Instinct, Intuition and Insight: Why South Carolina Desperately Needs Robert Ford.

Senators Ernie Passailaigue, Glenn McConnell and Robert Ford in Charleston Harbor at the Hunley site in 2000

Ten years ago, the H. L. Hunley Confederate submarine was a mysterious relic lying at the bottom of Charleston Harbor. Thanks to the passion and determination of Senator Glenn McConnell and a couple of his allies (my clients, Robert Ford and Ernie Passailaigue) in the State Senate, the excavation and recovery of the Hunley and its placement in a building on the Naval Shipyard in Ford’s Senate district was the acorn that gave rise to the newly announced $98 Million wind turbine test lab announced last week by the U.S. Department of Energy.

 This is what I was thinking about yesterday morning when I read the comments of Energy Secretary Steven Chu on the front page of the (Charleston, S. C.)  Post and Courier as to why North Charleston landed the Federal project.

"They had all the right ingredients," Chu told The Post and Courier while touring Clemson's International Center for Automotive Research, adding that future wind lab is "going to be very important to the United States." Chu said the wind turbines of the future will be massive pieces of machinery, and that putting them offshore makes sense because ocean winds tend to be stronger and more dependable than on land. "But once you put it offshore, you want it to go for years," he said. "So the reliability of the drivetrain and blades is a very big deal." That's where Clemson's new turbine drivetrain lab comes in. The facility will focus on ways to make more durable and efficient drivetrains, which in turn will make wind power more competitive with other forms of power generation. Chu said South Carolina beat proposals from other states because the state offered "a very generous match," strong management plans and a site next to a good port. Chu visited South Carolina one week after announcing that the Energy Department selected a consortium led by Clemson's Restoration Institute to build the new wind power lab. The Energy Department will give the consortium $45 million in federal stimulus money, with South Carolina agencies, businesses and private individuals chipping in the rest. State development officials and lawmakers say the new facility puts South Carolina in an excellent position to attract new wind-power manufacturers, an industry likely to generate 10,000 jobs in South Carolina or more.

 

That brings me back to my three Senators sitting (literally) on top of their problem (a nice problem to have, as it turns out) in the middle of Charleston Harbor ten or twelve years ago. The C.S. S. H. L. Hunley--certainly the most exciting civil war relic to be found since the end of that war.  The writer/adventurer Clive Cussler had located the Hunley after an exhaustive 15-year search using his own funds from book sales and royalties. But Cussler's funds were running low and the big part of the investment had hardly begun. Now it It would be up to these three Charleston Senators to create a workable plan to bring the miracle submarine up from the bottom of Charleston Harbor and save it for posterity. What were they going to do with it? Where would they put it? Who would have the expertise to raise such a treasure and keep it from turning it to powder when it hit the atmosphere? Where would they find the funds to pay for this enormous undertaking? 

There were all kinds of offers and counter-offers. There were already nay-sayers popping up all over the place, squealing about the waste of money digging up an old junk submarine and a Confederate submarine at that. For some, it was yet another unwelcome Confederate symbol, identical to the Confederate flag which at that time, was still flying over the State House. Ironically, it was these three Senators a year or so later who found a way to end that painful chapter in our history. The flag would be removed from atop the Statehouse in the year 2000, the same year that the little sub, with her brave crew still at their duty stations, was finally raised to the surface and lovingly placed in a bath a of cold desalinated water to begin the years-long journey toward unwrapping the mysteries she had held to herself for almost a century and a half.

There were many ways that South Carolina could have lost control of this precious asset during this process. But Senator McConnell and his allies weren’t going to have that. No sir. They would figure it out. They would take the heat. They had to. They all knew that this strange little machine which had become the object of so much intense worldwide curiosity was much, much more than a symbol. This was possibly one of the more important maritime discoveries in our history and certainly the most important find relating to the American Civil War.

When Ford suggested that the perfect place to house and restore the C.S.S. Hunley was a highly accessible building on the recently closed Charleston Naval Shipyard in his Senate District, McConnell and Passailaigue knew he was right. But they also knew it could backfire badly on the African-American Senator. The NAACP was already objecting to the whole project. Now, for Robert Ford, one of their most ardent champions to team up with Glenn McConnell the Senator who had made it his business to keep the Confederate Naval Jack flying over the State House all those years without interruption— this was too much. They just didn’t get it. But Ford knew it was the right thing to do and he told his Senate colleagues he would take the heat for it.

As it turned out, Ford’s initial instinct years ago was right on the money. Putting the Hunley at the Naval Shipyard was a stroke of genius. Soon they had world renowned scientists involved in the project. Then came the Clemson commitment and now the payoff in the federal wind turbine test lab. 

Ford had the same kind of intuition about solving the Confederate flag dilemma. He knew that there were strong feelings on both sides and that nothing was going to be accomplished until some middle ground could be realized. And that middle ground had to involve honoring the good intentions of both blacks and whites in the flag debate and assuaging the hurt feelings on both sides of the issue. It was Robert Ford’s bill that got it done. Again, instinct, intuition and uncanny insight.

And last year, after years of watching thousands upon thousands of children struggle to get an education in failing and inadequate public schools in his district and all over our state, Robert Ford opened his heart and mind to the possibility that there must be another way to create an acceptable teaching environment for our children. He simply grew tired of watching the majority of poor and disadvantaged children in South Carolina doomed to failure because they were trapped in horribly inadequate public schools. So after months of research and study and travel to school districts all over the country, Senator Robert Ford has now embraced the idea of tax credits for poor children stuck in failing schools... because it's the right thing to do for the kids.

Now, you talk about taking heat! Everyone knows that the words “credit,”  “voucher” and “choice” are anathema to the education establishment, which of course extends to and includes most of the leadership of the NAACP and all of the other African-American political organizations in the country. So there is Ford again—going against the status quo—unafraid, following his gut instincts—doing what he knows is the right thing to do.

For me this is what I love about the guy. Robert Ford didn’t go to Yale or Harvard, that’s for sure; but the kind of instinctive, intuitive, intelligence he has they don’t teach in books. A fellow like this comes along once in a great while. That’s why I’m supporting him for Governor (in case anybody asks.)