THE SUMTER ITEM N.G. Osteen 1843-1936 The Watchman and Southron
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2017 H.G. Osteen 1870-1955 Founder, The Item
H.D. Osteen 1904-1987 The Item
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Margaret W. Osteen 1908-1996 The Item Hubert D. Osteen Jr. Chairman & Editor-in-Chief Graham Osteen Co-President Kyle Osteen Co-President Jack Osteen Editor and Publisher Larry Miller CEO Rick Carpenter Managing Editor
36 W. Liberty St., Sumter, South Carolina 29150 • Founded October 15, 1894
COMMENTARY
Meet Rick. Meet the football. Hike!
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ASHINGTON — By now a few million Americans have met “Rick,” the aide-de-camp who carries the nuclear “football” for President Trump, and Richard DeAgazio, a Mar-aLago club member who posted a selfie of the two on his Facebook page. The entire Saturday evening in Palm Beach, where Trump hosted Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the Mar-a-Lago terrace among assorted high-dollar patrons, felt like touring comedy director Adam McKay’s imagination. World leaders huddling over documents, reading by the light of an aide’s cellphone; a Hugh Hefneresque character played by the president receiving news about a North Korean missile launch; and a Palm Beach fat cat snapping a picture of the nuclear satchel and posing with Rick. Love the trailer; when’s the movie? Kidding aside, we who worry, worry. Shouldn’t the football be sitting quietly in a discreet corner, minding its own business? Things have gotten so wacky in Week Four of the Reality Presidency, even Vladimir Putin must be wondering: Is anybody in charge over there? To calm my nerves, I called a former nuclear-football minder, now a happily anonymous civilian family man, about the photo and other concerns. “Jack,” I’ll call him, is beyond careful with his words. Ever faithful to mission, he’s a patriot who follows the rules and stays in his own lane. He’s so cautious, every other answer is “I can’t tell you that.” But he did tell me enough to ease my mind, so I thought I’d share. First, Jack says he wouldn’t have posed for the photograph, but doesn’t think it was a breach of any sort, nor did it pose a security risk. Jack still doesn’t have a Facebook account as it was a firing offense when he was “in.” Everything on the nonpolitical side of things in Washington is governed by rules, and there was zero tolerance for mistakes. The president may goof around, but the people in charge of keeping him alive and the continuity on course are deadly serious. The satchel also has strict rules. It must always be within a specified number of feet of the president. It is essentially a portable command center, not a nuclear launch pad per se. When the president activates the satchel, he is sending a message to the Pentagon rather than firing off missiles at his whim, as some would have you believe. The case, as others have described it, contains a book of retaliatory options, another of classified site locations, a manila folder containing procedures for the Emergen-
cy Alert System and, of course, the essential 3x5inch card with the authentication codes. Yes, it’s a little Kathleen chilling to Parker imagine Trump trying to read the codes with a flashlight app while the Palm Beach set posts videos to Instagram. One may find comfort, however, in being reminded that the military aide holding the bag, so to speak, isn’t the only one with eyes on the suitcase. “There are a million things going on behind the scenes that people don’t understand,” Jack says, reassuringly. Standing close by are at least two others locked, loaded and poised to act to protect the football if necessary. “The point always is continuity of the presidency,” says Jack. “The country should never be without the ability to use the nuclear arsenal for more than a minute.” Continuity was interrupted once when President Clinton misplaced his “biscuit,” his personal identifier code, as related in the autobiography of Gen. Hugh Shelton, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during Clinton’s second term. The vice president has the same satchel and biscuit, by the way, but they’re inoperable until and unless the president is confirmed dead or is otherwise unable to perform his duties. This would include being under sedation during surgery. The transfer of power and the making operable of those alternate instruments are executed immediately. Those worried that Trump might get his nose out of joint and start Armageddon should probably relax. There’s no red “launch” button in the bag. Once the president sorts through his options, and decides on a course of action, he launches a process — have you ever loved that word more? — including discussions with key military and civilian advisers, who may talk him out of the attack. In the end, the president has sole authority and the Pentagon has to follow orders. But, “there are checks and balances everywhere and they’re extremely classified,” says Jack. “The most important thing is for you to make people feel safe and stop with the frickin’ … “ He stops himself and just says, “I’m not fretful.” If Jack’s not worried, I’m not worried. Sort of. Not. Worried. Kathleen Parker’s email address is kathleenparker@ washpost.com. © 2016, Washington Post Writers Group
LETTER TO THE EDITOR IDENTITY POLITICS COSTS DEMOCRATS ELECTIONS And Democrats wonder why they keep losing elections. … “You dont agree with our brilliance … we will boycott anything associated with Trump or what you believe in. We will demonize and vilify those that are not in lock step with us. Free thought? You better not! We know what
is best for YOUR life.” Identity politics … most Americans see what you are … truly a party of division, mob mentality, and arrogance. And this from a man that did not vote Trump. In fact, I have voted for Democrats in the past. Never again in its current leadership and state. JOHN SELLAR Sumter
COMMENTARY
Is the Left playing with fire again?
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o those who lived through that era that tore us apart in the ’60s and ’70s, it is starting to look like “deja vu all over again.” And as Adlai Stevenson, Bobby Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey did then, Democrats today like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are pandering to the hell-raisers, hoping to ride their energy to victory. Democrats would do well to recall what happened the last time they rode the tiger of social revolution. As the riots began in Harlem in 1964 and Watts in 1965, liberals rushed to render moral sanction and to identify with the rioters. “In the great struggle to advance civil and human rights,” said Adlai at Colby College, “even a jail sentence is no longer a dishonor but a proud achievement. ... Perhaps we are destined to see in this lawloving land people running for office ... on their prison records.” “There is no point in telling Negroes to obey the law,” said Bobby; to the Negro, “the law is the enemy.” Hubert assured us that if he had to live in a slum, “I could lead a mighty good revolt myself.” Thus did liberals tie themselves and their party to what was coming. By 1967, Malcolm X had been assassinated, Stokely Carmichael with his call to “Black Power” had replaced John Lewis at SNCC, and H. Rap Brown had a new slogan: “By any means necessary.” Came then the days-long riots of Newark and Detroit in 1967 where the 82nd Airborne was sent in. A hundred cities were burned and pillaged following the assassination of Dr. King on April 4, 1968. And what happened in our politics? The Democratic coalition of FDR was shattered. Gov. George Wallace rampaged through the Democratic primaries of Wisconsin, Indiana and Maryland in 1964, then ran third party and carried five Southern states in 1968.
His presidency broken by Vietnam and the riots, LBJ decided not to run again. Vice Pat President Buchanan Humphrey’s chances were ruined by the violent protests at his Chicago convention, which were broken up by the clubwielding cops of Democratic Mayor Richard J. Daley. Race riots in the cities, student riots on campus, and that riot of radicals in Chicago helped deliver America to Richard Nixon. Came then the huge antiNixon, anti-war demonstrations of the fall of 1969, the protests in the spring of 1970 after the Cambodian invasion and the Kent State killings, and the Mayday siege by thousands of anarchists to shut down D.C. in 1971. Again and again, Nixon rallied the Silent Majority to stand with him — and against them. Middle America did. Hence, what did its association with protesters, radicals and Black Power militants do for the Democratic Party? Where LBJ swept 44 states in 1964 and 61 percent of the vote, in 1968 Humphrey won 13 states and 43 percent. In 1972, Nixon and Spiro Agnew swept 49 states, routing the champion of the countercultural left, George McGovern. And the table had been set for California Governor Ronald Reagan, who defied campus rioters threatening him with violence thusly: “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with.” Without the riots and bombings of the ’60s and ’70s, there might have been no Nixonian New Majority and no Reagan Revolution. Today, with the raucous protests against President Trump and his travel ban, the disruption of Congressional town meetings, the blocking of streets every time a cop is involved in a shooting with a black suspect, and the rising vitriol
in our politics, it is beginning to look like the 1960s again. There are differences. In bombings, killings, beatings, arrests, arson, injuries and destruction of property, we are nowhere near 1968. Still, the intolerant left seems to have melded more broadly and tightly with the Democratic Party of today than half a century ago. Where Barry Goldwater joked about sawing off the East Coast and “letting it drift out into the Atlantic,” Californians today talk of secession. And much of Middle America would be happy to see them gone. Where Nixon was credited with the “cooling of America” in 1972, and Reagan could credibly celebrate “Morning in America” in 1984, any such “return to normalcy” appears the remotest possibility now. As with the EU, the cracks in the USA seem far beyond hairline fractures. Many sense the country could come apart. It did once before. And could Southerners and Northerners have detested each other much more than Americans do today? Fifty years ago, the antiNixon demonstrators wanted out of Vietnam and an end to the draft. By 1972, they had gotten both. The long hot summers were over. The riots stopped. But other than despising Trump and his “deplorables,” what great cause unites the left today? Even Democrats confess to not knowing Hillary Clinton’s presidential agenda. From those days long ago, there returns to mind the couplet from James Baldwin’s famous book, from which he took his title: “God gave Noah the rainbow sign / No more water, the fire next time.” Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book ‘’The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority.’’ © 2017 creators.com
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