PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, AUGUST 19, 2016
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
Politics is an
Olympian endeavor
By E.J. DIONNE JR.
Simone Manuel, Ka-
tie Ledecky and Simone
Biles will not be eligible
to run for president until
2032, although Michael
Phelps hits 35 years old
in 2020. After watching
these Olympians display so many
traits we admire—persistence, disci-
pline, grace, goal orientation, resil-
ience, and inner strength—perhaps
we should consider drafting one of
them some day.
It is both a blessing and a curse
that the Summer Olympics happen
during the election year. The bless-
ings are obvious. Especially in this
campaign, it is a relief to watch a
display of American talent that truly
brings the country together. It’s a
nice change of pace to see partici-
pants judged by objective standards
(with all the caveats that gymnastics
scoring invites). It is good to see
these men and women achieve be-
cause they absolutely earned it.
And during a campaign in which
one of the issues is whether the
United States has lost its “greatness,”
a glance at the Olympic medal
board suggests otherwise while a
look at the members of Team USA
suggests how our diversity is part of
our strength.
There is, fi nally, a lesson for po-
litical commentators in watching
our sports colleagues do their work.
I’ll always treasure a 2004 NPR es-
say by the legendary sports writer
Frank Deford pushing back against
the idea that political writing is too
much like sports writing in focusing
on the “horse race.”
Beyond pointing out that our
never-ending election seasons more
resemble pennant chases than horse
races (which “last about a min-
ute and half ”), Deford argued that
sports journalists are typically more
straightforward in assessing the
good and the bad in their realm.
There’s no pressure for false bal-
ance, and he sees sports journalists
as better than we political scribes at
“probing, questioning authority, not
being afraid to criticize.”
But Deford also suggested why
the straightforward joys of sports
we’re currently celebrating can ac-
tually blind us to the nobility, or at
least the extreme diffi culty, of poli-
tics. He admitted that “it’s a great
deal easier to shoot your mouth
off about whether the coach called
the right plays in the fourth quarter
than about how to conduct a war.”
No kidding. Politics is fun-
damentally different from other
spheres because it is about reconcil-
ing sharply differing interests and
people with fundamentally different
goals and worldviews. As Bernard
Crick argued in his classic book In
Defense of Politics, demo-
cratic politics is “a great
and civilizing human
activity” because it’s the
way in which we seek
to resolve our disputes
without resorting to vio-
lence. “Politics has rough
manners,” he wrote, “but it is a very
useful thing.”
In sports, the goals are clear. In
politics, much less so—partly be-
cause, as the philosopher Isaiah
Berlin taught us, there are compet-
ing goods in life that are often ir-
reconcilable. Your notion of liberty
may be perfectly reasonable but it
may well confl ict in profound ways
with my equally reasonable ideas
about equality. We can even disagree
on the nature of commitments we
claim to share. “We all declare for
liberty,” Abraham Lincoln said, “but
in using the same word, we do not all
mean the same thing.”
As for Deford’s example of a war,
we can disagree not only on the tac-
tics required to win it but also on
whether it should be waged in the
fi rst place.
The 2016 campaign is one of the
least uplifting examples of politics
in our lifetimes. I place most of the
blame for this on Donald Trump, al-
though examples of campaigns that
were universally regarded as uplift-
ing are rare. Trump’s rise itself re-
fl ects a deep cynicism about politics
that we have allowed to fester. He
praises himself for not being a “poli-
tician,” even though that is exactly
what he is. In his manipulation of
resentments and his indifference to
truth, he represents the worst traits
we associate with the breed.
But Trump is, fi nally, a symptom
of our impatience with and disre-
spect for the messy but essential
work that politicians do -- and the
fact that we are badly out of prac-
tice when it comes to reconciling
(as opposed to sharpening) our dif-
ferences.
I truly hope that our great Olym-
pians consider joining the political
fray down the road. But in the short
run, we citizens and our leaders
need to work as hard at the skills of
self-rule as they do at their strokes,
kicks, fl oor routines and overall fi t-
ness. We admire them for respect-
ing the integrity of what they do.
We need the same attitude toward
politics.
e.j.
dionne
(Washington
Group)
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Will drama win the debates?
By DEBRA J. SAUNDERS
The fi rst of three presidential
debates won’t happen until Sept.
26. Nearly six weeks beforehand, I
safely can make these predictions:
Hillary Clinton will show up for all
three, as her campaign announced
this week. Donald Trump will show
up, at least to most of them. He told
Time, “I will absolutely do three
debates”—although he noted he
has “to see the conditions.” Most
important, after each debate, the
media will spend the next 24 to 48
hours debating what Trump really
meant by his latest bizarre utterance
and if that particular off-the-wall
remark represents the last straw,
sinking his campaign.
Clinton campaign chairman
John Podesta rightly ribbed Trump
for engaging “in shenanigans
around these debates. It is not clear
if he is trying to avoid debates, or
merely toying with the press to
create more drama.” In July, The
Donald tweeted, “As usual, Hillary
& the Dems are trying to rig the
debates so 2 are up against major
NFL games. Same as last time w/
Bernie. Unacceptable!” Not that he
minded, but he made himself look
silly. The bipartisan Commission on
Presidential Debates had chosen the
dates before
Clinton won
the nod and
the
NFL
announced
its schedule.
Trump also
claimed that
the
NFL
complained to him in a letter—
which the NFL denied.
Trump also says that he wants
“fair” moderators. Be it noted,
when Trump talks about fairness,
he means favorable to him. Yet in
this ugly election season, it’s voters
who should wonder if the debate
schedule is fair to the electorate.
The RealClearPolitics polling
average shows that 61 percent of
voters have an unfavorable opinion
of Trump, while 53 percent have an
unfavorable opinion of Clinton. A
majority of voters don’t like either
candidate. Is it fair that Americans
could be stuck watching a face-off
between two highly unlikables?
There is hope. The debate
commission will look at the polls
after Labor Day to see if a third-
party candidate has hit 15 percent
support in fi ve unnamed national
polls. Libertarian nominee Gary
Johnson has exceeded 10 percent in
other
views
two polls this month—more than
twice the showing of Green Party
nominee Jill Stein. Commission
co-chair
Frank
Fahrenkopf
recently told CNBC the panel
would “consider giving an inch”
to an outsider—if, for example, a
candidate hit an average of 14.5 in
polls with a margin of error in the
3 percent range. Politico reported
that the panel told sponsors to
prepare for the possibility there will
be a third lectern. That is the best
presidential campaign news I’ve
heard all year.
You will hear calls for the panel
to ditch its participation criteria
and admit Johnson and Stein.
But, as Pace University political
science professor David Caputo
told me, small tweaks are OK, but
if the commission dumps its rules
to accommodate a low-polling
Johnson, “I think it would be very
diffi cult” to say no to Trump’s
demands for, say, time slots that are
likely to draw top ratings or “fair”
moderators.
Meanwhile, if you want Johnson
on the stage with Clinton and
Trump, stay by your phone. You
never know when a pollster might
call.
(Creators Syndicate)
Earning millions while others suffer
Review the particulars of just one
Oregon professional team of sixteen
players, the Portland Trail Blazers.
They will take part in 82 games dur-
ing regular season play between Oc-
tober and sometime in April, or about
a half year’s work time, unless they
win enough games to enter the play-
offs, which end in 2017 with an NBA
championship, a status the Trail Blazers
have not achieved since 1977. Nev-
ertheless, during the next four years
of playing a game for profi t, those 16
Blazers will take home, in contractual
salaries, about $550,000,000.
But do these and other professional
athletes deserve that kind of money?
One opinion, mine, believes the an-
swer is in the negative. Here’s why:
In the U,S. of former times, salaries
and wages were based on the value of
one’s work. If we were still that nation
nowadays, grounded in reasonableness,
all members of this society would be
paid according to the economic im-
portance and value to society of their
job.
Consider the profession of being a
school teacher. Although we Ameri-
cans argue about everything, it would
seem we can agree that one of the
most important occupations here is
teaching. Why? Because our
very future depends on the
education of our youth. Yet,
many American teaches
are paid less than two cur-
rent examples among thou-
sands of those possible: the
amount of money Cleveland
Cavaliers’ LeBron James or
Golden State Warriors’ Ste-
phen Curry. For each basket
they make, they receive pay
equal to the annual salary of
many an American public
and private school teacher.
Then there’s the president
of the United States, who a lot
of us feel is the most impor-
tant American citizen. The
president makes decisions ev-
ery day that affect the entire
world but earns a comparably
paltry (to most professional
athletes) $400,000 per year.
Meanwhile, the
nation’s gover-
nors are paid as
low as Maine’s
at
$73,000
and as high as
Pennsylvania’s
at
$187,256;
Oregon’s gov-
ernor is currently paid $93,600 per
year. Even unproven and possible
early washouts during their fi rst year
in the NBA (and other professional
sports like the Major League Baseball
and National Footnball League) re-
ceive more money than the president
and every U.S. governor.
Firefi ghters and police offi cers
risk their lives for a mere fraction of
sports stars’ salaries. American military
personnel leave their families for as-
signments overseas in war-torn lands
and sometimes never return. Those
lost in battle are briefl y recognized
for their sacrifi ce. Meanwhile, Blazer
players like Damien Lillard and C.J.
McCollum are considered heroes and
paid in one year for playing a game
what many an American may earn in
an entire lifetime. Meanwhile, some of
those Americans die, protecting and
serving us.
gene h.
mcintyre
The Trail Blazers have had some
very poorly self-disciplined players on
board. These men have shown those
who look up to them that a person
can succeed at making big money and
remain in hero status to youth even
though they are lousy citizens. Lately,
if Blazers are behaving badly we know
little or nothing about their esca-
pades by way of cagey spokespersons.
It quite honestly grieves me to be
aware that there are so many social
problems in Portland and through-
out Oregon that money could help to
relieve as, for just one example, pro-
viding shelter and food for those many
who don’t want to live homeless. If
Oregon’s citizens would boycott pro-
fessional games until salaries were re-
duced to reasonable levels, we could
do so much better than we do now
at addressing our multiple social ills.
As long as thousands of us are willing
to spend hundreds of dollars to watch
a few gifted athletes play ball while
starving kids in wet clothes, without
a place to stay overnight, cry outside
in an old car that’s their home, we can
never claim any longer to be a moral
society.
(Gene H. McIntyre’s column ap-
pears weekly in the Keizertimes.)