BRACK: Mabus winds up service as leader of America’s away team

U.S. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus signed a framed poster in January 2015 that showed the new USS Charleston, which he named during a ceremony at the Charleston Maritime Center. Charleston Mayor Joe Riley, left, also made remarks touting the city’s naval heritage. U.S. Navy photo.

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher  |  For U.S. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, presence matters for “America’s away team” – the almost 900,000 sailors and Marines who comprise the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps under his leadership.

You see #presencematters in tweets and on Facebook and Instagram.  You hear about it in the hundreds of talks given by Mabus as he has traveled 1.35 million miles around the world.  Since 2009 when he took office, Mabus has been to more than 150 countries and all 50 states to meet the men and women serving in the Navy and Marines and help the country reconnect with their service around the world.

Presence matters because it show’s America’s commitment to leadership and democracy.

“America’s away team is substantially better than it was eight years ago,” Mabus said last week at the Pentagon during a special unveiling of his official, privately-paid portrait.  “They are significantly stronger than they were eight years ago – ready to do the nation’s work.

“What the Navy and Marine Corps give America is presence,” he told about 50 people crowded in a hall outside his office.  “We deploy equally in times of peace and war.”

Mabus at last week’s portrait unveiling.

As he spoke, he noted 100 ships were at sea throughout the world and 40,000 Marines were deployed in 40 countries.

“That’s what this job is about – making sure these sailors and Marines are some of the best America has to offer with the tools they need to protect us,” he said.  “The force we have today is the greatest force we’ve had in history.”

As secretary, Mabus has led efforts to increase the Navy’s fleet.  Before his tenure, it was building fewer than five ships a year.  Now it has 86 ships under fixed-price contacts, an average of 14 ships a year.  By the end of the decade, the Navy will have more than 300 ships.

Mabus also has led efforts to “green” the Navy’s consumption of energy with an aggressive goal of using non-petroleum alternatives, including biofuels and nuclear, for half of services’ energy by 2020.

A former governor of Mississippi and a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Mabus also led the Obama Administration’s efforts to prepare a long-term recovery plan for the Gulf of Mexico following the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in 2010.  That work has steered billions of dollars to recovery and energy projects to help the five Gulf states.

Mabus will leave the Pentagon Jan. 20, 2017, with stacks of accomplishments, thankful for being able to serve his country.

“It’s been the honor of my life.”

And we’ve been lucky to have him.

ON TO SOMETHING LESS SAVORY:  Corruption at the S.C. Statehouse.

Here’s an excerpt from last week’s Statehouse Report commentary on how the corruption probe at the Statehouse may impact the legislative process:

“The indictment of prominent Republican Rep. Jim Merrill has cast another pall on a General Assembly so fraught with challenges that some wonder if anything much will get done in 2017.

“Real progress, they say, doesn’t need another stumbling block from lawmakers constantly looking over their shoulders, perhaps reluctant to do much as a Statehouse corruption probe is sure to widen.  First came the 2014 downfall of former House Speaker Bobby Harrell of Charleston.  Now comes Merrill’s indictment on 30 charges.

“But others point to the plentiful, good people in the legislature who will treat what’s happening now as a hiccup.  Our state, they say, will keep moving forward on tax reform, pension reform and more money for state highways.

“Regardless, lawmakers would like any other corruption-related developments to be announced before January’s session arrives.  If integrity questions hang in the air for weeks – as they did in the early 1990s in the Statehouse sting known as Operation Lost Trust — forward movement could be fleeting.

“’The House came to a halt when some of that stuff was going on,’ one former legislator recalled.  ‘That group sucked a lot of oxygen out of the air waiting for the next shoe to drop.’”

• To read the rest of the commentary, click here.

• Have a comment?  Send to:  editor@charlestoncurrents.com