Call Sign: Slapshot

Some readers may view college administrators as inhabitants of an academic bubble where impractical ideas are gently protected from the real world and its consequences. But life is full of pleasant surprises and along comes news of a university hire with experience about as real as it gets.

Julie Carr Smyth reports for the Associated Press on the Ohio State University’s new president:

Walter “Ted” Carter Jr., 64, is the current president of the University of Nebraska System — another Midwestern land-grant institution with a large medical center — and former superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy. He’s also a retired vice admiral who attended the Navy Fighter Weapons School, known as Top Gun, and holds the national record for carrier-arrested landings with over 2,000 mishap-free touchdowns.

A press release from Ohio State adds:

Carter flew 125 combat missions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Bosnia and Kosovo. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross with combat distinction for valor and is a recipient of the Bronze Star.

Dean Narciso adds for the Columbus Dispatch:

Flying F-4, F-14 and F-18 fighter jets during his career, Carter, whose call name was “Slapshot” because of his love of hockey, was a flight officer on several ships, including the USS Midway and the USS Independence.

Beauty. Good things happen in hockey when you go to the net, and let’s hope that good things happen for the Buckeyes as they go with the vet. President Carter’s Nebraska experience certainly suggests that he can survive missions that take him deep into the faculty lounge.

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Meanwhile in Minnesota
Recently this column noted that Rep. Dean Phillips (D., Minn.) was considering a challenge to Joe Biden for their party’s 2024 presidential nomination, and the reasons that Rep. Phillips might present a formidable challenge to the incumbent.

Now it seems that Mr. Phillips has cooled on the idea of running, but continues to think that someone among the party’s experienced politicians should challenge the President.

Abigail Tracy reports for Vanity Fair:

Phillips’s primary concern is Biden’s age. “Age is the main issue in this election, because we have two men who are older than Bill Clinton, who was president when I was in college.”

Phillips insists he is just saying publicly what many Democrats are saying privately. But he certainly isn’t getting brownie points for these 15 minutes in the spotlight either. “Stand down,” is the resounding reaction he has received. Indeed, just hours after our interview, Phillips was scheduled to speak with House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries about this self-titled “crusade.” Phillips predicted Jeffries would tell him to get in line. “It’ll be, probably, an interesting one. And I don’t know the outcome.” He adds, “Many of us learn the hard way that if you simply pursue principle, you don’t have long careers in Congress. If there’s anything I want people to know, it’s that there’s no political reward right now for speaking one’s truth, for pursuing principle, because if the team doesn’t like it, they’re gonna trade you.”

Phillips wouldn’t tell me how his call with Jeffries went other than calling the minority leader “one of the finest and most principled people with whom I’ve had the pleasure of working.” (Jeffries’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

Perhaps the lawmakers are declining to provide details because their principled comments to each other were simply too substantive and courageous to believe.

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Mr. Phillips is often described in the press as “moderate” because he’s a U.S. House member from the Minneapolis area who doesn’t regularly express contempt for America and her friends. This brings us to his contemptuous colleague. Ryan Faircloth reports for the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, an outspoken human rights advocate in Congress, traveled to Qatar last year on the Middle Eastern country’s dime, according to her annual financial disclosure filed in May.

Qatar has been widely criticized for abusing migrant workers and criminalizing same-sex relationships, among other alleged human rights issues. Omar attended the FIFA World Cup and met with Qatari government officials while she was in the Gulf nation last November and had her food and lodging paid for by the country. The cost of her trip wasn’t disclosed.

A spokesman for Omar said the congresswoman “remains committed to upholding human rights and the rule of law around the world, and also to direct engagement with the regimes responsible for human rights abuses.”

Yet during the soccer adventure she was remarkably forgiving of the regime, compared to the scorn she heaps on the open democratic societies of North America. Bryan Metzger reported for Business Insider last year on her response to a question about balancing human rights accountability with diplomacy and enjoyment of the sport:

“I think that both of those things can happen,” said Omar. “You can call for accountability, you can ask for justice, but you can also just enjoy the beauty of the game.”

... The congresswoman also suggested that the 2026 World Cup may prompt similar conversations about human rights abuses in North America.

“We are slated to host the World Cup next with Mexico and Canada,” she said, referring to the 2026 World Cup. “I wonder what kinds of conversations will be had, and how many people will object to that happening with the history of indigenous people, of enslavement, of police brutality.”

“In the world that we’re living in right now, and the way in which we understand history, there are no perfect countries that have a perfect record,” she added.

To Qatar’s credit, it is a friend of the U.S. and has made great progress in opening its economy. But pretending that this dictatorship is no worse than a free society is perfectly wrong.

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Bye-ku for Yevgeny Prigozhin

Once Vlad’s caterer,

His career path arced largely.

To Vlad’s craterer.

-- Anonymous

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James Freeman is the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival” and also the co-author of “Borrowed Time: Two Centuries of Booms, Busts and Bailouts at Citi.”

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(Teresa Vozzo helps compile Best of the Web.)

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