Parker: In Canteyville, USA, a warning for Washington lawmakers

By Kathleen Parker

If thy name is Incumbent, you might want to start packing up those D.C. tchotchkes.

November is likely to be a cruel month.

That, at least, is the view from “Canteyville,” which you won't find on a map. There is no town by this name in South Carolina, though there ought to be. Canteys are as common as front porches in this part of the country.

For these purposes, Canteyville is a state of mind, a late-night invention born of spirited conversation at a sporting clay club in the state's unfortunately dubbed “Midlands.”

This particular Cantey is famous in certain circles. Most recently, that would be among the gun-toters so often feared and misunderstood by urban and coastal dwellers.

Cantey's fame stems primarily from his having been a six-time world-champion clay shooter. Before he was a shooter, he was a renowned thoroughbred racehorse trainer (including Belmont Stakes winner Temperence Hill). Before that, he was bound for the Juilliard School on a scholarship when an automobile accident ruined his trumpet lip.

What's all this got to do with incumbency? Consider the following a local anecdote presented in the service of a larger lesson.

The biographical sketch is meant as a reminder that not everyone with a gun rack in the back of his truck is a racist, gay-bashing, Confederate flag-waving redneck. That said, if anyone were entitled to take pride in the old battle flag, it would be Cantey, whose forebear James Cantey was a brigadier general in the Confederate army.

He isn't the sort to toot his own horn, earlier talents notwithstanding. He is the sort to invite neighbors, clients, friends to open-air vittles on Wednesday and Sunday nights at his 1,500-acre Hermitage Farms just off Tickle Hill Road in Kershaw County.

The scene: A long, winding road leads through a walled gate into a clearing with two structures. One is the clubhouse, featuring a kitchen and walls crammed with shooting awards. A large bison head presides.

The other structure is an open-sided pavilion with a dozen picnic tables and an array of outdoor cooking equipment. A plaque reads: “Canteyville, Population 4.” Several tables are filled with men and women. Dress code: Jeans and camouflage. Smoking allowed; drinking not discouraged.

There's something grounding and instructive about sitting in the woods on a cool spring night, away from the green rooms and talk shows. It is important to touch the bare, unmarbled earth now and then, something too few inside Washington do often enough.

At the risk of sounding patronizing, the camo-boys at Canteyville are the “ordinary Americans” whom pundits and politicians love to invoke while utterly ignoring them. The resulting anger recently on display is not only political theater. And the conversation at Joe's pavilion isn't rare.

The Obama administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress have acted on the conviction that they know best and that citizens eventually will come around. This may sometimes have been historically true, but here's another truth: If you can't convincingly explain the beauty of a policy to the educated, hardworking people of Canteyville, you might have a policy problem.

Incumbency will tell.

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