Brad Warthen's Blog

Scattered thoughts on the debate

First, I'll refer you to video from the panel discussion last night, where you will find Joshua Gross and others offering their thoughts.

I was wiped out last night, and didn't stick around to talk to folks after the discussion ended a little before midnight. Long day. I hope folks didn't think I was rude, but I'd been fighting a cold and had no resources left. I'd told everyone at the start that I was just there to observe; it was the newsroom's show.

On my way out I did run into our own Norm Ivey, who was there sporting an Obama '08 T-shirt. You can see some of Norm's recent comments on this post, and this one, and this one.

As I said last night from my Treo, I don't think this was a debate that changed any minds -- although Norm raised the interesting point that the candidates were speaking to voters who hadn't paid attention until now, and that on that score he thought McCain did better. I can't say, because I wasn't looking for that while I watched.

Nor do I have an overall observation or theme. I thought each candidate exhibited some strengths and weaknesses, as follows:

McCain strengths:

• Having been right about the Surge. There's so much more to that than the fact that by sending those extra troops, and using them properly, we created a stituation in which we can start talking about drawing down and leaving behind a stable Iraq. It goes to the core fact that McCain was right, and Bush was wrong, for four years before the president finally got rid of Rumsfeld and switched to a strategy that would work. This narrative (and so many other things) gives the lie to the Democrats' "McCain equals Bush" nonsense. It communicates that he won't give up on our nation's commitments, or let American blood be spent for nought. And it shows he knows the differences between approaches likely to work, and those not to.
• The constant reminders of his long experience with these issues. The answer he gave to the "bomb, bomb Iran" remark was his best moment. He gave the history of his judgments of major decisions involving the deployment of our military, from being against sending the Marines to Lebanon in 83 to backing Clinton on Bosnia in defiance of many in his party. It strongly suggested the thought, "Oh, yeah -- and Obama just got to the Senate..."
• His long-held opposition to earmarks and wasteful spending, and clear willingness to use his veto and the bully pulpit to fight it. Lehrer was irritating with his constant hammering on "if the bailout passes, what will you give up," but McCain gave the best answer.
• The reminder that he and Biden pushed through the 9/11 commission, again in spite of the Bush administration.
• His answer on the initial economic question, emphasizing how encourage he was that Democrats and Republicans were working together finally, made Obama's answer about "failed policies" of Republicans look petty.

McCain weaknesses

• One overrides all others, and he did it repeatedly and intentionally -- his condescending references to Obama "not understanding" issues. Obama is a smart man, but even if he weren't, McCain's constant attempts to put him down would have been unseemly, and beneath him. Yes, I believe there are some things Obama "doesn't get," but that's not a gentlemanly way of putting it, and I'm betting it created a lot of sympathy for Obama. Most of all, it was inconsistent with the sort of man McCain is -- he is usually deeply humble and gracious to those who disagree with him (something that I think is all the more admirable because of his natural temper; he has chosen to be mild in disagreement, and it speaks well of him). This was artificial and offensive, and whoever talked him into taking this approach should not be listened to again.
• As we knew already, he is not as smoothly articulate as his opponent. He lost himself in his sentences a number of times, particularly toward the end, and that did him no good.

Obama strengths

• His argument that Iraq has sapped our resources to the point that we can't "project force" where we need to elsewhere in the world. Yes, Democrats have long said this in regard to Afghanistan, but he took it beyond that. This remains the strongest argument that critics of our involvement in Iraq have, and he used it well, doing an excellent job of distancing himself from those in his party who are reflexively against ANY military action, and that's something he has to do to be credible as a candidate for commander in chief.
• Beyond exhausting the military, he also made a good argument that Iraq has enabled and strengthened Iran -- a familiar argument, but he presented it well.
• His gracious acknowledgment of the courageous leadership McCain showed in standing up to the administration on torture. The normal Democratic position is that McCain "caved" on the issue, and is no better than Bush. That's a deeply unfair characterization, and Obama showed himself to be above that.
• More articulate, as always (see "McCain weaknesses").

Obama weaknesses

• Continuing to be wrong on the Surge, and not acknowledging it, hurts him with everyone else except his base. Trouble is, that base will go nuclear if he acknowledges it. (The thing is that logically, he could still assert it was wrong to go INTO Iraq, but that the Surge was the thing to do.) The "worked beyond wildest expectations" earlier helped, but McCain turned that against him well, noting that it was no surprise to HIM.
• Probably no one else noticed this, but when he tried to excuse his failure to hold hearings on Afghanistan (a weakness in itself), he said that's not the practice on the committee chaired by his veep candidate. That made me fully realize, in a way I hadn't before, just how upside-down the ticket is in terms of qualifications -- the number two guy on the ticket is the number one guy's CHAIRMAN. If I had been McCain, I might have succumbed to the temptation to point out the irony.
• This is a silly one, but the "professor" was much in evidence in his pedantic insistence on trying to pronounce foreign names and terms the way natives of those countries might, but doing it with such an obvious American accent (the bad guys in Afghanistan were the "Tollybon," said as only an English-shaped tongue could say it). Maybe you couldn't hear it; it's something from my childhood when I lived in South America and was bilingual -- even though I can hardly speak it now, hearing other gringos try to be SO proper in their pronunciation and fail still grates on my ear.

Yeah, I know -- I gave McCain more strengths, and Obama more weaknesses. But each item does not have equal value, and overall, I think they came out even. That's bad news for McCain, because the subject of most of the debate was his personal area of strength, and he needed to clearly win this one.

I don't think he did that, but then I can't speak for all independent voters.

Bipartisan bailout deal reached

Maybe this did turn out to be our fiscal 9/11, pulling Democrats and Republicans together to act in the interests of the country rather than their respective parties. If so, kudos all around. We'll no more later in the day after the historic confab at the White House with congressional leaders and both presidential candidates.

For now, here's what The Wall Street Journal is reporting.

Here's The New York Times version.

And here's AP's:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Key Republicans and Democrats reported agreement Thursday on an outline for a historic $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, but there was still resistance from rank-and-file House Republicans despite warnings of an impending panic.

"I now expect we will, indeed, have a plan that can pass the House, pass the Senate, be signed by the president and bring a sense of certainty to this crisis that is sill roiling in the market," Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, said as members of both parties emerged from a two-hour negotiating session.

Negotiators planned to present the outline at a White House meeting later Thursday with President Bush and the rivals to replace him, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barrack Obama.

"We're very confident that we can act expeditiously," said Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., the Banking Committee chairman.

Not everyone in the closed-door talks was as optimistic. Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama, the only House Republican in the bargaining meeting, stopped short of saying he agreed with the other lawmakers on an imminent deal.

"There was progress today," said Bachus, the senior Republican on the House Financial Services panel.

Later, he issued a statement saying he was not empowered to strike any deals and there was "no agreement other than to continue discussions."

Both houses' Republican leaders, Rep. John Boehner and Sen. Mitch McConnell, also issued statements saying there was no agreement.

Still, the White House called the announcement "a good sign that progress is being made."

"We'll want to hear from (Treasury) Secretary (Henry) Paulson and take a look at the details. We look forward to a good discussion at the meeting this afternoon," said Tony Fratto, the deputy White House press secretary.

A Treasury spokeswoman said the proposal was being reviewed there.

On Wall Street, stock prices were up late in the trading day, but not by as much as earlier in the day.

The core of the plan proposed by the administration just a few days ago envisions the government buying up sour assets of shaky financial firms in a bid to keep them from going under and to stave off a potentially severe recession.

Obama and McCain called for a bipartisan effort to deal with the crisis, little more than five weeks before national elections in which the economy has emerged as the dominant theme.

McCain on Wednesday asked Obama to agree to delay their first debate, scheduled for Friday, to deal with the meltdown. Obama said the debate should go ahead.

Congressional negotiators said Thursday there were few obstacles to a final agreement, although no details of an accord were immediately available.

"There really isn't much of a deadlock to break," said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

But there were fresh signs of trouble in the House Republican Caucus. A group of GOP lawmakers circulated an alternative designed to attract private money back into the credit markets with less government intrusion.

Under that proposal, the government would provide insurance to companies that agree to hold frozen assets, rather than purchase them directly as envisioned under the administration's plan. The firms would have to pay insurance premiums to the Treasury Department for the coverage.

"The taxpayers haven't done anything wrong," said Rep Eric Cantor, R-Va., adding that rather than require them to bear the cost of the bailout, the alternative "pretty much puts the burden on Wall Street over time."

Boehner, R-Ohio, the minority leader, was huddling with McCain on the rescue. When asked whether the GOP presidential nominee could corral restive Republicans to support the plan, Boehner said, "Who knows?"

Bush told the nation in a televised address Wednesday night that passage of the package his administration has proposed was urgently needed to calm the markets and restore confidence in the reeling financial system.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Bush's agreement with Democrats on limiting pay for executives of bailed-out financial institutions and giving taxpayers an equity stake in the companies cleared a significant hurdle.

It was not immediately clear how lawmakers had resolved differences over how to phase in the unprecedented cost — a step demanded by Democrats and some Republicans who want stronger congressional control over the bailout — without spooking markets. The idea of letting the government take an ownership stake in troubled companies as part of the rescue, rather than just buying bad debt, also has been a topic of intense negotiation.

Frank told The Associated Press Thursday both elements would be included in the legislation.

Bush acknowledged Wednesday night that the bailout would be a "tough vote" for lawmakers. But he said failing to approve it would risk dire consequences for the economy and most Americans.

"Our entire economy is in danger," he said.

Video: Ed Gomez vs. Nikki Haley

First, I apologize for the length of this video clip, but I think it gives a pretty fair glimpse of what our interviews were like with the two candidates in S.C. House District 87.

You have newcomer Democrat Edgar Gomez challenging Rep. Nikki Haley. Four years ago, Nikki was the longshot going up against a very Old School incumbent in Larry Koon. If anything, Mr. Gomez is probably a longer shot, if only because Rep. Haley is hardly the symbol of entrenched seniority that Mr. Koon was; hers is still a very fresh face on the S.C. political scene.

On the video, you will see the candidates' respective remarks about or answers to questions about several issues, starting with an open question about what they consider the top issues to be, then moving on to taxation, school "choice" and payday lending.

And yes, I will still be doing separate posts on these two interviews, just not today. In the meantime, you have the video.

So THAT'S who that arrogant-looking so-and-so was...

For months now, I've been seeing this one photograph of this one guy, over and over, in The Wall Street Journal -- almost always with stories I was uninterested in reading, so the picture just sort of registered in the background.

It was the sort of picture that no sane company publicist would ever have distributed, unless it wanted its CEO to be hated. And you knew this was a CEO; the picture just radiated, "I'm the kind of guy who thinks he's really hot stuff because I'm so absurdly overcompensated." And you know, I seldom think that when I look at people. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt (something that drives some of y'all crazy, because you're always wanting me to join you in despising somebody, and I just don't feel like it -- not necessarily because I'm a nice guy; I just don't feel like it). But this picture INSISTED that you not like the guy. If a psychologist included this photo in a Thematic Apperception Test, I suspect there would be a surprising uniformity in the stories the subjects would tell.

Well, we've all been paying more attention than usual to Lehman Brothers the last few days. For tomorrow's op-ed page, I happened to choose this Nicholas Kristof column, which in a nutshell is about a guy named Richard Fuld who got paid the equivalent of $17,000 an hour while he was running that company into the ground.

Needing art for the page, I searched AP photos for "Richard Fuld." And lo and behold, what should pop up but that very same picture that's been half-registering on my mind the last few months. That's it above and to the right. It was taken by Kevin Wolf at a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington on Jan. 22, 2007. I especially like the way Mr. Wolf thought to include the satellite image of the Earth in the frame, just in case we missed the whole "master of the universe" thing going on.

And apparently, to the extent that this guy Fuld will be publicly remembered, he'll be remembered looking like this.

Well, I feel so much smarter for knowing that now. But not nearly as smart as he apparently thought HE was.

So now I'm bailing out something called AIG?

A little while ago I got a release from Jim DeMint that said in part:

Americans should be very concerned by the size and frequency of these government bailouts...

Well, I am, Jim -- I am. And I'd really like to see someone give me an intelligible explanation of why it was important for me, as a taxpayer who'd rather see his money spent on Iraq or universal healthcare, am bailing out yet another private company.

First Bear Stearns. Now AIG. Presumably, this was another company "too big too fail," which evokes the obvious response, "evidently not." Let's see -- we had to bail out Bear Stearns (and I still don't know why). We didn't have to bail out Lehman; we let that go into bankruptcy (another form of relief our government offers). We let the marketplace deal with Merrill Lynch -- specifically, another private company bought it. And now, ta-da!, another private company is buying Lehman. The market at work, one would think.

So why AIG? I get Fannie and Freddie; as little as I understand about High Finance, I always understood them to have a special relationship to the government. If nothing else, you couldn't let them go under for the same reason a Mob boss can't let a made guy get whacked without doing something about it. You lose respect, both on your own turf and abroad. You gotta do something; you got no choice.

But why AIG? I don't get it.

Michael Koska, S.C. House District 77

Sept. 11, 11 a.m. -- When he first came to see us during the primaries, Michael Koska made a good impression -- an especially good impression given that he was a newcomer to electoral politics. He had made himself expert on the issues that had gotten him involved -- especially Richland County road needs -- and showed a passion for learning about more.

He made an even better impression this time, and here's one of the reasons why: As he said himself a couple of times in the interview, he's learned and grown on the campaign trail. For instance, he expressed a tendency toward supporting vouchers. But it was fairly obvious at the time that he hadn't really thought the issue through. Now, he doesn't see himself supporting either vouchers or tax credits (last time he didn't know the difference between them) "in the foreseeable future." He believes that our first priority should be fixing the public schools that need fixing.

Mr. Koska is the Republican nominee in a district that has long been strongly Democratic. But his views are not inconsistent with those of moderate South Carolina Democrats, and he goes out of his way to praise such Democrats as Joel Lourie and Anton Gunn (regarding a recent op-ed by Mr. Gunn in our paper, he said "ditto.") He maintains that if voters elect him instead of opponent Joe McEachern, he will be more likely to get things done, being a member of the majority party in the Legislature.

About the only other time he said anything about his party affiliation was when he expressed enthusiasm for his party's vice presidential nominee. Much as Democrats have spoken of an Obama Effect this year, he predicted that Sarah Palin would do a lot of good for down-ticket Republicans such as himself.

But mostly he talked about his passion for better roads and affordable health care. His advocacy for fixing Hard Scrabble Road had won him a position on the citizen's panel on transportation that recommended the sales tax hike, and he feels betrayed that County Council (led by Mr. McEachern) didn't put the issue to a referendum. He said he believes the $550,000 spent on the study, not to mention the "valuable time, time spent away from their families" by the volunteers like himself, to have been cavalierly wasted. He is also critical of Mr. McEachern and the council for having bungled the county's representation on the Council of Governments that doles out what road money there is in the area, allowing Lexington County to get the lion's share of the funding for the next 10 years.

The council's decision to borrow $50 million for new parks (including one in his area), and to do so without a referendum, while people are still dying on Hard Scrabble is to him an outrage.

He has a small business owner's perspective on health care. His own personal experience and that of his acquaintances convinces him that the state must act now to make health care more affordable (he has no patience for waiting for the feds to do anything). It was like deja vu when he told about his daughter's recent $1,800 x-ray, which sounded an awful lot like the x-rays for MY daughter, the one that ate my "economic stimulus check," if you're recall. He was particularly incensed that when he asked the folks at the hospital in advance what the x-rays would cost, no one had any idea. Speaking of outrages, he thinks (as do I) that the stimulus checks were "the stupidest thing." If only, he says, that money had been devoted to upgrading the nation's infrastructure...

Energy is another area where he has no interest in waiting on the federal government to act. He says the state should push to have natural gas filling stations built around the state. Natural gas, he maintains, is "probably going to be our bridge off foreign oil," but you can't get anywhere without the retail infrastructure.

Michael Koska is a good example of what you get when a regular citizen not only gets worked up about an issue, but goes out of his way to get informed and try to do something about it. That's why we endorsed him in the spring. Of course, we also endorsed his general election opponent, so that makes this race particularly interesting to us.

DeMint sticks up for Sarah Palin

If you're a Republican looking for cred on Iraq, then you want Lindsey Graham to stand up and tell everybody you were for the "surge" when nobody else was -- as Lindsey did for best buddy John McCain last week.

But if you're looking to bolster your rep as a fiscal hawk, then you want South Carolina's junior senator.

Jim DeMint has made a name for himself nationally as the scourge of earmarks. So it is that Sarah Palin's got to be grateful for his op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal this morning, headlined "Yes, Palin Did Stop That Bridge." An excerpt:

In politics, words are cheap. What really counts are actions. Democrats and Republicans have talked about fiscal responsibility for years. In reality, both parties have a shameful record of wasting hundreds of billions of tax dollars on pork-barrel projects.

My Senate colleague Barack Obama is now attacking Gov. Sarah Palin over earmarks. Having worked with both John McCain and Mr. Obama on earmarks, and as a recovering earmarker myself, I can tell you that Mrs. Palin's leadership and record of reform stands well above that of Mr. Obama.

$50 million for parks

Fifty million. That's what Richland County Council has decided to hand to the county's biggest SPD to build and revamp parks.

This from a county that hasn't figured out how to fund buses past October.

What else is there to say?

Apparently, some people watched a football game last night instead (I'll bet they're sorry)

Actually, I said pretty much everything I had to say about this in my headline, which came to me when someone dropped by my breakfast table this morning and said, "Did you watch that game?" I muttered something about having had work to do, then when he went away, I quickly scanned through the sections of the paper scattered on my table looking for information on said game, so I would not be caught out by the next person to assume I knew all about it.

To save you the trouble of looking it up, the Chickens played Vanderbilt, and lost. (You may wonder how in the world I could have read any of the paper without knowing any of that, and all I can say is that for me, it's easy. Items about football, no matter how prominently displayed, seem in my case to be protected by a Somebody Else's Problem field, and are therefore invisible, unless I go looking for them.)

Only one more thing to say: Who were the scheduling wizards who decided to have USC's first two games, not only on Thursday nights, but on the Thursday nights that the men who would be president gave their respective convention acceptance speeches? Are we truly living in parallel universes, and does the Leadership of the Free World matter as little to people over in that other world as the outcome of a football game does to me?

Let's hope not, because I have a creepy feeling that a lot of folks who were glued to the games instead of the speeches are going to end up voting in November, and that's just scary.

Austin on right track: Tap private sector for lights

First, I am no Scrooge, any more than is our friend James D. McCallister. While I might be some decades removed from the time of life when Christmas was pure joy, unalloyed by stress and hassle, I am not one to call the season a "humbug." I need no spirit from the past to startle me into remembering the excitement I felt as a child when downtown decorations went up.

But as I think back to the various cities and towns in which my memory's eye sees those simple wreaths and lights hung from lampposts, I associate those things with local merchants. And so it is that I praise City Manager Charles Austin for suggesting that perhaps it is NOT the job of the city's taxpayers to come up with $140,800 to put up holiday lights and decorations in downtown Columbia.

"There are other ways to do this besides the city," says Mr. Austin. Indeed.

Of course, the sorts of merchants with whom you might expect to collaborate on such a thing -- the kind that most clearly benefit from the Christmas season (say, Macy's or Belk) -- are rather thin on the ground these days, and in some cases perhaps for the same reason that new lights are needed (the disruption caused by streetscaping).

But before the city government coughs up even such a small amount for decorations, it needs to figure out how to pay for an improved bus system, and deal properly with homelessness. What good are festive lights if they illuminate a human being sleeping on a grate?