Brad Warthen's Blog

Reactions to the president's speech?

As I noted, I missed the start of Obama's speech, and at this point I won't feel confident commenting on it in full until I've had a chance to go back and catch up, which I might not do until tomorrow at this rate. I don't have Obama's stamina. It's been a long day, and tomorrow is Ash Wednesday. (That Obama sure knows how to celebrate Mardi Gras, huh? What a workaholic. It's after 10, and he's still going...)

But I thought I'd provide y'all with this space to share YOUR observations, so have at it...

Oh, yeah -- you can read about it here and here and here.

Did Nancy get hold of the bong?

After dropping by to see the twins on my way home tonight and getting a late start on dinner, I didn't tune in to Obama's speech until way into it. And watching, all I could think for a moment was, "What's with that weird stoner smirk on Nancy Pelosi's face?" Did she get ahold of Phelps' bong? I pointed it out to my wife, who said maybe she had a little drink first.

Joe Biden, on the contrary, looks pretty normal. Or as normal as he can look when not talking, which of course is NOT normal for him.

I guess I need to catch up on what has been actually said here... I hope it was good.

Just now, the president promised a cure for cancer.... That certainly got my attention...

Historic Isadore Lourie speech

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

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

Remarks

By the

Honorable Isadore E. Lourie

On the Occasion of the Installation of the

Richland County Legislative Delegation

November 13, 1970

House Chamber, The State House, Columbia, South Carolina

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

Do we REALLY need people to be making RVs?

Yesterday, Mayor Bob Coble of Columbia said President Obama either had been, or would be, invited to address the National Hydrogen Association’s annual conference here in April. The mayor said, rightly, that such would be a great opportunity for the president to demonstrate his seriousness about the "green economy" and energy independence.

I heard the mayor say that yesterday afternoon.

So imagine my surprise to see that the president's first high-profile road trip beyond the Beltway (or one of the first; I'm not really keeping score) was to Elkhart, Indiana, which is suffering double-digit unemployment because.... well, because people aren't buying so many Recreational Vehicles these days.

Now, I consider it to be a BAD thing that all those people are out of work. But as the author of the Energy Party Manifesto, I have to say it's a GOOD thing, in the grand scheme and all that, that fewer people are buying RVs... In other words, I'd like to see all those good people of Elkhart working at good jobs doing something else.

One would think, given the things that he says about green technologies and energy independence, that Obama would think that, too. So I have to puzzle over the choice of Elkhart as a place to go campaign for his stimulus plan that is all about putting people to work AND protecting the environment and making us more energy-independent. It's just an odd setting. I mean, why not choose another town that's hurting, only from people losing their jobs building tubines for windmill farms or something, or printing Bibles or doing something else virtuous.

Obama's speechwriter seems to have been aware of this, so while he empathized with folks and promised jobs, he did NOT promise them jobs making RVs. Nor did he mention, specifically, that they needed to be something OTHER than making RVs, for the good of the country and their own economic future. He finessed it.

But he wouldn't have had to finesse it if he'd just made the speech somewhere else.

One war, two wars: But who's counting?

This morning we ran an editorial calling upon the nation to unite after the election, and quoting something S.C. Supt. of Ed. Jim Rex had said:

“What’s important for our students to know is that after elections, Americans come together,” Dr. Rex wrote. “We have enormous challenges ahead of us — a war on two fronts, an economy in crisis, a broken health care system, and so much more. We cannot stand to be divided one more day. Regardless of who wins, it’s time for us to work together to move this country forward and create a better, more stable America for our children and grandchildren."

Did you catch the little grace note there that made his message truly bipartisan -- his reference to "a war on two fronts?" In case you missed it, that is decidedly not the official Democratic Party version.

We were reminded of that last night in Barack Obama's otherwise gracious, affirming victory speech, in which he sincerely called on the nation to come together, but nevertheless repeated the official Democratic Party version of reality:

we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime – two wars, a planet in peril...

And so we continue with the refusal to acknowledge either a) the global war on terror, or b) that Iraq is part of it. It makes me wonder: When we act against al Qaida in Somalia, or Yemen or Pakistan or Indonesia, are those third and fourth and fifth and sixth wars, etc.?

Sorry to be such a nitpicker. I truly thought Obama's speech was good, and appreciated its attempts to reach beyond party.

Likewise, I appreciated the graciousness of John McCain's acceptance speech, even though one could detect partisan difference in that even when he was trying the hardest to reach out:

In a contest as long and difficult as this campaign has been, his success alone commands my respect for his ability and perseverance. But that he managed to do so by inspiring the hopes of so many millions of Americans who had once wrongly believed that they had little at stake or little influence in the election of an American president is something I deeply admire and commend him for achieving.

Did you catch it? Yes, it's a very Republican thing to say those Americans "WRONGLY  believed that they had little at stake or little influence." Democrats would likely leave out the "wrongly."

Bottom line, I appreciated both speeches, for what they did, and more, for what they meant to do. I can think of no recent election in which both victor and defeated were so gracious at the critical moment.

But I'm an editor; I pick at words. And even while I'm applauding, these little flaws jump out at me. File them under the heading of "how far we have yet to go," even on agreeing about the nature of reality.

What did you think of John McCain's speech?

Well, I'm exhausted. Exhausted from holding my breath through the speech that started -- and finished -- with such promise. In the middle, it let me down several times, such as with that silly litany about "I will do this; Obama will do that." (Yeah, a certain amount of that is called for -- a candidate is obliged to tell us why we should vote for him and not the other guy -- but that bit was contrived.)

This was ... a great speech, delivered by someone who is not a great speaker... with bits and pieces that dragged it back down to mediocrity (and sometimes worse). If he'd cut out about a quarter of it, maybe less (and cut the right parts), it would have been magnificent. In the morning, when I have the full text in front of me, it might be an interesting exercise to see what a little editing can do...

The great parts (or the ones that leap to mind; I'm sure I'm forgetting some; I look forward to reviewing it in the morning):

• He called repeatedly on Americans to come together, to reject the foolishness of partisan estrangement. In those parts he was in touch with his essential Joe-ness, his UnPartisanship.
• He dealt with a heckler by saying the American people want us to come together.
• He spoke unflinchingly of the failings of his own party.
• When he decried the failed policies of the past and taking on the culture of Washington in which he has so often been a misfit, it was clear he was talking about the failures of Republicans AND Democrats.
• He told his story of heroism not in terms of his own achievement, but of how it taught him that radical individualism, his worship of himSELF as opposed to something larger, was a dead end.

Where the speech disappointed was where he extolled the values of that same selfishness, and did it in ways that were downright schizophrenic, from the prattling about tax cuts to that bizarre passage in which he promised private school "choice" in one breath, and promised to fix public schools by encouraging and rewarding good teachers and getting rid of bad ones (two news flashes: America will never pay for both, and education is NOT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S BUSINESS!).

Those bits made the speech sound like it was written in places by a committee, one engaged in a tug of war between vision and cant.

He inspired when he spoke of foreign affair, and he sometimes sounded dangerously naive when speaking of domestic. That sort of makes him and Obama a complementary pair. Yes, that's an oversimplification (if Obama really knew what to do domestically, he'd push for single-payer).

So I was often deeply inspired, and at other times saying, DOH! Why'd he say that?

So I'm exhausted. I'm so glad these conventions are over.

What did y'all think?

The hype on McCain's speech

Minutes before John McCain's speech, I saw a New York Times story, based on excerpts released in advance, that said "McCain Plans to Speak of Dedication to Bipartisanship."

Obviously, this increased my anticipation. That made it sound like he was going to give the speech I had hoped Barack Obama would give last week, but was disappointed.

We'll see. It will be hard to meet the UnParty standard, the way Joe did...

All of you whiny partisans: Get over it!

A normally sober fellow blogger helped me crystallize something when he posted this on a recent post of mine:

C'mon, Brad, after devoting a whole column to how disappointing you found Obama's speech, and your conviction that McCain is The One Who Can Reach Across The Aisle, I want to hear what you have to say about the hatred that filled that room last night. Forget the hug.

"The hatred?" You know, I never know when you guys are kidding. You are kidding, right?

Because if you Dems are serious about the stuff I've seen about "hate" (a verb that I believe, translated from the Democratese, means "to disagree with me"), and you Repubs are serious about the... well, I don't even remember the words, but there were a lot of stupid ones about how mean and nasty "the media" was supposedly being to your precious Sarah (come on, Dems, remind me of some of the dumb words they used), then I think all of y'all need to take a chill pill.

Dems, the woman delivered a boilerplate veep speech. I've tried to think back and remember what she said that y'all might think was so mean, and all I remember was something about a mayor being like a community organizer but with responsibility, and a candidate who's authored two memoirs but no major legislation, both of which seemed like solid, above-the-belt shots to me. This is what veep candidates do, people -- they criticize the opposition. The question about Palin was whether she could do it. She could.

And you whiny Repubs, give me a freaking break with your Spiro Agnew Revisited hyperventilation about the fact that the "media" -- which, although you don't believe it, is a plural word, and does not refer to a monolithic beast -- was so terrible and awful to this woman. Come on. She sprang from McCain's brow like Minerva from Zeus. Nobody knew squat about her, and there was a huge, sucking vacuum demanding such info. Of COURSE her daughter's pregnancy was reported when she made a statement about it. (What I objected to in a previous post what that anyone was idiotic enough to mistake that for an "issue." Here's a handy-dandy guide: Abuse of power as governor, issue. Daughter's reproductive status: Not an issue. Think you can keep that straight, folks?)

Or did you mean, Tim, the reaction of the GOP partisans in the room? They like stuff like that, Tim. Just as the Dems in Denver like shots at the GOP team. They're partisans. They cheer. Seems like you could let them have their moment; it's the first time anybody in that party has looked even mildly animated this year. Dems have been cheering themselves hoarse since about 2006.

What did you think of Sarah Palin's speech?

For my part, not knowing what to expect, I was impressed. She fought her corner well, if you'll permit the sports metaphor. If nothing else, she showed she could use a teleprompter more naturally and with greater poise than the guy at the head of the ticket.

She sort of turned my sitcom analogy around. Rather than whipping off her glasses and letting down her hair to reveal the beauty queen, she kept the specs on and unveiled a smart woman, an Earth Mother type from the small-town frontier who is a tough cookie, unintimidated by the condescension of the cosmopolitan types Rudy had mocked so earlier in the evening.

But write in and tell us what y'all thought. I'll read it in the morning; gotta hit the sack.

Yelling at the television

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
THE DEMOCRATIC convention forced me to an unpleasant realization: I’ve become one of those crotchety old guys who yell at the television in helpless frustration: “Lies! How can they say such things? How can anyone sit still for this stuff?”
    And this week, I’m in for more of the same with the Republicans.
    What sets me off? Oh, take your pick — the hyperbole, the self-importance, the us-against-them talk, the stuff that Huck Finn called “tears and flapdoodle.”
    Take, for instance, this typical bit from Hillary Clinton’s speech:

    My friends, it is time to take back the country we love. And whether you voted for me or you voted for Barack, the time is now to unite as a single party with a single purpose. We are on the same team. And none of us can afford to sit on the sidelines. This is a fight for the future. And it's a fight we must win together. I haven’t spent the past 35 years in the trenches... to see another Republican in the White House squander our promise...

    Let’s deconstruct that a bit.
    Take back the country? From whom? Did I miss something? Did the Russians roll right on through Gori and into Washington? No? You say Americans are still in charge, just the “wrong” Americans, of the wrong party? But your party controls Congress! Take it back from whom?
    ... a single party with a single purpose. Now there you’ve hit on the biggest lie propagated by each of the major parties, the conceit that there is something coherent and consistent about such loose confederations of often-incompatible interest groups. Did you not just spend the last few months playing with all the force you could muster upon those very differences, those very tensions — between feminists and black voters, between the working class and the wine and cheese set? What single purpose, aside from winning an election?
    This is a fight... No, it isn’t, however much you love to say that. Again, I refer you to what the Russians are doing in Georgia — that’s a fight, albeit a one-sided one.
    ... that we must win together. Actually, that raises a particularly pertinent point, which is that the only “fights” that “must” be won are the ones in which “together” is defined as all Americans, or all freedom-loving peoples, whereas such divisive factions as your party and that other one that will meet in St. Paul militate against our being able to win such fights together.
    I haven’t spent the past 35 years in the trenches... You’re absolutely right; you haven’t. So spare us the war metaphors.
    ... to see another Republican in the White House squander our promise... Like that’s what matters, the stupid party label. Like there isn’t more difference between you and Barack Obama in terms of philosophy and goals and experience and what you would bring to office than there is between John McCain and Joe Biden. Come on! Please!...
    Sigh. Fume. Mutter.
    This stuff wouldn’t upset me quite so much if not for the fact that this was to be the year that we rose above this stuff. That’s why I so happily supported both John McCain and Barack Obama in their parallel bids for the White House. Both men offered themselves as alternatives from the incessant, bitter, destructive partisan warfare of the Clinton-Bush years.
    John McCain is the man the GOP’s partisans love to hate, the guy they call a “Republican In Name Only,” the man they stooped to new lows to destroy in 2000, the senator who’d just as soon work with Democrats as Republicans, the candidate who, coincidentally, has been giving Sen. Clinton a lot of love in his latest campaign ads.
    Barack Obama was the Democrat who made it abundantly, eloquently clear that he was not running in order to “fight” against his fellow Americans. So all week, I looked forward to his acceptance speech, and when it came I was... disappointed.
    Maybe I had built it up too much in my mind, depended too much on it to wash away the bad taste of all those boilerplate party speeches I had heard. He said many of the right things. He said “Democrats as well as Republicans will need to cast off the worn-out ideas and politics of the past,” but as for most of it — well, read David Broder’s column on the facing page.
    When he said “part of what has been lost these past eight years... is our sense of common purpose,” I thought, yes, but it’s been happening a lot more than eight years, and you know that. But he said it that way because of his audience. That’s what made the speech flat, by Obama standards. He had to avoid offending the kind of people who love the bitter politics that he had been running against.
    What I had wanted to hear was the kind of thing that caused me, while blogging on live TV the night of his South Carolina primary victory, to write “What a TREMENDOUS victory speech!” A sample of what impressed me so that night:

    “We are looking for more than just a change of party in the White House.... We are up against decades of bitter partisanship that cause politicians to demonize their opponents... That kind of politics is bad for our party, it’s bad for our country, and this is our chance to end it once and for all.”

    That sort of anti-partisan vehemence would not have played well in Mile-High Stadium. Maybe, as he escapes the gravitational pull of Denver, the Obama of January will come out to inspire us again. I hope so. In the meantime, on to the Republicans....
    Just moments ago as I write this, as he announced he’d chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate, Sen. McCain promised the GOP crowd that he’d “fight for you.”
    Lord help us.

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