long I forget who all was there, but some of them were Kester Freeman, former head of Palmetto Health; Peggy Hewlett, dean of the nursing school at USC; Mac Bennett, head of the local United Way; John Ruoff of The Ruoff Group; and Mary Kessler, director of the Capital Senior Center. There were about six others.

Our discussion was moderated by Jonathan Peterson, author of Social Security for Dummies. Really. I liked that.

The “experts” on the video feed were David John of The Heritage Foundation and Virginia Reno of the National Academy of Social Insurance. They spoke from predictably left and right perspectives. Guess which was which.

We were given a lot of data for coming up with our own solutions. I sort of knew what I thought we should do, but the data were helpful in confirming me in my opinion.

You can review some of the data at this website — although in a quick scan of what’s available there, I didn’t find it quite as helpful as the workbook we had at our session, which spelled out what each policy proposal would do. You might have fun, though, programming your own Social Security solution.

What’s my solution? It’s so easy, it’s pathetic that Washington seems so helpless on this issue:

  • Eliminate the cap on the payroll tax. That would fill 86 percent of the funding gap in the program. As Peterson said when I said this, it’s the closest thing to a “silver bullet,” if you can overcome the objections to doing it.
  • Raise the full retirement age to whatever you have to raise it to to get the other 14 percent. Raising it incrementally to 68 by 2028, and you fill 18 percent. So you’d have money left over. Ta-dahhh!

These two steps are no-brainers. It’s ridiculous that there’s a cap to start with, and the full retirement age should reflect the realities of modern longevity.

I’ve heard objections to eliminating the cap. All of them are ridiculous. This “tax increase,” as opponents call it, is nothing more than simply seeing to it that everyone pays the same tax all year — which is what 94 percent of the working population does already.

The cap right now is $110,100. Only 6 percent of the country earns more than that. Everyone below the line pays the 6.2 percent tax all year. People who make more get to a point in the year when they get a nice tax break — in fact, they no longer pay at all the tax everyone else keeps paying. And it is nice. I can tell you, as someone who used to get that break (starting at a time when the cap was much lower than it is now). It was nice to get a few hundred extra bucks just before Christmas. But if you’d taken it away from me, I wouldn’t have complained, because I thought it absurd that I got it. I certainly didn’t need it. I hadn’t in any way earned a special break that people who made less money didn’t get. It was regressive as hell, and I knew it.

What’s the worst thing that someone losing the cap would suffer? He’d have to pay the same tax he paid the rest of the year, only all of the year. He’d be fine. And no, it wouldn’t be a disincentive to earn more — it would still only be 6.2 cents of every dollar.

Another stupid objection: Lifting the cap would mean millionaires could retire on $150,000 a year. So? Big deal. It would fix the system, and we ought to do it now.

I could present objections to raising the retirement age and knock them down, too, but I’d rather move on to your comments.

FYI, next week AARP has invited me to another one of these discussions. This one is about Medicare…

SC DOT: One example of how SC constantly underfunds basic functions of government

This post should be seen as the background to this little drama over the governor’s vetoes, to provide some perspective. What seems to have been missing on most, but not all, of Nikki Haley’s vetoes has been a clear explanation of what she would spend the money on instead.

Her ideology prevents her from setting out powerful arguments for alternative spending plans, because she, like the governor before her, lives in a fantasy land in which the government of South Carolina simply spends too much in the aggregate. That South Carolina bears no resemblance to the one in this universe.

The truth is that South Carolina appropriates far too little for some of the most fundamental functions for which we rightly look to the public sector. And the deficit between what we spend on those functions and what we should in order to have the quality of service other states take for granted is sometimes quite vast, involving sums that dwarf the amounts involved in these vetoes that you hear so much fuss about.

What is needed is a fundamental reassessment of what state government does and what it needs to do, to be followed by the drafting of a completely new system of taxation to pay for those things. Our elected officials never come close to undertaking these admittedly Herculean tasks. But they should. The way we fund state government needs a complete overhaul, and spending time arguing about, say, the “Darlington Watershed Project” doesn’t get us there.

This is something I’ve long understood, and often tried to communicate. I was reminded of it again at the Columbia Rotary Club meeting on Monday.

Our speaker was SC Secretary of Transportation Robert C. St. Onge Jr. He’s a former Army major general, having retired in 2003 — until Nikki Haley asked him to take on DOT in January 2011. Some of his friends congratulated him at the time. Those were the naive ones. The savvy would have offered condolences.

Normally, public speakers like to inspire with phrases such as “From Good to Great.” Sec. St. Onge’s talk was far more down-to-Earth, far more realistic. He entitled it “Getting to Good.” And once he laid out what it would take for SC to get to “good enough” — to get all of the roads we have NOW up to snuff, much less building any roads we don’t have but may need for our economy to grow — it was obvious that we aren’t likely to get there any time soon.

The secretary started out with some background on how we have the fourth-largest state-maintained highway system in the country, after Texas, North Carolina and Virginia. He didn’t have time to explain why that is, but I will: It’s because until 1975, county government did not exist in South Carolina. Local needs were seen to by the county legislative delegation, one of the more stunning examples of how our Legislature has appropriated to itself functions that are not properly those of a state legislature. When we got Home Rule, supposedly, in 1975 and county councils were formed, many functions that had been done on the state level stayed there. So it is that roads that would have been maintained by county road departments in other states are handled by the state here. It’s not that we have more roads, you see — it’s that more of them are the state’s responsibility.

He also noted how woefully underfunded our system is. Georgia, for instance, has less road surface to maintain, but twice the funding to get the job done — and three times as many employees per mile. He alluded to why that is, and I’ll explain: We have the most penny-pinching state government I’ve ever seen, with lawmakers who (contrary to the fantasies you hear from the likes of Mark Sanford and Nikki Haley) would rather be tortured than raise adequate money to fund a decent state government. OK, so the retired general didn’t explain it that way. He just mentioned the fact that we haven’t raised the inadequate gasoline tax that funds his department since 1987 (the year I arrived back in SC to work at The State). Add to that the fact that the tax is levied per gallon rather than per dollar spent, and you have a recipe for a crumbling road system.

Here’s the secretary’s full PowerPoint presentation if you want to look at it. If you don’t, at least look these representative slides, which sketch out the basic challenges…

Above compares us to neighboring states. Note that only North Carolina has our bizarre problem owning responsibility for most of the roads.

This is a breakdown of the categories of roads SC maintains at the state level. Note that almost half are secondary roads for which the state gets no federal funds. This is where the state is squeezed the hardest.

Above is what it would take to get just the interstates in SC up to “good” condition, and keep them there.

This is what it would cost to fix up and maintain all those secondary roads, which make up most of the state’s responsibility.

This is the most important slide. This is what South Carolina needs to spend, and has no plans to spend, to get the roads it has NOW up to good condition, and maintain them in that condition.

Gov. Haley could arguably justify ALL of her vetoes by saying, “We need to put it all into our crumbling roads.” Then, after she had eviscerated all of those agencies as being less important than our basic infrastructure, she would have to turn around and call for a significant increase in the state gasoline tax, to come up with the rest of what is needed.

But our elected state leaders never go there. They either don’t understand this state’s basic needs, or aren’t honest enough to level with us about them. They’d rather truckle to populist, unfocused, unthinking resentment of taxes, and government in general, than be responsible stewards of our state’s basic resources.

That’s the money picture. Beyond that, here are some small things that in the aggregate add up to a big problem. If our governor won’t take on fully funding our state roads system, maybe she could work with the Legislature to get rid of some of the worst white elephants that DOT is saddled with:

This is a parking lot in Fairfield County that DOT is required to maintain. Sec. St. Onge would like to get rid of it, but can’t.

Ignore the dirt road, and look at the cemetery that DOT is required to maintain in Saluda County. Sec. St. Onge would like to get rid of that, too, but he can’t.

Here’s a road leading to a church in Florence County, which DOT is also required to maintain. The church is the only thing that the road leads to. Sec. St. Onge would like to give it to the church, and the church’s pastor would like to have it. But guess what? They can’t make it happen.

So… I’ve given you examples here from but ONE agency illustrating how we tolerate the intolerable, and refuse to fund the necessary, in our state government. THIS is the sort of thing we should be discussing, instead of having unnecessary culture wars over the Arts Commission.

A couple of last thoughts: Before any of you who think like Nikki Haley’s base start trying to dismiss all this by quibbling about what “good” means, or going on a rant about how these government bureaucrats just always exaggerate the need for funds in order to pad their fiefdoms, consider the following:

  1. This is Nikki Haley’s chosen guy to run DOT, not some “career bureaucrat” she inherited.
  2. This is a retired general officer — a guy with a very comfortable, generous retirement package — who did not have to take this job, and does not need it to improve his lot or to define himself. He’s about as objective and practical a source you can find for leveling with you about such things as this.

Whose hand is in whose pocket?

This morning, I ran into Samuel Tenenbaum and Henry McMaster having breakfast together. They asked me to join them, and I sat listening to their chat for several minutes before I had to ask the question I’d been thinking since I’d seen them:

Who is trying to get money out of whom?

As you may know, Samuel is the chief fund-raiser for the Palmetto Health system, and Henry now works raising cash for USC’s new law school.

When I asked that, two guy a  few feet away at the big round table of regulars there at the Capital City Club (Tom Persons and Jerry Whitley) both laughed out loud, because they had been thinking the same thing.

Samuel and Henry said “neither,” that they were just exchanging fund-raising ideas.

I got up and walked away, holding my coat pockets as tightly closed as I could…

Three times in a week, I’m mistaken for Mike

It happened two more times last night.

Mike Miller

After dropping by the victory party Cameron Runyan was having at 701 Whaley, I went to Kit Smith’s house to see what was happening with Daniel Coble. I went in wondering whether things were going well — and knowing that if they weren’t, people would feel somewhat constrained with a blogger in their midst. It only took a moment to find out that Daniel was a close second in a runoff, and that the campaign felt good about that — better than if they had been in a runoff with Jenny Isgett.

As I was absorbing that, a nice lady came up to me and started telling me that while she hadn’t followed me all that closely when I was at the newspaper, she had really come to appreciate my work, and she really, truly appreciated that I had decided to throw in my lot with the Coble campaign, and then she gave me a big hug. As I was trying figure this out, and muttering, “But I’m not… that is, I’m neutral… I mean…,” Bud Ferillo explained that I was there as a blogger. At which point the lady stepped back and looked at me and realized who I was.

Which was not Mike Miller.

A very short while later, I was in another room discussing the state of the world with Joel Smith, and a man came up to me and said, “Hi, you’re Mike Miller. I’m…,” at which point I interrupted to say, “No, I’m not.”

Not Mike Miller.

I told you previously about how this happened over at Belinda Gergel’s house the day she and Mike and Steve Morrison endorsed Daniel.

I don’t know what it is (it’s not like Mike looks like THIS guy), but I can almost sorta kinda see it. And I have this vague memory of this mistake having happened once or twice, long ago, when we worked at the paper together. Something about general similarity in height and weight and maybe head shape, and now hair color. We’re both from the Pee Dee (he’s from Dillon;  I’m from Bennettsville), but I don’t think that’s it.

Most of the folks at that gathering had on Daniel Coble stickers. I felt like I needed my own sticker, in the same yellow-and-black motif that Rob Barge designed for him, saying “I’m not Mike Miller.” But I don’t know if it would do any good…

Talking blogs, reaching no particular conclusions

The seminar from the panelists' point of view.

Late yesterday, I was one of three bloggers — the others being Will Folks and Logan Smith — who spoke to a seminar journalism class taught by Charles Bierbauer at USC.

It went fine, although I can’t tell you with any certainty that the students learned anything useful. They didn’t learn, for instance, how blogging will lead to a business model that will pay for real journalism in the future, because none of us know the answer to that. It’s sort of the Northwest Passage of our day — people keep looking for it, generally in the wrong places.

The unanswerable question is, and has been for some time: How, going forward, are media that report news and share commentary going to pay the bills — most particularly, the salaries and expenses of those who do the reporting, writing, editing and presentation of the content? Mind you, I’m talking about doing so on the state and local levels. One can still make money reporting national and international news and commenting on it, which is why we are inundated to the point of suffocation with news and opinions about Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. But it’s almost impossible for the average voter to be fully informed about state and local government or issues, and increasingly, too few even try. Which does not bode well for the health of our federalist system.

Will blogs be part of the solution to creating an informed electorate on levels below the national? I don’t know. As I joked to one of the students who asked something related to that, obviously The State didn’t think so, because I was the only active blogger at the paper, and they canned me. (Lest the students get the impression that I’m portraying my former employers as Luddites, I quickly added the truth, which is that I was canned for making too much money.)

Among the three of us, Will has made the most progress on the making-it-a-business front. He repeated what Nancy Mace told me months ago, which is that his blog brings in “several thousand” a month. I, so far, am more in the several thousand a year category. Logan is just starting out.

That points to the wide difference between the three of us. Back when I was a newspaperman, you could assemble a panel consisting of me and editors from other papers, and we would have a lot in common. A general-circulation newspaper was a definite thing, and working at one implied certain things that were predictable. Assemble a panel of bloggers, and you’ve got a group of people who are doing entirely different things, and for different reasons. It’s as though you had put together a panel consisting of one newspaper city editor, a photo editor from a magazine, and a newsletter writer.

For instance, among the three of us:

  • Logan started the Palmetto Public Record because he thought the “progressive” outlook was sort of thin on the ground in the SC blogosphere, and he probably has a point, with Tim Kelly and Laurin Manning currently out of the game. He’s trying to build it up from nothing, and learning as he goes.
  • Will started his blog by accident. He wanted to leave a comment on another blog that was criticizing him (he now says that the criticism was justified), and he clicked on the wrong things, and got a page inviting him to start his own blog. Which he did, and used it to push his Sanfordesque political views. But he tried to do more than that, becoming a news source, and breaking stories whenever he could (which, if you ask me, is why he has more traffic than I do — I reject the idea that it’s because of the cheesecake pictures). He devotes himself totally to the editorial content — which you have to do to post as often as he does. His wife handles the money, and Nancy Mace handles the technical side.
  • The roots of my blogging are in the 1980s, when I was governmental affairs editor of The State. I had about 10 reporters working for me in those days, and I was always frustrated by something: Reporters would come into the newsroom and share some interesting incident or exchange with sources that didn’t really rise to the point of being news, and wouldn’t fit logically into the news stories they were writing that day (even then, the finite nature of available space was highly restrictive), but which added color and life and context to my perception of what was happening out there in state government. I wanted readers to have that same benefit, so I started a column made up of such tidbits, which ran on Sunday and was called “Earsay.” (Something roughly like that still exists in the paper, I think.) Later, when I was editorial page editor, I was likewise frustrated by the fact that I had SO many things I wanted to say about the day’s news that I had no room for on the editorial pages. So I started the blog for all that other stuff — things I felt motivated to say beyond what got into print, things that interested me and might interest someone else, but probably not the vast majority of newspaper readers. That’s still what my blog is. I don’t even pretend or try to “report the news.” Having once commanded platoons of reporters, I know how impossible it would be to presume to do that well alone, even if I didn’t have a day job. So it remains a medium consisting of stuff I want to comment on, period. And I still never manage to get to all of that.

A couple of other quick points…

One of the students wanted to know when blogs would command the respect that mainstream media still do. He said he covers prep sports for The State, and when he arrives at an event and tells people that, he gets respect and cooperation that he wouldn’t get otherwise. I told him he had a long wait on that; the blogosphere is still the Wild West and will take some time to settle down and be respectable.

A corollary to that… Logan complained that he can’t get credentials to get onto the Senate or House floor over at the State House. When someone noticed me shaking my head I elaborated… I told Logan it doesn’t matter. Nothing much happens in the chambers anyway. Debate is dead in this country; the days of Daniel Webster and Henry Clay are long gone. To know what really happened on a key vote, you’ll have to talk to people outside afterward anyway. And all the members have cell phones if you want to ask them to come out for a chat.

I’ll close with this postscript that I enjoyed, posted by Logan Smith on Twitter:

Highlight of tonight’s Q&A: @BradWarthen talking about being a reporter in 1980, @FITSNews turns to me and asks “were you born then?” (No)

The funny part is that 1980 was when I stopped being a reporter. I was an editor from then on…

Were YOU there among the 40,000?

I had a busy Saturday and Sunday, so it’s just now that I’m getting around to posting my St. Patrick’s Day in Five Points pictures.

Were you there? Did you have a good time? I had an awesome time, as usual — even though I had to work. Kathryn Fenner had guilted me into volunteering with other Rotarians to check IDs.

As it happened, when I first arrived, all of the ID-check tents were out of the bracelets that certify partiers as being over 21. For awhile, that put us out of business, so I went walkabout.

Then, some more bracelets arrived, so I worked checking IDs for awhile, until we ran out again, at which point I went walkabout again.

Then, we got the word that we could simply write “21” in day-glo marker on both their admission bracelets and the backs of their hands, so I did that for a long while. At one point, Kathryn noted suspiciously that it was odd that most of the really cute girls were coming down to my end of the tent. A few minutes later, I went over to Kathryn and asked, in all innocence, “Just to make sure I’m doing this right — if she’s cute, I give her the OK, right?”  She didn’t think that was as funny as I did.

What I learned from this experience was that most of the world was born in 1990. (The cutoff date was March 17, 1991.) I also learned that only about half of the people in the crowd were from South Carolina. There was a surprising number of out-of-state licenses. Many of them were from Virginia, and quite a few, of course, from Georgia and North Carolina. But they were from all over. One unusually large laminated ID (it was about 3 inches by 4) was from Republique Francais. Two young guys showed their (U.S.) passports instead of licenses, which seemed odd, but whatever.

Then things got slow, so I went walkabout again. That’s how I got all of these pictures.

Near as I could tell, a good time was had by all. Jack Van Loan did a great job in this, his last year heading up the festival.

What I was doing all weekend

Gerrita Postlewait, Fred Washington, John Simpkins and Terry Peterson discuss "Education, Poverty and Equity on the Ground in South Carolina" with moderator Mark Quinn.

Y’all probably think I haven’t blogged in days. I have; it was just microblogging. One of these days I’m going to get social media totally integrated into this blog so y’all can immediately see my posts on Twitter, because when I’m away from my laptop, that’s where I’m sharing observations.

From Friday through Sunday, I was at the Riley Institute’s Diversity Leaders Initiative graduate weekend in Hilton Head. When I arrived, Cindy Youssef of the Riley Institute asked me to Tweet as much as possible, and to use the hashtag #onesc.

It’s dangerous to tell one of the Twitterati to Tweet as much as possible. There were others putting the word out there, but I was probably the most manic, as you can see by looking at the hashtag results. There was a respite of a couple of hours when I took my iPhone up to my room to recharge it, but other than that I didn’t slow down much.

Here you see most of my Tweets from the weekend. I left out some asides that had nothing to do with what was going on, but also left a couple of those in, for flavor.

For a complete roster of who was there, you can look here.

Most of the Tweets were when people said something I agreed with, although not all (as I’ve explained before, I favor single-payer NOT because people have a “right” to health care, but because it’s a more rational system for society overall than what we have now; but I thought it very interesting that Ed Seller thinks it’s a fundamental right).

When someone else’s Tweet is quoted, I use that person’s handle in front of it, and then insert my own as it goes back to my voice. I hope that makes this easier to follow.

Anyway, enough explanation. Here you go:

Brad Warthen ‏ @BradWarthen

Listening to Marlena Smalls singing to Riley Institute Diversity Leadership graduates in Hilton Head… He’s Got the Whole World…#OneSC

I was listening to Ken May talk about folk art traditions in SC when the coffee started to kick in… #OneSC

Just had an enjoyable political chat with Alston DeVenny, husband of Susan & law partners with the uncle of @fitsnews in Lancaster.#OneSC

Will Folks aka Sic ‏ @fitsnews

@BradWarthen ha! my uncle Robert is a good dude …

Brad Warthen ‏ @BradWarthen

Don Gordon talking about the need to transform the two South Carolinas into One… #OneSC pic.twitter.com/PQNaC7Qc

Harvey Peeler ‏ @harveypeeler

What is it about Starbucks that makes people want to tell you they are there and does the Drive-thru count ?

Brad Warthen ‏ @BradWarthen

@harveypeeler @Starbucks is awesome, they have time to kill, they’re caffeinated, and no, it doesn’t count.

In reply to Harvey Peeler

Harvey Peeler ‏ @harveypeeler

I think I can remove my “Tweeter training wheels ” when @BradWarthen pays attention to what I Tweet.

Brad Warthen ‏ @BradWarthen

“Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale.” Rudolph Virchow, quoted by Ray Greenberg.#OneSC

MUSC’s Greenberg: Problem of people not getting needed meds because of cost is getting WORSE… #OneSC

MUSC’s Ray Greenberg: People with higher levels of educational attainment spend more on alcohol… #OneSC

Greenberg: Stats indicate I-95 corridor is SC’s stroke belt… #OneSC

Greenberg: In many rural counties in SC, there’s not a single OB/gyn. “Deserts” of care… #OneSC

Greenberg: SC is No. 1 in people living in mobile homes. Whoo-hoo! One-fifth of us! #OneSC

Greenberg: Health disparities are NOT the result of bad habits of the poor. #OneSC

Forrest L. Alton ‏ @YoungGunCEO

Sitting at table by @BradWarthen, master tweeter… I can’t keep up, guy is good!! #OneSC #watchandlearn

Brad Warthen ‏ @BradWarthen

Ed Sellers: In SC, income does not rise with age, but health cost rise dramatically, for blacks and whites. #OneSC

Ed Sellers, formerly of Blue Cross Blue Shield: Access to health care is a fundamental right… #OneSC

That parenthetical interjection on the last Tweet was mine, not Ed Sellers’… #OneSC

Literally jumping the shark: “@CBSNews: Video: Reporter swims with sharks – without a cage (via @CBSThisMorning) bit.ly/wAhfsQ”

@wesleydonehue @harveypeeler When it comes to @Starbucks, I take a backseat to no man!

Heads up, folks: “@AnitaGarrett: Ed Sellers: “There are 55% more whites than black that will be on Medicaid.” #OneSC”

Carolyn Wong Simpkins: In US, we have best & worst health care.#OneSC

Ed Sellers: $24 billion spent on health care in SC annually. It goes up a billion a year… #OneSC

Ed Sellers: Other countries control health care costs by controlling growth of capacity, which (irrationally) is anathema to U.S. #OneSC

Simpkins: We are SO concerned to make sure no one undeserving gets care, we overcomplicate the system… #OneSC

Wanda Gonsalves highlights the crying need for primary care physicians, a “dying breed.” #OneSC

Watching a film that exhorts us to respect barbecue. But I don’t have to be persuaded… #OneSC

The takeaway: Don’t trust a barbecue pitmaster who doesn’t choose and cut his own wood… #OneSC

Huge applause for Pitmaster Rodney Scott of Scott’s BBQ in Hemingway, SC. #OneSC

BBQ Pitmaster Rodney Scott: Hemingway isn’t in the middle of nowhere; “It’s in the middle of everywhere.” #OneSC

Doug Woodward: SC productivity shot up from 90s thru early 00s, leveled off. And our income is FALLING, even when economy is good… #OneSC

Woodward: We must educate more of SC population at a higher level to be ready for 2030, when only 1 out of 6 will be working… #OneSC

Woodward: If we raise educational attainment to national average by 2030, personal income will rise by $68 billion. #OneSC

Jim Hammond ‏ @restlessboomer

#onesc Economist Doug Woodward: If we’d followed the policies Gov. Riley for the past 18 years, we wouldn’t have this (increase in poverty)

Brad Warthen ‏ @BradWarthen

Woodward: Key to prosperity — attracting and keeping the creative class… #OneSC

Steve Morrison quoting someone on poor towns in SC: We built Interstates so we wouldn’t have to look at them… #OneSC

Steve Morrison: If you want a safer and more secure South Carolina, teach a young man to read. #OneSC

Steve Morrison: We must get the greatest teachers to the students with the greatest need… #OneSC

Morrison: Recent trend in education in SC — cutting funding, while passing unfunded mandates to the districts… #OneSC

Morrison: Can we agree that teachers matter the most? #OneSC

Morrison: Take that tax base along the coast, and share it with the poor districts… #OneSC

Morrison: It’s great to have good private schools, but public education MATTERS… #OneSC

Morrison: The child gets off the bus at 5 years old with bright eyes. He’s not defeated. Yet. #OneSC

John Simpkins: The opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s indifference. (“My kids are fine; yours aren’t my concern.”) #OneSC

To paraphrase Terry Peterson, we need not just a love of justice, but a hard-minded understanding of what economic dev. requires. ##OneSC

What this conference keeps wrestling with is what to do about the total triumph of “I, me, mine” in SC politics. #OneSC

Ex-Gov. John Baldacci of Maine says Riley Institute is “kind of like a focus group for the state of SC.” #OneSC

Baldacci says on his first visit to SC, “I was really blown away” by downtown Greenville. (Something for Columbia to aspire to.) #OneSC

Baldacci: “The very basic foundation of our democracy is education.”#OneSC

Baldacci: As dysfunctional as our politics may be, what we have is better than what most people have had throughout history. #OneSC

Baldacci describes the surreal experience of being in Congress on 9/11/01… #OneSC

Baldacci: You can go anywhere in the world, but you can’t become Chinese; you CAN come here from China & become an American.#OneSC

Baldacci: “You’ve gotta be yourself; you’ve gotta tell the truth and you’ve gotta work hard.” (Father’s advice.) #OneSC

Baldacci: “We all have to get over it, folks… We have to realize that we have a greatness here if we work together…” #OneSC

Baldacci exhorts us to treat people as Dick Riley always has… with dignity and respect. Amen to that; we could have no better model.#OneSC

Others call Dick Riley “secretary.” I call him “Governor.” For SC, that means the most (to me, anyway). #OneSC

Apparently, I'm even Tweeting while talking at the barbecue with Clare of the Clare Morris Agency and Susan DeVenny of First Steps.

Yep, that’s Bobby all right

People wonder why I’m always late and never (well, almost never) get anything done. It’s because for me, stuff just leads to stuff. And I’m unable to resist plunging ahead to see where it all leads.

For instance, today I had a membership committee meeting at the Capital City Club. At some point our membership director said that you can now buy Smart Cards at the Club. Someone asked what that was, and I pulled mine out of my pocket to show him. This reminded me… I had arrived at the Club for a meeting before the meeting, and my two hours (it was one of the green ones, which max out at 2 hours) were probably going to run out just as we were ending the lunch meeting. And I’ve been ticketed seconds after running out before.

So I excused myself to go put some more time on the meter.

On my way out, I ran into Rep. James Smith. We exchanged pleasantries, I excused myself again and went down to the street. I put some more time on, and headed back up.

On my way into the building, a sort of familiar-looking guy walking perpendicular to my path made eye contact with that “Hey, aren’t you…” look, hesitated, nodded to me with the sort of halfway nod that feels deniable, in case you’re wrong about who it is, and I gave back a similar nod. I walked on, thinking about the odd complexities of polite human interaction, when I heard a “Hey!” behind me. It was the guy. He asked me if I was Brad and if I used to run the newspaper. I told him I ran the editorial page. He asked me about a woman named Cindi who was married to someone who had been someone high-ranking at the newspaper, saying he probably was confusing her identity. He said no, not Cindi Scoppe.

I don’t know how I got there, but I eventually I read his mind enough (after he mentioned Macon, Ga.) to venture that he was talking about Nina Brook. Her husband Steve came to the paper as business editor, she joined as a political reporter, she left to go to WIS and then was Gov. Jim Hodges’ press secretary before I hired her away (the move was widely regarded as a defection) to be an associate editor. She’s now a high school teacher. Steve is now managing editor at the paper.

She and Cindi Scoppe share a number of characteristics (they used to be a fearsome duo as reporters, covering the Legislature together), which could lead to a name confusion, but don’t tell either of them that.

That settled, I confessed to not knowing his name, and he gave it. He works at the Department of Commerce. I asked how Bobby Hitt was doing. Bobby, if you’ll recall, was very ill just before Christmas, and hospitalized for quite a while. He’s back at work now, I was told, but working more of a normal schedule instead of trying to kill himself doing everything. Good to hear.

Oh, he said, since you know Bobby from way back you should probably get off the elevator on 16 and look down the hall to see the new portrait. He said it was by that lady, and he gave a first name (again, not the right one — I have days like that, too) who works with trash. I said you mean Kirkland Smith, who… drumroll… is married to James Smith, whom I had just run into. And it’s not really garbage she uses as a medium, more like… cast-off junk. It’s a recycling thing.

So on the way back to my meeting, I stopped on 16 and looked both ways. The receptionist at Commerce asked if she could help me, and I said I was looking for the picture. She told me to step inside the double doors and look down a hall, and at more than 50 feet there was no doubt — there was Bobby.

I went on down the hall to get close enough for an iPhone picture, and ended up chatting with another lady whose desk was next to it.

Eventually, I made my way back to the meeting. It was pretty much over. I hadn’t meant to miss the rest of the meeting; stuff just happens…

Anyway, I thought Kirkland’s picture was pretty cool, just like the others of hers I’ve seen. So I’m sharing it.

Midlands mayors speak optimistically of burgeoning community unity

The panel laughs after moderator Bob Bouyea asked what should be done about traffic on I-126 and other paths into Columbia, and Steve Benjamin replied, "Everybody could live downtown."

This morning — very early this morning — I attended the latest “Power Breakfast” sponsored by the Columbia Regional Business Report. So did a lot of other people, packed into a ballroom at Embassy Suites.

I’d like particularly to thank the friends who joined us at the ADCO table, right up front:

We were there to listen to four mayors — Steve Benjamin of Columbia, Randy Halfacre of Lexington, Elise Partin of Cayce, and Hardy King of Irmo — talk about metro issues.

Here was the dominant theme: Regional cooperation.

You may note that that was the main theme at last year’s panel. You’d be right. But last year it was more about something to be grasped at. This year there was more of a sense of something achieved.

A lot of this arose from the experience of landing Amazon. One hears that a lot among folks who work in local government, and economic development, in the Midlands. Which is interesting. It started out as such a divisive controversy, in the Legislature, with the governor not helping a bit and lawmakers at each other’s throats. I had my own ambivalence about the deal at the time, but those who are dedicated to bringing jobs to the community were undivided in their minds, and undivided in the collective sense.

It seems to have been a rallying, bonding experience that carries over into many other areas.

Time and again this morning, we heard expressions of comradeship, a sense of all being in this together, that swept aside the political boundaries that have been an excuse to get nothing done in the past. We heard it a little less from Hardy King, who tended to answer questions entirely from an Irmo perspective, but he’s new, and hasn’t been through the same bonding experiences as the other.

Last year, the mayors were still stinging over the failure to come together effectively over the Southwest Airlines matter. This year, there was more reason to celebrate — and not just Amazon, but Nephron and other economic development wins for the whole community.

A lot of other issues were discussed — Ms. Partin mentioned the 12,000-year history park in her city, Mr. Benjamin said with regard to mass transit that “It’s hard to get Southerners out of their cars,” Mr. King spoke of his town’s 0 percent property tax rate, and Mr. Halfacre told us about what his citizens ask about almost as much as they ask for traffic relief: sidewalks.

But I’ve been away from home 12 hours now, and I hear my dinner calling.

My (successful) Quest for George Smiley

Outside Smiley's house on Bywater Street. No need to knock. George knows I'm here. And where's he going to go? It's a cul de sac. It's over, old friend.

I’d been holding this back for when the movie comes out, but now that it’s passed me by (although I look forward to its being at the Nickelodeon next month), I am much embittered and have decided to go public with the whole story — the Official Secrets Act be damned. See how they like it when it’s all laid out in the papers. Perhaps I’ll go with The Guardian; that should sting. Let Parliament launch an inquiry. Let them connect me to the notorious Rebekah Brooks, for all I care. (After all, I’ve done a freelance job for that same outfit, in the time since they cast me out.) I’ve been a good soldier, put in my time, watched and waited. All for naught. Here’s my story…

As you know, I went to the UK a year ago, ostensibly as a tourist. That wouldn’t fool a real professional, of course, but one keeps as low a profile as one can. I have my own tradecraft for this sort of thing — I make a big splash, publicize my whereabouts… what spy would do that?

It’s worked so far.

My mission — to find the Circus, and more importantly, George Smiley himself.

It was quite a challenge. George hasn’t been seen since 1982. And the original location of the Circus, now that MI6 has the River House (all mod cons, as Bill Haydon would say), is shrouded in service legend. It’s not something you’d assign to some probationer straight out of Sarratt.

First, we spent a couple of days settling in, establishing patterns. One assumes that tiny Toby Esterhase‘s lamplighters are everywhere, so you need to paint them a picture, let them get complacent. This we did — from Heathrow to Swiss Cottage (the very spot where General Vladimir would have been picked up as a fallback, had he not been killed on Hampstead Heath), then all over the city on the Tube, aimlessly. Trafalgar Square, St. James’s, Fortnum’s, Buckingham, the Globe, the Tate, the Cabinet War Rooms, the Tower, hither and yon in the City.

Finally, at the end of our third full day, after night had fallen, we ambled up Charing Cross Road, affecting to be interested in bookshops. We almost missed it, but then there it was — the Circus itself. There was the Fifth Floor, and even Haydon’s little hexagonal pepperpot office overlooking New Compton Street and Charing Cross. Quick, I said, get the picture. It took a couple of tries, the way these things do when you need to hurry. Thank heavens for our “tourist” cover; it excuses all sorts of odd behavior. Then on up the street, and an hour or so of browsing at Foyles to check our backs. Found a couple of decent-looking biographies of Lord Cochrane, but didn’t buy one. (They had shelf after shelf of naval history; it went on and on.) Then we wandered about in the West End, to clean our backs as much as possible, before heading back to Swiss Cottage.

One thing down. Hardest part to come.

By this time, I had decided not to risk the actual modern HQ of the SIS. Mix fact with fiction like that, and it’s like mixing matter and antimatter. Could blow you clear across the universe, or at least to Brixton, and who wants to go there, really? That’s why they put Scalphunters there.

We played tourist for another day. Then another. The Sherlock Holmes museum. A side trip to Greenwich, to stand astride the Meridian, and see the coat Nelson wore at the Nile. Back into town for the British Museum.

Then, it was our last day in London. Had to go to Oxford the next day, and check on Connie. Connie is high-maintenance. So it was do-or-die time. We opted to do.

We thought that twilight would be the best time to descend on George. Vigilance is low. Everyone’s tired then; time for tea and meet the wife. So we went to that general part of town. Spent several hours at the Victoria and Albert. Loads of statues and the like.

We took the Tube to Sloan Square, a good half-kilometer from Bywater Street, and went the rest of the way on foot. We entered the cul de sac as night descended (which it does before 4 p.m. at that time of year). There wasn’t a soul on the narrow street. Everything went smoothly. When we got to the part where Smiley lives, I tried to throw the watchers off by shooting pictures of houses other than his. In a way, though, they were all relevant. George lives at No. 9, of course. But the 1979 TV series was shot at No. 10. And No. 11 has a Banham security system, which the book describes as being on George’s house. No. 9 has an ADT system.

Anyway, after doing what I could to distract any lamplighters in the vicinity, I had J (her workname — best watcher in the outfit, is J) quickly shoot a happy snap of me in front of No. 9. She was a bit nervous, because there were lights in the basement-level windows. She said people who lived there would wonder what we were doing. I muttered no, they wouldn’t: “They know exactly what we’re doing.” The thing was to get it over with quickly, so we did. Given the hurry we were in, I’m struck, as I look at the image, by how placid and dispassionate and, well, Smileyesque I look in the image. Like I was channeling him in that moment.

Then, it was back out to King’s Road and back to the Underground as fast as our legs would carry us, trying not to show that our hearts were pounding like Peter Guillam’s when he stole the Testify file from Registry that time. I was getting too old for this, I knew. As I looked up at the Christmas lights in the trees on Sloane Square, they were as blurry as the stars in a Van Gogh.

I can hardly remember the next couple of hours, but I can’t forget the stroke of luck that befell us later. Nothing short of a miracle, it was.

We had decided to case Victoria Station and its environs, because we knew we had to catch a coach there for the trip to Oxford next morning, and it’s good tradecraft to reconnoiter these things ahead of time. We got a bit turned-around there, and ended up touring the whole station before we discovered that the coach station was on the next block. On one aimless pass through the vicinity of the ticket windows, I looked up and there he was. George himself. Right out of the first paragraph of this passage:

He returned to the railway station… There were two ticket counters and two short queues. At the first, an intelligent girl attended him and he bought a second-class single ticket to Hamburg. But it was a deliberately laboured purchase, full of indecision and nervousness, and when he had made it he insisted on writing down times of departure and arrival: also on borrowing her ball-point and a pad of paper.

In the men’s room, having first transferred the contents of his pockets, beginning with the treasured piece of postcard from Leipzig’s boat, he changed into the linen jacket and straw hat, then went to the second ticket counter where, with a minimum of fuss, he bought a ticket on the stopping train to Kretzchmar’s town. To do this, he avoided looking at the attendant at all, concentrating instead on the ticket and his change, from under the brim of his loud straw hat…

Apparently, our appearance at Bywater Street had sent him on the run, but we had stumbled into him anyway. I left him alone, except for grabbing this picture. You doubt that’s George Smiley? Look at this picture, and this one and this one, and then tell me that. ‘Course it was him. Stuck out a mile.

But now that I’d found him, what was the point? He was just my old friend George. I could hear Toby’s triumphant voice in my ear: “Brad! All your life! Fantastic!” But I ignored him. I got the picture, and moved on. I didn’t even look to see whether he had left Ann’s lighter on the floor.

My mission had been accomplished, and then some… Why did I not exult? All I felt was the urge to polish my glasses with the lining of my tie. But I wasn’t wearing a tie…

Tell Her Majesty that I just don’t KNOW…

Yesterday, two representatives from Her Majesty’s Government came to see me to talk politics, as they periodically do.

It can be fun to play the local expert, whether for national or foreign media, or in service of the Special Relationship — especially if you’re an Anglophile like me. Maybe I can’t see “Tinker, Tailor” where I live (yet), but I can contribute to a report that might, just might, cross a latter-day George Smiley’s desk. OK, so it’s not very likely, but hey, I can dream…

The temptation is to sound like you really know what’s going on, even if you don’t — like The Tailor of Panama, or Our Man in Havana. But I’m not the type to mislead HMG. Perish the thought.

So yesterday, I had to tell my visitors that I just can’t explain what’s happening in the South Carolina primary, and therefore can’t predict anything. And that’s the unfortunate truth.

I don’t know why Newt Gingrich is suddenly leading by double digits in polls in South Carolina, other than it’s his turn. I don’t know whether that trend will continue, because I don’t understand the dynamics that led her to this point.

And one of the problems is this: I’m not hearing from people who are Gingrich fans. I have to acknowledge that maybe there are things I don’t hear, or am not exposed to, because I’m no longer the editorial page editor of the state’s largest newspaper. Maybe that’s why I feel like I understand what’s happening now less than I understood the situation four years ago.

But you know what? So much of what I was hearing and seeing then was through my blog. I wrote relatively little about national politics in the paper, so most of my interactions in that area were online. And to the extent that I was seen as someone engaged in writing about the presidential race, it was online. For instance, a number of the national and international media types who were interviewing me initially didn’t even know I worked at the newspaper; they had come to me as a widely-read blogger.

And I’m more widely read online now than I was then. My monthly page views are at least four times what they were then. And yet…

  • My traffic hasn’t been steadily climbing in the months leading up to the primary, the way it did four years ago. It hit a peak in August, then dropped a bit.
  • I  haven’t had a request for an interview from national or international sources since I spoke with E.J. Dionne at the start of November, which would be weird anytime, but especially with a primary coming up.
  • I just don’t run into people who are excited about the upcoming primary, either online or in person. Think about it — beyond Doug’s perpetual support for Ron Paul, who have you seen here who is pumped about a candidate? Well, it’s like that in the wider world. Quick — name five people you know who are eager to vote for Newt? You probably can’t. I know I can’t. People may be saying they’ll support Newt when a pollster asks, but they’re not going around bubbling with public excitement about it.
  • There were several national and international advocacy groups that had set up SC offices for the duration four years ago — and they had done it months before now. By the summer of 2007, they were up and running. This time, I know of one such group that has started a local office in recent months — One, the Bono group. I know a lot of nonprofits are far less flush with money than they were then, but it’s still remarkable.

Yes, I know that the buzz in SC should only be half of what it was four years ago, since only one party is having a primary. But it’s really much less than half. Things just feel dead by comparison.

I think one reason for that is expressed in that same Winthrop poll I referenced above. It also shows that 59 percent of those polled — and that includes Republicans — believe that Obama’s going to be elected. That, combined with a lower energy level (compared to last year) among Tea Partiers, has led to a really subdued campaign.

In a normal campaign, the fact that Newt is so far ahead, this late, would mean that he had it more or less locked up. This year, I don’t know. The polls give so easily this year, and can so easily take away. And this is Newt Gingrich — a guy with a well-known talent for self-destruction.

Normally, at this point, South Carolinians would be coalescing around the Republican most likely to with the nomination — usually, the establishment. A Bush. Bob Dole. John McCain. Now, the very definition of what it is to be a Republican — much less a South Carolina Republican — is more up in the air than at any time I remember.

So it seems to me there’s a better-than-even chance that SC won’t pick the eventual winner this time. The whole process is too wobbly, and less susceptible to steadying factors than in the past. And if that happens, there will be even less energy, and much less national attention, focused on the SC GOP primary four years from now.

But I just don’t know. When it’s hard to explain why what is already happening is happening, it’s very hard to predict what will happen next.

We RAKED in the moolah for Salvation Army

Here, Boyd is giving me his, "You're the Salvation Army guy and you're here to pick up the bucket? Yeah, right!" look.

Boyd Summers and I had a good midday shift today ringing the bell for Salvation Army, representing the Columbia Rotary Club.

I can’t say I like the new kettles. They’re plastic, and no bigger than a bucket, and people have a terrible time jamming their money into the ill-designed slot. The old ones worked much better — the money practically fell in on its own.

Adding to the problem was that the money, from early in our shift, was all the way to the top (it was mostly there when we started). Fortunately, a guy from Salvation Army came and took the full one — which was heavier than you would expect — and left us an empty one.

I mean, we think he was a Salvation Army guy. He had an ID tag. After he left, I observed to Boyd that that would be a pretty good racket if he hadn’t been. Yep, said Boyd, and we kept on ringing the bell.

We had a high old time talking politics, reaching back to the first time I met Boyd, when he ran unsuccessfully against Jim Harrison.

We saw a lot of folks we knew, such as … wait second: Is being a bell-ringer like being a doctor or lawyer, with confidentiality privileges? Maybe so. And maybe certain people will give a little MORE next time I’m out there, so as to remain anonymous. Man, were those people hauling out the booze by the handtruck-load!

Of course, when our shift was over, Boyd and I both did a little shopping (I bought beer and wine; he went to the hard-stuff side). After you watch people come in and out for two hours (and we’re going, oh, yeah, that’s some good stuff — you ever try…?), you just have to get some for yourself.

This is me trying to look convincing as I say "Merry Christmas!" when it's above 70 degrees. I wouldn't give this guy money, but plenty of people did.

What ad whiz came up with this nightmare?

Have I mentioned that I’m participating in the Riley Institute’s Diversity Leaders Initiative down in Charleston? No, I haven’t… Well, there’s a lot I can tell you about that — the banner ad at the top of this page is involved — but I’ll do that later.

Right now, I want to show you something we discussed as a sort of mini-case study Monday in the class.

See the above, short-lived, Intel print ad.

See if you can find, without Googling the controversy, how many ways the ad is racially offensive.

No, there’s no right answer, but I came up with three. With more time, I’d have come with more. I just thought I’d get y’all to talking about what I spent part of my day talking about.

The amazing thing was that it ever actually found its way into print. I don’t think any newspaper I’ve ever worked at would have fouled up to this extent, been this clueless — although I’ve been party to a number of mistakes. It astounds me that something that was not produced on a daily deadline was this ill-considered. But it was, and appeared in a Dell catalog in 2007 before being withdrawn. Intel apologized.

The new iPads arrive at Lexington High School

This student, whom I cannot name because she's just 17, had found time to personalize hers...

Thursday morning I spoke to Michael Burgess’ class at Lexington High School. The format was much like one of Kelly Payne’s classes — the kids had a prepared list of questions, which is what I like. I hate a set speech, with me droning on and wondering whether anyone is interested. With questions, I at least know I’m addressing something my audience cares about — or something their teacher wants them to care about.

Sample questions:

1. How does the media influence the political process? Is this a positive or negative influence?
2. Discuss the impact of social media outlets on the political discourse of today?
3. What is the role of money in determining the outcome of elections?
4.Could you list and describe the various sources of funding for campaigns?
5.What is the real role versus the appropriate role of interest groups in influencing policy?

But my speech was definitely not the most interesting thing happening in those students’ school day, because I arrived on the same day as the new iPads.

I had trouble finding a place to park because the visitor spaces, I was told, were taken up by district people who were there for the iPad rollout.

Here’s a release on the Lexington One website about the new devices:

Last year (the 2010–2011 school year), Lexington County School District One successfully executed a personal mobile computing pilot at Gilbert High School as part of our ongoing search for ways to provide students with the tools they need to support their learning and to prepare them for higher education opportunities and careers.

At that time, we explained that we planned to expand the program to our other high schools.

This year (2011–2012), we are expanding personal mobile computing to our other three high schools. All high schools will begin issuing the devices in November.

The district feels strongly that its personal mobile computing initiative is not about the tool used. It is not about an iPad or a tablet. It is about what a personal mobile computing device enables our students to do.

With these devices, students will acquire the digital competence they need for our increasingly electronic- and technology-driven world. They will learn the essential skills they will need as consumers, citizens and workers.

The devices will give students access to the most current information available through the Internet and to the district’s Learning Management System 24 hours a day, seven days a week during the school year.

Students will be able to complete and turn in assignments, homework, projects or research electronically. Interactive applications will allow them to improve their reading fluency, build mathematics skills or create their own study cards.

Unfortunately, as yet, not all textbook publishers provide electronic copies of every textbook, so the district will not be able to eliminate textbooks. Teachers will be able, however, to supplement material found in textbooks with information they create using various multimedia or with information already available.

Lexington One purchased the personal mobile computing devices as part of the voter-approved 2008 Bond Referendum. That bond referendum included $15 million to expand and upgrade existing technology at all schools.

Read our Personal Mobile Computing Guide for high school students.

I should mention that the students were all politely attentive to my talk. I don’t think I could have been, with a new iPad in front of me…

What E.J. wrote from here (I’m quoted, so you know it’s gotta be good)

Thought y’all might be interested in reading E.J. Dionne’s column today, which he wrote before leaving Columbia yesterday.

Have to say I was a bit panicky when I started reading it, because I saw he was going in some directions that matched things I had said, and I hoped I hadn’t gone too much out on a limb as a source, to the point of embarrassing him or me. I was just, you know, talking, driving around town, having a Yuengling at Yesterday’s after the lecture — the way I do. (By the way, E.J. drank O’Doul’s. But I’m convinced that he is Catholic, nevertheless. He also chews nicotine gum constantly, to hold another vice at bay.) But I knew the main point of what I had said was sound. I was talking about the utter predictability of the GOP in SC (and elsewhere) at this point in its history.

Being the smart guy that he is, he fully got that. And being even smarter, which is to say a thorough professional, he talked to plenty of other people, from Bob McAlister to Mark Sanford to Mick Mulvaney to Will Folks (and others who didn’t make it into the column, such as Wesley Donehue).

It’s well worth a read. Here’s an excerpt:

What South Carolina can do for the GOP candidates

By , Published: November 2

COLUMBIA, S.C.

Can Mitt Romney be dislodged as the fragile but disciplined front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination? If he can, South Carolina is the best bet for the role of spoiler.

Republican primary voters here have historically ratified establishment choices, but the old establishment has been displaced by new forms of conservative political activism, the Tea Party being only the latest band of rebels.

South Carolina conservatives also seem representative of their peers around the country in being uncertain and more than a trifle confused about the choices they have been handed. They are skeptical of Romney, were disappointed by Rick Perry’s early performance, were enchanted by Herman Cain — a spell that may soon be broken — and are not sure what to make of the rest of the field.

All this, paradoxically, gives hope to the non-Romneys in the contest, including Perry but also former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, who was campaigning in the state this week…

Oh, I know you want to get to the good part, so here it is:

The candidate who absolutely needs to win here is Perry. It’s no accident that he announced his candidacy in Charleston. Brad Warthen, a popular South Carolina blogger (and a friend of mine from his days as editorial page editor of the State newspaper), thought at the time that Perry’s August announcement speech was pitch-perfect for the state’s conservatives in its passionately anti-government and anti-Washington tone, delivered in the city where the Civil War began. The primary and indeed, the nomination, seemed within Perry’s grasp.

I’m mentioned again later, so read the whole thing.

And thanks again to E.J. for coming down and making this year’s Bernardin lecture one of our best.

Thanks, E.J., for giving us a piece of your mind

Before another day passes, I want to express my appreciation to E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post Writers Group and the Brookings Institution, for delivering the 2011 Cardinal Bernardin lecture at USC last night.

Perhaps because he’s from my world, he spoke to me as no previous speaker has in the 12 years of the series — of faith and public life, particularly in the sense of how the Cardinal’s life and work relate to our existence today. So I thank him for that. I also thank all those who contributed to bringing about this event — the Department of Religious Studies, the College of Mass Communications and Information Studies, President Harris Pastides’ Civil Discourse Initiative, and Samuel Tenenbaum and the Tenenbaum Lectureship Fund.

For those of you who don’t know, Joseph Bernardin was a son of Italian immigrants who grew up here in Columbia, as a parishioner at my church, St. Peter’s. He would become the leading light of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the force behind such remarkable documents as “The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response.” He fostered the Church’s Common Ground Initiative, and his greatest legacy (to me) is placing the Church’s pro-life ethic within the compelling — and necessary — framework of the Seamless Garment — a legacy that, inexplicably to me, remains controversial, even anathema, among some. After becoming Archbishop of Chicago, he was widely regarded as a likely first American pope before his death of cancer in 1996 at the age of 68.

E.J. is that rare bird in the higher reaches of journalism who writes regularly of matters that bear upon ultimate questions (see, for instance, “The Vatican meets the Wall Street occupiers” from last week), and does so with an intellectual vigor that not only reflects credit upon his and my faith tradition, but shows what journalism is still capable of achieving at this late date. He knew the cardinal, and has long admired him.

Here’s a rough draft of his remarks. There are typos, and it is incomplete (entire anecdotes are missing), but it gives you an idea of what he had to say. An excerpt:

I want to close with something I have been pondering ever since the Spriritan fathers of Duquesne University asked me to give a talk about immigration. I was struck when I was preparing the talk how much both the Old and New Testament had to say about our obligations to strangers. Not to brothers or sisters or neighbors, but the strangers. And it made me think that perhaps our calling is really to create a world without strangers. Yes, that’s utopian and impractical and all sorts of other things. But it is a useful objective to ponder, a useful goal to keep in front of us. It is a world in which there is no “other,” no “them” or “those people,” just fellow citizens or fellow children of God or fellow human beings. It is a world in which we share each other’s joys and sorrows, each other’s benefits and burdens. It is a world in which the fortunate realize that their affluence depends not just on their own hard work and skill, but also on luck and providence. Often, simply, the good fortune of having been born in a particular place, to a particular family. We all owe so much of who we are to our parents and what they did for us. And not a single one of us can claim to have been wise or farsighted in our choice of parents. That truly was God’s choice, or for those who don’t believe, fate’s. And the same applies to the country in which we are born. We cannot praise ourselves for being really smart to have been born in the United States of America. A world without strangers would be a better world because all of us, everywhere, would feel at home all the time. In a world without strangers, we approach the new people we meet, anticipating the joys of friendship, not the anxieties of enmity. And yes, a world without strangers would be a world more likely to heed the injunction of the prophet Isaiah, to undo the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free. It would be a world more likely to resemble the place imagined by the prophet Amos, who, as Dr. King taught us in his “I Have a Dream” speech, imagined that justice would roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. I believe that Cardinal Bernardin spent his life trying to create a world without strangers. His mission to honor the dignity of every person was not just political but also personal. He provided us a model.  So let us live by his words: “Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.”

OK, that’s heavy, I know. Hey, it was the ending. Perhaps I can show you better the spirit of the way E.J. speaks with this ice-breaker from the beginning:

Whenever someone gives me an introduction that is far too generous, I like to note what it’s like to give talks about politics and be introduced with the words: “And now, for the latest dope from Washington, here’s E. J. Dionne.”

That’s E.J. He doesn’t take himself too seriously, but he approaches the most important issues with all the respect and reverence they deserve and demand.

I hope Kathryn Fenner and “Abba,” who were both there, will weigh in with their thoughts about the lecture. I had the impression that they found it meaningful as well.

Sorry, boys, but I’m with the feds on this one

This just in from our friend Wesley Donehue on behalf of the SC Senate Republicans:

SENATE PRESIDENT PRO TEMPORE AND SENATE MAJORITY LEADER ISSUE JOINT STATEMENT ON U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT’S INJUNCTION AGAINST S.C. IMMIGRATION LAW

MCCONNELL AND PEELER: FEDERAL GOVERNMENT FORCES THE STATES TO ACT ON IMMIGRATION BUT SHOOT THEM DOWN WHEN THEY DO

Columbia, SC – November 2, 2011 – This week, the United States Justice Department challenged South Carolina’s new immigration law, preventing it from going into effect. The Justice Department argues that the new law preempts the federal government’s overview of immigration. Both Senator Glenn McConnell and Senator Harvey Peeler believe that the federal government would be the perfect governing body in the country to initiate immigration policy, but for years it has been failing to act.

Senator McConnell said, “I wish that the federal government was as vigilant in protecting the country’s borders and enforcing our nation’s immigration laws as they are in attacking states like South Carolina that try to step up to the plate and act because the federal government refuses to do so. South Carolina has a duty to protect our citizens and our budgets from the problems caused by unfettered illegal immigration and I believe that we have done so in a lawful manner. But if the federal government wants us to quit acting in this area, the solution is simple – do your job.”

“The federal government’s inaction on this issue has forced states across the nation to react to the growing problem of illegal immigration. However, when the states pass laws that address this problem, the federal government rushes in to stop them. It’s time for Washington to stop focusing their energies on those trying to solve the problem and start addressing the real problem of illegal immigration on a national level,” Senator Peeler said.

It has been over half a decade since the United States passed a broad immigration law. Since then, immigration has continued to be a problem for states. In response, states across the nation have enacted immigration laws to help combat this problem in our country. These laws vary, but the federal government has thus far seemed intent on removing key enforcement provisions through federal court cases, rendering the laws ineffective.

Senator McConnell and Senator Peeler have always been strong supporters of legal immigration. They believe illegal immigration cheapens the value for all immigrants who come to the United States through legal means. South Carolina’s immigration law will help provide one more disincentive for those looking to illegally immigrate to the U.S.

“Immigration has been part of our nation’s heritage from the beginning. However, the federal government’s inaction is tarnishing this national tradition. If those in Washington are unwilling to act, they must support states in their efforts to do what is best for their citizens,” Peeler continued.

###

Sorry, boys, but I’m with the federales on this one.

Chalk it up to my Catholicism. Last night, after E.J. Dionne’s lecture, a few of us went to Yesterday’s to talk religion and politics and other stuff polite folks don’t talk about.

At one point E.J. invoked our Mass readings from Sunday before last:

“You shall not molest or oppress an alien,
for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt.
You shall not wrong any widow or orphan.
If ever you wrong them and they cry out to me,
I will surely hear their cry…”

Note that it doesn’t say, “… as long as they have the proper documentation.”

Now, before Doug gets on his high horse about legality… Folks, I want immigration laws enforced, too — but I also want just immigration laws that recognize economic realities and that are consistent with our being a nation of immigrants, a nation of people who welcome the stranger.

And the popular pressure for South Carolina to usurp federal powers on this issue arises from a very different impulse.

Just for the record, I am not mad at Boyd

Rep. Boyd Brown at Yesterday's.

About an hour after Kevin Fisher called me to set the record straight on whether he had called me, I met Boyd Brown for a beer at Yesterday’s.

We had a fine time getting acquainted — I don’t believe we’d every had a conversation before — although it was unnecessary from my point of view. Boyd had suggested the meeting because he thought I was mad at him or something, and I went along because, as my readers know, I’m always glad to spend time at Yesterday’s (see the ad at right).

It was a very South Carolina kind of conversation. We talked about Boyd’s experiences with his Daddy (who is probably younger than I, since Boyd is younger than my fourth child) being on county council in Fairfield County, and about when his grandfather was a high official in state government, and about the people he’s related to in Bennettsville (my birthplace), and partisan politics, and race, and… just a little of everything.

And, more to the point… Boyd says he did not realize until after he had said it that in the case of our governor, his remark could be construed on yet a third level that, he agreed, is inappropriate. So we had a total meeting of the minds. Except, to some extent, when we got on the subject of upcoming legislation that he’s planning to push, but more about that later…