A South Carolina Party?

(An Open Letter to Christale Spain)

Dear Christale,

Now that Labor Day has passed, it is officially fall for those of us who follow the college football calendar. It is also the start of the political season, and while few things are as frustrating as being a Gamecock football fan perhaps even more dispiriting is being a South Carolina Democrat.

Recently I listened to the Bourbon in the Backroom podcast which is aural comfort food for me. If macaroni and cheese came via soundwaves, that would be Bourbon in the Backroom. The podcast’s two hosts (former Democratic state senators) invite elected officials, journalists and pundits from both sides of the political aisle to sit and discuss politics in the state of South Carolina.

The teaser for this past episode indicated that the guest would be you, Christale Spain, the newly elected head of the South Carolina Democratic Party. The most recent chairs of the SCDP have been Jaime Harrison followed by Travis Robertson, jr. In the case of Jaime Harrison, he tried to stem the tide for the party’s decline during his tenure, finally leaving and nearly toppling U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham in the 2020 election. His successor, in what can charitably be called a caretaker role, was the aimable Travis Robertson who presided over the party losing 8 seats in the State House (but picking up one in Richland County) to become the “super-minority” to the Republican super-majority in this past election.

I listened to your interview on Senators Sheheen and Lourie’s show with curiosity albeit heavily tinged with pessimism given the past decades’ fruitless progress in making any electoral gains. Honestly, it is almost Sisyphean the task that is demanded, to constantly push this lifeless party up over the mountain to electoral victory, and I wish you luck. But it is going to take more than luck or catching “lightning in a bottle” as Jaime Harrison repeatedly put it, to breathe life into the corpse that is the SCDP.

Christale, you began by speaking about your background, which is indeed inspiring, rising from answering the phones at the headquarters to being elected the chairperson in a heated party election earlier this year. The initiatives you mentioned, most notably Project Roadmap, are at least something concrete that will provide a strategy to re-capture the five pick-ups you have targeted for 2024 (“at the very least five,” you said).

But quite honestly, I think what you need to do is radically depart from the failed SCDP efforts of the past twenty years. You stated during your fight to become chairperson of the SCDP that “I don’t think the ship is going in the wrong direction. What we have to do is execute.” South Carolina has lived an entire generation under one party rule. The last time that the Democrats won the governorship was in the last century when Jim Hodges won in 1998. The Republicans have controlled the State Senate and State House since 2001 and 1995, respectively. Whatever it is that the SCDP has been doing to reverse these electoral defeats has clearly not been working, and as the maxim attributed to Albert Einstein states, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.

Part of this turnaround has to be running candidates for every office. Yes, Joe Cunningham ran an awful campaign in 2022, but more importantly there were no Democratic candidates on the ballot in many House districts and local offices (so why vote?). Fifty-three SC House seats were unopposed with no Democrat on the ballot, essentially guaranteeing a Republican super-majority.

If you want to win, you have to at least show up. Thank you for including candidate recruitment as part of your Project Roadmap.

Additionally, you must go where the votes are.

South Carolina is a conservative state. I don’t think this is a newsflash for any of us. To build a new coalition of voters that will bring electoral victories, we need to realize that a majority of South Carolinians will not vote for a party that is weighed down from the national Democratic party brand. Most people vote based on tradition, if they vote at all (72% of all registered voters in South Carolina voted in 2020, but that percentage falls to 61% of voting aged adults who actually voted). It’s a form of self-identity, tribalism even. Indeed, Samuel Goldman, a noted conservative scholar, in an interview with the on-line magazine VOX said, “Most people just don’t think very much about political philosophy. They vote one way out of habit or out of vague affinity.”

With South Carolina basically a 54% - 46% Republican state, it will require a different kind of game to ever out hustle the Republicans, which is why I am advocating upending the playing board and starting over.

“All politics are national” Senator Sheheen has repeatedly stated on the podcast, but I respectively disagree. Yes, today the SCDP cannot win statewide in South Carolina, due to a variety of factors including the fact that the national Democrats and its national leadership are extremely unpopular to conservatives in South Carolina. The party needs to divorce itself from the national party as much as possible, and to re-brand, becoming laser focused on local issues, even going so far as ignoring the national party on whatever cultural issues are dominating the media.

Drop the “D” in the SC(D)P and become the South Carolina Party.

Building a new party, a new coalition of voters that spans from liberal to moderately conservative will require doing away with any ideological “purity tests” and demonstrating a truly open, independent spirit as a political force.

Thankfully on the podcast you agreed that the SC(D)P needs to become more engaged, talking and listening to voters. Creating a media operation is one element of that. Yes, you already have a Twitter, sorry, “X” account, and a website for the party. But how about a podcast? Or a YouTube channel? Create a safe space for all South Carolinians to come and listen and talk about the issues that are important to us, in a respectful, even humorous manner. Let’s do away with the political stump speeches of yore and join the 21st century utilizing TED-style talks, integrating graphics, memes, humor, music, and most of all, ideas. If you’re going to rebrand, let’s rebrand in a way that makes people go “wow” and creates discussion about the future, about a party that is relevant and vibrant.

You mentioned that you wanted to do a poll of voters. What wasn’t clear in your explanation was what the goal was of this poll, other than the last one that had been done was a decade ago (clearly, whatever was gleaned from that poll wasn’t implemented into electoral success). I would suggest that the poll shouldn’t be limited to Democrats, but to all South Carolinians. Ask open ended questions instead of polling on pre-set issues that you think are going to resonate.

Interestingly, when the The New York Times/Sienna poll asked midterm voters to name the most important problem facing America, only one of the survey’s 1,641 respondents mentioned the debt, the deficit, or federal spending. Yet one would never know this based on the performative drama that the Republicans in Congress rehearse whenever they have an opportunity. Likewise, the SC(D)P might be surprised about what they will learn from an open-ended poll.

Earlier I implored that you need to go where the votes are. Who votes the most reliably in every election?  Retirees. If the SC(D)P can begin picking apart at the retirees who reliably vote Republican, it will be a start in building a new coalition of the young (already voting overwhelmingly for the Democrats), African-Americans (ditto), and the college educated (leaning more and more as well).

Give retirees something to get angry about, while at the same time offering them something to love.

In summation, here are a few modest proposals:

1.     South Carolina is a conservative state, so a liberal SC(D)P party will never be able to build a stable majority. The SC(D)P needs to reinvent itself as a predominantly centrist alternative that values truth, equality, and fairness to a radicalized Republican Trumpist party.

2.     Focus on issues and solutions that impact average people’s lives (Family focus – fix day care, but also senior care, and figure out how to incorporate vouchers in education in a way that benefits not just urban districts, …), I suspect these are the types of issues that any poll will reveal to be at the top of everyone’s minds in South Carolina.

3.     Emphasize a return to old traditional values such as manners, and an end to the “everybody gets a trophy” mentality that reinforces the Dunning-Kruger effect.

4.     Condemn hypocrisy (morally corrupt “Christians” wrapping themselves in Christian moral authority – e.g Jerry Falwell, jr., Rod Dreher, Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Green, etc…the list is long), on the left as well as the right.

5.     Embody a civilized “Southern” Liberalism as a counterargument in the culture wars against a coarsened Right.

6.     Embrace the law (anti-Murdaugh, anti-corrupt good ol’ boys) and demand judicial reform that ensures equitable justice regardless of economic class.

I could go on, and probably will elsewhere, but want to close by thanking you for taking on this difficult task. Post-game, Monday morning quarterbacking the latest Carolina game is a ubiquitous activity, and I reckon giving unsolicited advice to others is as well. I wrote this with the hope it will spur discussion and change so that we see a new beginning for South Carolina in the coming years.

Cheers (and Go ‘Cocks),

Buck Jones

First Newsletter - Autumn 2022

(To subscribe to future quarterly newsletters just sign-up at the prompt! Looking forward to a great conversation.)

---

What I’m…

(October 2022)

Welcome to my newsletter. As you will see, my newsletter is not like others you are probably familiar with. I don’t do a lot of self-promotion. If anything, it is the opposite. Rather, what I’m attempting here is to create a little community of like-minded people who share the same interests as me and who will find some inspiration in what I’m sharing on a semi-regular basis through my newsletters.

So if you are passionate about the 1960s (or more precisely, that mid-century aesthetic that stretched from after the war until the 1980s), if you are politically progressive but culturally conservative (which is to say, you vote Democratic but have an appreciation for tradition, for doing things the old way whether it is reading a newspaper’s paper edition or valuing manners), and are stimulated by wit and intelligence we’re going to get along just fine.

Think of this as an invitation to chat and share, and with no further ado, here’s what I am…

Listening to:

            Music

                        “I Dig Rock and Roll Music” Peter, Paul and Mary

                                    YOUTUBE link

                        Whenever I used to hear this song it would immediately elicit a smile. It was pure, unadulterated comfort food for my ears, as if there were an audio equivalent of macaroni and cheese. I always assumed it was by the iconic 1960s group The Mamas and the Papas, especially since they are so prominently referenced in the first verse. But recently while I was listening to an Apple music playlist and it came on unexpectedly, I glanced to see who the artist was and it was in fact, a different iconic 1960s group: Peter, Paul and Mary.

            “Oh, I didn’t know it was them!” I said to myself, and then did a quick Youtube search to watch them sing this bouncy, infectious song. What is immediately striking about watching them sing this is how much fun Mary has when singing this. Her harmony and ability to mimic Mama Cass and Michelle Philips from The Mamas and the Papas is a joy to behold, and once I focus on the actual lyrics I realize that what this folk trio is actually doing is celebrating the music of the day.

            First up are fellow folk/pop singers, the aforementioned quartet The Mamas and the Papas, who Peter, Paul and Mary parody to great success. The trio achieve the beautiful harmonies that made the Mama Cass such a huge sensation. They even added the Mamas and the Papas signature “yeah” at the end of the verse. Next they do an homage to the British singer Donovan who is largely forgotten today except for his hit “Mellow Yellow,” but his breath-y style is captured by Paul during the second verse. Finally, the trio wrap up their tour with a quick reference to The Beatles and the emerging psychedelic scene following their success with “Sgt. Pepper.”

Overall, the feel-good romp that Peter, Paul and Mary create with this song is reminiscent of the joy I feel each time I watch the wonderful Christopher Guest 2003 mockumentaryA Mighty Wind,which features various folk bands inspired by the likes ofPeter, Paul and Maryas well as others of the era. If you’ve never seen this film, add it to your list (it has both Jane Lynch AND Parker Posey, I mean come on!).

---

Podcasts

                        “The Murdaugh Murders Podcast” hosted by Mandy Matney

What does the unsolved mystery of a gay teenaged boy murdered along a rural highway one summer night, the reckless boating homicide by an underaged drunken teen, the strange death of a trusted housekeeper, and a shocking double murder shot by close range of a woman and her son all have in common? Oh, and not to mention a complex web of financial fraud, theft, and money laundering. All of this and more (a bizarre suicide attempt, for example) is part of one of the biggest criminal cases currently taking place in the United States, and it so happens that it is in South Carolina, my home state and the locale for my novel The Last Good Republican.

Unlike my novel, which is historical fiction with a charming romance at its core, this true-life saga centers on Alex Murdaugh (pronounced inexplicably as “Alec Murdock”), a powerful white attorney in one of the poorest regions of the state, if not the entire country. The podcast began a couple of years ago by an intrepid local Low Country reporter named Mandy Matney, a woman with no podcasting experience, but who is tenacious in her pursuit to find the truth about these crimes that all lead back to Murdaugh. While the early episodes of the podcast demonstrate a charming amateurish quality, including self-deprecating references to her significant “vocal fry,” the pace of the events quickly pushes her to up her game as she uncovers the lies and deceit surrounding Murdaugh and his cronies.

At its core, however, this podcast is a commentary on the corrupt, good ol’ boy system of the powerful rural white elites who continue to exert disproportionate influence that has managed to keep them in power for generations. There are few answers regarding the mysterious deaths and murders, but with each episode we seem to be getting closer to the truth, and to justice.

---

People

  “Lady Bunny” Insta: @Official_Lady_Bunny

            Interesting that sometimes it takes a middle-aged drag queen with a penchant for song parodies and enormous teased out wigs to speak truth to power. But then again, hasn’t that been the traditional role of these cultural and societal court-jesters over the course of generations? What I find refreshing in reading Lady Bunny’s hot takes regarding the Biden presidency is her honesty in pointing out the hypocrisy of certain pundits when it comes to the Democratic party leadership’s incapacity to advance the timid progressive agenda promised by Biden (and Harris) during their 2020 campaign.

            For instance, she recalls that it was none other than Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi who waved off demands from the millions of college educated voters who were seeking tuition debt relief by saying that the president didn’t have the authority to do any such thing. Until all of a sudden he did. Each day brings a new micro-outrage, and not a parroting of media friendly politicians who sputter talking points, or who endlessly try to rile the Democratic base with another Trump scandal (I’m looking at you Rachel Maddow).

Instagram post from Official_Lady_Bunny

            So between tasteless jokes and casting shade at Bianca Del Rio, Lady Bunny is actually a surprisingly astute analyst of American Democratic politics. Plus she’s got great taste in not only music, but bars in Paris (her visit to our very own Imprévu Café was particularly riotous). Check her out.

---

Ideas

                        Midnight-Trains.com 

Anybody who knows me knows that I am a huge lover of all-things trains. From simple streetcars and trams, to cross-national high-speed carriers such as Trenitalia’s FrecciaRossa (from which I am writing this inaugural newsletter), train travel is really the only environmentally responsible way to travel. And it is certainly the most civilized as well. Arriving half an hour before departure to the train station, one can be seated in one’s first-class car with a bubbling coupe of champagne minutes after pulling away towards adventure in another city, in another country, in another culture.

The possibilities of traveling overnight, however, have become largely a thing of the past. Aside from very niche, very expensive trains such as the storied Orient Express, which still runs on a much-reduced schedule and trajectory primarily between Paris and Venice as opposed to its glory days in the 1930s when it was the train of glamour, royalty, and spies traveling between London and Istanbul, there are few options for normal overnight train service between major European cities. In recent years there has been a rebirth of sorts for this type of voyage. France’s national train company has reinstituted its Paris-Nice night train, and there is also a Paris-Vienna train provided by the Austrian national carrier.

Entering into this re-emerging market is a French start-up called Midnight Trains. Currently it is still just a concept, but the company is raising the capital and building out the rolling stock it will need to eventual conquer and dominate the growing demand for overnight train. Their idea is to reintroduce a bit of glamour and sophistication for the business traveler who would otherwise be flying and staying in a hotel for business trips within Europe. Midnight Trains will offer a private bed cabin, with full bathroom, as well as a restaurant, a bar car (with mini-grand piano), and meeting room space for corporate clients. Of course, the train will be available to the public at large as well, but the creators of the company envision their bread and butter will be the business sector. Leaving Paris, or London, or Berlin late in the afternoon and enjoying a delicious dinner before heading to bed, the traveler will awaken relaxed and ready the next morning at any number of eventual destinations.

Check out their intriguing website and follow their story as they get closer to launching in the near future.

---

 Watching:

            Series

            Okay, so here’s the thing. I live in France, and I don’t use one of those VPN tools to stream content. I’m old school, and while a lot of my friends back in the States spend a couple hundred dollars a month with their Hulu-Showtime-HBO-Amazon Prime-Netflix subscriptions, we only get Netflix. So most likely when I’m watching “tv” it is whatever is available on Netflix. In France. Having said that, there are some decent programs available. Two that I recently enjoyed was a crime drama called “The Lincoln Lawyer,” and a short documentary series called “Bobby Kennedy For President.”

            “The Lincoln Lawyer” is adapted from a Michael Connelly novel and stars Mexican actor Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as a Los Angeles lawyer who is a recovering alcoholic. The first (and as yet) only season revolves around his character, Mickey Haller, rebuilding his reputation and law practice as he takes a high-profile murder case where not everything is as it seems. The cast includes a couple of terrific performances from not only Garcia-Rulfo, but also Neve Campbell, and Jazz Raycole. It’s comfort food as entertainment, but sometimes I just want to eat macaroni and cheese and watch something like this.

            The documentary on RFK was enjoyable for a different set of reasons, not the least of which it gave fans of the 1960s such as myself a wonderful videography of that tumultuous decade through beautiful vignettes of his time as Attorney General, his U.S. Senate race, and his run for the Democratic nomination in the 1968 presidential election. With anecdotes and interviews provided by those who knew him well, this short three-episode series is worth checking out.

            Movies

                        Also on Netflix, I watched the remarkably enjoyable The Gray Man starring Ryan Gosling. I say that it is remarkably enjoyable because sometimes the anticipation for a Netflix project exceeds the actual experience (exhibit A: Emily In Paris, which I could only make it through one episode). Apparently this is the most expensive movie ever made by Netflix, and it shows with blockbuster chase scenes (the extended sequence that takes place in the center of Prague is over the top fun) as well as sumptuous locales including the Chantilly chateau in France and Baku, Azerbaijan. From a purely eye-candy perspective, Gosling has never looked better, and his nemesis in the film played by Chris Evans rocks some great 1960s vintage shirts and achieves an overall sexiness despite how odious his character is as a no limits assassin.

            Here’s the trailer if you haven’t seen it yet.

---

Youtube

                                    Dana Gould as Dr. Zaius from Planet of the Apes

Comedian, former writer for “The Simpsons,” podcaster and hard-core Planet of the Apes fan Dana Gould has put together a Youtube channel called “Hanging With Dr. Z.” I first heard the comedic stylings of Gould in the late 1980s/early 1990s when I lived in the San Francisco Bay area between my undergraduate and graduate years. Since this period was the cultural peak of Generation X’s influence in television, music, and film, as a fellow member of that demographic group I was an avid listener to the modern rock station KITS “Live 105.” Hosting the morning drive time on that station was host Alex Bennett who brought in comedians during his show. Dana Gould was a regular, and soon I was a fan of his intellectual but quirky humor. He could do spot-on voice impersonations ranging from Hollywood movie icon Vincent Price (done with an over-the-top gay lisp) to 1960s/70s television actor Don Knotts’ “Barney Fife.” Roughly the same age as me, Gould has a fascination for late 1960s and 1970s television, but his true adoration is saved for the 1968 cult classic, “The Planet of the Apes.” It came as little surprise during one of Gould’s eponymous titled podcast episodes, The Dana Gould Hour, he announced he was self-financing a tribute to his favorite character from the movie series, the self-absorbed “Doctor Zaius.”

            In Gould’s version of Dr. Z, Zaius is now a host of a Johnny Carson styled late night talk show. His character is still living somewhere between 1965 and 1975, making references to obscure personalities from that era such as Lindsay Wagner (“…”) and Charlton “Chuck” Heston, his co-star from Planet of the Apes. The short ten-minute episodes are a lot of fun, and he always has a guest whom he interviews. With friends like Andy Richter, Penn Jillette, and Janet Varney, Gould has created a perfect mash-up of mid-century American pop culture with 21st century celebrity.

---

Enjoying:

            It’s the end of summer in Paris, and we bought a picnic basket. The “fancy” kind that is a wicker basket and then inside there are four sets of real glasses (for wine, bien sûr), and white china plates, and tableware, a corkscrew, plus a cold storage space for keeping items chilled. One of the first nice days we had off together we walked over to an Italian trattoria we like on rue Rambuteau and loaded up on munchies ¾ grilled vegetables, focaccia, stuffed grape leaves, and some pasta ¾ as well as a chilled bottle of dry Italian wine from Veneto. Along with the current edition of the Economist and that day’s Le Monde which we purchased at a kiosk along the way, we headed over to Luxembourg Garden and found our spot for the afternoon. Under the shade of a plane tree, we basked in the ambiance of Marie de Medici’s glorious palace gardens.  

What about you? Join the conversation on my author page, www.monsieurbuckjones.com/blog and let me know your opinion, and what your recommendations are. I look forward to hearing from you.

Apologia

To give you an idea of how different I was as a young man, and arguably still am as a slightly older man, perhaps nothing is a better example than the following. While most people in college were pushing the limits of their freedom away from parents by getting drunk and having sex with anyone who was willing, I channeled my energies into the dubious pursuit of defending my Christian faith. Meeting once a week with a handful of other believers and a couple of Calvinist ministers from the local Presbyterian churches, we read theological studies on the esoterica of Christian (Reformed) Apologetics. 

If that doesn’t sound like a rollicking good time, let me hasten to add that there were cookies involved. Sometimes. So there’s that. 

There was a certain intellectual tidiness involved in the whole endeavor. It wasn’t lost on any of us that the founding father of Calvinism was a French law student by the name of John Calvin. If someone is doubting the capacity of a French lawyer to philosophize and argue a point, they are sadly mistaken. This tiny cell of young men (I can distinctly remember that there were about three of us, and in retrospect there is more than a good chance that the other two were closeted gays as well) and the two pastors spent long afternoons discussing various arcane subjects such as predestination while my roommates were playing Ultimate Frisbee on the campus quadrangle. 

But the role of reasoned persuasion, of apologia, in defense of an idea has remained with me. Impassioned rhetoric has its role to play — I’m thinking of the fiery men of God in African-American churches, or the flourishes often utilized by prosecuting attorneys pleading before juries — but I’ve always been more drawn to the cerebral. Passions and emotion are not part of my internal makeup, or perhaps that’s also a vestige of my WASP background. Which is why I wanted to explain the “why” for my novel The Last Good Republican. 

Some of you might be put off by the slightly provocative title. Those of you who are politically conservative might take offense that I am denigrating the Republican party by implying that there are no longer any “good Republicans.” I’ll speak to that in a moment. Then there are those progressives on the Left who would deny that there has ever been a good Republican, certainly none in the modern era. Blinded by their justified repulsion of Trumpism, they unfortunately demonstrate their ignorance of political history in the United States. 

What I wanted to humbly try with this novel was to nudge the public conversation in what is hopefully a post-Trump era. If the past few years has shown us nothing else, it is that America’s political system is broken. The Federal government is evenly split between the two parties, and the stakes involved for control of the institutions are so high that the parties have become radicalized, thereby further energizing their respective bases into a perpetual frenzy. Whether one watches Fox News or MSNBC there is a constant, relentless outrage machine pumping out an endless amount of political heroin. As a result, each party is addicted to the endorphin rush of hatred for the other side. Compromise and moderation are no longer possible. 

And yet, for anything to get done in Washington there is a need for consensus and compromise. Progressives might counter that no, if we could only fight back the Trumpists by stacking the Federal Judiciary, including the Supreme Court, with our own judges, and furthermore if we granted D.C. its statehood, and perhaps split California into two or more separate (liberal) states, and if we… well, the progressive prescription for how to fix the imbalance continues into a political fairyland where Biden and the Democrats are riding around on unicorns. Clearly the Democrats have no appetite for seriously pursuing these structural and political remedies. 

Compromise and consensus are the only paths forward. 

As for the Republicans… (sigh).

South Boundary Road, Aiken

I come from a family of Republicans. I grew up in a middle-class, evangelical Christian family that was politically and culturally conservative. The kind of values that I learned from them were the importance of work (“what do you do for a living?” was usually the first question one was asked, in our typical Max Weber-ian, Protestant fashion), of honesty (doing the right thing, even when nobody else was, because #Jesus), of modesty (a rejection of flashy jewelry, fancy cars, and the bling-bling sex and drug-fueled culture of Hollywood), and finally, the importance of being fair (you can’t skip to the front of the line, everyone needs to play by the same rules). 

Today I still live by those values, more or less. There are provisos and footnotes I have added to each as I’ve grown older and hopefully wiser, gleaned from my years of living in the real world outside of the bubble of my family and immediate circle of friends. For example, although I was fortunate to have been born into a middle-class family that loved me and I was able to go to decent schools and get a college education, there are many, many, many others who weren’t given that coveted starting position, and their lives have been mired far back in “the line” of life’s opportunities. 

So I get it. I understand how traditional Republicans think about America and its societal values. Which what makes the current state of the Republican party so infuriating, because it didn’t have to become this personality cult that rejects truth, science, and yes, compromise. 

From my perspective the Republicans started veering off into cuckoo land with the rise of Newt Gingrich in 1994. His toxic brand of scorched earth politics supplanted the traditionalists in the party, and his pomposity sucked all of the oxygen out of the room for the other “Young Turks” with fresh ideas. 

One of whom was a gentleman named Jack Kemp.

Jack Kemp, Republican Congressman from New York

I first came across Kemp when I was still in high school. I had a subscription to William F. Buckley’s National Reviewmagazine (didn’t all high-schoolers get that bi-monthly as well as Tiger Beat and Sports Illustrated?) which had a hard-on for Kemp during the Reagan years. I dutifully wrote a fan letter to his Congressional office and received a kind letter in response. I was now a missionary for Kemp, and by the time he ran for President in 1988 I volunteered to help on his campaign in South Carolina (working out of the law offices of then-U.S. Attorney/ future Governor of South Carolina Henry McMaster). 

At the time South Carolina was just emerging as an important primary state in the presidential electoral cycle, and I became Congressman Kemp’s driver whenever he flew into the Midlands for a campaign event. Picking him up at the airport and then driving him to wherever he needed to be, I got a chance to chat with him and felt as if I got to know him as a person (spoiler alert: he was a remarkably kind man, with a quick sense of humor and a charm that came off as genuine). I remember one instance when we were at a private airfield in Columbia and Kemp had arrived just before Congressman Dick Gephardt (who was running in the Presidential primary on the Democratic side). He waited a few minutes before getting into the car so that he could say hello to his fellow U.S. Representative and wish him luck in his endeavors. He was indeed a class act.   

Kemp got many things right: embracing civil rights and equality for all, advocating for a robust Federal government that invested in education, innovation, and infrastructure, leading imaginative housing policy that would enable public housing to be resident owned, and possessing a cheery confidence in the future of America reminiscent of Reagan. He came from a middle-class family and grew up in Los Angeles, one of the most racially diverse cities in America, and years later during his political career he never forgot where he came from, and he recoiled and pushed back against the lazy racism that manifested itself in America. 

He also got some things wrong: building his brand as a tax cutter, he never wavered in his ideology that cutting taxes was what spurred growth. He only looked at the tax ledger but never recognized that the spending growth was probably just as important, if not more so, in driving the economic growth of the 1980s and 1990s. But I am not going to relitigate the macro-economic policies of the Reagan-Clinton era, at least not here. Over a bottle or two of wine at a sidewalk terrasse I will gladly engage in that debate. I will acknowledge, however, that there is an argument to be made in cutting tax rates across the board if those rates are shown to be strangling growth or innovation, but historically in the United States that has not been the case. Perhaps the decade most associated with American ascendancy as an economic superpower is the 1950s, during which time the top marginal tax rate was over 90%. 

Unfortunately, the only animating idea that is the corpse of the Republican party is taxes. Reducing taxes is the end-all-be-all of the party, and as such was the only legislative achievement during the Trump years in office. 

Today, intellectual vacuity is a sine qua non of the Republican party. Looking for solutions to the myriad problems facing average Americans that involves spending and not tax policy is impossible with a Republican party that refuses to compromise. Whether the issue is public education system, infrastructure, converting the economy to an environmentally responsible “green” future, or creating a universal health care solution, their only policy lever is one of tax cuts. There are no Kemps left in the party that has given America such good Republicans as Lincoln, Willkie, Eisenhower, and arguably, Reagan. 

I take politics personally. When I was younger, in college with those other closeted gay Christians debating Calvinism, my politics were clarified through a Christian lens. Abortion was the overarching issue, fueled from conservative theology, and was the litmus test for any elective office. My perspective on abortion has since evolved, as has my views on most issues. But the cleavages that societal issues create historically have been fed from religious influences in America. Abolitionists against slavery, the Temperance Movement leading to alcohol prohibition, as well as the fight for full desegregation and civil rights all had deep roots in Christian theology with each side of the debate claiming a Divine blessing. In my lifetime abortion similarly has largely morphed into a binary test for most Christians (“Is this candidate for or against abortion?”) with no room for nuance, but in the past generation the issue of LGBT rights has now eclipsed abortion for many Christians. 

In the past twenty years I’ve witnessed the exuberance of the Republican party in becoming an authoritarian-loving, almost fascistic, theocratic party. Their descent into ignominy became worrisome for me during the 2004 election cycle when so-called “gay marriage” was used as a wedge issue to drive up the outrage index among the so-called Republican base. This “othering” of a minority group, singling the LGBTQ+ community as a kind of scapegoat for the social sins of America, has deep roots in our human evolution and must be constantly resisted because this type of politic can too easily devolve into feeding the worst instincts of xenophobia (not to mention homo/trans-phobia). 

Instead of embracing democratic (lower case “d”, as opposed to authoritarian, anti-democratic, government) traditions and constitutionalism, we now have a Republican party and an intellectual right-wing that gravitates towards Hungary’s Orban and Russia’s Putin as “heroes”, and embraces fascistic / plutocratic tendencies (the proto-militia Proud Boys, for example; and fueling income and wealth inequality to never before seen levels in the latest round of tax cuts enacted by the Republicans when they controlled the Federal government). The Republican party has long been enthralled to that peculiarly American virus that advocates for a theocratic interpretation of the republic’s origin story, and today is locked in a full embrace of radical Catholicism and fundamentalist Christianity positions on social issues. So it should come as no surprise that these various threads should come together in the hate-filled quilt of regressive voting restrictions, a failed coup attempt on January 6th, 2021, and panoply of transphobia across the so-called Bible Belt culminating in the “Don’t Say Gay” law that was signed into law in Florida.  

Is there a Democrat for whom I could never vote? Under the current political environment in the United States, where the Republican party is made up of intellectual pygmies such as Marjorie Taylor Greene and Mo Brooks, chameleons such as Nikki Haley and Mitt Romney, and grifters such as Mark Meadows, Tucker Carlson, and of course, Trump himself, no matter how awful the Democratic candidate might be I don’t think he or she could be worse than the Republican. There are rare moments, however, when I can’t bring myself to vote for a Democrat. I’m no fan of the Clintons, and in 1996 I voted for Dole for president (it was largely because Kemp was on the ticket as well as his vice-presidential nominee). In 2003 following the colossal incompetence of then-Governor Gray Davis during the California rolling-blackouts (remember that?), I voted for his recall and voted for a Democrat, Cruz Bustamente, who lost to Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

French politician, Jean Mélanchon

Or consider the example here in France of Mélanchon. For those of you unfamiliar with this French politician, he is the most popular leader of the disintegrating political left in France. At first blush one might think he would be someone I would vote for, after all he is for the working class and common man and against the rapacious influences of capitalism. But he has repeatedly demonstrated anti-democratic tendencies, with whiffs of authoritarianism that are amplified due to his close ties to Russia, Cuba, and Venezuela. He advocates for policies that are impractical (he would make it illegal to fire an employee, for example) and his caustic personality is such that compromise is akin to ideological heresy. It is remembered that when Mitterrand came to power in 1981 there was palpable fear among the French bourgeoisie that the Soviet Red Army would parachute into Paris the next day. Seriously. Of course, nothing of the sort happened. However, with Mélanchon his echoes of Joseph Stalin are close enough to make it impossible for a progressive such as myself from ever consider voting for him. 

I don’t think a Mélanchon exists in the United States. No, “AOC” is not a Mélanchon, as much as Fox News and Marjorie Taylor Greene try to anathemize Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She’s exactly the kind of Democrat I wish there were more of: independent from big, corporate money who fights for the working class. She believes in democracy despite the flaws and fissures in contemporary America. Likewise for Bernie Sanders. Questions over aesthetics and tone aside, because that is inevitably where criticisms of AOC and Sanders devolve, I would probably prefer as my ideal candidate someone less divisive who could appeal to a broader cross-section of voters, because the only way forward is through compromise. 

Ocasio-Cortez is quoted as saying that she has never lived in an America where political compromise was possible. It should seem self-evident to anyone who has been even mildly politically aware that the good ol’ days fondly remembered by Biden from his decades in the Senate are a by-gone era that hasn’t existed since Newt Gingrich’s vision of a militant conservative Republican party extinguished any hope for bi-partisanship. Her motto is distilled into the uplifting, and inclusive, “we can only accomplish great things together.” This suggests that even she recognizes that without finding common ground, or that politically dirty word “compromise,” getting legislation passed that will help move forward a progressive agenda is not possible. But while she would welcome the other side to cross over and join her, what she means by “together” is grass-roots mobilization. Getting not only the Democratic base energized but expanding it through voter registration and then a systematic get out the vote (GOTV), is possible (AOC has shown that it can be done), but it is not a sustainable, governing strategy at the Federal level where there are so many institutional impediments against the Democrats. 

This is where I think she, with all due respect, as well as the other progressives in Congress are wrong. 

Not that I think compromise is easy, or even oftentimes possible with the current Republicans in Congress. I don’t. But the art of politics is making possible the impossible. Finding “yea” instead of “nay” from the other side of the aisle in today’s political fractious environment is no less of a challenge than it was in the 1960s when my novel takes place. 

For instance, in The Last Good Republican my protagonist, Carter Ridge, devises a strategy to move the playing pieces of his game of political chess by nominating an obstructionist vote for his agenda to an open judgeship. As a parallel for Biden, there are two Republican U.S. Senators not running for re-election in 2022 who are from states with Democratic governors. Nominating one or both for Federal judgeships, while distasteful at a certain level for progressives, would have at least freed up those two seats earlier for the Democratic governors to appoint interim (Democratic) U.S. Senators into those two seats. By now it is too late in Biden’s term to do such a Machiavellian maneuver, and this tactic can’t be telegraphed in advance obviously, but to date I have seen little imagination on the part of the White House in breaking the stranglehold that Manchin-Sinema have on Biden’s agenda. 

For the narrow band of “independent” Republicans (I’m thinking of that sad trio of Murkowski, Romney, and Collins) who on the rarest of occasions break from the rest of their party to vote with Democrats, there must surely be a price, an earmark, a pet program larded with pork that can be included in legislation to get around the veto that “President” Manchin has on Biden’s proposals. 

In another example from the novel Carter Ridge convenes a citizens’ deliberative caucus to meet. The role of this tactic is to create a formal consensus on a politically charged issue that the legislature has proved incapable of addressing. Since my novel takes place in the South of the early 1960s, the conflict around de-segregation and civil rights for African-Americans is what I use as my red-hot, seemingly intractable problem that needs solving. 

For today’s America, while still suffering from ongoing racism and endemic poverty as in my novel, a similar tactic might be useful in jumpstarting a viable bi-partisan approach to building back better that reforms America’s infrastructure and energy grid. Perhaps no other issue is as important for the future as to how we reconfigure our consumption of resources and work to build clean energy. Clearly the American model of rampant consumerism and consumption is unsustainable for the planet, and there has to be buy-in from an overwhelming majority of Americans, not just Democrats, as to how to fix our dependency on oil and coal, as well as to rethink our idea of economic growth in environmentally friendly terms. The only way to get buy-in from 75% of Americans is to have this type of deliberative caucus that empowers ordinary, randomly selected citizens who on aggregate represent the demographic diversity of the country. 

InThe Last Good RepublicanCarter Ridge brings together one hundred South Carolinians for a weekend where they are given the task of ratifying a proposal to end racial segregation. They are provided with accommodations, as well as child-care, and meet in a solemn setting that lends gravity to the task at hand. During their workshops they are presented with expert witnesses with whom they can ask questions as they grapple with finding an overwhelming consensus that is finally voted upon. The result is difficult for the state’s elected representatives to ignore, because it not only had been a huge media and political event, but also because it is clearly a kind of “we, the people” statement.

While the story of The Last Good Republican at its core is a love story, the politics I discuss were meant to be relevant for today’s readers to imagine a possible way out of the current dystopia we find America descending into. To inspire hope, or as the state motto of South Carolina says, “As I breathe, I hope,” and push the dialogue towards solutions is part of what I as an author attempted with this novel. 

I hope I have succeeded. 

Review: "Find Me" by Andre Aciman

I am one of those who found out about Aciman after falling in love with the film adaptation of “Call Me By Your Name”. Ravenously consuming all things related to that film, I sought out anything I could find, whether it was the gorgeous Timothée Chalamet who played the lead character Elio (I still have the GQ magazine on which he graces the cover on my coffee table at home), listening to Sufjan Stevens’ original songs from the film, or even going to the Maison de la Poésiedown the street from me to see in person Mr. Aciman who was promoting the French release of his other novel (“Enigma Variations”). I bought the original novel of “Call Me By Your Name” with the excited frenzy of someone who was in love with a new lover, hoping that the adage that “the book is better than the film” held true in this case (it did). 

But while this is not a review of “Call Me By Your Name”, it is to give a clue of the anticipation I had for the sequel. I felt a kind of dread, fearing that it could not possibly live up to the original story. It was better to leave Elio and Oliver as they were left in the novel, with an ending that I read through tears. I remember the evening I finished “Call My By Your Name”, as I savored every last paragraph, sentence, and word. The emotions had poured out of me, and I had the sort of embarrassing cry that is best done in solitude. 

Of course, I longed to see Elio again, to know that he was still that beautiful, talented soul. The boy who had tortured himself as a seventeen-year-old piano virtuoso, wondering whether Oliver, the summer boarder at his parents’ villa in Italy didn’t hate him, but maybe kind of liked him. The way that Aciman was able to capture this teenaged boy’s inner torment, a universal experience for every adolescent but which also so vividly dealt with Elio's homosexuality, made their story doubly poignant for me. 

“It was already perfect, please don't ruin this for me,” I reflexively thought. 

I knew from my period of reading and listening to all-things-Aciman that he had remarked in interviews how Elio’s father in the story had been especially well received by both the readers of the novel and those who had seen the film (portrayed by the wonderful Michael Stuhlbarg). So, it came as little surprise to me as I began reading “Find Me” that it was the story of Elio’s father, told in the first person.  The setting had changed, we were now in Rome, several years after the events of that magical summer in 1983 when Elio and Oliver consummated what seemed to be a love for all eternity. Or was it? In “Find Me” we follow Sami, now divorced from his wife and well into late middle-age, on a train where he meets a young woman. Over the course of their train voyage, and as they walk in Rome, they confide in each other, slowly revealing themselves to the other, peeling away protective shells, the masks, that we project to others in public, depending on our roles and on the expectations of others. 

This theme of inter-generational intimacy, of the layers of life, is one that was a key element in the romance between adolescent Elio and the older, doctoral student Oliver in “Call Me By Your Name”. In this sequel, we were now exploring it from Elio’s father’s perspective, and frankly, it disappointed me. I wanted to find Elio. The title of the novel seemed to scream out to me that it was a call from Elio (or Oliver) to the other, and here we were in the midst of a love affair between Sami and Miranda, this young girl who is Elio’s age. I was disheartened, despite the lovely descriptions of the vigils Sami held with Miranda, retracing places from his past in Rome as a young student, or with his son Elio. 

Passages such as: “It’s just that the magic of someone new never lasts long enough. We only want those we can’t have. It’s those we lost or who never knew we existed who leave their mark. The others barely echo” and: “Aren’t those the absolute worst scenarios: the things that might have happened but never did and might still happen though we’ve given up hoping they could” were almost a taunt to me from Aciman. “Yes, you want that flush of passion from an Elio in the summer of 1983, but he’s gone now,” he seemed to be telling me. “This is a variation of a theme, like something that a cocky teenager might have played to try to impress Oliver.”

Yes, there is music in this novel. It is there from the start, although I didn’t realize it at first. The story is told in four parts, beginning with Tempo, which obviously means “timing” in a musical sense, but also, in a colloquial way timing has to do with fate. And fate is clearly a constant idea that is visited and revisited throughout this masterpiece. Sami and Miranda discuss it, the timing for their having met (he’s concerned about his advanced age, roughly the same as her dying father), and how it was obviously at the core of Elio’s relationship to Oliver (even obliquely alluded to in Oliver’s throw-away phrase he repeats during that summer, “Later!”). Timing and fate begin as a slow beat in this opening to the story, and gradually build to a full percussive presence once Elio finally makes his appearance nearly halfway into the work. 

It is in Cadenza, the second movement of this tale, that we find Elio at long last. He is now living in Paris, teaching piano at the conservatory. It is a few years after Tempo, and we learn that Sami and Miranda have had a child together, a baby boy. Elio is alone, and through happenstance (fate), he meets an older gentleman. Michel and he begin a fast-paced, passionate love affair. I grew myself jealous of Michel, this middle-aged Parisian who was insecure about his age in the face of the manifest beauty of Elio—of a “different generation” is how he constantly reminds both Elio and the reader that there again is a timing problem. 

Or perhaps the timing isn’t the real problem at all, but how we use the time we have. It is this playing with time, with fate, and re-evaluating where it is we come from and where we want to go, that Aciman dangles in front of us. 

He writes: “The composer of the cadenza had divined what Mozart hadn’t finished composing and what Mozart had left open-ended for others to finish for him, even if they composed it in an entirely different age when music had altogether changed… what one needed was to reinvent him in ways he himself would never have imagined, to build where Mozart had stopped building, but to build what Mozart would still recognize as irreducibly his and only his.”

The people who have touched us in our lives earlier, sometimes profoundly, leave us and let others continue the work that they had started. Elio is still very much a work in progress with Michel, and now that we are in Elio’s mind, we see the traces of that insecure and innocent youth ever present as he contemplates if Michel might be a long-term romance, someone with whom he will build a future. Michel is not so sure, and as they share their past, we finally have an inclination that perhaps Oliver will make an appearance, for Elio admits that there had only been one other in his life who wasn’t a temporary lover, but had become the standard in his life of what true love was. Elio says to Michel, “No, because you and he are the standard. Now that I think of it, there’s only been the two of you. All the others were occasionals. You have given me days that justify the years I’ve been without him.”

At this point in the novel the two of them begin working on a mystery that Michel shares with him, a secret that he hopes will bring them even closer together regarding a musical composition that had been hidden through the years. Reaching this charming sub-plot, I finally began to warm up to Michel, and the literal title of the novel, “Find Me”, revealed itself as the two of them searched for the meaning of this old score of music, and who wrote it. But it is also a plea for one to find oneself, to look inside and evaluate what it is we are really doing here, why we are going where we seem to be ineluctably headed, and is it possible to change our destination, our fate. “What could be more gratifying than to know that it will always be up to someone else to complete and round off our life?” “Find Me” is a call from across time, across the ocean, from Oliver. To Elio. From Elio to Oliver.

With Capriccio, Aciman advances us even further in time, to New York City five years later where we find Oliver. He is now in his early forties, frustrated not only emotionally because he is about to move back to his teaching job in New Hampshire after a too short sabbatical in Manhattan with his wife, but also frustrated because he is tempted. Tempted by the young girl who is his de-facto yoga partner, by the young man who is in the other department at the university, tempted by a life otherwise lived. It is a lively evening, this final get-together of his temporary life that he has constructed in New York, and it culminates in Paul, the young man who is the object of Oliver’s momentary efforts of seduction, playing the piano. The sonata that he plays brings Oliver back to thoughts of Elio, who played the exact same score so many years ago in Italy, and across this expanse we have Oliver asking: 

“Are you listening to his playing? I asked the one person who was absent, but never absent for me. 

I'm listening. 

And you know, you do know I’ve been floundering all these years. 

I know. But so have I.

What lovely music you used to play for me. 

I wanted to.

So you haven’t forgotten.

Of course I haven't.”

At this moment, I was back. I was back in love with everything these two had been to me, what Aciman had so achingly constructed, this love story that transcends time. I was back in my own 1983. My own inner monologue had become a dialogue with my own former self. To find me. 

There are so many pearls to be found in this multi-layered masterpiece. The ending, Da Capo, is indeed the conclusion that I wanted. No spoiler alert, I won’t ruin it for the reader. But I was not disappointed, and I am glad I read it in solitude. While “Find Me” can be read as a stand-alone novel, it is far more satisfying paired with its companion, “Call Me By Your Name”. Like two hands playing a perfectly tuned Steinway piano, each novel is a harmonious concert of beauty and love. 

Old Fashioned

Tell me what you drink and I’ll tell you what kind of person you are, or at least that is the mythology in popular culture. Never trust a teetotaler, and few people are more annoying than a former alcoholic who is now newly sober.

Last night I went out for cocktails with my two Martins (one is my husband, the other is our Chilean friend) to one of our favorite bar cafes in the Montorgueil area of Paris. Located in the shadow of the now renovated old Post Office, Cafe Etienne Marcel has a few interesting cocktails listed for their happy hour specials. I don’t really like anything too citrus-y or too grain-y, opting more often than not for sugary and sweet cocktails. My new go-to at the Cafe Etienne Marcel is “the Porn Star” which features rum, a chunk of passion fruit with its nectar accompanied by a splash of champagne. The name didn’t deter me in the least (I don’t know what that says about me), and after the second round we all felt the blissful effect as we eased into the night.

Now I know a thing or two about cocktails, as part-owner of a very successful cafe bar in Paris. So when I was trying to come up with what my protagonist, Carter Ridge, would drink in my novel “The Last Good Republican,” I decided that he was a bourbon / scotch whiskey drinker. I picked “old fashioned” as his drink of choice, because it reflected back onto him the fact that he is a traditionalist. A classicist. Few cocktails are as elegantly simple as an old fashioned, using just a few ingredients: some sugar, a splash of bitters, and a generous dose of bourbon or whiskey, rounded off with a twist of orange and a rub of the peel along the rim of the tumbler.

Personally I don’t love the drink, even with the offset of the sugar, its graininess comes through. But it does warm one up and calms one down. To that end, I think Carter could enjoy the quiet solace the drink might afford him when talking politics with others.

Which is a perfect accoutrement for the aptly named podcast I recently discovered: Bourbon In The Back Room. Hosted by two Democratic state senators in South Carolina’s State Senate, it is an entertaining look at South Carolina’s politics from two insiders, and as they chat with their guests on each episode you get the feeling that you’re sitting in the shade of a back porch, sipping your bourbon together and getting the full story on what’s going on in the Palmetto state.

Check it out wherever you get your podcasts, oh, and what are you drinkin’?

#BITBR, #BourbonInTheBackRoomPodcast, #oldfashioned #bourbon

She Was Our Jackie Kennedy

Seldom has a personality captivated an entire nation, indeed the world, like Jackie Kennedy did. The only other woman who perhaps eclipsed her was Princess Diana, an equally glamorous and tragic figure. From the moment the beautiful young Miss Bouvier emerged in the spotlight as the fiancé to the charismatic junior U.S. Senator from Massachusetts in 1953, Jacqueline’s grace and poise guided a generation of young women in how to project a traditional femininity in the modern, post-war era. 

Her voice was a kind of half-whisper, with a distinct upper class Yankee accent that belied her Manhattan upbringing, and she was fluent in French perhaps from the strong influence of her dashing father John “Black Jack” Bouvier who imbued his favorite child’s fascination with French culture and language. Under her doting father’s encouragement, the young Jackie gained a confidence and sense of independence that sparked an irresistible attraction from anyone who encountered her. When later she was on a state visit to Paris with her husband, President Kennedy half-joked to the press how Jackie had mesmerized not only the sometimes brittle French President Charles de Gaulle, but the entire French nation. “I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I have enjoyed it!”

As First Lady Jackie helped define fashion for the early 1960s. Her bouffant hair, the successive gowns from the couturier Oleg Cassini, and the iconic pill-box hat are emblematic of her. During her short time in the White House she led a restoration effort to decorate the mansion with historically appropriate furniture, even going so far as hosting a guided tour on national television during which she presented her efforts before the cameras and the eyes of millions Americans watching from home. Following her husband’s assassination in Dallas, she withdrew into private seclusion away from the spotlight and focused on trying to raise her two young children as perhaps the most famous widow in the world. Her sudden re-emergence in the public sphere five years later with her marriage to the Greek tycoon Aristotle Onassis shocked the nation and tarnished her reputation for many. 

She continued trying to find her own way during the 1970s, despite being the frequent target of paparazzi and endless speculation about “Jackie O” which made her a global brand in her own right (exhibit A: the Greek island of Mykonos’ “Jackie O” beach, bar, and resort). By the time of her own untimely death in 1994 at the age of 64 from Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis had found her own peace with her legacy, living the life of a Manhattan editor and happily in a relationship with Maurice Tempelsman. 

For many who came of age during the 1960s and 1970s, Jackie Kennedy remains a sort of palimpsest for that era. Her shining luminosity as First Lady, followed by the dark sorrow of Dallas, and the modern sunglass clad subject of artist Andy Warhol and countless gossip tabloids are all different aspects of this complex figure. Intelligent, strong-willed, determined, and charming Jackie fascinates us to this day. 

When writing my novel “The Last Good Republican” one of my inspirations for the character of Margot O’Neill was Jackie Kennedy. Though Margot came from poverty, and is distinctly Southern, she rose above her humble origin and re-invented herself into a whip-smart, headstrong woman who, for her era, gained a certain measure of independence. Together with a glamour and fashion sense that she embodied, Margot came to have an identity in which a young woman from South Carolina might have said years later that “she was our Jackie Kennedy.” 

On a personal note, my own mother had a distinctive Jackie Kennedy presence. She had a breathy, halting way of talking, and a poise when in public. Growing up as Diane’s son, I didn’t really notice the similarities until much later in life when after she had passed away, a childhood friend had told me that my mom had been her Jackie Kennedy. 

As a recommendation for those who have yet to watch the portrayal by Natalie Portman in the 2016 film Jackie, her performance garnered critical acclaim for the way she embodied Mrs. Kennedy in the days following that fateful day in Dallas. 

Cover Reveal for "The Last Good Republican"

The cover design, by the talented graphic designer David Provolo, is meant to evoke some of the themes of the novel. First of all, this is a political novel in the tradition of Gore Vidal hence the icon of the symbol for the state of South Carolina. Secondly, one of the themes of the book is of being different, not quite fitting into any pre-ordained category and the cover art is meant to suggest that the protagonist, Carter Ridge, is a bit of a mystery. He has carefully created a public image of himself, like a mosaic, piecing together elements that project a certain message, a distinct idea of who wants to be, but revealing little about who he actually is.

I’m excited to share this with y’all.

It wonderfully captures the complexity of the puzzle that is Carter Ridge’s life, navigating the tumultuous early 1960s.

Introducing Carter Ridge

It’s a new year, and change is coming. For South Carolina 2022 is an election year for governor, and if ever there was a time for a new generation of leadership it is now. Meet Carter Ridge.

#WhoIsCarterRidge, #TLGR, @SCGOP, @SCDP