Brad Warthen's Blog

$41 million for SC, and everybody's in on it

You get used to press releases from congressional offices in which Rep. This or Sen. That announces that his district or state is going to get X amount of federal largesse. Even when the member had nothing to do with it, by announcing it, he gets credit. It's routine.

But this one was so big that the president and the veep had to get in on it, which is something new for me:

President Obama, Vice President Biden, U.S. Transportation

Secretary LaHood, Announce Availability of Nearly $41.2 million in Public Transportation Investments for South Carolina

More than $8 Billion Made Available Across the Country for Mass Transit

President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood today announced the availability of $41,154,218 from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) for South Carolina in public transportation funding.  The funding was part of $8.4 billion made available to repair and build America’s public transportation infrastructure.
    “All over the country, resources are being put to work not only creating jobs now – but also investing in the future. A future that strengthens our transit system, makes us more energy efficient and increases safety,” said Vice President Joe Biden.  “With this recovery package, we will be creating jobs, saving jobs, and putting money in people’s pockets. And with these resources, we’ll not only be rebuilding roads and bridges and schools, we’ll be rebuilding America.”
    “Investments in public transportation put people to work, but they also get people to work in a way that moves us towards our long term goals of energy security and a better quality of life,” said Secretary LaHood.  “That is why transit funding was included in the ARRA and why we think it is a key part of America’s transportation future.”
    The U.S. Department of Transportation has already committed $540 million in federally financed loans, about one-third of the total cost, for the intermodal center, which is proceeding on time and on budget.
    The U.S. Department of Transportation will monitor state compliance and track job creation. The projects will be web-posted for the public to see with information on projects accessible at www.recovery.gov.

###

Joe Biden, prophet

Charles Krauhammer made the point most clearly, in his column for today:

The Biden prophecy has come to pass. Our wacky veep, momentarily inspired, had predicted last October that ``it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama.'' Biden probably had in mind an eve-of-the-apocalypse drama like the Cuban Missile Crisis. Instead, Obama's challenges have come in smaller bites. Some are deliberate threats to U.S. interests, others mere probes to ascertain whether the new president has any spine.
   Preliminary X-rays are not very encouraging.
   Consider the long list of brazen Russian provocations:
   (a) Pressuring Kyrgyzstan to shut down the U.S. air base in Manas, an absolutely cru-cial NATO conduit into Afghanistan.
   (b) Announcing the formation of a ``rapid reaction force'' with six former Soviet re-publics, a regional Russian-led strike force meant to reassert Russian hegemony in the Muslim belt north of Afghanistan.
   (c) Planning to establish a Black Sea naval base in Georgia's breakaway province of Abkhazia, conquered by Moscow last summer.
   (d) Declaring Russia's intention to deploy offensive Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad if Poland and the Czech Republic go ahead with plans to station an American (anti-Iranian) missile defense system.

But you know what? I didn't use the Krauthammer piece on today's page. After all, you sort of expect Charles Krauthammer to say stuff like that. Folks like bud are more likely to be persuaded by Joel Brinkley, who is the kind of guy who writes stuff like this:

    Even with all the anti-American sentiment everywhere these days, most people worldwide know America to be a decent, honest state. For all the justified criticism over the invasion of Iraq, the United States is now beginning to pull its troops out. For all the international anger and hatred of George Bush, the American people elected a man who is his antithesis.

Set aside the silliness of saying Obama is Bush's "antithesis" -- I point you to all the evidence of "continuity we can believe in," such as here and here -- and consider my point, which is that Joel Brinkley is decidedly not Charles Krauthammer. Anyway, here's some of what Mr. Brinkley said, in the column that appears on today's page, about how Obama is being tested, although he managed to say it without being snarky about Joe Biden:

    America’s competitors and adversaries are certainly not greeting President Obama with open arms. During his first month in office, many have given him the stiff arm.
    Pakistan made a deal with the Taliban to give it a huge swath of territory in the middle of the country for a new safe haven.
    North Korea is threatening war with the South.
    Many in the Arab world who had welcomed Obama are now attacking him because he did not denounce Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
    Iran launched a satellite into space, demonstrating that it has the ability to construct an inter-continental ballistic missile to match up with the nuclear weapons it is apparently trying to build.
    There’s more, but none of it can match the sheer gall behind Russia’s open challenge to Washington.

Just to give you yet another perspective that I did NOT use on today's page, here's what Philly's Trudy Rubin had to say about that deal that Pakistan cut with the Taliban:

       The deal was cut with an older insurgent leader, Sufi Mohammed. Supposedly, he will persuade tougher Taliban, such as his estranged son-in-law Maulana Fazlullah, to lay down arms. Pakistani defense analyst Ikram Sehgal told me by phone from Karachi, "They are trying to isolate the hard-core terrorists from the moderate militants. I think it is a time of trial, to see if this works."
       Critics say the deal is a desperation move, made by a weak civilian government and an army that doesn't know how to fight the insurgents. "The Pakistani army has been remarkably ineffective," said Dan Markey, a South Asia expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. He said the army, which is trained to fight land wars against India, lacks the counterinsurgency skills to "hit bad guys and not good guys."
       As a result, many innocent civilians are killed, leading locals to accept the Taliban as the lesser of two evils. (That may account for the warm welcome Sufi Mohammed re-ceived in Swat after the deal; poor people are desperate for the violence to stop, whatever it takes.)

So wherever you are on the political spectrum, if you follow and understand foreign affairs, you know that Obama is indeed being tested. Big-time. And it remains to be seen whether he passes the tests. I certainly hope he does.

Just glowing with happiness

Well, now, here's a congratulatory message I wouldn't have anticipated:

“The nuclear energy industry congratulates Senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden on their election. One of the most important and compelling challenges facing their administration is to put in place a national energy policy to achieve energy security and to protect the U.S. economy and the environment.

“If the United States is going to meet the predicted 25 percent growth in electricity demand by the year 2030, as well as achieve its environmental goals, we must begin that work now. And we must recognize as a nation that we cannot reach our energy goals without the reliable, affordable and carbon-free electricity that nuclear power plants generate to power our homes, businesses, telecommunications, military and transportation infrastructure. Senator Obama recognized this linkage early in his campaign by noting, ‘It is unlikely we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power as an option.’

“The development of U.S. energy policy must transcend partisan politics. There must be a bipartisan effort to develop a diverse portfolio of energy resources, including nuclear energy, which is the only large-scale source of carbon-free electricity that can be expanded to meet our nation’s electricity needs. Building new nuclear power plants will expand U.S. industry and manufacturing, creating thousands of green jobs and enabling America over the long term to electrify its transportation sector. Affordable around-the-clock electricity also helps to strengthen the U.S economy and protect America’s neediest citizens.

“The executive and legislative branches have shown considerable support across the political spectrum to work with the nuclear industry in a public/private partnership to enable the construction of new-generation nuclear plants and to move ahead with scientifically sound solutions for used nuclear fuel storage and disposal. We will work with the new administration to pursue an integrated used fuel management strategy that includes interim storage of used nuclear fuel, research and development into advanced technologies for recycling used fuel without contributing to proliferation concerns, and development of an appropriate geologic repository for permanent disposal of the used-fuel content that can’t be recycled.

“It is crucial for the new administration to continue with these and other efforts to shape a comprehensive energy policy that recognizes the value of nuclear energy and other low-emission electricity sources. We look forward to working with the Obama-Biden administration and Congress to assure that nuclear energy continues to be recognized as a key tool to deepen economic prosperity and achieve enduring environmental stewardship.”

###

The Nuclear Energy Institute is the nuclear energy industry’s policy organization. This news release and additional information about nuclear energy are available at www.nei.org.

Mind you -- my jocular headline aside ("Doh!") -- I'm a big fan of getting as many nuclear power plants up and running as we can, as fast as we can. But last time I checked, I don't think Obama shared my eagerness. Or did I miss that?

The latest Fey-as-Palin SNL skit

Sorry to be late posting this. I had a busy weekend, and actually didn't go back to watch this until this morning. Saturday the wife and I and several of our descendants participated in the Walk for Life, Saturday night I was at a belated 70th birthday party for my former boss Tom McLean out in Blythewood, and Sunday we celebrated both my 55th birthday, and my younger son's 28th. Busy, busy. How was your weekend?

Anyway, as for the Biden-Palin skit from Saturday night -- very funny, very much above the show's standard for the last couple of decades, but ya know, nothing is going to hit me with the freshness of that first Palin-Hillary skit. After that, they've so far just been good sequels. The true genius was in the first one.

But just so you'll appreciate the latest such sequel, the below clip from Saturday night's show is more typical of what we get these days. Don't bother watching past the first few seconds. It doesn't get any better...

Breathless over Sarah (column version)

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
Poor Joe Biden. He likes attention, and he deserves it. He’s smart, experienced, engaging, witty, and has a smile that, could its brightness be tapped, would give the nation a nice start toward energy independence.
    But he can’t get any. Attention, I mean. He certainly couldn’t when he sought the presidential nomination. And then, even after he got picked for the team, when his big moment came — it was all about Sarah.
    I think I can speak for much of America here when I say Sarah Palin had me breathless Thursday night. I don’t mean “breathless” the way Kathleen Parker meant it when she described the way she felt watching the veep candidate in her earlier interviews, pulling for her “like so many” women (this was before she decided Mrs. Palin was a “problem” and should drop out).
    Nor was I breathless in the sense that David Brooks meant it in The New York Times Friday, when he wrote of “Republicans around the country crouched nervously behind their sofas,” afraid for their gal. First, I’m not a Republican (or a Democrat). Second, as much as I admire and respect John McCain, and have for years, I was not enchanted by his choice. It was like, If I can’t have Joe Lieberman, I don’t care WHO it is; if this is what the base wants, they can have her. Which is not a good way to pick a potential future president.
    Nor was it that she’s a “babe,” as I have learned not to say on my blog. She’s pretty, but not to the point of constricting one’s breath.
    No, I realized Thursday night that I was getting light-headed whenever she spoke for the same reason that some movies and TV shows are painful to watch. You know how you can tell when something’s about to happen that will be enormously embarrassing to the character on the screen, and even if you don’t like the character (although it’s worse if they’re likable, and Gov. Palin is that), you cringe, because you don’t want to see it. You get embarrassed for the human race; you empathize no matter how much you try not to.
    Think of the boss character on “The Office,” in almost any scene.
    Often at such moments, I leave the room. Life is painful enough without having your nose rubbed in contrived discomfort. But I had to keep watching the debate, on account of it being my job.
    Fortunately, it went fine for all concerned. Sarah did fine. There were moments, of course, such as her repeated demonstrations that she learned to pronounce “nuclear” by listening to the current president (he oughta know, right?). And if she had said “maverick” just one more time...
    (I had reached my saturation point on that word during the convention. At least there it had the appeal of being extremely ironic, since the hall was full of people who hated him for being a... you know. Yes, he is one of those, and I like that about him; just don’t say it again. Try “nonconformist,” or even “iconoclast.” Sure, it doesn’t sound as macho, and maybe lots of folks don’t know what it means, and those who do may not like its anti-religious roots. But gosh darn it, if Sarah Palin started saying “iconoclast,” hockey moms all over the lower 48 would start sayin’ it, and first thing ya know it would be as American as snowmobiles.)
    But she did fine. And Joe did fine. And in the end I was fine, because I was breathing again.
    You may say, “of course Joe did fine,” but things could have gone very badly for him. He likes to show how smart he is, and up against an opponent that much of America is worried for, regardless of how they’ll vote (a friend who had described Gov. Palin’s convention speech to me as “venomous” confided Friday morning that he, too, had been breathless,) he was crossing a minefield.
    At this point, you may justly wonder, “Was there substance in this debate, or is it just about how it made you feel?” Suitably chastened, I would admit that there probably was. There was all that talk about Iraq, for instance. And come to think of it, by my lights, Sarah Palin had the right of it, and Joe Biden was wrong. But then, she was just channeling what John McCain has always said — that we can’t afford to lose there. Come to think of it, Sen. Biden was reflecting what Barack Obama, and the folks who swept him to the nomination, believe about Iraq. Joe Biden knows better. Or at least, he used to.
    And I don’t know which was more unsettling — the idea of Sarah Palin suddenly becoming president (as she said, “heaven forbid”), or Joe Biden’s intimation that we didn’t need to worry, he’d be there in the Oval Office at all times keeping an eye on that fine young fellow he’s running with (although he quickly added, “He’s president, not me...”).
    Not that a Palin presidency wouldn’t be interesting. Imagine the State of the Union delivered in the voice of Frances McDormand in “Fargo,” but speaking lines from an Andy Hardy movie: “We’ll reduce the deficit by puttin’ on a show in the barn! You betcha!”
    Forgive me. I get carried away. But I find that we’re in a strange and unexpected place. I had expected to be pretty pumped right about now, because the two guys I wanted to win their respective nominations did so, and I don’t remember that having happened before. But I wasn’t exactly blown away by the first presidential debate; it seemed overshadowed by the Wall Street implosion, which wasn’t the kind of dominant theme I had expected. Nor, apparently, had the nominees.
    So we turned to the vice presidential debate, which actually turned out to be more interesting and engaging, to the credit of Mr. Biden and Mrs. Palin.
    Still, I don’t think it helped anyone make up their minds — even if it did, for a brief time, have some of us breathless.

Go to thestate.com/bradsblog/.

What did you think of the debate?

My own quick take on it -- WAY more interesting than the presidential debate. Higher energy, and more engaging.

Both did well. Of course, that means more in the case of Sarah Palin, because we knew Joe knew his stuff. Joe's greatest danger was coming off as superior or condescending or ungentlemanly. Sarah's greatest danger was coming off as she did with Katie Couric. She didn't, and he didn't. They both did a fine job.

But what do YOU think?

What's so hard about speaking English?

Joe, you just said "different than" three times in about 30 seconds. It's "different FROM" -- what's so hard about that? "Than" expresses a comparison of DEGREE, a quantitative difference. When you're trying to express a qualitative difference, it's "different from."

And Sarah -- what's so blasted hard about the word, "nuclear?" Have you been studying at the W. school of elocution?

If I were Joe Biden, I'd be worried about the debate

Don't get me wrong -- I expect Joe to win big-time by MY standards. I've always liked and respected Joe, his tendency toward blarney notwithstanding, and he's a veteran big-leaguer, while Sarah's never been out of the sticks. Yes, I could be wrong, I could be shown up the way Max Mercy was when he bet on the Whammer against Roy Hobbs, but I know he's capable of knocking it out of the park at a time of his choosing.

But it's not about me, is it? It's about Josephine Sixpack out there. And despite that dazzling grin of his, Joe's charm is of a kind that I think is likely to wear thin with the folks in TV land if he shows just how smart he is. And Joe has trouble resisting the temptation to show how smart he is.

We all laugh at the Tina Fey skits about Sarah (those of us who have senses of humor), but only the crueler ones among us want to laugh at her, personally, struggling against a Hall of Famer in such a public and high-stakes ballpark (let me know when you've had enough of the baseball metaphors).

Mrs. Palin just needs to cram enough to give a few answers that make common sense. Sure, such a forum is loaded with hurdles that she's likely to have trouble clearing (just changed sports on you there). But Joe doesn't just have to get the answers right (which everyone expects him to do). He has to get the tone right, at every step of the way. Now that's tough, especially for a guy so well known for letting himself get carried away.

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.

What if it were Obama/Palin vs. McCain/Biden?

Today I was reading Peggy Noonan's column -- she, by the way, sees the opposite of my rosy scenario happening, with the financial crisis making the presidential election meaner and more partisan -- when an idea that has sort of half-occurred to me before came into full being.

Her column turned, in part -- her pieces tend to meander, although elegantly -- around the experience-vs.-change axis, to wit:

The overarching political question: In a time of heightened anxiety, will people inevitably lean toward the older congressional vet, the guy who's been around forever? Why take a chance on the new, young man at a time of crisis? Wouldn't that be akin to injecting an unstable element into an unstable environment? There's a lot at stake.

Or will people have the opposite reaction? I've had it, the system has been allowed to corrode and collapse under seven years of Republican stewardship. Throw the bums out. We need change. Obama may not be experienced, but that may help him cut through. He's not compromised.

The election, still close, still unknowable, may well hinge on whether people conclude A or B.

There was even a little cartoon illustration of a man poised indecisively at a voting machine choosing between those two options.

By the end of the column, I was thinking, what if the choice were that clear, and unmuddled by the running mates? What if New Kids Barack Obama and Sarah Palin were up against Wise Old Heads John McCain and Joe Biden? How simple and clear that choice would be.

Those on the right and left who want change, who distrust the Establishment, populists and libertarians, would have an uncomplicated choice for Obama/Palin -- two fresh, energetic young faces rising up from among the people and sweeping the old aside.

Those of us who believe that experience is as valuable in government as in anything else, and who have come to trust and admire both McCain and Biden as individuals over the years -- I would fall in that camp, by the way, as my respect for both is of long standing -- would have just as easy a choice.

As things stand, the choice is more complicated. And the presidential candidates seem to have gone out of their way to make it so -- Obama throwing away his advantage as a change agent in choosing Biden, McCain wasting the whole experience argument in picking Palin.